Virginity Pledges Can't Be Taken on Faith

[MountainLaurel]

So these kids are not only breaking the pledge, but they're also LYING about ever having taken the pledge to begin with, once they become sexually active? Now, those are good KKKristian values, aren't they?

So, these programs serve what purpose? To make teens feel so guilty about being sexual creatures that they can't be honest about it and are less likely to practice safe sex? Eh?

:mad:

Many abstinence programs have embraced the concept of virginity pledges, encouraging children as young as 9 to promise to wait until marriage to have sex.

So how reliable are reports of sexual activity by teenagers who took such a pledge?

Not very, according to a study by Harvard doctoral candidate Janet Rosenbaum published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Rosenbaum found that 53 percent of adolescents in a large, federally funded study who said they made a virginity pledge denied doing so a year later, often after they had become sexually active.

At the same time, 10 percent of teenagers who said they had had intercourse and then made a pledge or became born-again Christians subsequently said they were virgins.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500842.html

[tanyev]

1. So when they pledged they didn't really mean it?

Egad! What if they are also lying when they say the Pledge of Allegiance?!?!?


*swoon*

[Botany]

2. Old sexually weird people telling others what to do with their bodies.

No need for sex education, birth control information, and real faith and understanding .....

"Jesus told me that sex is dirty."

[havocmom]

3. Parents can be deluded into 'knowing' their kids are fine.

Then they can spend more time and energy trying to be the boss of you, me and the kids of all the 'heathens'.

That is the purpose of the oaths

[PATRICK]

4. Jesus and Paul

This is why Jesus said never to take oaths and more particularly why Paul said the burden of strict behavioral laws merely is another source of condemnation and despair. This who charade is totally unChristian and shows a profound and pervasive ignorance of the simplest Scriptural wisdom. This particular insight is not a mysterious dictum from on high but based on human experience a non-Christian could well appreciate. So further, like other sectarian cultists before them this shows an essential rebellion against the faith they profess to represent "better" than other Christians.

It is anti-Christian. Not to say there are no other examples of hyporcitical lapses in every Church! This is just one more distastefully kooky offense for the books.

[Tsiyu]

5. It's like telling a teenager to pledge not to eat junk food or talk

on the phone til they're married.

Very unlikely they can keep the promise.

Fundies are psychos when it comes to raising kids. Really. They honestly think Bill Clinton invented sex and that if not for liberals, their precious babies would NEVER get sexually aroused!

Kid of a fundy I know took the pledge, wore his ring and everything. A year later, at 17, having been taught NADA about birth control, he gets his fifteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant. ( Of COURSE, his mama blamed the girl - that Jezebel!).

Abstinence education does not work, nor does any other pie-in-the-sky program these nuts dream up.

[knitter4democracy]

8. That's my problem with these people right there.

"having been taught NADA about birth control"

They not only don't teach their kids about b.c. but also don't teach them anything about their own bodies. I went to an evangelical college and was constantly suprised at how many students there knew nothing about their own bodies and didn't want to know.

I was shunned for a few days my frosh year when I had the gall to talk about my period in my own room in front of other girls--in a womens dorm! I held my best friend's hand when she took a pregnancy test in one of the school bathrooms because her fiance was scared she was preggers--when they hadn't had intercourse and were clothed at the time! (I wanted to beat the crap out of him but instead helped her get through it and hide the evidence.) I had a roomie who had an eight week long period who, when I told her she needed to go to the doctor about it, said, "I don't want to know anything about down there."

I kid you not. These kids are sent into the world knowing nothing, and then they get preggers, get diseases, get pretty messed up all for their parents' need to believe their kids won't have sex outside of marriage. Gah! It just infuriates me!!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Bumper sticker I saw: "Chastity is it's own punishment."

A sentiment I have always agreed with.

[wtmusic]

7. Kids need guidance in order to become pathological liars

Outcome of ACLU lawsuit according to Silver Ring Thing, an "abstinence education" (fundie) group:

"Unlike erroneous articles and statements from the ACLU and AP, Silver Ring Thing did NOT lose one dime of federal funding."

http://silverringthing.com/press22806.html

Now according to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Friday, February 24, 2006
Abstinence group loses federal grant over 1st Amendment

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06055/660512.stm

Hey I'm a virgin too. No really. It's that honesty "thing" I'm having trouble with...

:rofl:

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Why is this even an issue?

Why does it matter? Why do so many Americans have such a generally unhealthy and obsessively Puritanical view of sexuality? And who really believes that 'virginity pledges' are going to be more effective than serious education about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy and the importance of responsibility and condom use?

[zbdent]

10. Where can I get a job

verifying teen girls' virginity?

(18 or older, please . . .)

:evilgrin:

[lindisfarne]

11. Ewww. Plus, it's impossible to determine whether someone is a

virgin based on physical evidence.

[yellowcanine]

12. self reported data is nearly alwas unreliable. They had 9 year olds

taking the virginity pledge? That in and of itself sounds a little perverted.

[MountainLaurel]

13. Ever hear of the "Purity Balls"?

Think of those sweet 9-year-olds in white ball gowns pledging to their daddies to remain "pure" until they're married. There have been some raucous threads on DU about them in the past month or so.

[jmowreader]

14. You mean like this one?

http://www.family.org/fofmag/pf/a0025000.cfm

http://www.purityball.org/

And you'll love this one:

http://www.braveheart.org/condom.php

That last page shows the "failure rate" of condoms. One minor problem: the most recent data is fourteen years old. They make much better condoms now.

[MountainLaurel]

15. Some scary *%#@ there

:hide: