Don't really know how to start this

So I'll just get right into it.

One of my friends received a call from one of his friends (who I'm acquaintances with) who says he might have gotten herpes from a girl. Now, this doesn't affect me personally, but it was important to me because of the small conversation that ensued afterwards between my friend and I.

#1, it was a big secret and I had to promise not to tell anyone anything before he even told me the news. Now, after he told me, I fully understood, but it still didn't sit right with me that in this society, so many things aren't put out in the open and discussed. If he were to have another disease not through sexual contact, then it wouldn't have even been an issue of secrecy. But in America, if you have an STD, you are immediately labeled and blacklisted. And everyone looks down on you. You're taught to feel shame for having it, and try not to let anyone know.

What did he do that was so wrong? he did what the majority of kids do during high school, he had sex and acted young and stupid like most kids. Not everyone knows exactly how to live and act as a young teen, and he simply acted on his natural urges and emotion.

He's still a fucking human being.

Everyone gets the feelings he has, but everyone deals with it in a different way. I don't know if he used protection, but if he didn't, then, again, it was a stupid mistake at one time in his life. Does that automatically make him a scumbag who should be cut out of society? Of course not. Maybe if there was more open discussion about these kinds of things, and if they would stop constantly preaching abstinence and instead educate youth about contraception and simply give them the facts, maybe they could choose for themselves and maybe make that decision a little clearer.

Instead of scaring kids with biased opinions and preaching morals, we should help kids embrace these feelings and teach them how to deal with them, not deem them as "impure thoughts" and tell them that it's evil. Once everyone admits that they have all this baggage and loose ends in their fucked-up minds, we will be able to keep an open mind when dealing with everyone's problems and hearing past mistakes, and most importantly, we'll be able to learn from them so we don't make the same mistakes.

keeping all problems bottled up, or telling people that can't tell anyone else doesn't help the overall problem in the end at all. Just admitting that there is a problem is hard, nearly impossible, for this "great nation" to do. This is why there is a drug problem, and this is why STDs are running rampant, and this is why we can feel good about bombing other countries. It's because America gives us a false sense of satisfaction by looking down at drug addicts, or people with STDs, or foreigners. It's all interconnected. And these "morals" which are preached--American can take them and stick them up their ass.