A recent Senate Appropriations subcommittee this week were told what most already knew: Kids today are having sex and conceiving babies at an alarming rate.

Single mothers now account for nearly 70 percent of births to women between 15 and 19, and committee figures show there were nearly 370,000 births to unmarried teens in 1991, up 31 percent from 1985.

But witnesses who presented these statistics to Senators believe inadequate education and poverty are driving up the rate of teenage pregnancy.

The problem is simpler than that. It's the law of averages. Most teens today -- regardless of education and economics -- engage in intercourse. And why not? Our culture -- as decreed by television shows, movies, music and literature -- overwhelmingly approves of premarital sex.

The "experts" claim education is the key to changing the way kids think about sex. But when education consists primarily of the proper way to use a condom, we're missing the mark.

Other critics focus merely on the immorality of premarital sex, condemning children for acting, in many instances, exactly as their parents act, or as they see "peers" acting on television or in movies.

But moral relativists don't respond to appeals to morality. And if there's one thing our public schools do very well it's to teach that there are no absolutes, that morality is a matter of individual opinion.

So what do we do? A good start would be to proclaim the truth, supported by reason and experience, with the same doggedness that the enemies of society assert their amoral drivel.

Truth is, there are absolutes. The moral absolutist isn't confounded by rising rates of teen pregnancy and its affect on society. Indeed, it stands as evidence that the absolute he espouses is based in reason. Of course, every rational person is free to choose how he reacts to moral absolutes. He can opt for good or evil.

By opting for good -- abstaining from sex until marriage -- our nation's young people can assure themselves of the best chance of happiness and economic success.

But what are the consequences of "opting for evil" in terms of premarital sex? Perhaps the gravest ill reaped from promiscuity -- and the least acknowledged as an ill -- is illegitimacy.

David W. Murray, an anthropologist and Bradley Scholar at The Heritage Foundation wrote in the spring issue of "Policy Review" a provocative article on the subject, titled: "Poor Suffering Bastards." In it, Murray reported that single-parent families are five times as likely to be poor as two-parent unions. "Broken and unformed families are the most important root cause of violent crime, drug abuse, and academic failure," Murray wrote.

Murray points out the importance of marriage for creating "kinsmen out of strangers... By uniting with outsiders, marriage helps families multiply their economic capital... and their social capital."

What society loses when it loses legitimate marriages are the necessary social relatives. Instead of fathers, we are substituting the indifferent welfare state.

But the importance of the capital incumbent in legitimate marriages often is overlooked. House loans, emergency aid, car payments, cash gifts, and job opportunities come disproportionately from these kinsmen.

"There is little question but that having four parents and eight grandparents attached to every marriage broadens the base of economic support," Murray adds. "But the plight of the single mother, isolated from kin, can be economically grim. With fewer people tied in a committed and socially sanctioned way to the obligation of support, the single parent is hobbled from the beginning. Single parenthood that passes through more than one generation, from unwed mother to unwed daughter, results in an almost exponential collapse of the number of supporting relatives."

I'm not saying that single parents are evil or that their children ought to be condemned. Most single parents work incredibly hard to be a loving parent despite having the cards stacked overwhelmingly against them. The point is, we have to stop spreading the lie that legitimate marriage is no better than single parenthood. The economic disadvantages a teen must face having a child out of wedlock ought to be sufficient cause alone for teaching abstinence. Instead, the "experts" continue to rely on "hands-on" education involving latex and garden vegetables.

Jay Eastlick is night editor for the Southeast Missourian.