A brief cultural history of sex
'Technical Virginity' Amongst Teenagers
Does pro-life now mean pro-libertinism?
Virginity Pledges Partly Effective
Preserve virginity testing, Zulu king urged
Palin's daughter victim of abstinence-only sex education
Many Teens Who Take 'Virginity Pledges' Substitute Other High-Risk Behavior
See also
The choice: STD sluttiness or ‘true love waits'
Janice Turner September
13, 2008
Abstinence may be cool in America but it's largely ridiculed on this side of the Atlantic. There must be a middle way.
Brian stands 6ft tall with a dash of Matt Damon in his dentally flawless smile. Little wonder the Ford model agency offered him a contract. Big wonder that at 24 he remains a virgin. In fact, Brian has never been past first base (hand holding/kissing), hasn't fondled a woman, let alone gotten naked. Indeed he tries to conduct dates in public places to ensure he isn't led into temptation, so that he can keep his pledge to God that the first time he has sex will be on his wedding night with his wife.
I should add that I didn't find Brian through a brimstone ministry. He was just the friendly guy who served me a scoop of cherry-vanilla at a coffee shop in the small Ohio town where I've spent the week, and we got talking. About temptation (“Sister, it can be hard”), masturbation (best avoided because it just multiplies lustful thoughts) and the big night itself (“I guess it could be an anti-climax”).
He is a sweet guy, from a large non-churchy family of military and medics, who works the 6.30am shift to pay his way through nursing college. I'd wager he isn't unusually screwed up or repressing homosexual desires. Neither is he a humourless funsucker - he likes indie rock and a beer or three and mixes with atheist and gay friends.
But as I look into Brian's guileless green eyes I recall Russell Brand's ill-received jokes at the MTV Video awards. Speaking of the Jonas Brothers, a squeaky-clean American boyband outfit who wear “purity rings” to avow their commitment to remain virgins until marriage, Brand, the hoary old sex addict, was bemused. “But they could get loads of girls. It's like Superman deciding not to use his special power to fly and just taking the bus.”
And I spend my conversation with Brian repressing a bubbling snigger. Why, I want to cry out, are you wasting your prime shagging years? (His big brother, a Marine, says much the same thing.) What if you end up like the local youth pastor I just spoke to, still waiting - at 36! - to find a woman who wants to receive his “greatest gift of love”?
Having lived only in Los Angeles, Brand made the classic British error of underestimating Christianity's hold over Middle American life. This week, I feel suddenly very far from home: meeting high-school teachers and businesswomen - educated, affluent folk, not ignorant rednecks - who think teaching creationism on an equal footing to evolution is “fantastic because it will allow children to choose”, or seeing a gaggle of moms who look just like my London mates, planning a school trip with reference to the book What Would Jesus Do? America is the Moon landing and Microsoft, the apogee of the modern, and yet sometimes you think the Enlightenment never happened.
From Europe it is easy to assume that this virulent religiosity brings about only bigotry and unreason. What I didn't appreciate until this my first visit to the mid-West is how belief can translate into such unrivalled courtesy and generosity, my days here lit up by hourly acts of kindness.
In our snarky, mickey-taking, Brandish superiority we decline to understand why so many American teenagers might become denim-clad nuns. We might note that billions of dollars spent under George Bush on abstinence-only sex education has done nothing to reduce a teen-pregnancy rate more shameful even than our own - and which sure didn't work for Bristol Palin.
Stars such as Britney Spears have fuelled our cynicism by making a virginity pledge seem just a convenient branding to give a look-don't-touch respectability to under-age raunch. Teen star Miley Cyrus wears her own purity ring - purchased at Disney World - while looking lipstick-smudged and postcoital for Vanity Fair. Virginity is hot; avowed chastity even hotter. All that repressed desire, the lip-smacking possibility of seduction, touching someone, as Madonna understood so well, for the very first time. Perhaps the Jonas Brothers are sincere but just maybe it sells more CDs if a tweenie girl fan can believe that Kevin or Joe or Nick is saving himself just for her.
And the craze for purity rings has a cheap whiff of fashion, providing yet another reason to hit the mall, this time for a $200 gold band inscribed with “True Love Waits” or bearing an unblossomed rose. One mother told me her 11-year-old daughter wears one - as if a primary school child needs to assert her virginity or can even identify sexual feelings - but her other daughter abruptly lost hers at 18 once she found a boyfriend. A father tells me how the conditions of the pledge are often interpreted in Clintonesque style, with oral or even anal intercourse not counting as a breach of rules.
