A reality check indeed. Does this mean that — gasp — most of these moralizing fundies have been lying and were boinking like bunnies?! I’m simply astonished that the horizontal bop has been occurring outside the bonds of holy, god-sanctioned, in-jeopardy-because-of-the-homos marriage.
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.Yes. the bible-beating moralists of Bushworld have simply had their heads in the sand, many choosing to believe that virginity pledges, Jesus-head chastity rings and scare seminars on the evils of sex. Given the fact that oral and anal sex increasing among teens. STDs are rampant and the rates of teen pregnancy, abstinence-only education deprives facts teens need to know about contraception and sexual health.“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.
“The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds,” Finer said.In March, Byron Weathersbee, a chaplain at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (a school affiliated with the conservative Southern Baptist Convention), conducted a study on the effectiveness of abstinence ed and virginity pledges in Christians. Looking at these figures from the Guttmacher study, I’m sure some of the folks who talked to Weathersbee were fibbing — take a look…Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers. “One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity,” he said. “The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease.”
* 100 percent professed faith in Christ
* 99 percent attended church
* 84 percent grew up in church
* 87 percent grew up in a two-parent home
* 62 percent of males had premarital sex
* 65 percent of females had premarital sex
* only 27 percent of fundies surveyed managed to stay completely chaste, not engaging in intercourse or Clintonian “non-sex” acts.
Oral and anal sex increasing among teens. Instead of putting blinders on, Dear Leader and his abstinence-only friends need to address what represents a serious STD issue with real information and instruction.
The WaPo reported in March that those virginity pledges touted by head-in-the-sand organizations like True Love Waits and the Silver Ring Thing are doing nothing to stop STDs either. Among the 20 percent of kids that took a virginity pledge, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews. Almost 7 percent of the students who did not make a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared with 6.4 percent of the “inconsistent pledgers” and 4.6 percent of the “consistent pledgers.”
And look at the Lone Star State, bastion of abstinence-only education? It ranks among the 10 worst states in the nation on almost all factors related to teen pregnancy including:
· Teen birth rate 47th
· Percent change in teen birth rate 44th
· Birth rate for younger teens 48th
· Percent teen births that are repeat births 44th
· Teen births as a percent of all births 40th
· Percent of births to teens receiving late or no prenatal care 44th
Abstinence-only sex education programs don’t work. Texas teens are increasingly knocking boots after participating in these programs. One program, the ludicrous virginity pledge organization Silver Ring Thing (”A high-tech, high-energy program for teens promoting the idea of remaining sexually abstinent until marriage”) lost its funding from the Bush admin, as a result of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU back in February because it was using the funds to proselytize.
When asked about the Guttmacher findings Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America predictably dismissed them:
“Any time I see numbers that high, I’m a little suspicious. The numbers are too pat.”
Hat tip, Holly Capote.
66 Responses to “95% of Americans had premarital sex”
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Let’s stop calling it “Pre-marital” sex. With the age of first marriage going up to 25 for women and increasing numbers of people not marrying at all, pretty much all sex is going to be “pre-marital”.
My parents lived together for years prior to marriage, and they were born in the 40’s.
There’s a cold hard wall of reality that’s going to hit the fundies when they try to make the abstinence movement widespread, and it’s not going to be pretty.
I have to say, Zuzu at Feministe has you beat as far as headlines go.
“Newsflash: Americans Fuck.”
Oh, I disagree. It’s going to be lovely. Bring it on!
So he’s admitting abstinence until marriage as a policy is just a complete joke, a lie they’re telling kids in the hope they’ll keep it in their pants for a bit longer? Good to know…
Kyra - ‘I have to say, Zuzu at Feministe has you beat as far as headlines go.
“Newsflash: Americans Fuck.â€?’
Not only that, but apparently we also suck…
Not to agree with Janice Crouse, who is certainly delusional, but the numbers do kinda surprise me a little bit. I mean, I’d certainly expect that a strong majority of Americans would’ve had premarital sex, of course - but 95%? 19 out of 20? Wow. That’s awfully high.
I’m a little bit confused …. the 95% thing - that’s 95% of 44-year olds that haven’t been married? Because the percentage was 75% for 20-year-olds. Does that mean 44-year olds who haven’t been married are more likely to have “premarital” sex, or just that the 20-year olds haven’t had premarital sex yet, and that’s why the number is lower?
