Like Tbogg says, lying about sex is as American as baseball and apple pie. A quick perusal of the culture of virginity fetishism will tell you that it’s a system where there’s a great deal of incentive to lie and not really much incentive to tell the truth. After all, if you pledge to stay a virgin, you get a lot of attention and some nice jewelry and if that pledge is a lie, it’s not like anyone is going to finding out you’re fucking on the sly. But on top of that, a recent study shows that the main issue with virginity pledges is they are easily made but also easily broken.
Recanting virginity pledges: The analysis also found that 52 percent of adolescent virginity pledgers in the 1995 survey disavowed the virginity pledge at the next survey a year later. Additionally, 73 percent of virginity pledgers from the first survey who subsequently reported sexual intercourse denied in the second survey that they had ever pledged.
Again, no big surprise. Virginity pledges are a front-loaded incentive campaign without any back end enforcement. Generally speaking, if you bait someone with a bunch of goodies, you have to be able to hold them accountable for their promise when they try to weasel out of it later. Like, you know, the way credit card companies work. But there’s no real incentive to stick to the pledge once taken.
Luckily, your average wingnut isn’t weighed down with common sense or willingness to look at the facts. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women of America has looked at the facts and decided they’re wrong because she have even better “facts”.
This new finding by Harvard is misleading and deceptive.
Ironically, this statement that the study is misleading and deceptive is in itself a misleading and deceptive statement. The study isn’t deceptive nor is it misleading. It’s just inconvienent, which is another ball game altogether.
Those who have committed to saving sex for marriage are to be congratulated and encouraged, said Dr. Janice Crouse, CWAs Senior Fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute.
Even if you assume, which I most definitely do not, that there’s a good reason to wait to have sex until you get sucked into a legal contract that’s hard to get out of, this still isn’t a logical statement that Crouse is making. Her desire to congratulate the minority of people who wait until marriage to have sex doesn’t magic the rest of us back to virginity anymore than my desire to congratulate people who never picked up smoking to begin with magics the nicotine out of cigarettes.
This study is in direct contradiction with the trends we have been seeing in recent years both teen pregnancies and teen abortions are down, and evidence indicates these trends are related to increased abstinence among teens.
Abstinence wasn’t a factor in the change in the pregnancy and abortion rate, actually. Apparently, the growth in injectable hormonal birth control had a lot more to do with it, which makes sense because it’s probably the best way to prevent pregnancy without having devices around that could be seen by a parent.
Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage. At the same time, those who have not made a conscious decision to abstain from sex are more likely to engage in premarital sexual activity.
In other words, girls who don’t want to wait for marriage are less resolved to wait for marriage than those who want to wait for marriage. Or, since we are discussing lying here–girls who don’t care what you think about their sex life are less likely to tell you what you want to hear than girls who are afraid you’ll think they’re sluts.
Crouse must have been a great mom if her idea of proof you’re not lying is that the lie she heard sounded better than the truth.
Abstinence education is the only effective tool for teaching young men and women the dangers of promiscuous behavior.
Ah, no wonder they don’t care that the kids taking virginity pledges are lying or will lie about it later. They have no qualms about lying themselves. The most effective programs for spreading information on the dangers of promiscious behavior have got to be the ones that dramatically slowed down the HIV transmission rate in the 80s and 90s–you know, the ones where a combination of warnings about sleeping with people you don’t know well and education about condom usage were employed? That’s not abstinence-only and it worked.*
Pre-marital sex, especially with multiple partners, greatly increases the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies.
This statement is self-evidently false. The wedding ring doesn’t actually decrease your fertility and therefore has no effect whatsoever on your possibility of getting pregnant if you don’t use contraception.
Not to mention the emotional impact of sexual intimacy.
Not to mention my fabulous recipe for queso. CWA mentions this but has nothing to say about it, I notice. Typical conservative weasel words–an attempt to imply that you can’t love someone if you ever touch a cock, but without coming out and saying it because straightforward language increases the chance that people will realize how stupid your beliefs really are.
The Harvard report is wrong.
Evidence to contradict the Harvard report should look something like this: “We have studies showing that kids stick to the virginity pledges because we secretly followed them with a camera to demonstrate that they do.” Or some other way to demonstrate that they have counterevidence that kids are telling the truth in the face of actual evidence that kids are lying.
So, evidence number #1 that Harvard’s report is wrong:
I know numerous couples who have saved sex for their wedding night.
A few couples have told Crouse they waited and that means that a study showing most people don’t isn’t true. Because a few couples Crouse knows=most people in America.
Evidence #2 that the Harvard report is wrong:
Research is clear that it is the best recipe for marital happiness and well-being.
This works in the same way that when I say, “Research shows that pink unicorns cheer people up,” means that everyone has a pet pink unicorn.
Evidence #3 that the Harvard report is wrong:
Abstinence-until-marriage is a beautiful promise that should be encouraged and promoted.
Again, I disagree with her assertion that abstaining from sex is so great, but even if you agree, her point makes no sense. “Eating 5 servings of vegetables a day is good for you and should be promoted,” isn’t evidence that people actually eat 5 servings a day. Saying that it would be nice if it rained today won’t make it rain today.
Abstinence works and condoms work to slow down disease transmission, but both methods only work if they are used properly. Comprehensive sex education is like giving kids a seat belt and telling them to drive safe, whereas abstinence-only is like telling them to drive safe and then praying really hard they don’t get into a crash. The problem is that inconvienent studies show that prayer doesn’t work very well either.
*Which reminds me of something else that bugs the ever-living shit out of me about abstinence-only education. It’s the dictionary definition of heteronormative. Telling people to wait until marriage is a prettified way of telling gays and lesbians they can never have sex at all.
205 Responses to “But the lie is so much prettier than the truth”
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My girlfriend astutely pointed out that, psychologically, virginity pledges made by tweens are just as likely to backfire as to accomplish anything. After all, being a teenager is all about rebellion and carving out an identity for yourself that isn’t an extension of your parents’ will. What better way to do so than to break that stupid virginity pledge you made to your dad when you were twelve and didn’t have any idea what you were saying?
Also, not everyone who waits is doing so for religion or because of some weird pledge.
a front-loaded incentive campaign without any back end enforcement…
…unfortunately.
Anybody remember Nancy Reagan saying “just say no to drugs”? If it didn’t work for drugs, why does it magically work for sex?
Excellent job dissecting the “critique” of the truth. “Well, it doesn’t fit my worldview so it must be wrong” is the hallmark of excuses made by sheeple who voted for Bush even though they knew he lied and knew lying was wrong because they couldn’t stand the cognitive dissonance. Fine, but somebody who has supposed professional standing in policy making should do better than “it is my professional opinion that you shouldn’t bother me with the truth because I’m having a religious fantasy.”
“Research is clear that it is the best recipe for marital happiness and well-being.
This works in the same way that when I say, “Research shows that pink unicorns cheer people up,â€? means that everyone has a pet pink unicorn.”
Genius.
Actually, to someone as completely delusional as Crouse, pre-marital sex does increase the risk of unintended pregnancies! (note that she said nothing about actual “fertility”…)
The key word is “unintended”. This is because once you’re married, you will immediately start getting pregnant and ejecting babies, and every single one of those will be an intended pregnancy because you
a. aren’t allowed to take contraception
b. should feel compelled to populate the world (as long as you’re white and christian)
Please excuse me while my head explodes D:
Actually, “comprehensive sex education” is like telling a kid to drive safe, then teaching them how to break all the traffic rules.
Let me ask you– if someone did derive a highly effective abstinence pledge program, would you go gung-ho over it? What if the Harvard study had come to the opposite conclusion– would you have blogged about it and heaped praise on the abstinence pledgers for their innovative brilliance? Can you blame me for doubting?
You write “I disagree with her assertion that abstaining from sex is so great”, yet in the very same blog post you compare premartial sex with getting into a car accident and smoking. And you never refute Ms. Crouse’s statement “Research is clear that it is the best recipe for marital happiness and well-being,” (what research?). The words omitted speak as much as the words included.
You have a convincing case that these abstinence programs have extremely questionable effectiveness, and thus probably shouldn’t form the basis of teens’ sexual education. But there’s another– deeper matter at stake here. If the lie *is* really prettier than the truth, then social liberals must hope that the lie can never become the truth, don’t they?
It’s like conservatives who must hope that poverty and war can never be eradicated, to argue against any attempt at redressing them in the first place. In this type of more abstract, philosophical debate, I’m sorry to admit my allegiance with those who are making the attempt to make the world a better place, than those who give up entirely for want of total victory.
The only conclusion I have from this blog post is Ms. Crouse and CWA, try again.
I took the virginity pledge at 12, probably within three months of telling my friends that my goal was to have sex by the time I was 16. Why’d I take it? Because I was in a room full of creepy pod people and it was administered by a nurse who had just shown me graphic slides of syphilitic penii. I would have pledged my hymen to God himself if it would have just gotten me the hell out of there.
I’d love to see a cite for this. Whenever I hear this canard I see divorce statistics given as a measurement of “happiness.” Having seen my share of traditional marriages turned into living hells because divorce wasn’t considered an option, this would seem to be a serious breach of logic. In fact, in a true instance of question-begging, most claims that “traditional marriage is better” boil down to “traditional marriage is, well, more traditional.”
Because I was in a room full of creepy pod people and it was administered by a nurse who had just shown me graphic slides of syphilitic penii. I would have pledged my hymen to God himself if it would have just gotten me the hell out of there.
I suppose the nurse didn’t tell you all that they have invented this pill called anti-biotics that cure syphilis?
Good God, I wonder where they got modern pictures of late stage syphilis? I’ve got some pictures for my research of 3rd stage syphilis - but I research the 19th century.
“Also, not everyone who waits is doing so for religion or because of some weird pledge. ”
Excellent point, Samantha. Some of the attrition may not be from fanatical fundies backsliding on their ill-thought-out vows, but simply from teens who didn’t feel ready for sex a year earlier. I was in college before I became sexually active, but I didn’t reject sexual activity in high school because I wanted to be a virgin on my wedding night. I just wasn’t interested at that point. I’m not sure if I blame high school boys (most of whom were a little too clumsy and goal-oriented to make sex with them an attractive proposition) or if I blame my mom for giving me comprehensive sex ed from the age of seven and leaving boxes of condoms around the house when I was in high school. She didn’t mind if I had sex as long as I took precautions, so I had nothing to rebel against!
For what it’s worth, I think a kid who decides against sexual activity for personal reasons (lack of interest, not feeling ready, etc) is probably going to handle sex rather more responsibly when they do start than someone who decides against sexual activity solely for religious reasons. Statistically speaking, teens who’ve taken virginity pledges are no less likely than their peers to have sex, but more likely to have unprotected sex. Someone who doesn’t think premarital sex is intrinsically evil is probably more likely to carry condoms or go on the Pill before they decide to try it out for themselves, because they won’t perceive themselves as morally wrong for doing so.
Besides, there’s tons of fun stuff you can do without needing condoms. I know penis inside vagina is the only thing wingnuts see as sex, but there’s actually more to sex than that. And penis inside vagina alone is unlikely to lead to a mutually satisfying sexual relationship unless the couple’s repetoire includes other activities.
And they say we’re out of touch with the mainstream? Whatever the mainstream is.
These people are out of touch with reality.
I suppose the nurse didn’t tell you all that they have invented this pill called anti-biotics that cure syphilis?
That was the point where I stopped listening and started counting the panes in the chapel’s many, many, multi-paned windows. I don’t really remember her words anymore, just the pictures. They must have come from some hospital somewhere in the middle of nowhere where people wait too long to seek treatment. There were other diseases too, like gonorreah and genital warts. She had the whole set.
Actually, “comprehensive sex education� is like telling a kid to drive safe, then teaching them how to break all the traffic rules.
No, “comprehensive sex educationâ€? is telling people that if they wish to avoid a car accident, they should stick to walking and public transportation, but that if they wish to drive, teaching them to choose their auto carefully, make sure it has airbags, and always wear a seat belt. “Abstinence only education” is like telling people to never, ever drive a car in a world with parking lots full of autos with the keys right there in the ignition. Yes, you might choose to avoid driving until the “right time,” but I certainly wouldn’t trust everyone to do that.
I’m also not convinced that a pro-abstinence message can be effectively taught by anyone other than a family. Even then, it only might work, and plenty of people will reject the social mores of their parents. Plus, teaching abstinence-only in school isn’t going to help when the parents aren’t teaching abstinence at home.
Abstinence education is useless. Thinking that saving yourself for your wedding night will make everything roses in the future is simplistic. What after the wedding night? There is no magic in a wedding ring to protect you from STDs (because sometimes spouses cheat), and the old tool of saying “no” to avoid unwanted pregnancy wreaks havoc on marital intimacy. Unintended pregnancies are not the sole property of single folks. I have been married over a decade and have 2 small children (one of whom was an unintended pregnancy) and it doesn’t get any simpler–birth control is more of an issue for us post-children than it was before.
Teen years != the rest of your life and a good foundation of thorough sex education is good preparation for what lies ahead in the distance.
I’m not opposed to virginity pledges in principle–though I am old enough to find them extremely odd–but on the other hand, I’m not in favor of making promises you are at least 66% likely to fail to keep within 5 years. I am certainly going to encourage my kids to approach their relationships in such a way that sex is a rewarding part of a committed relationship rather than a too-early disappointment–and tell them that “saving themselves” can be part of that–but I certainly am not going to bet their lives that they’re going to keep a promise like that. Lord knows, I certainly went into my teens expecting to save myself for marriage, but like 90% of people I know, I didn’t.
Because I was in a room full of creepy pod people and it was administered by a nurse who had just shown me graphic slides of syphilitic penii.
Luckily, I was just in a room headed by some creepy people who were singing the delights of being a born-again virgin (or whatever they called it). And it was “voluntary” attendence.
Thus, once I wanted to start screaming, I slipped out the door to go to the bathroom, and somehow ended up in the library. And missed out on the whole pledge-nonsense.
Ironically, at that point, I had already decided for myself that sex during HS wasn’t something I was interested in, and wasn’t something that was going to happen (this whole “celebration of sex within marriage” occurred around my junior year of HS). BUT, I had looked forward at a practical future, and realized that marriage wasn’t going to happen until at least after college, and sex was probably going to happen before–because I couldn’t see putting off sex until my mid-twenties or later. I was perfectly fine with that outcome.
And the fact that, now fourteen years later, I’ve only had one sexual partner, and he’s still my lover and now my husband . . . well, that was luck, more than anything else. It was right for me, but I don’t expect it to be right for anyone else.
And you never refute Ms. Crouse’s statement “Research is clear that it is the best recipe for marital happiness and well-being,� (what research?). The words omitted speak as much as the words included.
Yeah. They say that some things are beneath comment.
The problem with that metaphor, Tony, is that you don’t need to tell teenagers how to have unprotected sex. They probably know the basic mechanics by that point. You do need to tell them how to have protected sex.
