(I am sure only my husband gets the title)

So we start with a recent survey on the “Purity Pledge” you know that is the one where a young lady pledges to be a virgin until marriage.  That she remains pure until her wedding night.  How Victorian of them. I wonder if they do it through holes in their underwear like the Mormons used to?

Look I would be the last person when to tell someone the best time to start having sex.  Sex should always and first be a responsibility issue as I have hammered on frequently in this blog. I have seen STDs in practice, and quite frankly 99% of them could have been avoided had we not had crap like the “purity pledge” and abstinence-only education.

Now there is data to back this claim of mine up in spades (sorry couldn’t resist).

The purity ring was a gimmick of abstinence-only education. The idea of a “ring” and a “promise” was a design to show commitment. They were also are intended to help the wearer to recognize their self-worth and remind them that there is more to a relationship than sex. On the surface this doesn’t seem too bad, right? Well yes and no I am not the first person to promote wild, rampant, and hot sex everywhere (oh who am I kidding?)  I think sex is incredibly healthy and should be practiced regularly by consenting parties. If one chooses to be chaste, that should be respected; however, this was a situation where this philosophy was given in place of practical education.

This is a problem that really needs to be discussed before anything else here, putting our beliefs in front of science. I understand that many people think that sex before marriage is wrong; however, using your belief to eliminate a reasonable presentation and discussion on the biological science of sex is absurd. This is especially true for a sexually naïve group like teenagers. You take your belief and use it to influence, and derail, reasonable education.

I worked in the city that had a school district that was abstinence-only. You couldn’t even discuss sexual questions with a student on school grounds. School is a time to learn and learning medically accurate information about sex is essential. I learned sex education from my friends who knew just as little about sex as I did(mostly from porn mags), we should be doing this for our children. But anyway back to the purity ring.

Purity ring presentations were part of the purity movement that gave rise to Christian affiliated sexual abstinence groups. Wearing a purity was typically accompanied by a religious vow to practice abstinence until marriage. Purity rings are part of the absence only sex education movement and are also intended to help the wearer to recognize their self-worth and remind him that there is more to a relationship than sex.

David Bario of the Columbia News Service wrote:

Under the Bush (George W.) administration, organizations that promote abstinence and encourage teens to sign virginity pledges or wear purity rings have received federal grants. The Silver Ring Thing, a subsidiary of a Pennsylvania evangelical church, has received more than $1 million from the government to promote abstinence and to sell its rings in the United States and abroad.

In 2005 the ACLU of Massachusetts brought charges against this decision, alleging that the Silver Ring program did not ensure its secularity and hence was ineligible for federal funding due to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The purity pledge looks something like this:

“I am making a commitment to myself, my family, and my Creator, that I will abstain from sexual activity of any kind before marriage. I will keep my body and my thoughts pure as I trust in God’s perfect plan for my life.” (quote on a card) “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his/her own body in a way that is holy and honorable.” 1 Thess 4:3-4 True Love Waits for recent pledge (2009):

Obviously very religious.

Anyway, so back to that survey about what happened to those girls that sign purity pledges? As the article in Bust magazine indicates; nothing good.

When Jamie A. had sex for the first time, she hoped it would be special. She’d waited until she was 27, and she imagined that her boyfriend—who was 35—would be thrilled when she revealed she was a virgin. She assumed they’d marry and that the relationship would finally bring her the deep fulfillment she’d longed for all through her 20s. But, instead of pleasing him, her inexperience disturbed her boyfriend. Their relationship ended soon after they first had sex, and Jamie’s sense of self-worth was shattered. She’d been raised to believe that any sexual feelings or actions outside heterosexual marriage were sinful and that her worth lay mainly in her role as a virgin bride. Now that she was no longer a virgin and the man she’d planned to marry was gone, she didn’t know who she was anymore. She needed therapy to begin to untangle her sexuality and sense of self from her religious past. Her story might sound extreme—but it’s not unique. Thanks to the internet, thousands of other people like Jamie, whose lives were drastically affected by purity culture, are now connecting with each other, finding help, and making their voices heard.

Not that “Magical” sex that was promised. An unfortunate result to a very pushy presentation full of promises they were unable to keep. The Journal of Pediatrics says:

According to the latest statistics, the average American loses their virginity at around 17. But between 1994 and 2004, as many as 2.5 million American youths signed abstinence pledges, promising to abstain from sex before marriage. The movement swept through conservative circles, with church youth groups passing out purity rings, meant to serve as placeholders for future wedding rings—symbols of chastity to be given to the wearer’s spouse on their wedding day. Girls as young as seven started attending father/daughter purity balls to pledge their abstinence until marriage, their fathers vowing to be the keepers of their daughters’ virginity.