See, I wasn’t surprised at all. Even within the deeply religious communities in which I was raised, people were bumpin’ uglies without being married, like, ALL THE TIME.
If anything, this idea that people WEREN’T having premarital sex back in the day seemed like an aberration to me. Didn’t someone on this site dig up a bunch of stats that showed some ridiculous percentage of births occuring less than nine months after marriage as recently as the 50s? People developed all sorts of interesting ways to pretend they weren’t having extramarital sex - in my family, it was putting the name of one man down on the birth certificate even though the chlid was fathered by another man - so like I said, it’s really not that surprising to find out that Americans have been having sex, even when they’ve said they aren’t.
Yeah, perhaps I’m just naive. Or perhaps my surprise is more that 19 out of 20 people actually explcitly declared they had premarital sex. The handful of very religious folks I knew in high school/college who I knew had been boinking right and left had an infinite array of convoluted rationalizations and explanations of how they hadn’t really had sex. Amazingly, the cognitive dissonance involved didn’t make their heads spontaneously explode. I’d somehow figure that folks like this are a nontrivial subset of the population.
Does that mean 44-year olds who haven’t been married are more likely to have “premarital� sex, or just that the 20-year olds haven’t had premarital sex yet, and that’s why the number is lower?
I read that as the latter.
I went through Texas abstinence-only education when I was 16. It was basically a bunch of lame role-playing exercises meant to demonstrate the disgusting, deadly awfulness of sex, ending with the infamous, much-talked-about, Nasty STD Slideshow!! Everybody looked forward to it, like a new horror movie or something. Didn’t stop anyone from having sex, though.
It’s funny… they say that teaching abstinence and contraception sends a mixed message. And yet, they teach that bullshit about “secondary virginity,” as if that doesn’t also send a mixed fucking message right there.
But as soon as they start fucking without condoms, that value goes right out the window.
Reality Check: 95% of Americans had premarital sex…
My parents conceived me that way. And I’m in my 50s so that was well before the sexual revolution. CNN: More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study…….
I’m trying to figure out how they phrased the questions to get people to admit to sex outside of marriage.
I mean, I’d certainly expect that a strong majority of Americans would’ve had premarital sex, of course - but 95%? 19 out of 20? Wow. That’s awfully high.
When I was in college, I was friends with an extremely nice older lady named Betty who had returned to school in her 60s to pursue a social work degree. She gave me some really good advice: don’t sleep with three men in the same day, because you’ll never keep the names straight, and one of them will get upset with you when you call him by the wrong name at the, er, wrong moment.
All of those gray-haired older people you see walking around? They were adults in the 1970s. You don’t even want to know what they were up to.
Guess what, mom! I AM normal! That’s a relief. I thought my wife & I were the only people having sex before marriage. ;->
BTW, “Clintonian sex acts” is awesome! I’m going to start using that all the time.
Well someone actually said, on another blog, that 40% of the puritans had children who must have been conceived out to wedlock…this wasn’t too hard to check as most births in such small communities were probably registered in family bibles, church registries, etc.,
It’s not such a surprise…women probably had sex with someone they expected to be married to eventually…so what difference did a few weeks or months make if you were going to wind up married to that person anyway????
The difference today obviously is that fewer people marry…
But why is this such a big, shocking finding????
It seems to be common sense to me…
I think they needed to ask a question in the survey defining what pre-marital was. I suspect some poeple would not count having sex with a fiance as pre-marital.
“There’s a cold hard wall of reality that’s going to hit the fundies when they try to make the abstinence movement widespread…”
Uh, no. That’s a bit of a stupid statement. These people don’t recognize the applicability of reality to their value systems. These people actually deride the existence and validity of reality. Therefore, more reality is only going to reinforce them in their discredited value systems, and redouble their efforts to foist it on us as a means of validating it and thus — they fervently believe — ensuring that their beliefs become universally real.
six-oh-seven-nine - You’re right, they’re going to pretend there’s something wrong with the survey, although, if anything, 1 in 20 is ‘way more abstainers than I expected.
I’m sorry they didn’t ask the people who did wait, and whose wedding had been more than, say, 5 years ago, how happy they were with their decision. My experience is that they tend to divorce, and that sexual naivete is a huge contributing factor thereto.