Kyso, I was shown those same pictures in my high school health class. We were also taught about contraception, though a large part of that was teaching us failure rates of various contraception. I think we were supposed to be learning to be scared of sex, but at least they were fairly forward with the message, “If you’re going to do this dangerous, dangerous thing, at least use a condom to make it less risky (though still risky).” So I guess this is an example of good sex-ed?
I also am astounded by the hypocrisy of these virginity pledge people: any discussion of sex in a book or on a TV show or something would lead to them declaring that we are forcing their children to be sexualized too young but they will march their pre-teen daughters to gala balls where they will make public pronouncements about their sex lives. How are they not sexualizing their own children?
If syphilis can be cured by penicillin, then what was Henry’s doctor buddy in A Farewell to Arms so mopey about? Am I remembering the book right? That’s what Rinaldi had–syphilis. They had penicillin by WWI.
Em - like a lot of diseases, you have to treat it early enough (I think).
I thought penicillin wasn’t around until shortly before WWII. I could be wrong, but I’m fairly sure it was a 1930’s era invention.
According to Wikipedia, penicillin was discovered in 1928. Eleven years after the end of WWI
Actually, “comprehensive sex education� is like telling a kid to drive safe, then teaching them how to break all the traffic rules.
Yikes, were you one of the ones on the boston.com boards who was insisting that teaching kids how to maneuver a vehicle in an emergency and showing them how difficult handling is at higher speeds was “teaching them to drag race”?
LOGIC ERROR LOGIC ERROR LOGIC ERROR!
I can tell you this: these two boys sleeping one floor below my office are NOT going to leave this house before they receive:
1. comprehensive sex education, including how to avoid STDs, a sense that masturbation is a good way to stay safe or not do something you are not ready for just because your body is in a tizzy, and a good grounding in what constitutes abusive relationships and the meaning of the word “no”.
2. instruction in how to properly operate a motor vehicle including comprehensive road rules test (more like Oregon’s than that joke Mass uses) execute basic evasive steering/handling, and how to avoid getting into messes to begin with by anticipating situations
3. how to handle and manage finances - check books, bank accounts, credit
To do otherwise would be foolish parenting, not to mention selling my kids short.
If I were Tony I would delude myself into thinking:
1. Teaching them how to drive would make them them ignore the road rules and be reckless (despite them having no farking clue what actually was reckless until it was too late)
2. Not tell them anything about sex except don’t do it and don’t masturbate. Never mind that unprotected butt-fucking is a great way to play pass the STD.
3. Not worry them about the money stuff, because understanding how to manage money will just make them want to spend too much. Kids figure out credit cards easy - I’m sure they will be okay because so many college students have them now!
You know, I like this idea. Maybe I’ll hire Tony for a machinist’s job. I won’t give him safety glasses - that will just make him reckless and he’ll have an accident. Better yet, put him to work in a foundary - naked! All those clothes and he’ll just want to get too close to the work and get burned.
About what’s been done to OSHA.
Let me ask you– if someone did derive a highly effective abstinence pledge program, would you go gung-ho over it?
Me, no. Because I have no moral problem with nonmarital sex whatsoever. I don’t even have a problem with older teens being sexually active, provided they’re mature enough and practice safer sex (yeah, the wingnuts will argue that teens are never mature enough, but whatever. An awful lot of people have sex of some kind between the ages of 15 and 19 and still grow up to be reasonable, well-adjusted adults). And as Amanda points out, saving it for marriage is a veiled way of telling gay people not to have sex ever. I also don’t have a moral problem with queer people.
I see no reason why the validity of Amanda’s critique of the article is dependent on her supporting effective abstinence pledge programs. Apples and oranges.
—
Kyso K. got the same version of sex ed I got, I see.
Em — penicillin didn’t become a common treatment for syphilis until after WWII. It was discovered in 1928, 10 years after WWI ended. Pre-WWII, they used arsenic drugs (and malaria (!) for late-stage). These days oral tetracyclines are used to treat patients allergic to penicillin.
But yeah, I’ll never understand how the nuns at my high school came up with photos of late-stage syphilitic genitals, either. I spent that afternoon staring at my desk and trying not to listen (according to anonymous surveys administed to the senior class, we had a lower sexual activity rate than the national average. The nuns and teachers attributed it to the scare tactic of the STD Slideshow. Someone else can criticize the methodological flaws of the survey).
Penicillin wasn’t discovered until 1928 and wasn’t used actually used as an antiobiotic in large scale until around D-Day. On the other hand, syphilis was originally treated not by penicillin but by Salvarsan, which was Paul Ehrlich’s famous “Magic Bullet,” which he created in 1910. Apparently, it wasn’t entirely magic, though, so syphillis during WWI may still have been something to mope about.
Well said, Ms Kate.
There really is no point in a “what if” contemplation of abstinence-only education. In fact, people like Janice Crouse are engaging in a bit of “what if” themselves, because they know that it doesn’t work.
To deliberately neglect arming young people with all the tools to understand what is going on around them is patently stupid. What happens from that point requires no “what if” - pregnancy, disease, and confusion.
People will fuck one way or another.
Even after penicillan was widely used to cure syphillis, there were still folks who were left untreated, deliberately so, like in the infamous Tuskegee Study.
Yowzers! I can’t believe I’m referring to teenagers as “young people.” I’m 27 for chrissakes - I’m not that old.
To my mind, abstinence-only education would be equivalent to telling your kids to drive safe, rigging the brakes on the car so they only work at below 55, and not telling them. Let’s just make sure that if they happen to break the speed-limit there’s a maximum chance of a horrible accident, why don’t we?
I’m with Ms. Kate. My husband did some (legal) amateur racing as a teen. He had a hell of a lot more respect for how hard it was to handle a car at speed then most teen drivers.
I think abstinence-only is more like telling them not to drive at all until they find their one true car, and if they do drive before then, wearing a seatbelt is actually useless, not to mention the airbag, which actually increases the chance of horrible disfigurement.
Of course, if you don’t drive, son, you’re a fag.
Daughter! Stop looking out at the driveway!
And once they buy their one true car, if they wear a seatbelt when they drive, or drive anywhere except when they absolutely have to, they’re trivializing the act of driving.
Let me ask you– if someone did derive a highly effective abstinence pledge program, would you go gung-ho over it?
Let me ask you - if someone did derive a highly effective comprehensive sex-ed program, would you go gung-ho over it?
Oh, wait. We already did that. And you’re still bleating on about the theoretical value of hypothetical abstinence-only education. Guess that answers that question.
Not to mention my fabulous recipe for queso.
No fair teasing like that. I’ve been looking for a good recipe.
The reason so many kids break their abstinence pledges should be obvious to anyone who was ever a teenager. They never intended to keep them in the first place. Kids will tell their parents whatever they want to hear. If you’re a brain-dead fundy parent, you probably don’t know the difference, because your own slavish obedience to authority is projected onto your kids.
What’s the definition of a highly effective abstinence pledge program? Not having sex? I don’t give a fuck about that. Sex is good. People should have sex when they’re ready and willing and shouldn’t be forced by their peers or elders into doing it any earlier or later, period.
So, are we going to define “highly effective” as lower unwanted pregnancy rates, lower STD transmission, etc? OK, fine. Effectively convincing people not to have sex is going to decrease pregnancy and STD rates all around, but it seems to me like you’re advocating reducing acne by cutting off everyone’s head when they turn 14. Unnecessary and probably harmful, especially when there are proven alternatives which work.
Abstinence-only (or even abstinence-plus) will never be acceptable because it implies that not having sex is superior to having sex. Similarly, abstinence-plus will never be acceptable to fundies because it implies that having sex is acceptable. I completely reject that any program which suggests sex should be restrained to a heterosexual pairing bound by legal ceremony should be used on children. (Even in liberal Portland, Oregon, the sex ed curriculum says it’s best to wait until marriage to have sex.)
Tony asked:
Not me. I’d be pretty gung-ho over a program that resulted teenagers delaying first sex for a few years, (particularly young teenagers). But abstinance until marriage just seems like a bad idea to me.
As for pledges, well, I find them deeply squicky. It’s one thing to pledge something out of one’s own volition, it’s quite another to manipulate people into pledging through peer-pressure. Teenagers are people too.
But that’s not really what Amanda’s post was about (if I may be so bold). If someone did derive a highly effective abstinence pledge program, I might not necessarily believe it. I might not have the time or inclination to examine the evidence (though I do generally try to fact-check). But I would not argue for the ineffectiveness of abstinence pledges without mentioning credible contrary evidence. Not just that, while I would be sceptical of the results of such a hypothetical study, I do try and avoid “wishful thinking” and base my positions on what the facts are rather than what I would like them to be.
Djur:
I dunno. I’ve met a few people for whom having their head lopped off would be a marked improvement.Some people chose not to be treated for syphilis (perhaps because they feared the treatment more than the disease). Al Capone was one person who suffered the mental ravages of late stage syphilis, even though he lived at a time when syphilis could be treated.
Even the name “abstinence pledge” is a lie, it’s a pre-marital abstinence pledge, which A) fucks up the whole concept because you actually are, in no fewer words, telling the kids that sex is a good thing they should do without condoms (which is what happens when you put abstinence and contraceptives in conflict with each other, all that “but abstinence is the only 100% effective way to avoid stds/pregnancy!” stuff coupled with couching it all in this pro-marriage clap trap about “saving yourself for the person you truly love”, which becomes both a good way for horny kids to weedle their partners into having sex (”Don’t you love me!? Well prove it…”) and also fails to take into account that most kids couldn’t tell lust from love if their life depended on it) and B) tricks the parents into supporting something that they basically think means that their little kiddywinks are never ever ever going to have sex, because most of the abstinence only supporting parents are weirdo control freaks wiht little or no imagination who couldn’t imagine their little jessicas and dudleys ever getting married!
The first lie of the unprotected sex encouraging abstinence only education program sets up all subsequent reasons why the damn thing doesn’t work, and uses all the extra lies they justify it with to obfuscate that initial lie and central flaw.
I didn’t read the responses, just had to post this, who the hell cares, besides anyone under say 16 or 17? (wait -I had my first sex at a Christian expo at 15)
Who the hell cares?
What I mean is after a human is 18 or so and in the real world, who cares what their sex history is expect busybody nobodies that belong to groups or write in an abstinence bog…)
Very good post.
While I concur with the arguements, I will say that if you do have a recipe for queso you should post that as well. Just to touch all the threads. And yes I may be interested in the recipe.
Amanda Marcotte:
“Not to mention my fabulous recipe for queso.”
As for abstence only, historically, it has never worked. I seem to recall that the idea was originally put in place in areas that practiced primogenisis (hence the emphasis on the bride being a virgin). In such societies, many times oral, anal, or homosexual (greeks circa 400BCE to 500CE, catholic monastery circa. 400CE to present, if you include the current cases of child abuse) sex would gain in popularity.
In cultures that were matrilineal (Hawaii pre missionary invasion) promiscuity was not kapuu. You will always know who the mother is. Even Kamehameha the great traced his right to rule matrilinealy.
Despite the many evangelical claims of morale superiority because “the bible says so”, I have yet to reconcile the claims with the facts. Still I may be looking in the wrong version of the immutable word of god. So should I look in the Talmud, the King James version, the Gnostic version, the original Armameic that Saul had writen, or the latest whatever version? The issue of abstinance as a divine commandment like the issue of homosexual marriage is fictitious. Most of these people just repeat what they hear from the radio or mega pastors.
I am sorry Amanda, but this is about control. More precisely who controls every aspect of your life, my life, all our lives. It is about which mega pastor will have “dominion” over all of us because onlly he has the direct line to Jesus.
Unfortunately for us all, the conflict continues.
Tony: “you compare premartial sex with getting into a car accident and smoking”
Post-martial sex is better anyway. See the Duchess of Marlborough’s diaries: “My lord returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots.”
In the old days in Southern Europe the women use to protect themselves from losing their virginity by practising anal intercourse. Today you see ads in India for doctors who can “re-create” a virginal hymen,whic is so necessary for prosperous marriages.
“There were other diseases too, like gonorreah and genital warts. She had the whole set.”
I can see some fundy printing up a set of trading cards to pass out at schools…
You write “I disagree with her assertion that abstaining from sex is so great�, yet in the very same blog post you compare premartial sex with getting into a car accident and smoking.
I can’t handle people who want to argue with me but can’t read. My point was that even if you buy the false belief that premarital sex is dangerous–the false belief that it’s dangerous like smoking or driving–this argument doesn’t work. My point is that there is actually no way on god’s green earth she makes sense.
Now if you’re a grown-up and realize that premarital sex is not substantially different than marital sex in any way, then you’re likely to just gloss over Crouse’s argument because she’s a whiny titty baby. I’m trying to create a back-up argument for sexphobes, so that both people who a mature about sex and those who aren’t can grasp the fundamental truth that abstinence-only doesn’t work.
But actually the driving/seatbelt metaphor is perfect. If you start with the belief that no one has a right to go anywhere then there’s no reason whatsoever to think the risks incurred with driving are worth taking. So there’s no reason for safety belts or airbags because people’s very desire to go places is wrong. I say, “When people drive places, the risk should be mitigated by seatbelts,” and sexphobes say, “People are immoral and overly curious and need to stay at home and get all the information about the outside world from a television set whose programming is controlled by me. Seatbelts only encourage people to explore the world when they should be obediently listening to me.”
It seems to me really a shame that there appears to be so much anger and condemnation about people who simply do things differently than you. There is no “magic bullet” to deal with unwanted teen pregnancy. You deal with it the way you deem appropriate, yet you heap criticism on those who simply have different ideas about to deal with it.
Recanting virginity pledges: The analysis also found that 52 percent of adolescent virginity pledgers in the 1995 survey disavowed the virginity pledge at the next survey a year later. Additionally, 73 percent of virginity pledgers from the first survey who subsequently reported sexual intercourse denied in the second survey that they had ever pledged.
What was the purpose of this report? It almost sounds agenda driven, it certainly was very anxious to examine and expose the failures of viginity pledges.
Research is clear that it is the best recipe for marital happiness and well-being.
This works in the same way that when I say, “Research shows that pink unicorns cheer people up,� means that everyone has a pet pink unicorn.
Can you really be intellectually shallow enough, and lack such a complete understanding of the human psyche that you would compare abstinence to having a pretty pink unicorn?
Most of things you say here lack intellectual honesty and are plays on words, but I don’t have the time to exemplify it all. What I wonder is, where is the Harvard study on all the damage done to our persons, our children, our society, by our complete lapse of any moral responsibility regarding sexual promiscuity. I think it is a testament to where we are at as a society when women killing their babies while in the womb is considered a matter of choice. It is a real shame we have so many young women “choosing” to kill their children. Perhaps a more responsible choice should have been who to spread your legs for, then it wouldn’t be necessary to kill your baby.