But those like Brian - who sees no need for a ring to advertise his beliefs - aren't just obeying the thump of a pulpit or I Thessalonians iv, 3-4. The spread of the evangelical movement is partly why young Americans are often more socially conservative than their own Sixties-raised parents. They are also reacting against a popular culture that commodifies sex, pimps the young and is seeped in pornography that twists their burgeoning desires into sordid, loveless XXX-rated couplings. A father tells me of high-school party races in which girls performing fellatio on boys they might not even know compete to finish first.
And thus Brian mirrors the reasons I've heard British Muslim girls give for wearing the veil: to remove themselves from a sexed-up society they don't respect because it does not respect them. These girls see a clear choice between the hijab and the thong. And this same moral absolutism permeates the purity movement. Can we shun porn culture only by regressing to a time when masturbation is shameful? Is it necessary for white-clad teenage virgins to attend America's popular father-daughter purity balls where dad pledges to protect his child's chastity until she can bestow it upon her eventual husband?
Isn't there some middle course between STD-infested sluttiness and this perverse repression of God-given appetites? I fear Brian may be inflating the sweaty, animal business of copulation into some sacred rite. It is, after all, only sex. But he just smiles his easy Midwest smile and says he has a girl in mind. She's saving herself too. Once he's qualiied as a nurse, they'll wed. Not too long now then? “Sister,” he says with feeling, “I can't wait.”
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Some things never change but sex isn't one of them. Marcus Field looks back on some surprising episodes in the centuries-long evolution of Western sexual attitudes, from the ancient Greeks to the present day. 23 September 2008
Let's start with the Greeks
Aphrodisiac, eroticism, homosexuality, narcissism, nymphomania, pederasty all these terms are derived from the language of ancient Greece which tells you something about its society. The myths of Homer and Plutarch told stories such as that of Aphrodite, goddess of sexual intercourse, who emerged from the foaming semen of her father's castrated testicles. Then there were the mortal heroes such as Hercules, who it is said ravished 50 virgins in a single night, but who also had an affair with his nephew Iolaus and fell in love with "sweet Hylas, he of the curling locks".
From the early 6th century to the early 4th century, the culture of pederasty flourished in Athens, with adult men taking adolescent boys to serve as their lovers (although how much physical sex actually happened is a matter of some debate). Women in ancient Greece were generally the property of men and rarely enjoyed the exalted status of the young homosexual partner. But we know that there was a strong culture of female prostitution, with the most successful courtesans often wielding power and wealth and with brothels paying a state tax on their profits. Neglected wives found ways to satisfy their desires. Lesbians (called tribades) certainly existed, and the culture is associated most particularly with the island of Lesbos "where burning Sappho loved and sung". There are also plenty of literary references to the use of dildos, which in ancient Greece were made of padded leather and anointed with olive oil before use.
And then along came the Romans...
In Rome, as elsewhere in the ancient world, wives and children belonged to the man of the family. A woman caught in the act of adultery could be killed by her husband on the spot, while a wife who drank more than a moderate amount of wine gave grounds for divorce. Despite this, the orgiastic culture of legend certainly existed during the Bacchanalian festivals, when all restraint was abandoned. Such was the hedonism and lawlessness of these rites, with rampant couplings of both heterosexual and homosexual nature, that public worship of Bacchus was finally outlawed in 186 BCE. Prostitution was widespread and legal, and the Greek tradition of pederasty was significant enough to cause concern when the Roman birth rate dropped. Much attention was given to the development of contraception.
Pliny recommended "mouse dung applied in the form of a liniment" or pigeon droppings mixed with oil and wine. Much more successful was the method devised by the gynaecologist Soranus of Ephesus who suggested a wool plug for the uterus impregnated with gummy substances. However, it is more likely that outbreaks of plague and disease led to the catastrophic fall in the population of the Roman empire than the success of primitive contraception.
The Word is God
According to Reay Tannahill's book Sex in History the years between 400AD and 1000AD saw Christian morality gain a grip on Western thought "so paralyzing that it is only now beginning to relax". Many of its rules regarding sex originate in the Hebrew law of the Old Testament and were fixed firm for over 1,500 years, with threats of hellfire proving one of the most successful deterrents ever invented. Lust and sex became associated with the original sin of Adam and Eve and the celibate life was promoted for those with the most godly minds. An indication of how poorly early Christians viewed sex is the fact that they declared Jesus to have been conceived without carnal contact.
Incest, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex and homosexuality were all deemed sinful and punishable by the Christian church with increasing severity. Sex within marriage was tolerated for reproductive purposes only and contraception banned because of its associations with pleasure. We know little of how these rules affected the lives of ordinary people, but the threat of damnation almost certainly transformed sex into activity loaded with fear and danger.