Okay, how creepy is that going to the dance with your father instead of developing healthy relationships with whoever you are physically or emotionally attracted to? Personally, I think it is very creepy; it seems like more of developing the Elektra complex than an actual favorable situation. I guess the only positive thing out of this was fathers spending more time with her daughters. Here’s an even more massive bombshell:

Many others who signed similar pledge cards or wore purity rings also never had that fairytale virgin wedding. One study by Janet Elise Rosenbaum, published in the journal Pediatrics in 2009, found that young people who pledged their abstinence were just as likely to wind up having premarital sex as those who did not promise. Clearly, many pledgers never intended to save sex for marriage in the first place. But those who did take the pledge seriously—especially those raised in conservative, religious communities—internalized that ideal deeply. And for them, dealing with the fallout from that promise has been an ongoing process.

In the end teenagers were still having sex, what a shock. What is all this saying? I think my readers are intelligent enough to see that quite frankly the system’s flaws show themselves quite nicely. You have a group of young women were promised the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and received nothing but pain and awkward relationships. You also see a significant increase in STDs and teen pregnancy. I saw that in the public health department I worked in in the city that only provided abstinence education to its students.

I once had a parent argue with me that STDs were punishment for disobeying God. Yes, I had a parent that said that to me. I will just say that that is sick and wrong to wish diseases on your children. What is this fetish that adults have for willingly exposing their children to disease? Wanting your child to have an STD (which includes HIV) as punishment for sexual transgressions is sick. It is sick when we can provide adequate education on not only abstinence, but also discussing the transmission of disease, protection from disease, and basic anatomy. Sex education can teach far more than just saying no. And in the end the American Association of Pediatrics discovered this, which is a lot like learning the sky is blue.

We haven’t even begun to discuss the psychological implications of the purity pledge.  For example, in the early 2000s,

Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers started noticing an alarming trend. She would ask the grad students in her human sexuality class—most of them aspiring therapists—to write the stories of their own sexuality. After years of asking the same questions, she suddenly saw a sharp uptick in students describing feelings of humiliation and disgust toward their bodies and sexual identities. These students all seemed to share a sense of general ignorance and naiveté about sex and relationships, as well as a deep discomfort with natural sexual urges. “This dramatic increase in self-loathing was really heartbreaking for me to see,” says Schermer Sellers.

Is this healthy? I think by now see that the notion of the purity pledge caused a hell of a lot more harm than it did good. Teens were still having sex, getting pregnant, getting STDs, and doing what teens generally do. What they been doing since the dawn of time. Teenagers, as they enter puberty, do not have a smooth ride. Most go from zero or near zero levels of sex hormones to 10,000 times the amount of sexual hormones nearly overnight. This is not an exaggeration; most parents will tell you that one day they went from sweet kid to moody teenager. We owe it to our kids not to put weird belief based thoughts in their head and to let them make their own decisions; right or wrong. That’s a tough one for parents because we want to protect their children but, this does not have to come at the cost of the child’s healthy maturation into adulthood.

This is also not to say that abstinence is completely wrong. Healthy sex comes from healthy relationships. That should be a mutual decision by both participants. Sometimes not having sex can be just as meaningful as having it. Sometimes waiting is a far better option because of age, emotional decisions, or dull, current circumstances.

I realize this is an unusually long piece. I like this article that Bust magazine published and its focus on young women (which is kind of who the magazine is aimed at) and their issues with sexuality. Granted young men were also included in the purity pledge. Expectedly the numbers are much higher for males, and we all know that males are not expected to be chaste until marriage. The double standard here is glaring and wrong, but that’s a subject for another piece. We talked far too much about males while trying to control and ignore females. This article and many also do not discuss the apparent fact that the purity pledge wants nothing to do with homosexuality, lesbianism, and transgender issues; and would in fact like those just go away or die in hell.  Lovely group, huh? Bottom line have all the sex you want, just be responsible and take the precautions you need to protect yourself mentally and physically. If you’re unsure about protecting yourself, as embarrassing as this might seem, talk to your primary care provider or the County Health Department who would love to give you information on STD prevention rather than provide you treatment for an STD.

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