What if the Harvard study had come to the opposite conclusion–
Here’s the point. IT DIDN’T. Every available study has shown abstinence education to be a failure. When are you fools going to accept that? Oh, you won’t. You’ll just keep lying to teens and trying to come up with more programs destined to fail. With you guys as wrong as you are all of the time, why in the hell should we listen to a thing you say?
Queso recipe:
One stick Velveeta (I promise, it’s good)
Big can diced Hatch green chilis
One can salsa verde
Minced garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
One bottle of beer, preferably something stout
You cut up the Velveeta into chunks, toss them into the a pan, cook on low, stirring frequently. Pop open your bottle of beer. Drink the beer while occasionally dashing some into the queso to help the melting process (not too much, just occasional splashes–no more than a bit more than the neckful should go in). When it’s almost all melted, add your chilis, salsa, minced garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. The green chilis are actually the secret but the beer helps and charms everyone.
Beer queso is also a good way to illustrate the concept Sodomy Is Good. As your student watches you make the queso say, “Some people would say good beer is only for drinking. I say it’s good for drinking and making marinades and making queso.”
Also, some people say you should only use real cheese for queso. I view using real cheese for queso in the same light I view flavored lubes. Make of that what you will.
Virginity pledges are next to worthless. Why? Because they tell teenagers that they aren’t capable decision makers also they don’t give teenagers knowledge that would be useful for relationships. Instead of saying “you should look for these things in a relationship …” and then giving a list of helpful suggestions for what makes a successful relationship, instead they just say “don’t have sex before marriage!!!!”
That doesn’t help teens learn how to develop a healthy relationship. It just pressures them to seek out marriage earlier than they may otherwise be inclined to with people they might not know as well as they’d like to get to know otherwise. Marrying young is not a terribly good idea for most people, especially if the teens are all planning on going onto college.
A virginity pledge is not akin to telling teens to drive safely. It’s more akin to telling an 11 year old that they can’t drive for five years and so they shouldn’t be told what traffic signs and signals mean, because it may encourage them to “joyride” or something.
[…] Found here: Pandagon Like Tbogg says, lying about sex is as American as baseball and apple pie. A quick perusal of the culture of virginity fetishism will tell you that it’s a system where there’s a great deal of incentive to lie and not really much incentive to tell the truth. After all, if you pledge to stay a virgin, you get a lot of attention and some nice jewelry and if that pledge is a lie, it’s not like anyone is going to finding out you’re fucking on the sly. But on top of that, a recent study shows that the main issue with virginity pledges is they are easily made but also easily broken. […]
My father’s sex-ed talk:
“If you aren’t man enough to buy rubbers you aren’t man enough to have sex. It shows you don’t really care anything about her or yourself.” (Which was a fairly long speech for my father)
Good Lord that first trip up the drug store aisle must have been a good twenty miles…uphill.
One of the things that particularly struck me about the Harvard study was not merely that the kids recanted their virginity pledges, but (if I understand the meaning of “disavowed” correctly) they forgot entirely that they had ever made one. That would be a really bad sign of effectiveness.
It’s the lack of back-end enforcement that leads so many virginity pledgers to preserve their hymens by butt fucking.
Tony:
Actually, “comprehensive sex education� is like telling a kid to drive safe, then teaching them how to break all the traffic rules.
So in this metaphor, driving=sex? No, because it’s not about safer sex, it’s abstinence. So driving safe=not having sex.
So yes, it’s like telling kids to drive safe, then teaching them to punp the brakes if they find themselves in a spin. I guess. I dunno, I don’t even have a license. Although I do have sex. Safely.
Joy:
Thinking that saving yourself for your wedding night will make everything roses in the future is simplistic.
I was thinking about that. Marriage is an arbitrary thing, so there’s no difference, biologically, between sex before and after marriage. I’m willing to accept there’s an emotional difference, if not psychological, between sex in a committed relationship and sex in a developing relationship and one of a string of one-night stands, but you don’t need to be married for that.
afrit:
And once they buy their one true car, if they wear a seatbelt when they drive, or drive anywhere except when they absolutely have to, they’re trivializing the act of driving.
That is how I feel about driving, although it’s not really an accurate metaphor for how I feel about sex.
What was the purpose of this report? It almost sounds agenda driven, it certainly was very anxious to examine and expose the failures of viginity pledges.
The purpose of the report was to discern how effective virginity pledges were toward delaying intercourse, preventing teen pregnancy and stds.
You know–a reality check. A study to discover the truth, one way or the other. That’s not an agenda, it’s science, b/c it allowed for whatever reality is to show up in the answer.
If it showed that virginity pledges worked, the fundies would quote it extensively. Since it showed they don’t, suddenly it’s an “agenda driven” study meant to debunk virginity pledges.
Better to just pull the pretty lies out of our asses and pretend they are the truth, right? B/c there’s no agenda there!
Oh, and it’s a legitimate study in the first place b/c abstinence programs receive our tax money!!!
Shouldn’t we get what we pay for? If we want to lower teen pregnancy and stds, we should use sex ed programs that work.
It seems to me really a shame that there appears to be so much anger and condemnation about people who simply do things differently than you.
Actually, the issue isn’t that they want to do things differently. It’s that they want to make everyone else do things the same way they do, primarily through legislation to bring the coercive police power of government into it.
What was the purpose of this report? It almost sounds agenda driven, it certainly was very anxious to examine and expose the failures of viginity pledges.
Or perhaps it was to examine the success of pledges, and found that there were a lot of failures. But you don’t know the answer to that, do you? (Incidentally, the answer to the question is neither. The study was done to test if the concept was effective in delaying first intercourse. This is how science works, you ask the question to discover the answer, not to validate the answr you already have.)
Can you really be intellectually shallow enough, and lack such a complete understanding of the human psyche that you would compare abstinence to having a pretty pink unicorn?
No, but she would be intellectually clever enough to unwrap the silliness of the statement by replacing a term of tremendous gravity with one of no discernible gravity so that the actually irrelevance of the statement to her thesis (”This new finding by Harvard is misleading and deceptive.”) can be clear. Now, can you be intellectually shallow enough to think that this is nothing more than spurious wordplay, or can you actually see the logical device being used here?
What I wonder is, where is the Harvard study on all the damage done to our persons, our children, our society, by our complete lapse of any moral responsibility regarding sexual promiscuity.
Please Google the phrase “burden of proof.” After Googling that phrase, and understanding it, please feel free to use Google to answer your own question, and present the results here. This sort of productive, fact-based feedback is welcomed.
I think it is a testament to where we are at as a society when women killing their babies while in the womb is considered a matter of choice. It is a real shame we have so many young women “choosing� to kill their children. Perhaps a more responsible choice should have been who to spread your legs for, then it wouldn’t be necessary to kill your baby.
I also think it is a testament that you assume that every abortion is the result of consensual unprotected sex. (And probably that there is a loving father in the offing being denied his chance to fulfill his desires.)
The sick part about this is that I am as “on your side” as it gets. My wife and I both abstained till marraige of our volition (long past the point where it was obvious our relationship was plenty stable to facilitate sex). I can even tell you with a fair degree of certainty that it saved our relationship, although one could argue that a less mystical approach to sex might have prevented our relationship from needing saving. But, the point is, it was our choice. We made that decision for ourselves, and no oen else, and we do not feel the need to make it for anyone else. The reason that people have to argue against abstinence-only education is because this president has made a law that denies federal funding to anyone who teaches differently. If the law allowed schools to teach either one, we could argue which one was more effective. But we CAN’T argue about that, because abstinence-only is the Law of the Land.
“The purpose of the report was to discern how effective virginity pledges were toward delaying intercourse, preventing teen pregnancy and stds.
You know–a reality check. A study to discover the truth, one way or the other. That’s not an agenda, it’s science, b/c it allowed for whatever reality is to show up in the answer.”
First off, that’s not science, that is a study from Harvard University, which is definitely agenda driven. Where the only people it is OK to criticize are christians.
“If it showed that virginity pledges worked, the fundies would quote it extensively. Since it showed they don’t, suddenly it’s an “agenda drivenâ€? study meant to debunk virginity pledges.”
“Better to just pull the pretty lies out of our asses and pretend they are the truth, right? B/c there’s no agenda there!”
I don’t really know anything about virginity pledges and I am sincerely interested in the truth, even if the truth is painful. It is a shame you can’t approach the truth with the same intellectual honesty. Much easier just to classify everyone who does not agree with you as racists and homophobes trying to control every aspect of your life. Why do you have no tolerance for an opinion other than your own? Isn’t tolerance an integral part of your mantra?
Since I was pretty unfuckable in high school (76-80) I didn’t pay attention to what they taught in “Health” class. What was the point?
Asking teenagers to stick to any promises they make is fairly unrealistic. I remember the cancer-infected lung they passed around to scare us off smoking. Thank god I’m down to a pack a day now!
I think this all ties in to why wingnuts are cranky about taking soda machines out of schools. My theory - The religious right understands that nobody wants to fuck a fatty. The fatter Americans get, the greater the chance that we will only have sex for procreation.
Just a thought.
Eric:
where is the Harvard study on all the damage done to our persons, our children, our society, by our complete lapse of any moral responsibility regarding sexual promiscuity.
Why are you telling us? Few if any of us are Harvard researchers. Tell them.
You may want to go to them with a more specific research proposal, though. What you have here is vague at best — for example, I’m not really clear on what damage you have in mind, and if you mean spiritual I’m not sure how you would measure that. And be aware the researchers may or may not find whatever it is you want them to find.
Eric, you don’t understand the meaning of the word “tolerance”. I’ll make it simple. In order to ask for tolerance, you have to be tolerant. The tolerant version of sex ed is one where all choices are taught. Unless you think kids are being told they must fuck in comprehensive sex ed courses, you have no argument. Kids are told that abstinence is a perfectly acceptable choice. That’s tolerance. Their abstinence is tolerated.
However, lies and bullshit are intolerable. You’re beating a strawman. “Tolerance” is not a catch-all liberal value. We don’t tolerate the Holocaust, we don’t tolerate lynching, we don’t tolerate people trying to force their fundamentalist religious views on our children.
The issue is that you and yours are intolerant. In order for you to feel properly tolerated, all other views must be silenced. That’s abstinence-only. That’s virginity pledges. There is no “other side” to virginity pledges. No one is setting up a heavy peer pressure situation for kids to pledge to fuck 15 people before marriage. That’s cruel and invasive of their privacy. But you can’t seem to grasp that it’s just as cruel and invasive to demand they submit their sexual choices to your inspection.
First off, that’s not science, that is a study from Harvard University, which is definitely agenda driven. Where the only people it is OK to criticize are christians.
Boy, your faith must be weak if you think it must be protected from even a whiff of criticism.
Nope. Abstinence-only education totally failed in my neck of the woods (Utah), where we only learned that we were to say no to sex and that having sex would result in pregnancy, depression, suicide, self-hatred and death. We had loads of pregnant teenage girls - TONS of them. And that doesn’t even count the kids who did have sex but didn’t get pregnant. Even the threat of such things as having to confess to the bishop, losing one’s temple recommend, not being able to go on a mission, or even the idea of disappointing God and/or Jesus or being totally ruined for your future partners - these things were not enough to keep kids from having sex. It did, however, totally freak them out once the act was done. My older sister took a lot of phone calls from crying, upset friends who were freaked out over the fact that they had just ’sinned’ with their boyfriends, and one couple in particular was practically making biweekly trips in the middle of the night to see the bishop after they had sex because they were so concerned about the effect it had on their souls.
So yeah, if I think the idea of abstinence-only education is a bad one, it’s because I know from first hand experience that it doesn’t work. If anything it just makes kids way more neurotic about sex than they need to be, and neuroses about sex is about the last thing we need more of in this country.
[…] Recanting virginity pledges: The analysis also found that 52 percent of adolescent virginity pledgers in the 1995 survey disavowed the virginity pledge at the next survey a year later. Additionally, 73 percent of virginity pledgers from the first survey who subsequently reported sexual intercourse denied in the second survey that they had ever pledged. […]
“Boy, your faith must be weak if you think it must be protected from even a whiff of criticism.”
Tammy,
I am not protecting anything, somehow I got the idea that this was a forum for the open exchange of thoughts and ideas, perhaps to find some common ground. A mistake on my part.
“Pre-marital sex, especially with multiple partners, greatly increases the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies.”
“This statement is self-evidently false. The wedding ring doesn’t actually decrease your fertility and therefore has no effect whatsoever on your possibility of getting pregnant if you don’t use contraception.”
No, but statistically, you’re more likely to want children after marriage than before. So, premarital sex is, overall, more likely to produce an unintended pregnancy than marital sex.
And having sex with multiple partners is more likely to get you a disease than having sex with one partner. That one partner may cheat, of course, but if you have multiple partners, you can catch diseases from any of the total of all of their partners, which averages higher.
So, self-evidently false? Not even close.
“That doesn’t help teens learn how to develop a healthy relationship. It just pressures them to seek out marriage earlier than they may otherwise be inclined to with people they might not know as well as they’d like to get to know otherwise. Marrying young is not a terribly good idea for most people, especially if the teens are all planning on going onto college.”
It’s also not a terribly good idea to wait until age 18 to finish high school and go to college; we just don’t give most teenagers the opportunity to do anything different. Thus they have many years of opportunity to derail their education by doing something stupid. Lefties and righties alike keep proposing kludgy workarounds for this, when the real answer is to educate people in a timely manner and shorten their childhoods so it doesn’t take up several of their prime childbearing years and several of what should be their early adulthood years.
First off, that’s not science, that is a study from Harvard University, which is definitely agenda driven.
Tell the NIH and NSF that no science goes on at Harvard University. Next, it is not Harvard which is “agenda driven.” Rather, to paraphrase Stephn Colbert, it is that reality has a well-known liberal agenda.
“Man, those universities are always trying to tear things down. Why do they have to spend all their time criticizing stuff like the Luminiferous Aether. Can’t they be more positive?”
This gets into a larger issue about conservatives, as exemplified both by Eric and Dr. Crouse– namely a hostility to and ignorance of the process of study, research, and analysis. THe ostensible purpose of “virginity pledges” is not to make people feel better about themselves– it is for people to abstain from sex and avoid the consequences of unwanted pregnancies, STDs, real or imagined stigmas associated with promiscuity, etc. It behooves people who advocate a course of action to accomplish their goals to see whether those actions actually work.
Unless Eric is a troll, in which case I am impressed. Subtle lunacy without coming across as a guy making up a character out of whole cloth.
“Why are you telling us? Few if any of us are Harvard researchers. Tell them.
You may want to go to them with a more specific research proposal, though. What you have here is vague at best — for example, I’m not really clear on what damage you have in mind, and if you mean spiritual I’m not sure how you would measure that. And be aware the researchers may or may not find whatever it is you want them to find. ”
Hershele,
Again, as I said to Tammy, I thought on I was on a website for discussion. I did not presume you were all Harvard professors and my question is only intended to promote thought and conversation. Yet you have no response to the question itself, only to inform me I’m on the wrong web site and telling the wrong people? I guess you are right.
Ken, you’re mixing up causation and correlation. Marriage doesn’t make people want children more. People who want to settle down and have children are more likely to marry. If you don’t want to have kids, marriage won’t change that. And if you want two kids, marriage won’t make you open to 12.
Eric, you asserted that anything that criticizes Christianity is immediately suspect. Faithless.
“Eric, you don’t understand the meaning of the word “toleranceâ€?”
Tammy,
I do understand the meaning of the word and I am a tolerant person. I don’t force my views on anyone.
“However, lies and bullshit are intolerable”
Tha
Eric, what do you do for a living, because if the answer is not “I’m a scientist,” then you got some balls for believing that you get to declare what is science and what is not. I’m afraid I’m going to have to assume that the Harvard School of Public Health has a better grasp on the scientific process than you do. You are free to argue otherwise, but you’d better be able to back it up.
Now the actual report doesn’t say anything about wether or not virginity pledges work. What it does say is that kids lie and you can’t take them at their word when evaluating the success of pledges in the future. If I may quote:
So what this study says, and all that this study says, is that if we really want to know how well virginity pledges work, we have to use a method that does not rely on teenagers self-reporting their sexual history. It just says “Hey, in the future when you check this stuff out, remember that this method of evaluation is crap.” I don’t know where you come from, Eric, but where I come from (science school) that’s science. Admittedly, you can cast some reasonable doubts about the success of virginity pledges once you know that teenagers lie about them, but this particular study doesn’t really address that.
If you’re arguing against this study, what you are effectivly saying is “I don’t really want to know if virginity pledges work. I believe they do, so they do. And if you try to examine it, I’m going to sit here and go LALALAI Am not LISTENING! while you grownups try to talk about it.”
[…] Pandagon (via Huffington Post) talks about the preternaturally premenstrual Concerned Women For America’s* response to a Harvard study whose finding show that abstinence pledges are, for lack of a better word, fucked. […]
First off, that’s not science, that is a study from Harvard University, which is definitely agenda driven. Where the only people it is OK to criticize are christians.
Eric, I think your ass needs a breath mint.
Tammy,
I do understand the meaning of the word tolerance and I am a tolerant person. How can there such a lack of understanding of failure when the goal is unattainable perfection?
“However, lies and bullshit are intolerable”
That is really profound Tammy–how about a little truth then?
–if people did not engage in pre-marital sex there would be no unwanted teen-age pregnancy or any unwanted pregnancy period.
–if people did not engage in sex outside of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, sexually transmitted disease would not be the killing scourge they are in our society today.
These statements are true so how about a little tolerance on your part, or do they fall into the bullshit category?
Eric, I’ll say it in capital letters so maybe you’ll understand:
EVERYBODY HERE BELIEVES THAT ABSTINENCE IS A VALID CHOICE. WE THINK THAT PEOPLE SHOULD DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHEN, HOW, AND WITH WHOM TO HAVE SEX. THE ONES WHO ARE BEING INTOLERANT AND REFUSING TO COMPROMISE ARE THE ONES WHO INSIST THAT WE KEEP CHILDREN IGNORANT BY NOT GIVING THEM AS MUCH INFORMATION AS WE POSSIBLY CAN ABOUT SEX.
If you’re asking for some sympathy for this last opinion simply because it’s, well, an opinion, you’ve come to the wrong place.
The open exchange of thoughts and ideas is great. That doesn’t mean we have to treat every thought and idea as if it were acceptable and harmless, because not all of them are. Nor does it mean that we have to sit here and smile when people come in and accuse us of intellectual dishonesty and calling abortion murder.
Go away. You’ll be doing everyone, including yourself, a favor.
Eric, I think your ass needs a breath mint.
Norah,
Wow, that is really intelligent. Thank you so much for the good advice (shoves breath mint up his ass).
I don’t really know anything about virginity pledges and I am sincerely interested in the truth, even if the truth is painful.
Alright, so here’s the truth; abstinence-only education fails, by every concievable measure, in every reputable study, to address any of the various and plentiful issues regarding sexuality and, especially, mid-to-late teen sexuality. It fails to educate students about proper safe-sex procedures, it fails to educate students about what to look for in a healthy sexual relationship, and it, according to this study and many more like it, fails to keep teenagers from having sex until they’re married. That’s the truth, eric, the truth you said you were ’sincerely interested in’. So, are you going to accept it, painful as it may be for you, or are you going to keep complaining about biased Harvard social scientists and evil liberal agendas?
EVERYBODY HERE BELIEVES THAT ABSTINENCE IS A VALID CHOICE. WE THINK THAT PEOPLE SHOULD DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES WHEN, HOW, AND WITH WHOM TO HAVE SEX. THE ONES WHO ARE BEING INTOLERANT AND REFUSING TO COMPROMISE ARE THE ONES WHO INSIST THAT WE KEEP CHILDREN IGNORANT BY NOT GIVING THEM AS MUCH INFORMATION AS WE POSSIBLY CAN ABOUT SEX.
Hestia,
Well I am not one of those people, and I don’t seek to force my particular views on anyone.
“The open exchange of thoughts and ideas is great. That doesn’t mean we have to treat every thought and idea as if it were acceptable and harmless, because not all of them are. Nor does it mean that we have to sit here and smile when people come in and accuse us of intellectual dishonesty and calling abortion murder.”
I agree with you on this, many ideas and thoughts are dangerous. All I can say is that it is very sad to me that I live in a society where so many women freely choose to kill their babies while they are still in the womb.
Aw. Boo hoo, Eric.
Well I am not one of those people, and I don’t seek to force my particular views on anyone.
Weird…
Well I am not one of those people, and I don’t seek to force my particular views on anyone.
“I just really, really love fetii and really, really hate non-marital sex, and I think everyone should think exactly like me and do exactly like I say on these issues. Also, nobody should ever question whether or not these ideas actually accomplish anything. Is that so wrong?”
–if people did not engage in pre-marital sex there would be no unwanted teen-age pregnancy or any unwanted pregnancy period.
–if people did not engage in sex outside of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, sexually transmitted disease would not be the killing scourge they are in our society today.
And if wishes were horses beggars would ride. Back in reality, where people do engage in premarital sex and adultery happens, what is the best way to help people mitigate the risks that are inherient to all choices? All signs point to comprehensive sex education that, yes! includes and encourages abstinence, especially for younger teens. (”Children, there’s a time and a place for everything, and it’s called college [/chef]) But if you’re gonna do it, then you better know how to as safely as possible.
But you don’t want to do boring fact-based things like “mitigate risk,” you want drama! You want self-righteousness! You want to fight killing scourges with superhuman levels of restraint! A virgin for every knight and you’ll all get to slay demons before the Rapture! Black is black and white is white and fuck grey! Grey areas are for homosexuals, scientists and other sinners!
–if people did not engage in pre-marital sex there would be no unwanted teen-age pregnancy or any unwanted pregnancy period.
This is a lie. 17% of abortions are performed on married women.
–if people did not engage in sex outside of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman, sexually transmitted disease would not be the killing scourge they are in our society today.
Also a lie. In Africa, a woman’s chance of contracting HIV goes up after marriage.
But the fundamental lie you are telling is that people’s desires and lives should be stifled in order to make you more comfortable. Condoms are more effective in real-world terms than abstinence because “correct usage” is a part of the failure rate of a method. Abstinence has a poor showing in correct usage–people don’t use it, and those who try to use it generally don’t use it right. Condoms are much easier to get people to use correctly. One method works better than the other and yet because of religious nuts we’re obliged to state the asininely obvious, which is that the best way to avoid risk is to not have sex.
But that’s also the best way to avoid pleasure. The other lie you tell is one of omission. Yes, not living your life is a good way to avoid risk. But what’s the purpose of being so scared of risk that you don’t bother to live your life at all?
so how long before we start seeing the reintroduction of the chastity belt? really, the only way to keep your daughter pure is to lock that shit up tight, and wear the key around your neck. and i see no moral stumbling block on the side of the religious right to pursue those means. i mean it is “traditional.”
has there ever been a constitutional challenge to the chastity belt?
it seems like the next logical step, for the sex warriors.
“So what this study says, and all that this study says, is that if we really want to know how well virginity pledges work, we have to use a method that does not rely on teenagers self-reporting their sexual history. It just says “Hey, in the future when you check this stuff out, remember that this method of evaluation is crap.â€? I don’t know where you come from, Eric, but where I come from (science school) that’s science. Admittedly, you can cast some reasonable doubts about the success of virginity pledges once you know that teenagers lie about them, but this particular study doesn’t really address that.”
Kyso,
I am not a scientist, I just think it’s an interesting topic for a Harvard study. In my humble opinion, academia is largely slanted toward a viewpoint that casts christians and christianity in a bad light. You may or may not agree, but that is my opinion.
Teen pregnancy, traumatic as that is, is not the only “downside” of inadequate sex. ed.
People who are too afraid or disgusted to accept the fact that little Mary is or will soon be a sexual being are placing her life at stake.
Not only does HIV still exist, it is not “just” a “gay disease.” And it still kills.
Plus, there’s cervical cancer. Typically caused by the HPV, a sexually transmitted disease. It’s a very rapidly growning cancer, and if not detected early, likely fatal. While very “curable” when detected early, cervical cancer is detected early by Pap smears, which many parents who refuse to understand their daughters as sexual beings will not take their daughters to have done.
And another thing that’s really angered me lately about this? There’s a vaccination against HPV.
Literally … a shot you can take to prevent cancer. And some “religious” people don’t want their daughters to have it.
Punishment for premarital sex? –> cancer –> death
How WWJD is that?
“And if wishes were horses beggars would ride. Back in reality, where people do engage in premarital sex and adultery happens, what is the best way to help people mitigate the risks that are inherient to all choices? All signs point to comprehensive sex education that, yes! includes and encourages abstinence, especially for younger teens. (â€?Children, there’s a time and a place for everything, and it’s called college [/chef]) But if you’re gonna do it, then you better know how to as safely as possible.”
Kyso,
I live in reality, simply because perfection is unattainable does not mean it is not a worth goal. I agree with much of what you say but that doesn’t change the fact that high standards and a constant pursuit of the inattainable goal of perfection is not worthy.
Woah … abrupt irrelevant covering subject change much?
In my humble opinion, academia is largely slanted toward a viewpoint that casts christians and christianity in a bad light. You may or may not agree, but that is my opinion.
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Either prove that the facts of the study are wrong, or learn to deal with the reality of the facts.
Or you can pull a Stephen COlbert and complain that the facts have a well-known liberal bias. You can’t simply complain about all the ideological reasons why you don’t like the findings of a research study.
Wow, that is really intelligent. Thank you so much for the good advice (shoves breath mint up his ass).
You’re welcome. Now piss off.
If we weren’t being trolled, I would wonder what method for finding out about teenage sexual behavior would be better than self-reporting. Maybe we can finally find gainful employment for all those wingnuts who love to look into parked cars.
Eric, your definition of perfection is different than mine. In my perfect world, everyone would be able to have lots of sex with lots of people if they want. Whoops. Since there is no “perfection”, there can be no goal. Now we deal with reality.
But for all your love of “perfection”, you sure don’t give off the slightest indication that you’re interested in striving for basic honesty. You’ve lied like a mofo all through this thread. Try striving for following the 10 commandments before you tell other people how to fuck.
“But the fundamental lie you are telling is that people’s desires and lives should be stifled in order to make you more comfortable”
Tammy,
That is not what I am saying at all, I’m just conversing. Again, just because I have an opinion does not mean I try to force it on everyone else. Do whatever you want but don’t expect me to pretend,so you’ll be more comforatable, that there isn’t a difference between right an wrong, because there is. Not a difference of opinion on what is right and wrong, but a universal truth. I don’t purport to know what all of this truth is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Another lie! You’re not “conversing”. Conversing means accepting reality and discussing it. You’re promoting a fantasy, which is much different than conversing.
Try the truth.
“Try striving for following the 10 commandments before you tell other people how to fuck.”
I would never presume to tell you how to fuck, I don’t’ have time for that, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.
“Another lie! You’re not “conversingâ€?. Conversing means accepting reality and discussing it. You’re promoting a fantasy, which is much different than conversing.”
Tammy,
I am not being dishonest, I am conversing. I do accept reality and ask only that you grasp a concept. Why is it so difficult? Let’s say I’m fucking, my goal is to be the best fuck for everyone around, but that is impossible. Since I can’t be the best fuck for everyone, as that would make me the perfect fuck, I might as well not try to be the best fuck I can, because that’s not reality. You must be a lame piece of ass. Now do you understand? Just because the goal is unattainable doesn’t mean you don’t sincerely strive for it.
I live in reality, simply because perfection is unattainable does not mean it is not a worth goal. I agree with much of what you say but that doesn’t change the fact that high standards and a constant pursuit of the inattainable goal of perfection is not worthy.
It’d be wrong of me to jump on that ‘not’ in there, right? Yeah, thought so.
Anywho. It’s true that having high standards and pursuing seemingly unattainable goals can be quite worthwhile, and can spur certain groups and individuals on to stratospheric heights. But those people and groups are the minority; most people can’t live up to impossibly high standards, and a constant pursuit of an unattainable goal of perfection will just frustrate them until they give up and turn to something else. That’s reality, eric. So, since hoping that everyone will always do the ‘right thing’, for a give definition of ‘right’, doesn’t actually work for most people, it seems pretty reasonable to, instead, try to construt a world-view that can accomdate these all-too-human limitations. In this case, that world-view is comprehensive sexual education. It’s designed for all the people who won’t or can’t or just don’t want to ‘wait for marriage’, because those people will absolutely not be helped, at all, not one iota, by a total focus on abstinence-only education. That would just leave them ignorant and frustrated and rebellious.
GAAA - NOT THE PINK UNICORNS!! AIIIIEEEEE!!
- sorry - flash back there -
Whether eric intends to be or not, he’s clearly a troll.
Eric, don’t show up on a site and accuse the posters of being angry and intolerant in the very first sentence of your very first post, and maybe you’ll have a better chance of having that “discussion” you claim to want to have. Obviously, you do NOT know what tolerance is if that’s how you reach across the divide. Also, attempting to discredit a survey because it’s from Harvard only demonstrates to us how close-minded you are. If you at least could site the individual who did the study and present evidence that THEY are agenda driven, you’d stand a chance, but just saying “ooo, Harvard, they hate chritians” is stupid. Lots of people of lots of political stripes go to and teach at Harvard. Even if you think the majority are “godless liberals”, you don’t actually know that it was one of the liberals who did the study. So at that point, we’ve already decided that discussing anything with you is a pointless exercise, and we go into baiting mode.
Basically, if you come to a site, and immediately behave in an offensive manor, don’t expect to be treated delicately and don’t complain about others “intolerance” of your behavior. You’ve already been treated MUCH better than any opposition gets treated in a right-wing or fundy blog.
Anywho. It’s true that having high standards and pursuing seemingly unattainable goals can be quite worthwhile, and can spur certain groups and individuals on to stratospheric heights. But those people and groups are the minority; most people can’t live up to impossibly high standards, and a constant pursuit of an unattainable goal of perfection will just frustrate them until they give up and turn to something else. That’s reality, eric. So, since hoping that everyone will always do the ‘right thing’, for a give definition of ‘right’, doesn’t actually work for most people, it seems pretty reasonable to, instead, try to construt a world-view that can accomdate these all-too-human limitations. In this case, that world-view is comprehensive sexual education. It’s designed for all the people who won’t or can’t or just don’t want to ‘wait for marriage’, because those people will absolutely not be helped, at all, not one iota, by a total focus on abstinence-only education. That would just leave them ignorant and frustrated and rebellious.
Garnet,
Very well put, I agree.
Good. So, now, since you’ve just agreed that the best method is comprehensive sexual education, and not abstinence-only education or a focus on ‘virginity pledges’, I suppose you’ll stop pestering people about how ‘biased’ they are for saying the same.
I thought on I was on a website for discussion. I did not presume you were all Harvard professors and my question is only intended to promote thought and conversation
Fine.
What do you rhetorically propose they study? “Harm” is rather vague. What, specifically, did you have in mind?
just think it’s an interesting topic for a Harvard study.
Not really. It was done by the school for public health. Does a school focusing on public health need an extra reason to look into the effectiveness at programs that are touted as a way to decrease unwanted pregnancies and STDs?
I live in reality, simply because perfection is unattainable does not mean it is not a worth goal.
That’s beautiful, if you’re an artist. But we’re talking about the sort of stuff that goes into policy. This is the kind of research the government should be looking at when it decides to divvy up the monies for abstinence based vs comphrehensive sex education. You know, where our tax dollars are spent, what we teach our children, that sort of stuff. If the persuit of beautiful perfection is a waste of money, damaging to public health, or simply doesn’t work in reality, then we have to put aside the idealism and start being practical. It’s all well and good for you to sit behind a keyboard and smugly thing that everyone should be shephereded towards your unattainable, yet so tragically noble, goal, but you’re not the one who will be getting the STD, or faced with an unintended pregnancy that she/they can’t afford, or dealing with the consequences of having a whole population that failed to hit the goal and are now burdened with expensive diseases they can’t afford to treat or children they can’t afford to care for. There are very real consequences for failure in your worldview that will affect us all negativly.
You can, in your own life, be as all-or-nothing as you like, but morally and economically, it does not make sense to guide our educational or public health policies on noble ideas that don’t work out so good in reality. And in order to make those calls, we’re going to need research like the Harvard study.
It’s all well and good for you to sit behind a keyboard and smugly thing that everyone should be shephereded towards your unattainable, yet so tragically noble, goal, but you’re not the one who will be getting the STD, or faced with an unintended pregnancy that she/they can’t afford, or dealing with the consequences of having a whole population that failed to hit the goal and are now burdened with expensive diseases they can’t afford to treat or children they can’t afford to care for. There are very real consequences for failure in your worldview that will affect us all negativly.
Kyso,
You can’t presume to know that I will not be the one faced with these issues.
Why do you have no tolerance for an opinion other than your own?
I have tolerence for lots of opinions. I just happen to have a low tolerence for bullshit.
Why do you have no tolerance for science?
Academia is not slanted against any particular brand of Christianity or any other religion. Harvard is not some fly-by-night operation.
Science, however, **cannot** accept that God created the world and that an often mistranslated text is the absolute literal truth in defiance of observable facts. You need to have testable hypotheses, or it’s not science.
You seem to think there was an agenda for researchers to investigate virginity pledges in the first place–one beyond ‘are they effective’. But you offer no proof beyond your personal disdain for science.
Thanks to Kyso’s post, we can see that the scientists who were examining the effectiveness of a particular kind of abstinence-only program not only revealed the results but also the limitations of their investigations. They suggest better modes of study for future investigations, based on what they learned from this investigation.
How can that be an part of an anti-Christian agenda? They asked questions, revealed their results, and suggested methods for better analysis–without regard for whether future analysis might invalidate their findings.
Unless the anti-Chrisitan agenda is simply asking questions and dealing with facts…
in which case I call bullshit. As would my Jesuit teachers. Not all Christians are anti-science.
Oh good, glad to see you’ve come around to thinking people should be equipped with condoms, knowledge, and everything else they need to prevent STDs and unwanted pregnancy when they have sex, Eric. Welcomd aboard to Reality, where our goals are reducing harm in ways that work.
“Obviously, you do NOT know what tolerance is if that’s how you reach across the divide.”
Geeno,
Again, I do understand tolerance, forgive my abrasiveness in reaching across the divide. I am only an imperfect human guilty of engaging in virtually every manner of sin, debauchery and failure know to mankind. Perhaps I made a mistake.
“Whether eric intends to be or not, he’s clearly a troll”
While I do understand tolerance, I’m not quite sure what a troll is. I’ll take the plunge that this is not a compliment though.
Eric:
If cows had wheels they’d be cars but…ummm….they don’t…soooo, they aren’t.
What if virginal teenagers marry and don’t use birth control because they don’t know how and start having babies they can’t afford and don’t want? Sorry…BUZZZZZ…statement a failure. SteeeRike One!
Well, gee, that is profoundly….ummmm….dumb. On lotsa levels.
1) What if one of the previously virgin hetero couple becomes HIV infected from blood, needle, etc.?
2) Does the gender matter? What if two gay men marry and were previously virgin and are not HIV positive or not a carrier of other STD? So gay virginal marriage is good, right?
3) Suppose we cure all the STD’s? Then sex outside of marriage would become moral in your universe. Right?
BUZZZ…statement failure. SteeeRike Two!
I survived an abstinence-based approach, but I don’t know how. I got such a heavy dose of guilt from my church youth group that I could not admit to myself that I was going to have sex (again and again and again). In this world buying condoms was an admission of a failure of will and (somehow) a bigger sin than what I was doing with my girlfriend before, after (even during!) these church activities. (It was kind of fundamentalist, but also in a SoCal beach town, so there ya go.)
I love the line from Magis (back about 4 hours ago) that grown up enough to have sex means grown up enough to buy and use condoms. I’m going to add that to my “Dad talk.” (Along with not letting anyone push you into anything.)
What is it about a woman defending her right to her own body and her right to have sex that bring these trolls out???
Allow me to break it down for you one last time, Ken:
1) While it may be technically true that more partners raise the risk of STD’s, that doesn’t neccessarily transfer into reality. First off, very few adolescents these days have multi-partner sex to begin with, and those who do, generally insist on protection like condoms, or resort to acts like masturbation or oral/anal sex acts that don’t produce pregnancy. (You do know that the actual teenage pregnancy rate within the past few years has actually remained the same or even fallen off, do you??)
Secondly, you could have sex with a hundred persons a day, yet if everyone of them are clean and use protection, and are up front and honest about their persuit of sex, the odds of transmission are simply ZERO. On the other hand, if you choose to restrict yourself to one person within marriage, but mask your sexuality behind ruses like “virginity pledges” and cheating on the side; the risk of contacting someone who is HIV-positive is actually increased; one tryst with the wrong person motivated by frustration will do the trick. And, of course, there’s always the risk of rape, incest, and other forms of sexual abuse as well.
And as for scientific study “casting Christians and Christianity in a bad light”…well, to each his own opinion, Ken, but what would you say about the likes of Paul Cameron or the “ex-gay” ministries or the creationist/intellegent design people who rig science to promote their “Christian” positions about homosexuals or evolution?? What would you say about Judith Reisman and her studies on how porn (or other sexual media) releases internal “erotoxins” which turn regular men into raving, raping sex addicts??? Oh, but I guess that the problem really isn’t science, it’s educational institutions like Harvard with their evil “leftist”/”anti-Christian” elitist bias??
And no, I’m not a scientist nor a Harvard grad, just a college educated 42 year old Black man who has seen in real life what fundamentalist antisex thinking has wrought.
Finally….this is a progressive blog designed specifically for feminists and their supporters, Ken; when you chose to bring yourself here and post your message, you reserved for yourself the right to be held accountable for that message. If you can’t handle the answers given to you, then don’t ask the questions. Baiting women who don’t follow your “Christian” beliefs about sex as sluts ans “baby killers” deserving of suffering and disease hardly amounts to respectful debate; here, it only serves to mark you rightfully as a woman-hating, sex-hating troll with too much time on his hands.
I’ll just leave it at that and let Amanda and Pam run their blog their way. Their blog; their rules.
Anthony
And just for your education, Ken: a “troll” by definition is someone who invades a blog or website’s comments section for no other reason than to harange or harrass the blog’s regular commentators with ad hominem attacks or repeated and gratituous posts that do nothing to address the issues raised.
By that definition, I’d think that you definitely qualify..but that’s only me.
Anthony
“Well, gee, that is profoundly….ummmm….dumb. On lotsa levels.”
Magis,
You are obviously an expert on stupidity.
1) What if one of the previously virgin hetero couple becomes HIV infected from blood, needle, etc.?
–in the scenario described, HIV would not exist in human beings
2) Does the gender matter? What if two gay men marry and were previously virgin and are not HIV positive or not a carrier of other STD? So gay virginal marriage is good, right?
–If you would bother to read what was written I stated marriage between a man and a woman.
3) Suppose we cure all the STD’s? Then sex outside of marriage would become moral in your universe. Right?
–I don’t know if pre-marital sex is right or wrong
I realize my statements were not clearly explained but I did not and don’t have time to elaborate. I understand they will be misconstrued.
in the scenario described, HIV would not exist in human beings
I thought you were only interesting in reality, eric?
And remember, you’ve already agreed that comprehensive sex education is the best policy; don’t slide too far into ’sex is EVIL’ territory…
OK..my apologies, Ken….those last two blasts I wrote were directed strictly at Eric, not you.
Anthony
“Finally….this is a progressive blog designed specifically for feminists and their supporters, Ken; when you chose to bring yourself here and post your message, you reserved for yourself the right to be held accountable for that message. If you can’t handle the answers given to you, then don’t ask the questions. Baiting women who don’t follow your “Christianâ€? beliefs about sex as sluts ans “baby killersâ€? deserving of suffering and disease hardly amounts to respectful debate; here, it only serves to mark you rightfully as a woman-hating, sex-hating troll with too much time on his hands.”
Bob,
My name isn’t Ken and I have never labeled any one a baby killer or a slut. You make that assumption since I have an opinion different than you’re own. Thanks for all the tolerance.
I am not a woman hater, and I really love having sex with them also, how is that possible? I have definitely come to the wrong place though. My apologies.
“And remember, you’ve already agreed that comprehensive sex education is the best policy; don’t slide too far into ’sex is EVIL’ territory”
Garnet,
Where are you folks getting that I think sex is evil from? I love sex, even with people other than myself.
You said women who have abortions kill their babies. Man, you can’t go a comment without lying.
Where are you folks getting that I think sex is evil from?
Well, you came here, started immediately defending the idea that pre-marital sex is bad, attacked a study because it showed that most people weren’t living up to your restricted-sex fantasies, talked about how superhuman self-control with regards to sex is the only worthwhile way to act, and have just generally acted like a couple of teenagers armed with condoms and birth control pills will be the end of western civilisation as we know it. Kind of hard not to suspect you’re just the teensiest bit anti-sex there, chief.
“You said women who have abortions kill their babies”
I said it is sad to me that so many women freely choose to kill their unborn children while they are still in the womb. How is that calling someone a baby killer? It’s simply a statement.
Will you deny that when a woman becomes pregnant that the end result is a human child? When you terminate a pregnancy, that child ceases to exist, whether you like it or not, I’m not passing judgement on anyone, simply stating a fact.
Please feel free to terminate all the unwanted pregnancies you like, it’s your legal right.
Is that better?
I said it is sad to me that so many women freely choose to kill their unborn children while they are still in the womb. How is that calling someone a baby killer?
It’s calling them baby killers by saying that they kill babies. Look, it’s right there, ‘kill their unborn children’. Jesus Christ!
In my humble opinion, academia is largely slanted toward a viewpoint that casts christians and christianity in a bad light.
Not just Christianity, but also any other viewpoint that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny with facts and rational analysis. Academia doesn’t have much use for flat-earthers, for example, either. It just so happens that in this society, Christianity is the most common contra-factual viewpoint and so it’s the one most likely to come into conflict with the academy.
“It’s calling them baby killers by saying that they kill babies. Look, it’s right there, ‘kill their unborn children’. Jesus Christ!”
So because I believe a life is taken when an abortion is performed that means I am a bigoted, hateful person who goes around calling women who have had abortions baby killers?
A similar example would be, I suppose, since people are killed in car accidents I am a car hater and I believe cars are “poeople killers”?
I have never labeled any one a baby killer
PRO-TIP: If you come in and tell a bunch of abortion supporters that people who have abortions are killing babies, it amounts to largely the same thing.
Just sayin’.
“I never said you were a baby-killer. I just said you were pro-killing-babies.”
“Not just Christianity, but also any other viewpoint that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny with facts and rational analysis. Academia doesn’t have much use for flat-earthers, for example, either. It just so happens that in this society, Christianity is the most common contra-factual viewpoint and so it’s the one most likely to come into conflict with the academy.”
It was scientists, scholars and academia that came with theories such as “the earth is flat”. These same scientists scholars and academia now feed us “global warming”. My only point is that scientists are very often wrong, and theories are called that because they are not fact, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Just because we don’t have the science yet to prove it, does not mean that the idea of God in untrue.
Eric,
You do not strike me as the standard issue troll who shows up, spouts some ridiculous bullshit and then accuses us commentors of being intolerant leftists who love Osama, but this…..
is pure, grade A wingnut crap. Science and scientists have absolutely zero interest in doing anything to christians or christianity. They want to discover how the world works and how we fit into it. If that tends to conflict with religious belief, well sorry, but that’s how reality works.
So because I believe a life is taken when an abortion is performed that means I am a bigoted, hateful person who goes around calling women who have had abortions baby killers?
“Perhaps you know Russian epic of Cinderella. If shoe fits wear it.”
- Pavel Chekov, Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
So. Do you, or do you not, believe that women who have abortions kill their babies? Becuase if you do, which you’ve said several times now, then you believe, QED, that women who get abortions are baby killers.
Hey Eric, darling
I am both a CHRISTIAN and a former HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCHER!
The researchers NEVER question that sexuality has a downside … what they question is the VALUE of ABSTINENCE PLEDGES in protecting teens from that downside.
And the answer to that - NO FUCKING VALUE WHATSOEVER!
What part of “does not fucking work at all” do you not understand? Oh yeah, the part where “what I think is right doesn’t fucking work at all”.
“You do not strike me as the standard issue troll who shows up, spouts some ridiculous bullshit and then accuses us commentors of being intolerant leftists who love Osama, but this…..”
Bat Shit,
You are right, I am not the standard issue troll. Until today, I did not know what a troll was.