Renaissance pleasures
The spread of syphilis to epidemic proportions across Europe in the 16th century reveals that many men and women were not as chaste as the Church would have liked. Prostitution was large-scale across the continent (there were 7,000 public women in Rome in 1490) and the brothels of Southwark in London were notorious. The Church accepted the situation as a necessary evil, arguing that at least sin was contained. But times were definitely changing. Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture reveals the rediscovery of the art of antiquity, when the naked flesh of men and women were worshipped and enjoyed rather than regarded as sinful. Homosexuality was tolerated in certain areas and classes, among artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo for example, and even in the court of James I in London where the king paraded his lover, the Duke of Buckingham, in public.
Although a Buggery Act was introduced for the first time in 1533, making sodomy between men punishable by death, it was rarely acted upon. Indeed, the homosexual Duke of Sutherland was able to rise to the position of Prime Minister in the early 18th century and only forced to resign when satirical stories were published about the gay sex club he had established. Enlightenment literature, in novels such as Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and, most strongly, in the novels of the Marquis de Sade, outlined the dangers and excitements of sexual perversion and reveal the extent to which sex had moved away from the guilt-laden act of the Middle Ages to become an intoxicating if risky source of pleasure.
Vice and the Victorians
A combination of overt gentility and ignorance turned the 19th century into the most rotten age there has ever been for sexuality. In Britain the ideal of the middle-class wife, safely installed with her family in a bourgeois home, was the universal ideal. But the repression of natural urges led to a dark underground world of debauchery and vice. As the purity of the wifely figure was promoted (once-a-month sex was generally considered enough), prostitution became more widespread than ever before. In 1839, in London, a city of two million inhabitants, there were estimated to be around 80,000 prostitutes. Later in the century Prime Minister William Gladstone found the problem so pressing that he would walk the streets himself at night and counsel these working girls. Some courtesans, Lillie Langtry for example, reached the highest echelons of society and even managed to retain an air of respectability. But venereal disease was rife and syphilis spread wildly between prostitutes, their clients and their clients' families (Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, is a well-known example).
Thus, "clean" virgins became a highly desirable commodity, although faking it was so easy that by the 1880s the price had dropped from 100 earlier in the century to just 5 a session. Homosexuals had generally enjoyed a period of tolerance until 1885 when the Criminal Law Amendment Act stated that gross indecency between men would be punishable by two years' imprisonment. It was this law, known as the "blackmailer's charter", under which Oscar Wilde was convicted in 1895 and which remained on the statute books until 1967. Indeed the whole confused and hypocritical attitude of the Victorians towards sexuality had long-lasting repercussions.
Modern life and 'the joy of sex'
Not until after the Second World War did any real cracks begin to show in the Victorian moral code. The freedom many men and women felt as war workers made it hard to go back to the old life once peace came. This is illustrated by the Kinsey Reports of 1948 which found that 69 per cent of men in the US had visited prostitutes, 50 per cent of husbands had been unfaithful to their wives, and that 37 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women had had at least one homosexual experience. During the 1960s many old ideas were swept away by what we now call the sexual revolution. The introduction of easily available contraception in the form of the Pill gave women more control and allowed them to indulge in sex for pleasure, often with multiple partners.
In 1972, Alex Comfort's book The Joy of Sex was published and soon became the best-selling manual for a new generation. But the arrival of the lethal Aids virus in the West had a huge impact on the idea of free love in the 1980s. Since the virus can be transmitted by sex, it's no surprise to hear that a common reaction of the public, summed up by a letter to Time magazine in 1988, was a call to return to "the God-fearing moral standard of yesterday". But could conservatives ever effectively re-invoke the deterrent of hellfire? It's a losing battle. New figures from the World Health Organisation show that 39 per cent of girls in Britain have underage sex, and 34 per cent of boys the highest rates in Europe. We might not approve, but the sexual revolution goes on.
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The concept of 'technical virginity' amongst teenagers is not as common as believed. In fact, a new survey has revealed that teenagers do not opt for oral sex as a way to preserve their virginity. After analysing a federal survey of more than 2,200 males and females aged 15 to 19, it was found that over 50 percent of them engaged in oral sex. But the practice of oral sex was more common in those who had had intercourse as compared to those claiming to be virgins.
"There's a popular perception that teens are engaging in serial oral sex as a strategy to avoid vaginal intercourse. Our research suggests that's a misperception," Washingtonpost.com quoted Rachel Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a private, nonprofit research organization based in , who helped do the study, as saying.
