When it comes to sex, there's so much to abstain from I don't even know where to begin.

It may surprise you that sex itself isn't on the list. Let me be clear: God does not want college students to abstain from sex. Far from it! The Bible celebrates coitus, beginning with God's first commandment in Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply." Our Lord continues in 1 Corinthians 7: "A husband should satisfy his wife's sexual needs. And a wife should satisfy her husband's sexual needs. You shouldn't stop giving yourselves to each other except when you both agree to do so.... Then you should come together again" (NIV).

Could He make Himself any clearer? You should be satisfied. Substitute "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" for "husband" and "wife"—or "boyfriend" and "boyfriend," or "girlfriend" and "girlfriend," or "customer" and "lap dancer"—and the odds that you will be sexually satisfied multiply accordingly. This is pleasing to God.

There are spiritually corrupting acts you should abstain from. First and foremost, abstain from conceiving if you are not ready to become parents. In Proverbs, God gives His blessing to tit-sex ("...let her breasts satisfy thee..."), which is viewed, even by conservative theologians, as a green light to all forms of congress that satisfy our sexual needs without risking pregnancy—oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, etc. If you prefer vaginal intercourse, familiarize yourself with the many products that can help you abstain from unplanned pregnancy, like condoms, birth-control pills, and morning-after pills. For a better picture of blessed birth-control options, consult Planned Parenthood (www.ppww.org).

Should I even have to mention that all God's children should refrain from giving each other sexually transmitted infections? STIs are never sexually satisfying. Get tested regularly. If you believe you have an STI, seek treatment. If you believe you have passed on an STI, inform him, her, or them. And if you have a mysterious sore on your genitals, go see a doctor—do not send digital photographs of the lesion to this paper's sex columnist. There's plenty of useful information about STIs and testing sites at the Public Health website: www.metrokc.gov/health.

Young men should abstain from committing rape—date or any other variety. Consent should always be obtained in advance. Young ladies should refrain from describing sex they regret as "rape." Consent can never be withdrawn retroactively. And while many college counselors tell new students that a person cannot consent to sex when inebriated, anyone who has spent time in the real world knows this is foolishness. Why, if drunken people refrained from having sex, the human race would soon disappear from the face of the earth! (And tipsy Christians have a duty to be as fruitful as possible, outbreeding Jews, Hindus, and other benighted souls.) But it's a good rule to abstain from having sex with people who are too drunk to know they're having sex.

Finally, there is no biblical reason to refrain from exploring your more esoteric desires. "Sexual satisfaction," after all, is subjective—one man's happiness is another's anal fissure. Does God approve of kinks and fetishes? Flip to Revelation 2: "She sinned on a bed, so I will make her suffer on a bed." Could you ask for a simpler endorsement of consensual BDSM? That God also approves of scat ("My beloved put his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him," Song of Solomon 5:4) troubles the fainthearted but should come as a comfort to corprophiliacs.