“is pure, grade A wingnut crap. Science and scientists have absolutely zero interest in doing anything to christians or christianity. They want to discover how the world works and how we fit into it. If that tends to conflict with religious belief, well sorry, but that’s how reality works.”
These scientist must then have attained perfection in order completely eliminate any form of bias that might cloud their minds in order to bring them to the conclusion they seek. Science and scientist are just as flawed as anything else. I don’t believe you, any better than I, can speak to the credibility of science and scientists.
It was scientists, scholars and academia that came with theories such as “the earth is flat�. These same scientists scholars and academia now feed us “global warming�. My only point is that scientists are very often wrong, and theories are called that because they are not fact, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution. Just because we don’t have the science yet to prove it, does not mean that the idea of God in untrue.
Okay, I was wrong, you are a standard issue troll. Yes at one time (around 200 B.C.) scholars thought the earth was flat. Then, when evidence was produced that the earth was spherical, they abandoned the flat earth theory for the truth. Which is exactly the opposite of religious belief in which you continue believing regardless of evidence. It’s not just that there is no science to prove the existence of God, it’s that there is no evidence to even study.
“Well, you came here, started immediately defending the idea that pre-marital sex is bad, attacked a study because it showed that most people weren’t living up to your restricted-sex fantasies, talked about how superhuman self-control with regards to sex is the only worthwhile way to act, and have just generally acted like a couple of teenagers armed with condoms and birth control pills will be the end of western civilisation as we know it. Kind of hard not to suspect you’re just the teensiest bit anti-sex there, chief.”
Ok, cheif, obviously, you are going to hear what you want to hear and label me as you choose and disregard anything I say.
Bat shit,
You don’t have the slightest idea what I believe, did that ever occur to you? You can certainly make many assesments of my character and intelligence based on your lack of knowledge though.
I don’t believe you, any better than I, can speak to the credibility of science and scientists.
I guess my 25 years as a research scientist count for nothing then? Scientists may have biases, but they have nothing to do with their feelings toward religion. We just don’t care because the existence, or lack there of, of God has no bearing on science.
Garnet,
Are you then saying that when a woman gets an abortion that “nothing” happens? Are you saying that when a woman has an abortion that a human life is not destroyed? If so, using your same logic as you use one me, you are the one living in the fantasy world, where babies aren’t being killed by abortions. How scientific is that? Unbelieveable.
Bat shit,
Now I’m impressed. How can you be so naive to believe that the existence of god has no bearing on science? What is hard for me to believe is that a scientist would say that.
You don’t have the slightest idea what I believe, did that ever occur to you? You can certainly make many assesments of my character and intelligence based on your lack of knowledge though.
My statement “Which is exactly the opposite of religious belief in which you continue believing regardless of evidence.” was not directed at you personally, but at religious believers in general and was my take on religious faith. And please point out where I made an assessment of your intelligence or character. Thanks for not getting the joke behind my name. That does give me some evidence of your intelligence.
Now I’m impressed. How can you be so naive to believe that the existence of god has no bearing on science? What is hard for me to believe is that a scientist would say that.
Then you just don’t understand science which doesn’t surprise me a bit.
Eric:
Gee, you aren’t getting this at all.
Yes, it would. Sex is not the only “vector” of the disease. It may not have even been the original vector.
I know what you wrote but what you wrote made no sense. Some gays are virgins when they enter into life-long relationships so how can you blame them for passing disease?
Then your whole point in preaching against it was…what?
*tiny violin playing*
God I love the cry of trollus oppressus in the morning.
[…] There’s a discussion going on at Pandagon about Janet Crouse’s reaction to the Harvard School of Public Health’s article on an analysis of viginity pledges. […]
Whenever I look at any scientific study, whether it happens to be real science or junk science, I always try to figure out what the point is to doing that study. Some are easy and obvious. Other studies just seem to have a political agenda attached to them. Those are usually pretty obvious to spot if you want to.
Then there’s this study. It seems to me that the whole point to discussing this study is that people want to use it as an opportunity to mock the religious. The same thing happened with that study a month or so ago about the effectiveness of prayer.
There seems to be a large percentage of people in this country on both sides of the political spectrum who not only want to be right, but they take incredible happiness out of the other side being wrong.
In my opinion, this is just silly and mean-spirited.
Yes, both sides do it. And, I’m sure that the other side does it more than your side does (since that is what both sides tend to think). It’s not very productive though.
It’s like the debate over evolution versus creationism. Is there anyone out there like me who doesn’t really care? Is there anyone who just sits on the sidelines while the two sides argue thinking to yourself “what does it really matter? We’re here. Why does it matter how we got here?”
It’s probably just me. At least that’s what it seems like. All of the religious people wanting to prove the God-less heathens of the left wrong. And, you have all of the educated leftist wanting to prove that silly and ignorant conservatives are just so stupid.
It’s just so childish.
But on this particular topic, I think that sex before marriage might lead to an increase in the divorce rate. This is just a theory mind you, but let me explain before you agree or think it’s stupid. My theory is that if you have sex before marriage it takes away one of the things that would make marriage special. If you do everything that married people do before you get married, what’s really the point of getting married? Or staying married for that matter. This is certainly a cause of people getting married at a later age. I’m guessing that it plays a role in the divorce rate as well.
Just a theory.
Science and scientist are just as flawed as anything else. I don’t believe you, any better than I, can speak to the credibility of science and scientists.
You’d be surprised. Many of us can speak to the credibility of science and scientists much better than you. Don’t labor under the delusion that everyone’s opinion is equally valid. If you can see the logical flaws in the study, point htem out. They’re there for you to see. However, saying, “I don’t like this study, and my opinion is just as valid as the conclusions in the study” is an invalid statement. You need to have facts on your side, and since you don’t, your criticism of the study holds no water.
Look, this is a study from the Harvard School of Public Health. They have a vested interest in analyzing data with respect to the spread of disease and discovering the best ways to do that and figuring out which methods work and which don’t. They don’t actually give a damn what groups, secular or religious, advocate “virginity pledges.” They just want to see whether they work and whether the data they gather from the participants is accurate. If you can show that their conclusions and data is flawed, do that. Don’t whine simply because they tell you something you don’t want to hear.
Wow, Eric’s a piece of work…Creationist, misogyinist, homophobe. Getting pretty much all of ‘em covered. But I think they all pretty much fit under dumb and dishonest as shit, which he’s evidenced over and over again.
Do whatever you want but don’t expect me to pretend,so you’ll be more comforatable, that there isn’t a difference between right an wrong, because there is. Not a difference of opinion on what is right and wrong, but a universal truth. I don’t purport to know what all of this truth is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
We think there’s a difference between right and wrong, too. Our view of right and wrong differs from yours. Unlike you, we’re willing to discuss why we think things are right or wrong instead of accusing other people of not knowing right and wrong exist because they disagree with us. You say you don’t know what the truth is, but you sure as hell seem to think you do. You’re so secure in your opinion that you don’t feel the need to defend it rationally or logically, and that precludes the kind of discussion and debate you say you want to have.
You’re so secure in your opinion that you don’t feel the need to defend it rationally or logically, and that precludes the kind of discussion and debate you say you want to have.
Shoot, afrit, you’ve explained Eric more clearly in a single sentence than I did in four entire posts on this thread.
Magis,
Thanks for your concern, but you flatter yourself, it will take more than I’ve seen here to make me cry, I was just stating a fact.
How can you be so naive to believe that the existence of god has no bearing on science?
Science is the process of figuring out how the universe works. If there is a god, he set the rules down a long time before we started figuring them out. Unless he changes them randomly, then his continued existence does not factor into anything scientists are doing today. If he does change them randomly, then we are truly fucked because one of these days he’s going to get around to the gravitational constant or planck’s constant or any one of the numbers that we’ve been taking for granted for basically ever. In which case, I highly recommend laying down on the floor with a bag over your head, waiting for the world to collapse.
If you don’t live in constant fear of this happening, then you have no real reason to display so much distrust of scientists. They’re not out to get you or anyone. In fact, quite a few manage to be all sciency and believe in God at the same time.
Abortion ends the potential for human life, it’s true. Just as and egg that does not get fertilized and is flushed with menses, or the billions of sperm that never find an egg are the end of those potential human lives (or even the majority of fertilized eggs which do not implant for any variety of natural reasons).
There is as big a difference between the potential for human life and actual human life (babies!)as the difference between an acorn and an oak tree, like acorns, fertilized eggs have many, many steps to survive before they actually become an oak tree or a baby. You miss one of these steps (proper scarification of the acorn, freezing and thawing, proper soil type and depth of planting, temperature, precipitation, etc.) that potential of life is gone without ever having acheived actual life. Quite frankly those who refuse to see the difference between something’s potential and it’s actual physical state are being intellectually dishonest, end of story.
How can you be so naive to believe that the existence of god has no bearing on science? What is hard for me to believe is that a scientist would say that.
A failure of imagination on your part is of no consequence to the practice of science.
THis whole thinks stinks. First of all there is no enforcement and secondly there really is no viable incentive to ensure compliance/ maintenance. Besides sex is one of the fundamental things that keeps humans being humans…
Such a sad state is the fundamentalist, having to hide the Truth behind so much ignorance and lies. Eric and Ms. Crouse hold this in common. Their Truths conflict with reality, so they have to evade reality in order to keep their pretend world from crashing down upon them. The result is as Shakespeare penned, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The saddest bit though, is there are people who mistake their passion of self-preservation for meaning.
Eric-shun,
With the amount of words you’ve spewed, you’d think you’d have a blog. Or can you only react to what others say? You should talk to Google about context ads for comment trolls.
It’s like the debate over evolution versus creationism. Is there anyone out there like me who doesn’t really care? Is there anyone who just sits on the sidelines while the two sides argue thinking to yourself “what does it really matter? We’re here. Why does it matter how we got here?�
Probably. But there are a lot of people who do care and like knowing as much as they can about things they’re interested in. They think it’s lots of fun, just like sex. There are also people who feel scared and threatened when a lot of people start to disagree with them and say things they don’t understand, so they try to stop other people from finding out anything new. It’s not a huge stretch that these sides are at odds and that each will take pleasure when the other fails to achieve its objectives.
You say you don’t care about learning and you don’t understand why anyone else does, but you presented a theory of your own at the end of your post, and you acknowledged that it’s just a theory. If that means you’re interested in trying to find out whether or not it’s true, then it doesn’t seem like you don’t understand the appeal of intellectual debate.
Egads, Eric, of course Christians are being criticizies: they should be. They’re a) a religious institution, and b) trying to violate the separation of church and state to legislate their morality on us. I’m hopping mad at Christians.
But that’s beside the point: abstinence is hardly 100%. Assuming the so-called abstinent act on their commitment, abstinence is only about 99% effective for abstinence women. That means hormonal contraceptives are more effective than abstinence. How did I get my numbers? Glad you asked. According to various statistics, approximately 27% of women, or 1 in 5 for easy reference, will be raped after they reach the age of 14. In other words, raped once they reach childbearing potential. Each individual instance of unprotected sex with an individual of average fertility stands about a 5%, or 1 in 20, chance of resulting in a pregnancy. We can assume the good abstinence-onlyist education the survivor received will incline her not to be on contraceptives or to be carrying a condom. Actually, the effective “contraceptive failure” rate of abstinence is much lower, since a woman who is raped once is 7 times more likely to be raped multiple times. Those supporting abstinence should be clamoring for the abstinent to carry condoms and use birth conrol to prevent pregnancy. (Equal opportunity moment: somewhere between 1 and 3% of men will be raped, so they’re not doing so well versus STDs either.)
So you don’t like women killing babies, do you? Are you unaware of ectopic and molar pregnancies? They’re entirely nonviable and fatal to the mother if not treated. How about the fact that over half of fertilized eggs never implant and only a fraction of those that implant survive? Or the emerging evidence that breastfeeding suppresses fertility by shifting the ovulation cycle, resulting in fertilized eggs failing to implant? For that matter, why does God require an eye for an eye if a man fighting should injure a pregnant woman, but if she should miscarry the father *may* fine the man who caused it, but that fine is capped by local judges? Hurting a woman: criminal offence. “Killing a baby:” civil, finable offense. God Himself is the most active abortionist about, in fact He can be blamed for faulty engineering considering a woman’s body is designed to miscarry and cell division errors frequently create nonviable monsters out of a fetus. As deities go, He’s so immoral He’s not even on the Christian side re: abortion. Out of curiosity, though, if your god gives each zygote a soul at conception, does a mosaicism chimera have two souls? Does the second head of a cranially attached, atrophied siamese twin have a soul? Is it murder to remove that head considering evidence it’s alive?
Not that I should have to prove my chops: I was a virgin my wedding wedding night and think abstinence is a fine idea, but not one to impose.
I think that sex before marriage might lead to an increase in the divorce rate. This is just a theory mind you, but let me explain before you agree or think it’s stupid… Just a Theory
Ok, let’s say we tested your hypothesis with a study. Controlled for religious feelings, views on marriage, nd economic circumstances, etc. Let’s say tht the study indicated tht your ideas about the connection between pre-marital sex and the divorce rate was wrong. Would you accept the reality of thus study or would you get upset that someone was mocking your beliefs and how this study existed only to criticize and mock religious people and others who believed in abstinence?
As you can see from this blog post, “both sides” do not “do it.” One side is doing reserch and analysis and taking dat to test claims, and the other side is screaming, “La la la! I can’t hear you!”
*shakes head*
Eric:
Cry as in the cry of the wild, mating cry, etc.
Nice try, Eric, but wrong again.
First…my misdirecting my remarks at Ken rather than you was merely an accidental misprint on my part, and I have already apologized to Ken for that.
Secondly, that statement was just a general blast at fundamentalist Christian antifeminists/antiabortionists at large; some of whom make very much clear their open disgust at women who don’t follow their restrictive roles as “sluts” and “baby killers”. It wasn’t directed at you personally in particular..although, if the shoe fits too comfortably there…
And yes, Eric, I do admit to being quite “intolerant” of those who feel the need to lecture others on their misgivings and shortcomings and on how to live their own lives…especially others who have done no harm to themselves or others to deserve such loathing and disgust. It’s my right as a progressive, pro-feminist man to feel that way, regardless of what you or any other “Christian” may think of me or anyone else here.
And finally, Eric…on your point that we immoral leftists have no concept of right and wrong: I would respectfully beg to differ. On the balance, our side has been mostly right on the issues; and your side has been proven remarkably wrong. (BTW, it was the Catholic Church who developed the theory of the earth being the center of the universe; when scientists like Galileo attempted to rebuke the theory, it was the Church which slapped him back and repudiated him, mostly because admitting his theory would threaten their power and authority.) Your personal treatment of women isn’t the issue here; your blindness and loathing of women outside your “charmed circle” is.
BTW…didn’t you say that you were leaving a long time ago??? Another definition of a troll is someone who keeps saying that they will leave..again..and again..and again….Make up your mind, please.
