Sexual Abstinence

I knew I could depend on you Francis.

Of course she would have to get it straight first, and make sure the situation was well in hand.

(go, Chai, I say, laughing and agreeing.)

Abstinence is a great way to make sure you don't get pregnant or get infected with an STD, but it should have nothing to do with marriage.

I'm one of those people who think marriage has outlived its usefulness. It was designed for men to know their heirs and women to be able to rear children with a safety net. I think it's great for people to commit to work together as a team and maybe raise a family, but traditional marriage should be put away with whalebone corsets, Deuteronomy, and the smoking jacket.

People need to be emotionally mature to properly deal with a sexual relationship. They need to be mentally mature enough to understand the possible consequences of sex such as pregnancy and/or disease. It's true there are some 15 years olds who might grasp it better than some 20 years olds, but I don't think most teens are ready for the baggage that comes from sexual relationships. I would pick eighteen as good age to dive in. Three years before they can legally drink. Drinking and sex has it's own troubles.

I have no idea why virginity is prized and should be saved for The One. I think most of these chaste people have unrealistic, naive expectations of what marriage is. They seem to think God sprinkles some fairy dust and they will magically meet their soulmate sometime between the age of 18 and 25. This will naturally lead them to be happy and faithful with that person for the next 50 or so years of their lives. 'Til Death Do Us Part was doable when most women died in childbirth before they were 30 and most men didn't make it far into their 40's. Today life expectancy is much longer and we continue to grow and change as we age. I think of the first guy I had sex with, and I'm sure if we had gotten married we would be either divorced now or one of would be in jail convicted of homicide.

People who wait also miss out on some of the best possible sex of their lives. Nothing like sex when the hormones are at peak and your partner was picked just because the chemistry was right at the time - or he had lovely denim colored eyes and played drums in a band. I had a couple of wonderful lovers who I would not have wanted to miss out on, but I would never have considered them husband material.

I learned about sex from the little practical remonstrations from the Redemptorists' Ligorian magazine in the fifties. To read one of those again would curl my hair with anger. Certainly did not learn about sex from my religious girls school (no pleasure even in marriage, according to Sr. M. Anthony) or from my parents, and very little from my reading material around then; no immediate friends my age. I'm still pretty irritated about all that.

Thus, Catholic girls achieved a certain kind of fame back then, as crazy to explore the forbidden.

Later in life, I gave a relative all the information she wanted and needed, fairly early. It worked, rather as soz described earlier in the thread.

I did not wait, and would never advise my kids to wait.

Sex ed, be it from parents or the school, should be about quality and safety, with the mix being about 80/20 in favor of quality.

What's wrong with that? It took a long while to get to such a neat arrangement. And it has nowhere to go. Any changes can only be a return to the arrangements of the past.

Your homily begs a large number of questions.

Deuteronomy is of an age we needn't worry about and I'm not sure corsets and smoking jackets are. I'm pretty sure we still need to worry about corsets.

I disagree with Hawkeye in that I think he skips the matter of emotional readiness, not to mention readiness for consequences. This will sound victorian, but I think that victorians had a faint clue that subleties, glances of eyes, not people bombasted into early teen sex but let blossom - is a good thing.. that time of restraint is a good thing.

I have advised waiting and elaborated on why. Do I expect all the world's teens to listen to me, no.

By virtue of my strange background, I was a late virgin. I didn't really date until university, when the first guy who kissed me kissed like a red snapper (oh, no, is that what kissing is?), and then ignored me at the Rose Bowl, when I knew as much about football as he did, (and I was as much pre med as he was) talking instead to his fraternity pal. I threw an osso fit. No sex, egads, much less romance. Years later, I suppose I hope he's okay. But that was a primer for my not taking guff or fish lips.

Second fellow was not just thoughtful but very sharp, and probably still is. He taught me all about romance, including poems in chemistry class, and I might have never been so happy. I've never been sorry about any of our time. We broke up over religion, me being the residually religious one (now ironic). He married the woman after me, a better fit for him, much as I loved him then.

The thing is, I don't know that I might have been that blown away happy if I had been fooling around since age twelve. This first real romantic experience was just after I turned twenty one. The conversations - all part of our developing who we were as adults. The sex was joy. Loss of virginity, joy.

I'm glad that all happened then, and not when I was fourteen.
Twenty one, pushing it, even then, but those were odd times in my environment.


Which doesn't put me on the side of the Abstinence brigade. More some putting off.
But I'll say arm preteens with information and be there to (be square) help.

Well that made all quiet. Must have been the word 'virginity'.

I am with Green Witch, right down to my first sexual encounter - it definitely
would have ended in divorce and/or murder.

People who demand sexual abstinence from their children until marriage
exercise a form of passive aggressive abuse. The man who demands of his
future wife to be a virgin should be publicly flogged.

Ok, we agree.

My WW2 parents are to me fairly recently.

Hell, I was an even older virgin than you.
I agree about the "pushing off" part.
I can't imagine too many kids holding out until marriage in this culture.

I vote this the most sensible response.

What I meant was: what do those running the program see as the goal of this
abstinence. I followed chai2's advice and checked out the NPR site. It seems
that the prevention of children having chilren is indeed one of their goals.

Only because marriage had been push off to late 20s early 30s instead of late teens and early 20s.

Early marriages work out fairly well for the WW2 generation and before with lower divorce rates compare to what we have now also.

I think there's a lot more to it than that.

More than enough actually. One must beware the self justifications of fallen women.

Without divulging too much information...not all people who stay virgins until they are married are naive and believe in fairies that sprinkle dust on their partners believing that virginity is going to make that marriage work.

There are no scares of pregnancy, no worries of sexually transmitted diseases, break-ups - pretty darn easy, and getting taught how to take care of business by the one you decided to spend the rest of your life with could prove to be quite an enjoyable experience...no comparisons. It could be all good. Whether a marriage is successful and lasts or not has nothing to do with your state before you married. It is soley dependent on the whim of the 2 people who are in the marriage.

There is nothing wrong with making that choice. Making people feel like there is something wrong with them for making the choice to abstain is every bit as bad as calling someone who chooses not to remain a virgin until married a whore...or whatever. Just because you wouldn't or couldn't do it does not make it a bad decision.

I would think talking with the child about the options that are before them and making sure you keep the lines of communication open to walk them through whatever they are experiencing at whatever age is every bit as important as giving them a birth control pill or a condom.

There is more than one choice...there are some decisions that kids are not mature enough to make. That is where the parent comes in. When I was of an age where I was able to make a sound decision...I made it. And it was the right one for me.

Of course, some kids don't have parents that are willing to step in and take on that responsibility. I would think a program of abstinence would be safer than handing out a condom and seeing the child get hurt by skewed expectations. Many of us are romantics when it comes to sex...not all...but many.

Of course...I am no expert so - my musings here are mainly to give you all something to post about for the rest of the day

I mean...SOMEONE had to give the other view. Just to be fair - right?


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