Which means that it’s not just that abstinence education doesn’t work for the 95%–it’s not even working for those who accept its premises. It’s completely worthless for everybody.
I remember Mother Avenger telling sis and I that in her graduating class of Catholic women in 1954, half of them got married because they wanted to know what sex was like, that being the only way a “good girl” could do so in the RC faith.
My favorite comment in this area was when someone asked Professor Irwin Corey how he felt about pre-marital sex, and his reply was, “It’s okay, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the ceremony”.
Actually, the cold, hard reality hits uneducated teenage girls, probably the most likely demographic to believe in romance, unicorns, and the reliability of teenage boys. These poor innocent girls and their babies, who normally recieve NO prenatal care, and who have NO ability whatsoever to economically cope with motherhood, are the ones who pay the price, and it SICKENS me. Our society is little better than England in the 1700’s, and who can be surprised that these girls have abortions and occasionally abandon their babies. It’s a miracle any of them manage at all. (In Texas, your full “welfare” benefit a month is $75, for an unwed single mother. It doesn’t even cover the cost of diapers, and if you work or are being provided with housing by anyone, you aren’t eligible. It is a total FICTION that anyone can live on welfare here in Texas, even unwed mothers with newborns.)
Add to that the fact that a teenager commands about $5 a hour in today’s marketplace; and how in the world is a young girl, a child herself, supposed to work and take care of a newborn at the same time?
Unless they have super supportive parents, these girls are are in a completely impossible position, and The Fundies are just in denial; and more than that, the Fundies are actively hurting young girls, some of the most vulnerable members of our society, by feeding them bullshit and blowing smoke up their asses, instead of letting the schools give them crucial information about managing fertility.
I’m FUMING.
W.H. Mencken was highly skeptical of such studies (as he was of everything else, bless him). The Kinsey report, which said that men committed adultery far more often than had been previously believed, drew this comment from him:
“I see nothing in the Kinsey Report to change my conclusions….All that humorless document really proves is (a) that all men lie when they are asked about their adventures in amour, and (b) that pedagogues are singularly naive and credulous creatures.”
I don’t know if this is germane to the discussion, but I love quoting Mencken.
*goes away now*
It’s not such a surprise…women probably had sex with someone they expected to be married to eventually…so what difference did a few weeks or months make if you were going to wind up married to that person anyway????
I remember reading somewhere that Cotton Mather had a hell of a time convincing his flock to abstain from sex once they were engaged. At that point in British/American history, an engagement was considered just as binding as marriage (to get out of it, you’d essentially have to “annul” the engagement with cause) and the Puritan youth figured, “Hey, you keep telling us we’re as good as married, so why can’t we start having sex now?” And they did.
I”f anything, this idea that people WEREN’T having premarital sex back in the day seemed like an aberration to me. Didn’t someone on this site dig up a bunch of stats that showed some ridiculous percentage of births occuring less than nine months after marriage as recently as the 50s? ”
Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were. Required reading for every Pandagonian. I heart her almost as much as I heart Amanda.
In the 1950’s, the birth rate among teens was twice what it is today. Difference is, in the late 1950’s, the “happy couple” was handed a ring and had a suspiciously bouncing premie 7 months later.
Jasmine Dec 20th, 2006 at 5:03 pm:
“I’m trying to figure out how they phrased the questions to get people to admit to sex outside of marriage.”
It may have been a variation of the coin-flip technique: Everybody flip a coin; nobody show anybody what you flipped, but take a look yourself. Now, those who flipped heads — and those who had premarital sex — raise your hands for a count.
On average, half the folks will flip heads. The rest of the raised hands belong to people in the half who flipped tails, and they represent the percentage of that half who admit having had sex before marriage.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
searching for home
pretty much all sex is going to be “pre-marital�.
Speak for yourself; I’ve actually done stuff with my husband since the wedding day.
I’m trying to figure out how they phrased the questions to get people to admit to sex outside of marriage.
???? Where do you live, that people don’t admit to having had sex before the wedding day? Admitting to it can’t seriously be just a New York and California thing.
I’m sorry they didn’t ask the people who did wait, and whose wedding had been more than, say, 5 years ago, how happy they were with their decision. My experience is that they tend to divorce.