Anthony
Where’d he go? Don’t tell me Eric’s scuttled off already. An anti-science, anti-choice troll–my favorite species!
it was the Catholic Church who developed the theory of the earth being the center of the universe
No, the theory was developed by Ptolomy, a pre-Christian astronomer (whose work was the best modelling of planetary motion until Kepler came along). The Catholic church simply accept edthe prevailing science of the time in late antiquity and incorporated it into their theological worldview.
He went to Feministe
Constantine..thanks, I stand corrected.
;-)
Anthony
John:
Whenever I look at any scientific study, whether it happens to be real science or junk science, I always try to figure out what the point is to doing that study.
Satisfying someone’s curiosity, expanding human knowledge …
Some studies have an agenda. You can usually pick them out because they’re poorly designed. Rather, they’re quite well designed to advance an agenda, they’re poorly designed by the standards of academic inquiry. The whole point of doing a study is that you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, even if you had a hunch.
Every scientist wants his or her reseach to disprove the prevailing wisdom — that gets your name in the papers. Right now, the prevailing wisdom is that abstinance pledges don’t work. It doesn’t matter whether that’s the PW because academics hate Jesus or because that’s what the research has consistently shown, a scientist who discovers different will become famous.
The interesting thing (HO, Jeff, Magis, and Garnet will back me up on this) is that we are having precisely the same discussion about this binary transference regarding science on the thread regarding the anti-gay push in Charlotte, North Carolina:
http://pandagon.net/2006/05/02/upcoming-bible-beater-rally-not-ashamed-charlotte/
(go towards the bottom)
I’m getting the impression that evang./fundamentalist thinkers regarding science think that because their side is ideologically driven, and their research is ideologically positioned, that OF COURSE, ‘ours’ must be too.
The thing is, of course, we don’t need to argue for ‘liberal’ research spaces, because those that have neutral scientific positions produce work that reinforces our position. This is because we don’t tend to take apriori positions, ours tend to be based on reality.
I am sure there may be people out there that produced liberally-slanted research, but I tend to think we would dismiss that almost as fast as we do the shite that comes out of the other side. But there simply isn’t that many research orgs that produced liberally biased material. I’m not going to claim objective, but all the research that comes from those that don’t have anything invested in our arguments nonetheless supports our position.
Their binarism is fairly typical of a black/white mindset, and is remarkably consistent across topics (not to mention the “Lalalalalalalala! Can’t hear you!!” reaction.
The thing is that once puberty is reached, the human animal is about as sexually obsessive as animals get. This means that one way or another people who reach puberty will want to get it on - and will get it on. There are biological reasons for how and why this evolutionary strategy has come to be for our particular species of animal and, it is instructive to note that only a few closer animals to us, such as the Bonobo Chimp, are also are sexually obsessive. One thing we now know is that there is more to it than just a means to project copies of our particular genes into the future – parenthood - although evolutionarily speaking that is the highest end. Humans, however, have evolved to use sexuality to solve problems such as inducing loyalty and bonding, peace-making, stress relief, and even manipulating physically stronger males to do the bidding of weaker females. Anyway it all sortta works. What does not work is that which absolutely spits in the face of nature such as abstinence only sex-education. The truth is that one way or another this animal is going to seek orgasms unless it is neurotic which means, as Freud pointed out, the human is behaving and thinking in ways not conducive to his or her personal happiness. And that gets down to the basic sickness of Puritanism: It is against anything that brings joy to life. We are supposed to put off our pleasures first until marriage and when that proves disappointing and limiting, heaven. Fuck them.
Teagarden, I think a lot of them think that if someone under 18 has a sexual thought, it must be because someone — probably a liberal, or a movie, or a TV show — put it there. They don’t remember or believe that people get horny once they hit puberty — they take the Victorian Romanicist viewpoint that children are innocent angels unless something happens. That’s the viewpoint that produced Freud, and it shows.
I’d say that adolecents should experiment with sexuality — it’s inherent in the meanings of the words “experiment” and “adolecent.” Not with me, with each other.
That recipe for Queso sounds tasty. I’m not quite sure how sodomy and flavored lubrication came into it, but, I guess it’ll make for an adventurous meal.
At least now I’ve expanded my vegetarian repertoire out to 4 meals. I figure I’ll need at least a few more to ensure Iron levels, energy etc, etc. is kept up to pre-vegetarian levels.
John:
Then there’s this study. It seems to me that the whole point to discussing this study is that people want to use it as an opportunity to mock the religious. The same thing happened with that study a month or so ago about the effectiveness of prayer.
You know, I’m pretty certain that when they applied for funding for this study the researchers did not sit down and say “heh heh heh, goals of the study: To mock the [Christian] religious. We will mock their silly pledges.”*
In fact there doesn’t seem to me to be even a hint of mockery or even “I told you so” in the researcher’s reported findings quoted above:
I respectfully submit that your interpretation of the study as biased in its goals, outlook, and findings might be the result of your own particular biases.
* Why would anyone need to conduct a study in order to mock the religious, anyway? There are entire classes of joke that do that already! Or haven’t you heard the one about the man who asked a priest, a preacher, and a rabbi if it was o.k. to have sex on the sabbath?
So what, you want a fucking cookie? Most hetero woman haters love to have sex with women - however, the fact that all they like about women is their ability to have sex with them is what makes them a woman hater.
But actually the driving/seatbelt metaphor is perfect. If you start with the belief that no one has a right to go anywhere then there’s no reason whatsoever to think the risks incurred with driving are worth taking.
The original metaphor was this:
Comprehensive sex education is like giving kids a seat belt and telling them to drive safe, whereas abstinence-only is like telling them to drive safe and then praying really hard they don’t get into a crash.
The only way this makes sense is when driving is equated to intimate relations with the opposite sex, and ‘getting into a crash’ is the complete sexual act. Since my original comment was posted it’s been transformed so that sex is now equated with driving– which has problems as well since the benefits of driving are undisputedly greater than the costs but the same is not true with sex outside of marriage.
the benefits of driving are undisputedly greater than the costs but the same is not true with sex outside of marriage.
How’s that, now?
As an aside, I do like that the fundies have decided to try to scare us with STDs and baby-killing now that we don’t care if they think we’re bad people for fucking. They wouldn’t be so stubborn and desperate if they thought they had reality on their side.
the benefits of driving are undisputedly greater than the costs but the same is not true with sex outside of marriage.
Ah. Allow me to bask in the utter glory of that statement.
Letting it wash over me…
Shorter Eric: “it’s better to have certainty without facts than facts without certainty.”
Even shorter Eric: “IT’S JUST A THEORY!!1!!!”
I pine for the days when rhetoric and logic were required subjects for all schoolchildren. Of course, those were also the days when all schoolchildren had penises.
the benefits of driving are undisputedly greater than the costs but the same is not true with sex outside of marriage.
As a sexually active non-driver, I really must dispute the indesputable:
Benefits of Driving:
1) You get places more quickly.
2) You have greater flexibility in terms of travel.
3) Some people think it’s fun.
4) If you can afford it, you get to own a shiny car.
5) Your particular fetish is socially endorsed.
Costs of Driving:
1) You pay a lot of money for gas.
2) Your carbon footprint increases contributing to smog and acid rain, which in turn contributes to asthma and secondary respiratory difficulties. Even if you don’t suffer from respiratory difficulties, the guilt accrues to you.
3) Some people find driving very stressful and get road ragey. These people are generally not the people who find driving fun.
4) You pay a certain sum of money for insurance.
5) You are indirectly contributing to the planning blight in urban environments, by contributing to the culture of the car. Car culture demands roads that are good for driving. Roads that are good for driving are not so good for walking, shopping, or living on.
6) You are far more likely to die or be horribly maimed in a car accident (than you would be if you didn’t drive).
7) You are far more likely to kill or maim someone else in a car accident.
8) You may have to find a place to keep the shiny car, and deal with car payments, depreciation, and evil mechanics who are out to fleece you.
9) You need to plan alternative transportation when you go to parties, or refrain from drinking.
10) You are far more likely to get parking tickets, traffic tickets, and to have to pay for parking.
Benefits of Sex Outside of Marriage
1) If it’s good sex you get a nice orgasm and/or have a lovely time. If it’s bad sex, why are you doing it anyway?
2) You get the orgasm and/or lovely time without having to enter into a legal contract with someone.
3) You can have the orgasm with a member of the same sex.
4) You learn stuff about your body, your sexuality, and other people’s bodies and sexuality, and this makes you a better lover.
5) As long as you are careful and sensible, you and your partner(s) have a good time without hurting anyone, contributing to air or water pollution, or creating unliveable urban environments.
Costs of Sex Outside Marriage
1) If you are careless you can get pregnant/get someone pregnant. Of course, this applies to sex within a marriage, too.
2) If an unplanned pregnancy results from sex, the child may well be unwanted, and will probably be unhappy (whether or not its parents are married). It may be so unhappy that it grows up maladjusted and enters a life of depravity and crime. Or it may just be sad because it was unwanted.
3) If you are careless, and have sex with multiple partners or with partners who have had sex with multiple partners, you risk contracting a sexually transmitted infection. Some sexually transmitted infections can kill you. Others are embarrassing.
4) If you are careless you can pass a sexually transmitted infection to someone else.
5) If the sex is bad you get all naked and sticky and you don’t even have an orgasm to show for it. So why are you doing it?
6) It distresses some other people who don’t think you should be having sex. They may call you names like “slut.” (i.e. your particular fetish may not be socially endorsed).
7) If you have Issues about sexuality, you may wind up thinking bad things about yourself. So you should probably not be having lots and lots of sex until you work those out.
I don’t think the cost/benefit analysis shows what you say it does nearly as unarguably as you say it does.
…when scientists like Galileo attempted to rebuke the theory, it was the Church which slapped him back and repudiated him…
he was, in fact, imprisoned.
and thanks, Anthony, for ’saying’ everything i was thinking. =)
Rats, I missed the It’s All About Eric Show! Apparently cancelled due to lack of interest.
How about a nice retrospective of his juiciest quotes? I vote for:
“Perhaps a more responsible choice should have been who to spread your legs for…”
Oh I see. Within marriage, sex is a holy thing, blah blah blah, but outside of marriage, it’s just a bunch of sluts spreading their legs. And spreading them for someone else’s pleasure, apparently, not their own!
It’s too bad that the teens haven’t had time to discover that marital sex is the funnest. It just gets better every year–whether there’s any leg-spreading involved or not! I guess that would really bother the sexophobes, to know there are plenty of us married folk partying it up (faithfully but sluttishly!) in the marital bed. Maybe they’re just jealous! Moo ha ha.
How about a nice retrospective of his juiciest quotes?
I vote for:
Talk about being oblivious. The whole idea that every pregnancy MUST BE welcome within marriage is just disturbing, and just overwhelming evidence of right wing nuttery. It shows an utter inability to empathize with others.
[…] (Via HuffPo) Pandagon observes: Recanting virginity pledges: The analysis also found that 52 percent of adolescent virginity pledgers in the 1995 survey disavowed the virginity pledge at the next survey a year later. Additionally, 73 percent of virginity pledgers from the first survey who subsequently reported sexual intercourse denied in the second survey that they had ever pledged. […]
He did shut up when it was clear he had lost, though. I’ll say that for him.
I get the distinct impression that “eric’s” new to the blogsphere. Either he’s really young, like a teenager, or he’s from small-town area.
BTW, the survey/opinion research types at HSPH are considered to be somewhat to the right in terms of their research funding sources, research topics, and alliances with industry.
I doubt they had a “christian mocking” agenda. They probably applied for funding from the government to track results - money which was appropriated as part of the abstinence only program funding. They simply carried out the study as they were funded to do.
No money = no research. Somebody had to pony up. Boy do I wish I could just chase down whatever lead I felt like chasing without that constraint! It doesn’t work that way.
jennie,
You are looking at this very clinically. These are utilitarian problems, not problems of the spirit.
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
My theory is that if you have sex before marriage it takes away one of the things that would make marriage special. If you do everything that married people do before you get married, what’s really the point of getting married? Or staying married for that matter.
Dude, if all your marriage has going for it is novelty value, you are far, far beyond any help. Plus, what happens once you’ve had post-marital sex and lived together for a couple of years; won’t people then get so terribly jaded and bored that they’ll yearn for a divorce?
This is certainly a cause of people getting married at a later age. I’m guessing that it plays a role in the divorce rate as well.
You know what I think plays a role in the divorce rate? The fact that lifespans have shot up in the last hundred or so years. Back in the day a woman got married at like fifteen, and then lived for maybe that long again before dying, frequently in childbirth. Now, though, even if you wait twice as long to get married, with the average lifespan you’re talking about being with one person for another fifty years. You don’t think tripling the length of a marriage just might lead to some inevitable friction and loss of interest after a while?
Tony:
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
I am totally serious when I ask this: why are you obsessed with sex?
You really think the only thing people get out of marriage is guaranteed access to pussy? What a small, sad life you must lead.
You’ve just come out and said you feel no emotional attachment to your wife, and you’re calling someone else clinical?
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
Tony, you’re joking, right? You’re not really that messed up, are you? You’re making this up. You gotta be.
Assuming for just a moment that you’re not a pseudotroll stirring things up for your own amusement, I will give you a straight response.
I think that ideally the bases for a marriage are love, respect, and trust that allow two people to each undertake to build a life together in which each of them can grow, learn, and become more who they individually are, knowing that as they grow and learn and change the other person will be there to share the glory and the grief and all the everyday humdrum stuff that cements a relationship.
Marriage can involve building a home, raising a family, even embarking on a business venture or artistic project. It can and usually does involve a sexual relationship.
But the shared laundry duty, the lazy Saturday breakfasts, the arguments that you work through, the compromises, the visits with family, the cups of tea when you need one, the knowing that when you need them your spouse will be there—these are all as fundamental to a marriage as sex.
To say that the basis for marriage is that you and your spouse only ever have sex with each other negates a lot of strong, healthy marriages. It negates any second marriages—even those between widows!
Maybe that’s the basis for your marriage, and maybe it works for you. So be it. I hope that my marraige has as its basis shared passion, conviction, trust, and a desire to build a life together in which each of us can become a better, stronger, more compassionate, wiser person, knowing that the other will be there to help us up when we fall down, to celebrate the victories, to share in the work, and to create something wonderful.
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
So, when either the husband or wife suffers a medical problem or injury that puts sex out of the picture (perhaps forever), what then? If sex is the entire basis for marriage, that indicates you believe that marriage would be in trouble fairly soon.
I recall that I was about nine when I reasoned through the illogical fetishization of virginity and marriage with the simple question of “so what happens next?” There’s this whole buildup to the wedding night . . . and then, what happens next? The woman is no longer virgin, the sex moves from this “pure and holy” realm into this “normal” realm, and if all the marriage has going for it is that sexual expectation, what happens next?
And then, after pondering it for a while, I went to my mom about it.