The findings revealed that teens were more likely to become sexually active in many ways around the same time. For example, while only 1 in 4 teenage virgins opted for oral sex, more than 4 out of 5 teenagers reported to have tried it within six months after their first intercourse "That suggests that oral and vaginal sex are closely linked. Most teens don't have oral sex until they have had vaginal sex," said Jones.
Sexually experienced teens were almost four times more likely to engage in oral sex.
Those who advocate sex-education programs that focus on abstinence said that the results of the study threw light on the debate that the approach was accidentally encouraging more teens to go for oral sex, which still carries the risk of sexually transmitted disease, for preserving their virginity.
"This study . . . invalidates the suggestion that 'technical virgins' account for the rise in oral and anal sex. Sexually experienced teens were almost four times more likely to engage in oral sex and 20 times more likely to engage in anal sex than their peers who were virgins," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association.
It was suggested in an earlier research that oral sex was gaining popularity among teenagers as an alternative to intercourse. However, the studies were based on small samples or anecdotal reports. But, the new study analysed data collected from a nationally representative sample of 1,150 females and 1,121 males aged 15 to 19 who were questioned in detail in 2002 for the federal government's National Survey of Family Growth.
While examining the timing of sexual behaviours, the researchers found that 82 percent of those who said during face-to-face interviews that had had vaginal sex in the past six months also had had oral sex, in comparison to 26 percent of the virgins. 92 percent of those who had initiated vaginal sex more than three years earlier had engaged in oral sex.
However, Jones indicated that they could not find which sexual activity was more likely to occur first. While examining the number of partners the teens reported, the researchers found that among those who reported engaging in oral sex, 67 percent had only one partner, "another piece of evidence that there's not a lot of teens engaging in serial oral sex," said Jones. The findings of the study will be published in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
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At NationalPost.com, journalist David Frum has a piece in which he discusses what he perceives to be the transformation of the pro-life movement. His thesis is that the widespread acceptance of unwed motherhood — including by pro-lifers — has eliminated the stigma attached to the state, thereby causing a quarter-century decrease in the abortion rate.
Frum starts out talking about how the applause for Sarah Palin's pregnant, 17-year-old daughter at the Republican Convention reflects this sea-change. Then, contrasting today's sexual mores and abortion rate with those of 27 years ago, he writes:
. . . the pro-life movement has come to terms with the sexual revolution. So long as unwed parenthood is considered disgraceful, many unwed mothers will choose abortion to escape disgrace. And so, step by step, the pro-life movement has evolved to an accepting — even welcoming — attitude toward pregnancy outside marriage . . . .
. . . this approach seems to have worked. As the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has diminished, the United States has seen both a huge increase in the proportion of babies born out of wedlock — now reaching almost 37% — and a striking decline in the incidence of abortions . . . .
. . . In 1981, 29.3 abortions were carried out for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in the United States. By 2005, that rate had tumbled to 19.1 per 1,000 women.
It is certainly true that the stigma once attached to unwed motherhood has gone the way of the dodo. As an example, Halle Berry joined other libertine entertainers in having planned unwed pregnancies. Then, with life imitating artists, we heard about the 17 girls who allegedly made a "pregnancy pact" at Gloucester High School. And although such planning still isn't the norm, I think most of us know an unmarried female who is or has been "in the family way."
I take issue with Frum, however. His choice of data is tendentious, and I don't like the implication that the degrading of sexual mores is an acceptable — or even effective over the long term — remedy to the abortion problem. Most significantly, I don't accept the premise that we have only two choices: The de-stigmatization of promiscuity or a high abortion rate (in fact, the former ensures the latter). There is a third option.
To many, Frum's argument may seem compelling. Women had fewer out-of-wedlock babies and a higher rate of abortion in 1981, a time when the stigma against having such children was greater. Today, however, without said stigma, we have a higher unwed birthrate and lower abortion rate than in those more judgmental times. Open and shut case, right?
The problem is that Frum is not studying history and building a theory based on it; rather, he is cherry-picking a historical period that just so happens to support his theory. As it happens, he must do this because a more conscientious examination of the past would reveal his theory as nonsense.
We might wonder why Frum would go back 27 years for his starting point. It's a rather odd number, after all; why not a round one such as 20, 30 or 50? Well, not surprisingly, 1981 just so happens to be the year with the highest abortion rate in American history. During earlier times, however, the rate was even lower than now. In 1972, for instance, the rate was 14 per 1000 women, significantly lower than today. But how could this be? How could the rate have been so much lower during a time when the stigma against unwed motherhood was far greater? Clearly, there are other factors at work.