My experience is that everyone tends to divorce. OK, I’m exaggerating; lots of people stay married, but the correlation with how much premarital sex you had, in either direction, doesn’t look nearly as large to me as people say. Neither virginity nor sexual experience is all that sure a road to a lasting marriage.
Merciless, did you mean H.L. Mencken? You might have confused his initials with those of W.H. Auden.
The statistics referenced here remind me of the old, old joke:
95% of all men surveyed responded that they masturbate.
The remaining 5% are lying.
I’m curious what the reported margin of error is on this survey, too. The CNN article doesn’t say. If it’s anything like the usual plus/minus 4%, it could be anywhere from 91% to 99%.
Bah. Even the press release at the Guttmacher Institute website doesn’t say. I can’t find the figure. I hate the way statistics are reported.
I’d be much more surprised if a conservative organization (say, the Heritage Institute) did a similar survey and got similar results. Guttmacher is way too sex-positive for your typical decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.
Guttmacher is way too sex-positive for your typical decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.
Hey! I’m a church-going woman. And at the moment I’m even decent.
For getting the figure on pre-marital sex, I figured they asked people when they lost their virginity, and then compared it to their marriage records. seems the simplest way to me.
Re: “conveniently timed” marriages (5-6 months before birth of child) among puritans and other 17th-18th c. British folk, NYMOM is right about sex occurring between couples who planned to marry, and the practice varied from community to community. Truly extra-marital activity like adultery and “seduction” was pretty darn rare, most likely because the stakes were sooooo much higher (inheritance snafu’s, being forcibly removed from the community, etc.) For the super-nerds in us all, historian John Gillis has a great book called For Better, For Worse: British Marriages 1600 to the Present in which all sorts of interesting dating and mating rituals are discussed in different social contexts–factory towns vs. farming communities, Dissenting communities vs. Anglican communities, etc.
“Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were. Required reading for every Pandagonian. I heart her almost as much as I heart Amanda.”
I second that recommendation. I first came across it when doing research for a paper in college and have read it three times. It’s such a great book. I still use her citations when arguing with people about the prevalence of “traditional nuclear families” in which the father worked and the mother stayed home with the kids. (It’s NEVER been the majority family arrangement, not even in the fifties)
Ms Gazis-Sax, you have my apologies — I know there are plenty of decent church-going women who are all kinds of sex-positive. (My mom falls into that category, among other folks.) It just seemed like a good place for a Burroughs quotation, considerin’ the picture shown above.
NYMOM is right about sex occurring between couples who planned to marry
Sex with your fiancee was a fineable offense in Puritan Massachusetts; I know because court records show that one of my ancestors was fined for it. I think, though, that it must have been the Puritan equivalent of having a fake ID nowadays - something you could get dinged for by the law, but not something you’d be shamed for among all your peers. My ancestors don’t seem to have lost any social face in the long term for their offense.
And, Moira, your’e forgiven
.
Listen, sex is a great thing. But there was nothing wrong with setting the bar high with abstinence. Yeah, most people failed miserably at this. But it does tend to keep sexual morality somewhat alive.
HOWEVER, setting the bar low is PROMOTING sex at ANY age and circumstance as long as “protection” is used, and in many cases IT’S NOT USED. It will result in a fungal bloom of unwanted pregnancies, abortions, disease epidemics, damaged psyche of underage kids, and an overall trashing of sexual morality. Oh wait, I guess we’re already there.
Yeah, we don’t need sexual morality.
It’s easy for a sexually mature person to argue against abstinance. But it’s a different story when your 8 years old and you don’t understand what it is that you are agreeing to.
WTF? Mark, none of that makes a lick of sense.
First of all, part of your definition of setting the bar low includes using protection, which you then turn around and say no one is using, and that we are in a world of shit because of it. Did you miss the part about using protection? Because if people were actually using protection - instead of being taught only about abstinence only sex education - then ‘unwanted pregnancies, abortions, disease epidemics’ would not be a problem. This statement is so internally inconsistent, I’m shocked it didn’t rupture the space-time continuum and suck us all into oblivion with the sheer force of its wrongness.
I’m still searching for the post who says it’s healthy and okay for an eight year old to have sex. Oh, wait…it’s not there because no one is arguing that.
Yeah, we don’t need sexual morality.
