Red Sex Blue Sex

The “sexual début” of an evangelical girl typically occurs just after she turns sixteen. Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark.

"Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion."

The quote is from a recent New Yorker article looking in greater detail at the reaction of many delegates at the Republican Convention to the news that Bristol Palin was pregnant.