I saw this story in Briefing.com this morning and thought it was a joke:
Doctors at the Lübeck campus of the University Clinic of Schleswig-Holstein (search) in northern Germany described the case in a medical bulletin, according to Ananova.com.
After eight years of marriage, the 36-year-old man and his 30-year-old wife went to the campus’ fertility clinic to figure out what was wrong.
Doctors gave them a battery of tests and were baffled — both husband and wife were healthily fertile.
Then came the important question.
“When we asked them how often they had had sex,” said a clinic spokesman, “they looked blank, and said: ‘What do you mean?'”
He went on to explain that each of the pair had been brought up extremely religiously and had never heard of the birds and the bees.
“We are not talking retarded people here,” the clinic spokesman said. The two “were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.”
The man and wife are now being given sexual therapy. The clinic is trying to find out if there are other couples in the area who could use a refresher course in human biology.
Update: Snopes seems to think this story is an urban legend and/or hoax. So maybe my original thoughts were right.
And evangelical conservatives everywhere are now trying to figure out how to convince our children to behave like this.
Dude, I”m calling BS on that one 🙂
A co-worker of mine told me about this story yesterday morning and I just looked at her, baffled. How on earth do you get to be in your 30s and not even know the word “sex” exists and its meaning when even European television, magazines, newspapers, people you know and meet, etc. must have discussed it in front of you at least once in your lifetime already!?!?!
I am going to have to second Glenn…
It looks like FoxNews has cleaned up the story just a tad. The Ananova and Mirror versions misspelled Lübeck as “Lubek,” and had the unnamed spokesman saying that the couple weren’t “retards.” I sent an email to a real spokeswoman for the clinic; so far my inquiry remains unanswered.