Luckily for me, my mom then discussed with me the other emotional, cultural, and yes, financial issues of marriage and she helped me come up with a personal understanding of what marriage means within our society, and the many things–love, respect, a willingness to be partners in many ways–that form the basis of a good marriage. Yeah, those discussions totally de-mystified the whole concept of “virgin” and “sex” for me (and made my virginity neither something I desperately wanted to get rid of or desperately wanted to hold onto–it was not something I really identified with during my teenaged years, which actually made things a lot easier).
You know, and now I have a husband who shares many of my interests and hobbies, a husband I participate in a lot with both inside and outside my home. Sure, we have interests and friends who are separate from one another–but we share as many things as we do apart. I see so many couples around us whose only connection is the children (and, I’m presuming, the sex), and it makes me feel sad. Yeah, I’m discontented in my marriage sometimes (god, I wish he would clean the kitchen on a regular basis, since I’m the one doing the cooking) but I am surrounded by all these women who have so little connection on a day-to-day basis with their husbands that discontent isn’t even the word to describe their emotions.
I dunno, it seems to me that people who “save themselves” for marriage and then get locked into one for decades might at some point start to wonder whether wandering might not be fun. So I think it possible that the insistence on premarital abstinence might contribute to the divorce rate. No irony there!
Hurray for Jennie! She makes a lot of sense in a fear-driven mean-ass world. The terrible destructive idea that sex is bad except for when within marriage and when it produces babies is still somehow infecting perhaps most people in our society. Shall we rid ourselves of it as we rid our selves of other terribly destructive and wrong ideas such as love of country over love of humanity or that we are here to rule over nature? These are all concepts that threaten our survival and I believe they are related to, not disconnected from, the struggle for sexual freedom of expression.
So here we discuss the supposed rights and wrongs of sex before marriage when perhaps the more pertinent discussion would be the lack of plentiful good satisfying orgasms - and more often within marriage than outside of marriage. Orgasms, it turns out, are not biologically necessary for mating at all and many animals that have sex between male and female do not have orgasms. Orgasms are a special gift of nature and are there to promote the wellbeing and, thus, the survival of certain species - not just including humans but especially humans as we are amongst the most orgasmic species on Earth. We need to quit sublimating and neurotically redirecting orgasms (in the Freudian sense) into such activities as corporate business dealings and, of course, the multiple-murder orgasmic experience called war. Let us redirect those orgasms towards a more proper and beneficial purpose - because for this species alone that is our choice. The more beneficial orgasms have to do with stimulating the penis and the vagina and that we have a choice of how and when to engage in this kind of orgasmic experience connects to our unique capacity as a species to consciously control our evolution -which is the very essence of being a sentient animal.
Now that we have fairly effective means of birth-control, let us all seek to increase our orgasms over our life-times and extend the right to the pursuit of healthy orgasms to all on this threatened frightened planet. That includes thirteen-year olds. As long as, in the end, the good out weighs the bad, sex of all and any kinds is not just acceptable, it should be encouraged. The now scientific idea that sex is full of natural purpose needs to be inseminated throughout our species. So that is my prayer.
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
Wonderful! We apparently finally have a wingnut troll that’sn in favour of same-sex marriage
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
I am not a woman hater, and I really love having sex with them also, how is that possible?
What do you think is the basis for marriage besides that two people only ever make love with one another for their whole lives?
Tony, I hope you’re not married. If you are, don’t let your wife anywhere near this blog. You may lose everything important to you.
not problems of the spirit.
And what would the “problems of the spirit” for non-marital sex be, pray tell?
Jennie & hp,
Thanks for your replies.
I think you have idealized views of marriage, ones that hold it up to high standards. But I asked about the foundation, not the ideal.
It’s easy to argue that “shared laundry duty, the lazy Saturday breakfasts, the arguments that you work through, the compromises, the visits with family, the cups of tea when you need one, the knowing that when you need them your spouse will be there” are just as fundamental to marriage as sexual commitment. But if that’s your take– what happens when you get sick of the compromises, the visits with family, the hum drum of living together? It’s not glamorous. Then, by your account, the foundation is undermined.
I’m afraid that many people (I’m not saying anyone here) who tried to base their views of marriage too much on the emotional aspect or personal connection/compatibility aspect without a strong commitment have simply gone from one failed marriage to another, in the end being happy with none.
As to “all these women who have so little connection on a day-to-day basis with their husbands that discontent isn’t even the word to describe their emotions” — how do you know, hp? Have they told you this? And what would you suggest– a divorce?
A marriage with little passion or companionship but that remains stable is sad at some level, but it’s preferable to a marriage that is emotionally rewarding in the beginning but breaks down entirely later because the couple lacks commitment to one another.
Which is to say that love respect, and companionship are the icing on the cake. The basic foundation of marriage is sexual commitment; which means not only monogamy but having saved yourself for marriage.
Two people who have saved themselves entirely for each other are connected in a special way that others are not. Divorcees and those who had premartial sex can be sexually committed out of loyalty to the other person or desire to stay in the marriage.
But those who saved themselves for marriage have their entire experience with the sexual act inherently subsumed into their experiences with one another (and within the confines of their marriage). Their sexual commitment is not just a generic loyalty to another person or to a vow but something much more inherently exclusive and irreplaceable.
You might call it the foundation of the foundation of marriage: love, respect and companionship are the home itself. Sexual commitment is the foundation of the home. Having had only your spouse as a sexual partner for life is the land the foundation was built on.
I’m not saying of course that others don’t, or can’t, have good marriages of course. All I’m saying is that there is a meaning in abstinence-until marriage that cannot be created in any other way, and that meaning is inherently connected with the sole unique manifestation of martial commitment (sex).
By emphasizing the companionship, love, and respect aspects of marriage, I’m afraid it’s just an attempt to cover for the devaluation of the unique meaning of marriage as a sexually exclusive commitment.
Tony, what you have to say seems heartfelt and passionate but I, for one, find it mystical.
That marriage and monogamy is a practical arrangement rather than one that is entirely consistent with our biological hard-wiring is not news nor should the point be contentious. What’s wrong with a practical arrangement that gives back more than it takes? (If it does.) I just cannot for the life of me see the virtue in not ever having had lovers except for a wife or a husband. If you believe that those who do not follow the harsh instruction that those who have sexual relations beyond the boundaries of legal marriage church-blessed marriage will be doomed to eternal damnation, at least I would understand, if not agree with, the logic. But I don’t believe in damnation or heaven. If you argue that because intimacy is so ephemeral and rare in our post-industrial Western societies that the institution of monogamous exclusive marriage is a compromise that is nevertheless a necessary prophylactic against alienation, meaninglessness, in a crazy lonely world, I can at least understand where you are coming from. But am I the only one here who does not in the least comprehend the argument you present in your post, that people who value the companionship, love and respect that is on-going in a healthy marriage are somehow missing what is really important? What is really important then? Can you put it into a succinct phrase or sentence?
Which is to say that love respect, and companionship are the icing on the cake. The basic foundation of marriage is sexual commitment; which means not only monogamy but having saved yourself for marriage.
Wow.
Just….wow.
I guess that means the wedding is off, Tony. I’m heartbroken, but you know, I don’t think I could live with someone who considered respect to be “icing.” You call the guests, I’ll let the folks at the church know. Do I get to keep the dress?
Tony, people who shouldn’t be married to each other shouldn’t be married to each other. That sounds obvious to most people, but I figure I need to spell it out for the person who said: if that’s your take– what happens when you get sick of the compromises, the visits with family, the hum drum of living together? It’s not glamorous. Then, by your account, the foundation is undermined.
Maybe one or both of us is begging the question. If marriage includes an emotional commitment, the marriage falls apart when the emotional commitment falls apart, but if emotional commitment has no connection to marriage, it doesn’t.
Getting back to the original topic, though, if marriage is based on sex, and divorce is bad, shouldn’t you get an idea of what the sex is going to be like before you get married? If sexual incompatibility dooms a relationship — in fact, is the only thing that’s guaranteed to doom a relationship, and is the only thing that ought to doom a relationship — shouldn’t you check for compatibility before the relationship begins to take root?
Jennie- though I’m a virgin and would prefer virgin partner, don’t get the misperception that I’ve set my standards so high as to exclude the vast majority of the eligible population. Men and women have to surrender to the social reality around them. Sexual commitment is still possible among the sexual pre-experienced, even though it isn’t quite as meaningful.
Hershele– maybe, but unless there is some secret, gross deformity, I don’t think there would be a problem that could not be overcome. The much more important part is mental and maybe socioeconomic compatibility.
Succinct phrase? Special. Unique.
Sigh… we are in debate mode. Which means none of you are going to “get it”.
First of all, it’s not the end of the world to admit I’m right at some level, even if you didn’t have a totally monogamous life. It’s easy to see that sexual ‘experience’ or ‘exploration’ has its benefits. Is it really so bad to admit that it also has its costs? From the perspective of the individual (not the marriage), I’m not even saying the costs necessarily outweigh the benefits. Each to his or her own.
Secondly, hiding from the truth is worse than admitting an unpleasant truth in the long run. You’ve got to accept something before you can move past it.
Finially, you can’t expect to engage in debate with people like Janice Crouse here without understanding what is the “beautiful vision” she lauds that makes her tick. Yes, it’s religious, but religious law was actually based on some wisdom of human relations.
That’s kind of you Tony, but I just don’t think it would work between us. You’d always feel that you’d settled for someone “pre-experienced,” and I’d always be looking elsewhere for love and respect. I don’t mind if I can’t keep the dress.
Tony:
No, it’s not. It’s love. Sex doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with love nor does love necessarily have anything to do with sex. You can have good sex with someone you don’t love and love someone whom you don’t have sex with. That’s not to say that sex with someone you love isn’t better.
I could care less whom my g/f had sex with before we met. I’ve never asked her and she’s never asked me. We have a 20+ year relationship because we have love and it is love that leads to a commitment not commitment to love.
Religious law changes not only from culture to culture but from historical time to historical time. We no longer stone adulterers, for example. My point is that some religious teachings reflect what might be called wisdom but others reflect intolerance and ignorance. Is there a commonality between religious traditions that points to a unified theory under all the dogma of what is really right and wrong? It is arguable but perhaps when it is love, tolerance, and respect being reinforced.
That stated, to suggest that ‘religious law was actually based on some wisdom of human relations’, is simply unsupportable by the evidence. The idea of statements needing evidence is both the basis of philosophy and science and represents a break with simply accepting what has been handed down to us from older generations. (Please note that we no longer jail scientists who have theories that differ with the religious authorities, although, granted, recently there has been a movement towards this notion.)
So if one accepts science, logic and emperical evidence as at least being the foundation for belief, one can state that he or she accepts the principles that began taking shape in our civilization with the Classical Greeks and went on to such intellectual high points and, I will say. spiritual breakthroughs such as what occured in the Renaissance that gave birth to true science and in the Enlightenment of the 18th century that gave birth to, for example, the American Constitution. If one denies all that and retreats into blind faith (perhaps in what might happenstantially be the religion of one’s heritage) then one is really is turning away from the precepts of the modern age and now post-modernism. That way leads to ethnocentric tribalism, ignorance, superstition, cruelty, war, and perhaps now, being that the planet has ’shrunk’, the end of all human civilization as we have known it. That way leads to fundamentalist nut-cases.
What I am arguing for here applies to human sexuality and sexual conduct as much as it applies to issues like the idiocy of the supremacy of one race over another. When I suggest that biologically we seem to be predisposed to certain sexual behaviors, I am also suggesting that finding out what really goes on within our brains and bodies would be a necessary component of any true wisdom about what is advisible for human sexual relations. What we are now finding out about the male and female human brain and its relationship to evolutionary strategy for our species is certainly interesting, often startling, sometimes perhaps off-putting, but always pertinent to discussions such as should someone engage in sexual relations before marriage. What the science indicates is that the debate in this context might be moot because on average boys and girls will have sex before marriage unless they are married at a very early age after puberty, say, thirteen as often was the case in biblical times. Does anyone still suggest that thirteen year olds should get married?
What forensic anthropologists have discovered is that always there was a great deal of hanky-panky going on outside of marriage both for men and women. From investigating genetic evidence in cemeteries it has been discovered that as many as one person out of ten people did not have the biological father the records state he or she had. This variance from the ‘religious rules’ seems to be true for all cultures, although the official rules governing what is allowed and what is not allowed varies tremendously from one culture to another as do the punishments. In some cultures the religious elders have sentenced the sister of someone who has been found guilty of a crime to be gang-raped. That too is their ‘way’.
So what way to the glorious sexual future? I’d say a way that promotes plentiful, wholesome, healthy sexual relations for all people. I’ll err on the side of freedom both politically and sexually. I’ll restate the science and state that, on average, orgasms are good for people. I’d say that the golden rule is the best rule and that is to ‘do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you’. I’ll suggest that if we apply that rule to our sexual conduct for the most part good results can be expected.
And here, I’ll add just one more claim. Many older people don’t want young people and especially young teenaged girls to have sex because they are jealous of their sexual power. They themselves may have had sexually repressive and barren earlier years and they can’t stand the idea of gorgeous young people opening themselves up to Eros.
Well, I can see two sides to this. My only final conclusion is- if it works: great.
One more note– Teagarden, very well written post. Can’t say I disagree with what you have to say. Increased exclusion or sacrifice leads to greater meaning, and sex is no exception– and if we combine this with what makes marriage, as it has been socially defined, inherently unique, and there you could find a reasoning for why sexual exclusiveness is so foundation. That is by no means necessarily the final word on the subject.
I’m still trying to figure out how a marriage based on nothing more than novelty value could possibly last out the year, let alone thirty or forty of them. Especially since, if you believe that sex is such an all-important aspect, you’d think that being with someone who’s as ignorant as you are, who knows no more moves or techniques or fetishes or roleplaying games than you do, would get way more boring way more quickly then, say, a virgin hooking up with someone who’s been everywhere, done everything and is eager to pass on their accumulated sexual wisdom.
Damn, that was a HUGE affirmation of my decision not to ever get married. The messed up ideas that people have about what should be a really good idea are just mind boggling.
Tony:
Two people who have saved themselves entirely for each other are connected in a special way that others are not
If that’s true, it’s cultural. Society tells people that the first person you have sex with is more specialer than anyone else, so naturally the’re going to feel a connection.
I don’t feel any more connected to my first girlfriend than to my current girlfriend; I don’t think the end of the first relationship would have been any more pleasant if it had been chaste.
Garnet:
Especially since, if you believe that sex is such an all-important aspect, you’d think that being with someone who’s as ignorant as you are, who knows no more moves or techniques or fetishes or roleplaying games than you do,
In fairness, he didn’t say anything about not reading about sex or planning the wedding night in advance. He’s shown no evidence of being so wingnutty that he doesn’t think anyone should even be aware sex exists before they get married.
[…] And how are those virginity pledges working out? Not so good. We might want to think before outlawing contraceptives. […]
So is there something wrong with me for remaining a virgin until marriage?
Lord have mercy on us. It’s articles like these that make me want to loose hope in humanity.