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The interesting thing about the whole lifestyle debate that swarms around abortion is the place that sexual activity plays in the discussion. In fact, it goes to the core of the whole phrase “Pro-Choice” and what choices we have. Framing the debate, one side consistently paints the picture that people (specifically teens) will have sex– almost like <a href="they do not have a choice. This is far from the truth, for at each stage of the relationship choices present themselves. However, what I find interesting is the duality of what’s being said…
I can’t remain abstinent, but my partner better be!
A survey was done recently in India which revealed that most Indian men want virgin brides, but what was more shocking was what else was discovered:
Nearly two-thirds of young Indian men expect the woman they marry to be a virgin, but nearly half have had sex with prostitutes, according to a poll.
The survey of more than 2,500 men aged between 16 and 25 conducted by India Today magazine across 11 cities found that 49 percent claimed to have had sex with a sex worker while 37 percent said they had had a homosexual experience.
But 63 percent of young men in conservative India said they expected the women they married to be a virgin.
Even in this day in age of feminism, equality between the sexes, there is still the expectation of the woman being pure. This is a good thing— because if the women are pure they can have higher expectations! That last part is key. A pure woman should demand and expect purity– and then the quality of relationships will be raised throughout. It’s when women will settle for an alley cat that we have problems.
It’s good for me to experience sex before marriage.
This comment ranks right up there with “I should live together with a guy before I marry them” as things that have a pseudo-logic to them but are foolishness. If you put aside the whole “my wife/husband will be the first/only one to experience this unique gift with me” argument, there are many reasons why people (including teens) should not be having any kind of sex. Sex harms teens emotionally…
Teenagers often suffer emotional consequences from having sex, even when it’s “only” oral sex, a study published Monday suggests.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco found that up to one-half of the sexually active teenagers in their study said they’d ever felt “used,” guilty or regretful after having sex.
And that’s not even getting into the whole Sexually Transmitted Disease realm, and over to the abortion debate. In fact, there are so many reasons why you should abstain from sexual relations until marriage that it’s almost easier to list reasons why people think they shouldn’t! And those all revolve around having fun.
At least some are treating sex seriously.
A club was created at Harvard to promote abstinence after a couple saw just how lightly it was being treated:
Sometime between the founding of a student-run porn magazine and the day the campus health center advertised “Free Lube,” Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school.
Harvard treats sex — or “hooking up” — so casually that “sometimes I wonder if sex is even a remotely serious thing,” said Kinsella, who is dating Murray.
This couple is trying to promote the message that you are worth waiting for, and that sex is a big thing– not something to be taken for granted. Unfortunately, many have taken to mocking them, discussing their sex lives graphically in front of them, and proving that it’s not always easy to take a stand for what is right. It may not always be popular, but I doubt that you find many that are abstinent by choice that regrets waiting.
“A pure woman should demand and expect purity– and then the quality of relationships will be raised throughout. It’s when women will settle for an alley cat that we have problems.”
This statement really bugs me. First off, I believe it is God who decides who should marry who. As a result I can definitely see having it a requirement that your spouse to be serves Christ and is repentent of their past sins… but to have specific requirements of what they did and did not do is a flesh thing. If Jesus can forgive those sins and think no more of them and we are to model Christ there is no reason why we should hold these things against our spouse-to-be.
Second of all, your statements suggest that more women are staying pure until marriage than men. While the numbers on this article seem high and as a result I am apt to assume they didn’t do a very good job of random sampling, it does suggest that as manywomen are having sex before marriage then men.
“That 70% of adolescent females and 65% of adolescent males have had sex
by age 19 and few have married suggests that a large percentage do so before marrying.”
At a bare minimum I think this article shows that the numbers are close. Now, if you want to talk about the pure number of partners I believe that Men still tend to have more total partners. However, if you’re just talking about abstinence vs. not abstenance, males and females are in the same boat. As a result abstenance is not something somehow up to the leadership of the female.
Like pretty much all things, I think the way to enact change in this department is to affect the males. This is not saying that I’m not also going to teach my daughter to wait, but that cultural change starts with the leadership God has established. Where the guys go, the women end up. You can delay the result by training the women, or spend your time with affecting men and divert the whole path. In reality you have to do some level of both…
I totally agree with Doug on this one. How can we be encouraging women to set the bar? Really, that goes against everything the Word says. It isn’t her sole responsibility to remain abstinent. It is likewise not her role or ability to lead men into abstinence. I mean really.