It's important, however, to be intellectually honest and acknowledge where Frum is right. He expresses an obvious truth of human nature when saying that if you remove the stigma from a behavior, it becomes more common. Yet also obvious is that the stigma in question didn't originate by viewing out-of-wedlock pregnancy as being divorced from the activity that causes it. Were this the case, believing Christians would have to hold the Virgin Mary in very low regard. No, the stigma's true target is fornication, and this is the problem: The solution Frum speaks of so cavalierly is nothing more than the mitigation of one flaw with another.
Many would label this the embrace of the lesser of two evils, and as a pro-lifer I agree. Yet this still leaves us with one evil left, and if some would say it's an acceptable concession to the age, I profoundly disagree. It is a point of view that fails to recognize the gravity of the problem of widespread unwed motherhood.
When pondering this, we could dwell on just the obvious. It's now well-established that children of single parents have higher rates of criminality, drug use and alcoholism; suffer academically; and, generally, exhibit a wide range of social ills to a far greater degree than those from intact homes. Yet, did you ever ponder what such a thing portends for the growth of government and loss of freedom?
The reality is that Bristol Palin doesn't fit the profile of the average single mother, in that she won't have to forge on singly. She is soon to be married, and, also important, she has two relatively young parents of means who are ready, willing and able to provide aid and support. The average pregnant single mother, however, is much more likely to be left almost twisting in the wind . . . alone, with child. Individually, this is often tragic, but collectively, when the number of single mothers becomes great enough, it is always so — for a civilization.
The obvious problem for a single parent is that you cannot work to put bread on the table and care for children simultaneously; thus, someone else must perform the role you cannot. Of course, aside from the Bristol Palins of the world, there are rare cases such as mothers who are financially independent and can stay at home or those who earn enough to pay for day care, but, again, what of the rest? The answer is that, sooner or later, the government will step into the breach; it will institute social programs and fulfill the traditional father role by providing money or the traditional mother role and provide day care. And the less the individuals fulfill their roles — in other words, the greater the number of single mothers laboring singly — the greater the government's role will become.
Moreover, when there is a large population of dysfunctional youths in society, there will be impetus for a trove of other programs as well. You can start with pre-kindergarten, after-school, nutritional, youth-intervention, drug and anti-violence programs, but the sky is the limit. Virtually anything a good family would do, Hillary's village will do.
This is where my libertarian friends will disagree, saying that adherence to the Constitution and proper principles of governance could forestall such statism.
This is where I say, you dream.
Correct principles are great, and we should all try to live by them. But no principle, no matter how valid, trumps the principles of human nature. And one of the latter was expressed well by Edmund Burke when he said:
"It is written in the eternal constitution that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
Like it or not, there is a direct relationship between the morality of a people and the liberty they enjoy. Thus, as people become more collectively irresponsible, there will be a drumbeat to have the government take responsibility for them — and authority from them. This is especially true during the interim period between healthy republic and dictatorship.
To understand this, realize that the same thing causing children from broken homes to exhibit a greater degree of social ills — their relative lack of virtue — also has other consequences. One of them is that they are also more likely to have a feeling of entitlement and expect largesse from the government, and, therefore, support statist candidates. This is just common sense, but if you're still not convinced, consider this research reported at the liberal web site The Democratic Strategist:
. . . young people growing up in 'non-traditional homes' are more likely to support Democratic candidates — 67 percent of young people growing up in homes with divorced, separated or unmarried parents voted for John Kerry in 2004, compared to only 49 percent of young people in homes with married parents. Young people growing up with divorced, separated or unmarried parents also have more progressive attitudes on social issues, such as gay marriage: 66 percent of young adults who grow up in non-traditional homes support gay marriage, compared to only 53 percent who grow up in traditional homes [perhaps leftists have more incentive to destroy the family than you thought].
So how do we minimize both abortion and single motherhood? There is no easy answer. But there is an answer: A thorough return to traditional morality. Of course, its critics may take a page out of Frum's article and say it doesn't work, as they claim that a stigma will lead to abortion. Or they may say that preaching abstinence is fruitless because kids will "have sex anyway." And, in a way, they may be right — within the context of today's culture. And that is the point.
G.K. Chesterton once said, "The problem nowadays is that we have Christian values floating around detached from one another . . . ." A wise traditionalist understands there must be a healthy "ecosystem of values," which exists in a state of equilibrium because it contains values that balance each other out. Remove a value, and, just as when a species is eliminated from a balanced food chain, the system may break down.
