Pornography is a lucrative business, because we live in a sexually insatiable world. Journalism? Well, it just about pays the bills if you wake up late enough to skip breakfast.

The media gets called all sorts of things, but simply tries to be a mirror of the world at-large. Part of that reflection, as illustrated by the Aug. 24 sex-toy issue, is a happy and fulfilling sex life.

Most kids have stumbled upon, if not actively sought out, actual pornography before the third grade. Pre-teens, no doubt, are already thinking about sex.

Sex is as much a part of the world landscape as concrete overpasses. Watch television for more than five minutes or walk past any magazine rack, and tell me you didn't just see eight breasts and a midget dressed up like a beekeeper.

When the news is filled with tales of pregnant 12-year-olds and fourth-graders being expelled for harassment, how can anyone still say that sex is an adult topic unsuitable for a family newspaper? If anything, we should be educating our kindergartners. Shielding your child from the pervasive sleaze-fest of popular culture is about as likely as standing in the middle of Gold Creek and preventing the water from reaching Gastineau Channel.

If you're a child, and if the content of the article has led you to ask your parents about sexuality, a few words of caution:

They may be misinformed, or worse, they may not want to talk at all. Both of those possibilities speak volumes.

Even in this age of multi-global connectedness, Southeast Alaska is a bubble, culturally detached from the rest of the world. Juneau has mountains, trees, bears and giant fish, but for all of its beauty, it's still 1997 in the parts that aren't locked on some bucolic world-view of 1973.

How many kids in Juneau are being raised in a double-bubble: their parents' cloister within Juneau's vacuum? How many of their parents are trying to shelter them from media, music, magazines and any depictions of sex and violence? And unless your kid is graduating to a pygmy life in a lean-to on Admiralty Island, how is that going to work?

It's not. It's just going to add fuel to the flame. We've all seen what happens to the double-bubblers. They go away for their freshman year at a liberal arts college "down south," they get their first taste of freedom, and they bounce around like a spaceman in zero-G.

What happens to the kids who weren't exposed to reality, don't have the wherewithal to make their own choices and move back home after a semester? Kids need to know about alcohol and drugs so they know what to do - or not do - when guys named "Troy" invite them to "ragers" at the "Phi house."

Thank god for older siblings and the fact that most elementary-school classrooms have one dude named Brad who seems like he's three years older than everybody. That's the only saving grace preventing some kids from growing up thinking the uterus is a central African republic.