Teenagers Are Fornicating Less

And a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah 11:6

I recently read an article stating that fewer teenagers today are engaging in sex. If this report is true, then Glory be to God. It appears that the young people are able to do what many thought was impossible, they are forgoing sex. This will come as a shock to many adults who promote the idea that teenage sex is inevitable and so we may as well not make any efforts to curb it. However, with this data many states have cut and curtailed their abstinence programs. The problem have with the studies that say abstinence doesn’t work is because they don’t take into account the 90% of other information that teenagers receive through movies, television, music, and video games. Abstinence education is just a small area in the child’s overall day. The important aspect of abstinence education is that it helps to shape attitudes not necessarily about sex, but also about marriage.

“You have to look at why sex was created,” Eric Love, the director of the East Texas Abstinence Program, which runs Virginity Rules, said one day, the sounds of Christian contemporary music humming faintly in his Longview office. “Sex was designed to bond two people together.”

To make the point, Mr. Love grabbed a tape dispenser and snapped off two fresh pieces. He slapped them to his filing cabinet and the floor; they trapped dirt, lint, a small metal bolt. “Now when it comes time for them to get married, the marriage pulls apart so easily,” he said, trying to unite the grimy strips. “Why? Because they gave the stickiness away.”[1]

While I would love to believe that all our children will grow up and save themselves for marriage, this is really not realistic. What is realistic however is that we can stress the importance of marriage to many children who have lost interest in it as an option, due to their own single parent experience. Why is stressing the importance of marriage important? Because study after study has shown that children do better regardless of economic conditions in two parent families. This should be something we want to promote as a society, for the well-being of the society. I find it interesting that we expect people who have been unable to maintain a committed relationship to develop that in our children, it’s not going to happen. Just as parents that did not complete their educations require help educating their children, so we should also help them prepare for marriage.

The institution of marriage is under an onslaught, but unlike my religious conservative brethren I don’t believe it is from gays. The current threat to marriage is and always has been heterosexuals, whether they are adulterers, pornographers, or other sexual deviants. The breakdown in the family and marriage has nothing to do with whether gays get married or not. While I find it personally offensive, my experience shows that the breakdowns in marriage are due to the partners in the marriage. I think the gay question is a smoke screen to cover the real issues which is that we are not preparing our children properly for marriage or adulthood.

For the first time, however, Virginity Rules and 700 kindred abstinence education programs are fighting serious threats to their future. Eleven state health departments rejected abstinence education this year, while legislatures in Colorado, Iowa and Washington passed laws that could kill, or at least wound, its presence in public schools.[2]

I find it hard to believe that with all the pressure our children are under to fornicate, that many find offering a counter message worthless. It’s as if we give freedom to the sex trade, but it is imposing on our freedom to offer another view. This is in part why the rest of the world finds our values so hypocritical, we allow promotion of and the selling of sex in every area of our lives, but God forbid if we show that there are other alternatives. This is crossing the boundaries of State vs. Church, we must not continue to buy into this for the sake of commerce. We are selling out our children for the sake of making money. What value are you willing to place on the lives of your children?

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/education/18abstain.html

[2] Ibid