For instance, when the abortion rate was far lower two generations ago, we had a strong stigma attached to unwed pregnancy, but it was balanced by the widely accepted values stating that abortion is murder and human life is sacred. Thus, this stigma should exist, but it should be attended by an even greater stigma attached to abortion. And when it isn't accompanied by those complementary elements, it's silly to complain that traditional morality "doesn't work." It's like having a match and oxygen but no wood and claiming that fire doesn't provide light. It cannot work because, without certain integral constituent elements, "it" doesn't exist.
As for preaching the value of chastity before marriage, there is the problem of inconsistency of message. If a parent teaching rightly is contradicted by his spouse and extended family, we're not surprised when the children don't learn the lesson. Yet we don't apply this knowledge to our national family. At one time chastity was encouraged not just by some churches and organizations, but by the whole culture. Today, though, preaching such virtue gets you labeled a fringe prude, making you a voice in the wilderness of lust. Are we to expect the whispers of an abstinence message rarely heard to inspire chastity in youth whose hearts and minds and souls are continually bombarded with sexual messages from popular culture? This is a bit like dousing a conscientious fire-starter's wood with water most of the day and then saying his fire doesn't provide light.
In all fairness to David Frum, he may understand this. His argument might simply be that we must deal with the world as it is, "come to terms" with the sexual revolution, as it were. But a poison pill doesn't cease to be a poison pill because it becomes a passion, and an answer doesn't cease to be an answer because it's viewed as an anachronism. Sometimes, when the question is one of putting the toothpaste back in the tube, the only real answer is to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It may not be easy, no, but the first step is to recognize the ideal, not obscure it.
This is the third option. It's also a third rail of modern social commentary because, well, it just might spoil our fun. Of course, different groups reckon fun differently. So it's just a question of what we want to be. Are we to be civilized people whose fun is spoiled by barbarism, or barbarians whose fun is spoiled by civilization?
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Vittorio Hernandez. AHN.
September 3, 2008
Teenagers may postpone having sex if they make virginity pledges, according to a study by Rand Corporation.
The survey of 1,517 teenagers in 2001 showed that 23.8 percent made pledges to remain chaste until marriage. Those who made the vow but broke it by 2004 comprise 34 percent of the respondents, while those who did not make a commitment to virginity and engaged in sex was 42 percent of the respondents.
The study takes a special significance as Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the GOP convention Wednesday, fresh from public disclosure that her 17-year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant by her 18-year old boyfriend, highlighting the widespread practice of pre-marital sex by American adolescents.
Rand psychologist Steven Martino, the study's lead author, said it was a good idea for teenagers to make a pledge to refrain from indulging in sex because those who make the vow have higher chances of keeping their word.
Martino added, "But that's not to say virginity pledges should substitute for comprehensive sex education, because a majority of teens do have sex, and even among teens who take virginity pledges many of them have sex."
The Rand study was published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Its printed edition will come out this month.
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The continuation of the practice of virginity testing of Zulu maidens - some as young as eight - received strong backing at the annual reed dance ceremony at KwaNongoma.
King Goodwill Zwelithini was urged not to give in to pressure and to ensure that this aspect of Zulu culture was preserved.
The call was made as thousands of maidens gathered at Nyokeni palace to deliver reeds.
They snaked into the palace in a line almost a kilometre long, singing songs on the need for good behaviour and the need for maidens to preserve their virginity until marriage.
The call is in response t some sections of the children's Act that ban testing of girls under 16. It comes after a warning by the government that those who tested girls under the age of 16 would be prosecuted once the relevant sections were in operation.
"As soon as section 12 of the Act is in operation, those who contravene it will be dealt with by the justice department," said Kgati Sethegke, of the social development department.
However, speakers at the reed dance ceremony urged the king to ensure that virginity testing was preserved because it was the only solution to the scourge of HIV/Aids.
Welcoming dignitaries, Zululand Mayor Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi said virginity testing was the only solution to the social problems afflicting Zulus.
"We urge you Bayede (king) to make sure that this (aspect of) culture is preserved," she said.
"The government cannot say they want children to abstain from having sex, yet pass laws that say they can have abortions at the age of 12 years. We are against this," she said.
However, arts, culture and tourism MEC Weziwe Thusi said the Act merely prescribed how the practice should be conducted.
The traditional prime minister to the king, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, said the reed dance spoke of life and all that was "beautiful and pure" in Zulu culture.
"These beautiful young maidens are the pride of their families. Chastity is a rare jewel, a precious diamond in today's material world.