We actually do need sexual morality, but not the kind that says the only kind of good sex is procreative sex within a heterosexual marriage. We need sexual morality that says the only kind of good sex is sex that involves consenting (i.e., no eight year olds - ew) individuals who are using protection and are all into what’s going on. We need sexual morality that says it’s not okay to force someone to have sex against their will, and we need sexual morality that says people have the right to control their own bodies. What we don’t need are more panty-sniffing moral scolds who believe the solution to the world’s problems is to keep one’s legs shut, because that’s what we’ve had until now, and as you said, look at where it’s gotten us.
[From Lynn Gazis-Sax] My experience is that everyone tends to divorce. OK, I’m exaggerating; lots of people stay married, but the correlation with how much premarital sex you had, in either direction, doesn’t look nearly as large to me as people say. Neither virginity nor sexual experience is all that sure a road to a lasting marriage.
Good point. But all the people I know who waited until they got married seemed to think it was a seriously bad idea; the consensus seems to be that it made their adjustment to marriage that much harder.
I realize that askng around my friends and relations isn’t much of a survey, and that, w/r/t divorce, even hindsight isn’t always 20/20. But that’s what I hear. I also think people who wait are more likely to “suck it up” when their marriages makes them miserable. “Lasting” marriage doesn’t always mean “happy” marriage.
I’m still searching for the post who says it’s healthy and okay for an eight year old to have sex. Oh, wait…it’s not there because no one is arguing that.
But that’s exactly my point. I know no one is arguing FOR more immoral sex. But by shunning, scoffing at, and ridiculing abstinence, we’re going to get LOTS MORE OF IT! I’m not arguing against protection, or premarital sex among consenting adults. But the path you’re on teaches our youth that abstinance is IMMORAL. Can you beleive it?!? Go ahead, educate the world on condom use. But even a condom package says “the only 100% effective method is abstinance”. If you ask me, it should also say, “Abstinance is something you can be proud of”.
I think there is an all out attack on abstinance, and this thread is one of ‘em.
“panty-sniffing moral scolds”
WTF was that? Do you really think it’s a good idea to associate “morality” with “panty sniffing scolds”? You are part of the problem.
We don’t need sexual moraltiy. We need sexual ethics. Everything Caitlin says after that is totally right.
Saying “use a condom” is the same as teaching young people that abstinence is immoral? Hi, I’m Earth - have we met?
Mark,
Abstinance is for virgins.
Seriously, though.
No, I can not believe it. It’s just dumb. How in the world does teaching kids about using proper protection, acknowedging the reality that most of them are going to have sex, and (in a better world) approaching it responsibly (let’s say from a feminist prespective), give anyone the impression that abstinance is immoral?
[Schwarzenegger Voice] No you ah paht af the problem! [/Schwarzenegger Voice]
No, I can not believe it. It’s just dumb. How in the world does teaching kids about using proper protection, acknowedging the reality that most of them are going to have sex, and (in a better world) approaching it responsibly (let’s say from a feminist prespective), give anyone the impression that abstinance is immoral?
It does so by making shunning and ridiculing the abstainer. Do you want me to cut and paste all of the comments above that do that? You are making abstinance a dirty word. THAT’S what I’m mad about. Just because 95% have premarital sex we might as well just start promoting it. Yeah right. My teenage girl gets enough pressure to have sex as it is. She doesn’t need it from her parents, too.
Let me get this straight: Everyone else in the whole world needs to give up on a pleasurable, safe sex life that hurts no one because it bugs you to think of your teenage daughter having sex someday? Selfish much?
Yes. Please do.
Patsy, it’s not like that at all. I just think that our attention on sexual freedom is a bit premature, given all of the sexual deviants that our counrty has been producing over the last 50 years. Moving forward the good sex before hampering the bad will only result in moving forward the bad. I’m talking about abortion rates, pornography, child pornography, beastiality, S&M, Bondage, cutting, asphixiation, group sex, etc. (I suppose you would argue that there is nothing wrong with these things)(BTW, why are abortion rates at an all time high, while condom use has been marketed so much? Step 1:The promotion of condoms made sex more available. Sep 2.get people open to premarital sex. Step 3.People become complacent about condom use.)
