Am I a prude?

The Tribune runs a column called "Bachelor Pad," where we can relish in the travails of a twenty-something guy from Jersey. It's not a bad column; I usually read it.

Yesterday's column (reprinted here) discussed whether a man and woman could ever be friends given mans' presumably overactive hormones. It was a decent column.

My question, though, is whether this content is better suited for the Great Falls Tribune, People Magazine, or Maxxim? In discussing his friendship with Deb, the writer said "I sort of wanted to see her naked....From the beginning, Deb tried to put that idea out of my mind. In no uncertain terms, she said she had no desire to see me in my underwear, let alone buck naked. We would just be friends and there would be 'no sex or past sex or future sex.' "

My 12 year old kid read the column yesterday. We have tried to maintain the old fashioned and perhaps somewhat unrealistic notion that sex is for marriage. At a minimum, we convey that this is a very significant step in one's life and only should be made in the context of a serious commitment. Casual sex, while oft chased, oft leads to unhappiness and heartbreak.

Thus, my question. Should a 12 year old kid get the 'casual sex' message from a newspaper? Should a 10 year old kid get any sex message from a newspaper?

Also, I note that the column was right next to the Tribune's Cocktail of the Week, a recipe for a Screwdriver. I always laugh that our community nanny, a paper that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the evils of alcoholism, has a "Cocktail of the Week."