"It is an achievement and credit to them that, in this day and age, the purity of our daughters has been preserved, living under the intense pressure and demands of modern living, from peer pressure to the glitz of the mass marketing media," he said.
Premier S'bu Ndebele expressed concern at the rate of teenage pregnancy, saying 5 000 schoolgirls had fallen pregnant in Gauteng this year by August.
Ndebele later led the maidens in a pledge to commit them to preserving themselves, even if they were promised the world.
The king thanked the maidens for responding to his invitation in their thousands and blamed the media for exaggerating his call that they should cover up.
However, unlike at previous ceremonies, the majority of maidens ensured that their genitals were covered.
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With the revelation that Sarah Palin's underage, unwed daughter is pregnant, both political parties are clamoring to pronounce that her family is off limits to the political debate.
While on its own this is a noble notion, we as a nation are missing an opportunity to have a real discussion on the high rate of unplanned teenage pregnancies in this country. The latest surveys show that the united States led the industrialized world in unplanned teenage pregnancies.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the rate for those ages 15-to-19 was 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. The estimated annual cost just for 1996 can be broken down as follows:
Teenage mothers cost the country an additional $2.2 billion annually in welfare and food stamp benefits, medical care costs are an added $1.5 billion, foster care expenses are increased by $900 million. In addition, the government loses about $1.3 billion a year in tax revenues from the reduced productivity of women who bear children as teens. Exactly how effective our government response has been to this crisis is debatable.
The major debate currently dealing with this issue is exactly how effective the $10 billion spent by the federal government on abstinence-only education over the last ten years was. Long term studies have shown that abstinence-only education will not prevent kids from experimenting with sex any later than other more traditional forms of sex education.
The damning issue is that the information given is oftentimes filled with gender stereotypes and glaring medical inaccuracies that leaves children not only unprotected and directly leads to an increase not only in teen pregnancy but also sexual transmitted diseases.
This is due to the proven fact that students exposed to abstinence-only sex education are much less likely to use any form of protection or safe sexual practices.
It is frightening how our society and government has responded to individuals who dare to teach children basic sexual health. In 1994, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders lost her job for advocating the informing of children that masturbation was a safe alternative for sex.
The idea that the highest doctor in the land was fired for suggesting that we teach kids that masturbation doesn't cause blindness, should have caused a major uproar in our country, but it didn't. Even more recently, at Utah's Fort Herriman Middle School, a sex education teacher was suspended for answering students' questions regarding homosexuality, contraception, oral sex and abortion. She was suspended because the federal guidelines on sex education prohibit classroom discussion of homosexuality and "advocating" contraception, abortion, masturbation or other practices. Apparently in practice, "advocating" means even acknowledging these topics. The response from the local government was comically horrific.
Representative Carl Wimmer (R-Herriman) immediately announced his plan to draft legislation to criminalize teaching comprehensive sex education. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that he will introduce a bill in January that would enact criminal penalties for teachers who stray from the abstinence course, as well as create a registry of the offenders, presumably to prevent them from gaining other teaching positions in the district. Yes, ignorance will reign supreme as educating children will be against the law
in the Herriman District and those that violate it will be registered similar to sex offenders.
Often the argument from parents is that it is their job to discuss sex with their children. That is fine assuming that they actually do their job and give children the information they need to protect themselves. Unfortunately, studies show that parents are not doing just that and young adults across this country are forced to learn safe sex practices through trial and error. How long are we going to allow this farce to go on at the expense of our children?
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Many
Teens Who Take 'Virginity Pledges'
Substitute Other High-Risk Behavior for Intercourse, Study Says
medicalnewstoday.com 21 Mar 2005
Substitute Other High-Risk Behavior for Intercourse, Study Says
medicalnewstoday.com 21 Mar 2005
Although teenagers who take "virginity pledges" begin engaging in vaginal intercourse later than teens who have not committed to remain abstinent until marriage, they also are more likely to engage in oral or anal sex than nonpledging virgin teens and less likely to use condoms once they become sexually active, according to a study published in the April issue of the... Journal of Adolescent Health, the Washington Post reports.
The findings could explain why pledgers have similar rates of sexually transmitted diseases as nonpledging teens (Connolly, Washington Post, 3/19). Study co-authors Peter Bearman, sociology department chair at Columbia University, and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and CDC, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports.
The national study surveyed students nationwide in grades seven through 12 and followed up with interviews one, two and six years later. The Yale and Columbia report looked at data from 12,000 teenagers (Apuzzo, AP/Long Island Newsday, 3/18).