You want to say that this stuff has always existed? Could be. But the numbers are WAY up these days, thanks to the PROMOTION of these activities. Who would have ever thought of cutting as a pleasurable thing to do? Well, someone did, and now LOTS of people are doing it. Ever heard of tounge splitting? Some say it’s a spiritual experience. So, now more people are doing it. How about suspentions? Ever try it? Well, somebody did, and now LOTS of people are doing it. The shear numbers of people doing these things is PURELY a result of marketing. You probably think “that’s different”. I say it’s only a different rung on the same ladder. Wait till you see what your grandchildren are doing. Now, if you think there is nothing wrong with these practices, I’ll shut up on this thread. Let’s see how many supporters of these practices there are.
You really think a ton of people are out there getting their tongues split and suspending themselves from hooks? These are fringe activities, and what the promotion of abstinence has to do with this, I have no idea.
Plus, you lose cred when you lump S&M and group sex in with things like child pornography. The first two are just fine, in my book, while the third is absolutely immoral. Not every sexual practice that repulses you is immoral.
The “fringe activities” didn’t exist 50 years ago, and the numbers are climbing. It’s like your doctor saying “it’s just 2 cancer cells, so don’t be alarmed”
Just wait, caitlin.
Mark, what exactly do you consider “good sex”? Because you lump extremely different things together, just like Caitlin said, and you make it sound like there’s suddenly an epidemic of gang bangs and self-mutilations. Guess what, just because people didn’t talk about these things before doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. What you call “deviant sex” (BTW, I’d like to know your definition of that too) is hardly new.
Are you arguing that people should be ashamed of their sexual practices, even when they happen between consenting adults? What IS the ideal sex education according to you? Is it telling kids that sex is dirty and deviant except when it happens in a heterosexual marriage?
The “fringe activities� didn’t exist 50 years ago, and the numbers are climbing.
Ever read De Sade? You’d be surprised…
And again, I don’t see epidemics of BDSM and gang banging. Either you’re a bit paranoid or you live in a weird neighbourhood.
The “fringe activities� didn’t exist 50 years ago, and the numbers are climbing.
That whole “Kama Sutra” thing is just a hoax, right Mark?…
I would guess that as long as there have been people with naughty parts, they’ve been using them in way Mark would not approve of…
Thankfully, we haven’t created Giliad just yet…
Just wait, caitlin.
Yes, Caitlin, the Big Bad Deviants are coming to get you. They’ll split your tongue and force you to engage in group sex with baby possums and stuff.
Marc thinks people were only having sex in the missionary position until 40 years ago, when they suddenly decided to fuck animals and split their tongues.
Mark, I’m sympathetic to you, because I was once a teenage girl with a father who couldn’t bear the fact that I was a sexual being. Here’s a story: when my dad found out that I was fooling around with my older brother’s friend, who was a year older than I was, his first thought was to yell at me and ask if he was molesting me. As if I was being preyed upon! I know that it’s because my dad saw me as his little girl, but I was also a teenager. Sure, I was a girl, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have sexual desires and urges of my own.
So I get where you are coming from, but I still think you are wrong. I think you are making huge errors in your deductive reasoning, and I think you fail to take history into account, as everyone has already pointed out. I mean, it’s not like group sex did not come into existence with condoms and modern birth control. Take a trip to see Pompeii some time, and go check out the brothel walls.
I love a good debate, and I gotta say Scarlet, you make me laugh, even at myself! Great comments–well taken!
Seriously, I know these things have been going on for a long time, heck–forever. But that doesn’t make it good. My point is, they are stealing the innocence of more and more people. What is sexual deviance? Well, I’d say on one end of the spectrum you have the missionary position. On the other end, you have gang banging with plastic bags over your heads. Where the line in the sand is, I don’t know. But the TREND is MAINSTREAMING the line more and more into the deviant zone. Surely you can agree about that.
I guess what it really comes down to is the approval of God. My arguments are fultile without a God in existence. If there were no God, I guess ANYTHING is open season for consenting adults. But that’s not how it is for me. What does YOUR God approve of?
Oh my god! Mark is an underwear gnome!
Well, I knew we were going to get here at some point. My god doesn’t exist. I don’t think yours does either. Until he knocks on my door (or makes a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank), I’m not going to base my ethical standards on what a bunch of stone-age goatherders thought was good or bad.
