It’s just another small town newspaper reporting on small town teenagers taking small town “purity vows” at a small town church….
“Waiting until marriage” is not just a phrase for some local teens, who have vowed to abstain from sex until they marry.
That’s not an easy road for today’s teens. They’re surrounded by a culture that celebrates sex in movies, even some rated PG-13, song, books and television. Ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl football contest used sex to sell Doritos and godaddy.com.
The reporter praises the pledging teens, condemns the sex-crazed culture (that dang Super Bowl ruins everything!), and promotes a local church’s efforts to keep kids pure and right with Jeebus. Predictably this reporter for the Emporia Gazette doesn’t allow reality to encroach on her report—she doesn’t reference, for instance, the results of this recently published study:
Five years after the pledge, 82% of pledgers denied having ever pledged. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers had 0.1 fewer past-year partners but did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms in the past year and birth control at last sex.
In other words, kids who take purity vows like the ones being praised in the Emporia Gazette—the overwhelming majority of whom will one day deny ever having done such a stupid thing—are just as likely as non-vowers to fuck before marriage, contract sexually transmitted diseases, swallow loads, get fucked in their fool butts, etc., etc., and they’re less likely to use condoms than kids who don’t take purity vows. It seems to me that these inconvenient truths should at least get a mention in a piece about purity vows—even a puff piece—that’s running in a newspaper and not, say, a church bulletin. But here’s is my favorite part of the report:
Cody [said[ the candy bar illustration… helped him decide to abstain even before Cornerstone sponsored the Purity Banquet.
“He pulled out a Snickers bar, unwrapped it and put the whole thing in his mouth, then pulled it back out,” Cody recalled. The speaker then held that candy bar up with a second Snickers bar, still in its sealed wrapper.
“He asked which one we’d want.”
Yes, because hymens are kind of like candy-bar wrappers because, um, vaginas are kind of like candy bars—all long and phallic and brown. And speaking of the sex-drenched Super Bowl: follow the link to the Emporia Gazette and you can vote on who you think will win the Super Bowl. The Cardinals? Or the Steelers? Right now the Empire Gazette’s readers are predicting a miraculous win for Arizona Cardinals.
@50
Statistics don’t matter to the individual. But you have to respect the fact that your case is exceptional. By looking at my example, I would have to conclude that all poor kids from forced families turned broken homes grow up to be Ph.D.’s in chemistry. We can look at the numbers and see that prisons are overcrowded with people from my demographic.
Just be happy that your happy and beat the odds. Most of us can’t live up to those expectations.
I just want to know if he used the “fun size” Snickers bar in his demonstration…
When I was in high school in the 80s, the weird sex-only-within-the-holy-confines-of-marriage analogy we got was, “Why would I have hamburger when I can have steak?”
Either way, the lesson was apparently that women are meat.
What I can’t quite discern from the Snickers demonstration is what day 2 of a marriage is supposed to be like. I mean, you’re only a virgin once, right? So are all subsequent acts of intercourse unspecial and like “used chocolate?” Or is the implication that people should only get to have sex once? That kills the “be fruitful and multiply” argument.
@42, my husband thought your analogy hilarious. Thanks!
@51. I wasn’t saying the study was wrong at all. I was just stating that not all kids turn out like the statistics. Some of us grew up to be healthy and happy and all that. Some people (like me) had it all work out well and the pledge may have actually given me time to think about things.
I understand that my life and experience are one of many and everyone lives different lives. College taught me that!
But that was my point! I wanted to point out that not everyone who took the pledge got messed up by it or was messed up to begin with. I wanted to let people know that there were lots of different outcomes.
And truth be told, I fell out of touch with most of my friends who took the pledge. So I have no idea what they turned out like. But at least 2 broke the pledge with in 2 years of making it. And they turned into little nymphos. I mean that as a compliment. 1 friend is 21 and kept the pledge. And one is 20, broke the pledge and then retook it. She is trying to bring me back into the group, but it won’t work.
“vaginas are kind of like candy bars—all long and phallic and brown”
how long were you thinking or what the hell were you smoking before writing this stuff ? Gosh …
Returning to the main topic, Having Sex With a Non-Virgin has it’s pluses and minuses (as everything in this crazy world) so it’s up to you – either look for your prince(s) to be their “first” (and maybe only one) but nowadays you’ll need to try haaaard, or try your luck with the “slightly” more experienced one. GL anyways!