STD Findings
Bearman and Bruckner in March 2004 at the 2004 National STD Prevention Conference in Philadelphia presented their findings that teens who make abstinence pledges have similar rates of STDs as teens who have not made pledges.
The study -- also based on data from the NLSAH -- found that, although teens who made the pledges had sexual intercourse an average of 18 months later than teens who did not take a pledge and averaged fewer sexual partners overall, they had similar rates of STDs.
In addition, the study found that pledgers were much less likely to use contraception the first time they had sex and also were less likely than other teens to have undergone STD testing and know their STD status, which could increase their risk of STD transmission to sexual partners (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 3/10/04). Of the 777 teens who reported being virginity pledgers throughout the course of the study, 4.6% had trichomoniasis, chlamydia or gonorrhea.
Of the 1,622 who reported pledge to remain abstinent at some point during the study, 6.4% had one of the STDs. Of the 9,072 teens who did not ever make a virginity pledge, 6.9% had one of the STDs (Wetzstein, Washington Times, 3/19).
The study did not reveal significant geographical differences but did show that minorities were "far more likely" to have an STD, according to the Post. About 25% of African-American girls had at least one STD in 2002, the study found (Washington Post, 3/19).
Details
Because pledgers typically delayed sexual activity, had fewer sexual partners and married earlier than nonpledgers, the researchers "looked for explanations" as to why the differences in STD rates were not statistically significant, Bearman said, the Times reports (Washington Times, 3/19).
The gap between pledgers and nonpledgers for high-risk behavior was statistically significant, with 2% of virgins who did not pledge reporting engaging in anal or oral sex, compared with 13% of those who did pledge (Washington Post, 3/19).
According to Bruckner, the pledgers' increased likelihood of substituting oral or anal sex for vaginal intercourse puts them at risk of contracting STDs, according to Bruckner. Among virgins, boys who had pledged abstinence were four times as likely to have engaged in anal sex as those who did not pledge, and pledgers overall were six times as likely to have engaged in oral sex as teens who were virgins but did not take a pledge, the study found.
In addition, teens who made virginity pledges were less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience and were less likely to get tested for STDs, the study found (Detroit Free Press, 3/19).
Conclusions
"Advocates for abstinence-only education assert that premarital abstinence and post-marital sex are necessary and sufficient for avoiding negative consequences of sexual activity, such as STDs," the study says, adding, "This assertion collides with the realities of adolescents' and young adults' lives." As a result, abstinence-only education is insufficient to prevent teens from contracting STDs, Bruckner said, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail. "It can't be enough because eventually, even the most abstinent adolescents, the great majority of them will have sex.
... We need to provide education that helps in dealing with it when they do it," Bruckner said (Mahoney, Globe and Mail, 3/19). "The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior," Bearman said, adding, "From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement that encourages no vaginal sex may inadvertently encourage other forms of alternative sex that are at higher risk of STDs" (Washington Post, 3/19).
Reaction
"Not only do virginity pledges not work to keep our young people safe, they are causing harm by undermining condom use, contraception and medical treatment," William Smith, policy director at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, said (Washington Times, 3/19).
Deborah Roffman, an educator and author, said that teens who take virginity pledges "are often undereducated about sexual health" and will engage in oral or anal sex because they do not consider it "real sex," according to the Post (Washington Post, 3/19).
However, Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, called the study "bogus" and said that the supposed pledgers had not pledged true abstinence, which forbids oral and anal sex (AP/Long Island Newsday, 3/18).
Robert Rector, an analyst at the Heritage Institute, said that the study overlooked previous findings about teens who take virginity pledges -- including that they usually have fewer pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births -- adding that the programs are "hugely successful" in those areas (Washington Post, 3/19).
Chicago Tribune Examines Virginity Pledges
The Chicago Tribune on Sunday examined virginity pledges and the recent "craze" of "purity rings" that many teenagers wear to proclaim their abstinence-until-marriage pledge. Despite the recent surge in purity rings and abstinence programs -- some of which receive federal funding under the Bush administration -- teen health experts say that most teens will break their pledges before they are married. In addition, these health experts also say there is no "reliable evidence" that the programs reduce teen pregnancy or the spread of STDs, according to the Tribune (Bario, Chicago Tribune, 3/20
See also
Whatever happened to virginity?
Promiscuity
Abstinence education in the United States
Sex in Crisis: How the Religious Right Is Trying to Ruin Sex
Sex bad for grades, Cambridge survey shows
Designer vaginas, anyone?
http://www.lifeway.com/tlw/
http://www.heritage.org/research/abstinence/cda04-07.cfm
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