FWIW, the tongue splitting, body mods, suspension, etc., as far as I know, have nothing to do with sexual practices. They were started back in the 60’s by Roland Loomis as a “modern primitive” movement–it was a spiritual expression, not a sexual one. Cutting, OTOH, is self-harm as a means of catharsis. It’s linked with depression, not getting your rocks off.
Which commandmnet was “thou shalt not split thy tongue?” Six? Seven?
Seriously though, what makes you assume that abortion rights are high because of sex ed? wouldn’t teaching condom use tend to reduce abortion rates?
Didn’t teen pregnancy and abortion rates reach an all time low during the awful, awful Clenis years?
My arguments are fultile without a God in existence.
My point exactly. I respect other people’s faiths and beliefs, but I think it’s definitely wrong to view people who have different ethics as “deviants” who are “stealing people’s innocence”.
), it is a FRINGE activity that is very unlikely to ever spread into mainstream. Believe me, most of my friends are tatooed and/or pierced and I’ve never met someone who had had their tongue split (or intended to have it done).
Heck, I’m a confirmed agnostic, but there are tons of things mentioned above that I really don’t feel like experimenting, not because I think they’re immoral, but because I have no DESIRE to experiment them. And I know a lot of people like me. Just because you don’t get bent out of shape about people spanking each other or fist-fucking doesn’t mean you have an irrepressible urge to do it.
And like Mothworm already pointed out, body modifications as a whole have very little to do with sexuality. As far as tongue-splitting is concerned (I know that one seems to have made a lasting impression on you
As far as tongue-splitting is concerned (I know that one seems to have made a lasting impression on you
), it is a FRINGE activity that is very unlikely to ever spread into mainstream. Believe me, most of my friends are tatooed and/or pierced and I’ve never met someone who had had their tongue split (or intended to have it done).
Exactly my point, once again. 50 years ago, you would have to search for someone that would say “most of my friends are tatooed and/or pierced”. (agreed, you COULD find some, but it is much easier today to find someone that could say that)
It’s like every rung of the ladder society inches up to, they all still look up 3 rungs and say, “That will become mainstream.” But then, when we get there in 100 years, the young generation will be looking up to the NEXT three rungs and saying “that will never become mainstream”, all the while defending the rung on which they stand…the same rung that today we are saying, “it’s just a fring activity, it’ll never become mainstream.” It’s easy to scoff at this, but true. It’s like a social evolution of pushing the envelope. Surely you can see that?
Mark - who cares? Seriously, why does the fact that a few people have forked tongues really bother you so much? You act like body modification didn’t exist prior to fifty years ago. So what if tongue forking becomes popular? I fail to see the cause for alarm.
Well, you fail to see your body as a gift from God. But again, I end up at the same conclusion. That God cares how we live. So I lose, because to you all, either you don’t beleive in God, or you do beleive in God but that what God thinks is fine and dandy is entirely subjective.
So now I go into why I’m not against you splitting your tongue, but I am against you popularizing it for the sake of my children. Free-will is great, but temptation to the innocent is not. Around and around.
What it comes down to is, you fail to see the cause for alarm, I see cause for alarm.
So, I guess I’ll be going now. (cheers from the crowd)
Merry Christmas!
You are right - we diverge at this point. You look to God for guidance on how to live. I feel comfortable making those calls without being told what to do. I personally wouldn’t go for a forked tongue, for instance - it’s a super painful process that looks silly in the end - but I let other people make their own decisions.
Between this thread and the one about soy and homosexuality, I’m starting to think that you see no difference between accepting that something happens and promoting something. To you, when someone says “Using a condom is a way to stay safe”, you hear “Go out and fuck the football team!” When someone says, “I think gay people should be allowed to marry”, you hear “Let’s use the public schools to make everyone gay!” You are really making some untenable leaps in your logic in both instances. Plus, you underestimate your kids - as well as your parenting abilities - in thinking that the mere presence of something will be enough to make them sway from the values you’ve instilled in them.
You say you accept that people are gay and that people have sex outside of marriage, but then you turn around and play the persecuted martyr, as if all of the godless homosexuals with forked tongues of the world are out to destroy you and your family. Trust me when I tell you that people who are gay, who have sex outside of marriage and who have forked tongues are probably way too busy living their own lives to want to bother with yours.
You realize that when your kid eventually wants to rebell, they’ll have no choice but to get a forked tongue.
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