Take the new "Birds and Bees Text Line" in North Carolina. As with similar programs popping up around the nation, it offers "anonymous" sexual advice to teens through the texting feature on their cellular phones. Children can text any sex question and within 24 hours a stranger will send them back an answer.

Paid for partly with tax dollars, the owners promise frank and "nonjudgmental" answers - and secrecy from mom and dad. Marketed directly to teens through outlets like MySpace, they seek to teach your children their views about sex and sexuality without your knowledge.

"Sex texting" is a deliberate effort to convince our sons and daughters that nameless, faceless adults understand them better, and have greater empathy for them than do their own moms and dads.