I do think that historically it has been considered “ok” for a man to have a partner or more before marriage, but a woman was not ever to do so. Furthermore, a woman was told that she was to thwart every come on by a man, while men were encouraged to seduce and chase the skirt.
These are some scriptures addressing this issue.
Deut. 22:13-21, This discusses what happens if the woman is married and found not a maid, or if the lies against her and SAYS she isn’t a maid but she is. If she is a maid, then the man must pay the father money, and remain married to the woman all her life. If the woman WASN’T a maid, she is killed and held responsible.
Deut 22:22-24 if the man lies with a married woman and is found with her, they are both stoned. If the man lies with a betrothed woman in a CITY and she didn’t cry out, they are both stoned.
Deut 22:25 If the man comes on her in the field and takes her by force, then the man only is stoned, for she cried out and no one was there to hear her.
Deut 22:28 (this one is most relevant) If a man finds an unbetrothed woman and takes her by force, and they are found, then he shall pay the father fifty shekels and marry her, and he may not divorce her ever.
So the responsibility is shared, the woman is required to cry out if she is being raped, the man is required to marry her if she isn’t betrothed.
Anyway.
Mrs. Meg Logan
I don’t disagree at all with what Doug and Meg are saying here, but would like to clarify any misunderstanding.
The general expectation from society is that women are the gate keepers for sexual experience. Up until this previous generation, women were taught to value their virginity, and men were supposedly left to the whims of “raging hormones.” Men wanted pleasure, women companionship. Whether this is an accurate portrayal or not is hard to tell, but women were definitely taught that they were to remain pure.
This is not to say that both sexes should remain pure, nor a commentary on the cleansing power of the Cross, but of abstinence in general. If one of the two sexes holds a high standard, then the amount of pure people will be higher (after taking out those that engage in perverted sexual activity).
If a the general pure woman demands purity, then men will have to shape up if they want a pure woman. This does not say that there can’t be forgiveness, that people that are not pure cannot change, etc. What it does say is that the standards need to be raised, and women typically are better at saying “no” then men are.
“The general expectation from society is that women are the gate keepers for sexual experience.”
I don’t disagree that this is societies perception. I don’t even disagree that historically this has been the case. I can certainly think in my life that the woman has usually been the “gatekeeper”, but mostly in the same way as Eve gave Adam the apple. Adam wasn’t looking for the apple, but when he found it…
However, if we look at the biblical perspective I think we should see that the man should have been the leader. Adam should have turned away from the apple (and Eve should not have presented it).
Ultimately its the man’s responsibility to turn away from the sin and keep it from happening. Its the woman’s responsibility to not put the apple out there in the first place.
While this isn’t too huge of a difference behind what you’re saying the premise is very different. The decision is still in the hands of the man, and it is a big place to enact change. At the same time it takes two to tango…
In regards to:
“and women typically are better at saying “no” then men are.”
If the statistics I found are right women under the age of 19 are less able to say “no”.
You’re right, husbands bear the responsibility. It’s one of the reasons that I believe Adam is to blame for sin and not Eve. You’ll notice that it’s not until Adam ate of the fruit ( we do not know that is was an apple 🙂 ) that things changed.
The TRUTH about this poll is that it does NOT measure public opinion. Check out this analysis of the poll at RH Reality Check.org
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/05/17/if-only-this-absitnence-p
Which poll/study are you referring to, Scott? The page that you linked to returns a 404.
Hey there: Sorry about the error message. Not sure why that’s happening. The National Abstinence Education Association is promoting a poll that they say shows parents support abstinence education by unbelievably overwhelming margins. The poll, just like abstinence only, is a fraud, and we have a piece that debunks it thoroughly that your readers might enjoy. It is called “If ONLY This Abstinence Poll Were Honest: Debunking NAEA” and can be found at RH Reality Check.org.
Now I need to find out why that darned link won’t work. Thanks for your heads up and the great work on this site!
In what way are you suggesting that abstinence education is fraudulent? Considering that teaching teens to wait is something that has been around for centuries, even before birth control and other devices, I could suggest that modern birth control is more of a cause of teen pregnancy and the spread of disease than abstinence education.
Thanks for giving us an updated link, and your kind remarks.
Well that was an interesting exchange!
MML