Posted on 12/10/2004 11:36:01 AM PST by DBeers
Hey Kids! Want Good Sex? Try Abstinence.
Warren Throckmorton
As a mental health counselor, I am really troubled by the numbers of adolescents that I have counseled who cried for days and hurt for years because they engaged in "safer sex" within dead end, unfulfilling relationships. Sadly, they learned that safer sex can be hazardous to their emotional health.
I think the current political debate concerning abstinence vs. contraceptive based sexual education has failed to include an important variable in the discussion of what to teach in school: sexual well being.
In many contemporary sexual education curricula, young boys and girls who listen carefully in health class will be schooled in the virtues of condoms. They may learn the mechanics and become involved in safer sex without the result of pregnancy or deadly disease. Sadly, though, such programs rarely inform them that their emotional and sexual adjustment would be enhanced if they would wait for the marital bed. What a disservice to a generation of young people.
I am raising this point because I just finished authoring a report, with colleague David Blakeslee concerning proposed changes in sexual education curriculum in Montgomery County, MD. Among other innovations, these changes offer students a PG-13 experience in watching a condom application demonstration, featuring a female and a cucumber. Further, the curriculum explains to students that it is harmful to have risky sex (meaning sans condom) but says next to nothing about any problems associated with engaging in pre-marital sexual relationships, provided condoms are on board.
In other words, 10th graders, we will tell you that applying condoms may prevent disease and pregnancy but we will not tell you that your long term sexual and emotional satisfaction may be enhanced by saving sex until marriage. The curriculum says in places that the only sure way to prevent disease and pregnancy is through abstaining but there is no mention that ones overall well being might be enhanced by waiting.
Since you wont hear this in school, here are a few survey findings from research concerning abstinence. According to 1996 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, lower sexual activity among adolescents is correlated with higher levels of well being. In fact, sexually active girls are over three times as likely to report depressive symptoms than their abstaining counterparts and sexually active boys are over twice as likely to report depressive symptoms. Amazingly, these two groups report higher incidence of suicide attempts; boys in particular are at 8 times the risk for a suicide attempt if they are sexually active.
Young women are particularly vulnerable. According to the sex survey Social Organization of Sexuality, by Edward Laumann and colleagues, young women often go along with intercourse the first time, finding little physical pleasure in it The report notes that there are dramatic costs for young women which are increasing as young women have intercourse earlier in the life course. (p.347). Sounds like delaying sexual involvement is a good thing both emotionally and sexually.
Concerning marital sex, the same report indicates that a monogamous sexual partnership embedded in a formal marriage evidently produces the greatest satisfaction and pleasure. (p. 364). Further, religious women are more likely to report being sexually satisfied than non-religious counterparts. These are the women who are more likely to have waited until they can follow the teachings of their faith about being embedded in a formal marriage before they have sex. However, presumably abstaining works for those of all faiths and those with none.
Why dont health educators want kids to know these things? Good question. Ask it sometime at school board meeting.
Instead religious people and those who favor abstinence until marriage are usually portrayed as prudish, repressed folks afraid to talk about sex, let alone practice it. Rather it appears those smiles may be more than religious euphoria.
Given the positive health and mental health benefits of abstinence, it looks to me like these research findings should be prominently featured in sex education curricula. That is unless all we want to do is get latex around the problem.
However, often the research results reported above are not even mentioned. Not in the Montgomery County curriculum and almost never in public debate concerning the best form of sexual education.
So kids, want great sex? Now you know what to do. Or should I say: what not to do.
Warren Throckmorton, PhD is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the College Counseling Services at Grove City College (PA). He is co-author, along with David Blakeslee, Psy.D. of the recent report, Health Education as Social Advocacy, which is available at http://www.drthrockmorton.com/montgomery.pdf. He can be reached at ewthrockmorton@gcc.edu .
The answer is yes, at least as it applies to the Almighty. His rules are few, and their violations self-punishing, but they require a certain amount of self-discipline to put into effect.
We don't tell a child not to play in the street because we want to test his allegiance to us. We do it because we understand something of the structure of the world in which we live, and we desire the child to be safe, happy and free from harm. Similarly, God understands the structure of the Cosmos that He has created, and imparts to human minds the few simple rules needed to ensure the safety and happiness of his free-willed offspring. The Law, in short, is not a burden placed upon the shoulders of Man, but a blessing, which, if followed, will lead to the best measure of happiness that can be attained on the earthly plane.
I think this is where the Judeo-Christian philosophy really manifests itself as of great worth, not only to Christians and Jews, but to the human race as a whole. The Law, as propounded in the Decalogue, is not merely a set of opinions that are "only religious," as today's secularists would like us to believe, but universal truths that apply to all societies, whether they choose to acknowledge the Almighty or not. No society can long survive which does not adhere to at least a reasonable subset of those commandments. If there is no God, He will have to be invented.
Duct tape might not make the world go round, but it might play an important part in holding it together. :P
Bleeding heart liberals like you don't have a clue. All you want to do is make excuses for their irresponsibility.
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Now, that's downright funny. I have never been called a "bleeding heart liberal" before. Let me ask you, if what I am saying has made excuses for personal irresponsibility, how come you are the only one attacking me?
Let me put it as simply as possible:
1) Abstinence is the best policy.
2) Since schools have decided parents are not teaching their children sexual responsibility, they are going to. Abstinence is the best policy.
3) This woman we are talking about apparently doesn't have a clue what abstinence is.
4) Her children exist, therefore someone has to pay for them. IF she is unable, that's the church or the state.
5) The church has abdicated its social responsibility to the state.
6) This woman (and others) need to know abstinence is the best policy.
7) Beating them up and telling them they are no-good, whoring deadbeats is not going to make them open to hearing that abstinence is the best policy and why.
8) Proactively educating people that abstinence is the best policy can lessen the tax bill for our children and grandchildren to take care of the personal irresponsiblity of others.
9) I am thankful that your children are moral, responsible citizens. So are mine. Not everyone is so blessed.
10)Social responsibility falls on us as members of Christ's body. Use your disgust at the tax extorted by the state to take care of those who are not as an impetus to activism in teaching and training those who need it that abstinence is the best policy.
11) I don't understand how you can have a problem with what I am saying.
"If you came up with it without reading it from me it's a pretty amazing coincidence!"
Not really. They're pretty well-known historians. I had the complete 13-volume set of their history of everything back in the early seventies. Gave it away when I went in the Navy.
I have an MS Word file called "Glossary of Quotations" into which I honk things like that. I've been using that particular quotation for at least ten years now.
"Sexual misconduct has been the ruin of many lives, not just the ones who chose the misconduct, but their children and relatives."
The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 5
5:1 My son, attend to my wisdom, and incline thy ear to my prudence,
5:2 That thou mayst keep thoughts, and thy lips may preserve instruction. Mind not the deceit of a woman.
5:3 For the lips of a harlot are like a honeycomb dropping, and her throat is smoother than oil.
5:4 But her end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword.
5:5 Her feet go down into death, and her steps go in as far as hell.
5:6 They walk not by the path of life, her steps are wandering, and unaccountable.
5:7 Now, therefore, my son, hear me, and depart not from the words of my mouth.
5:8 Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the doors of her house.
5:9 Give not thy honour to strangers, and thy years to the cruel.
5:10 Lest strangers be filled with thy strength, and thy labours be in another man's house,
5:11 And thou mourn at the last, when thou shalt have spent thy flesh and thy body, and say;
5:12 Why have I hated instruction, and my heart consented not to reproof,
5:13 And have not heard the voice of them that taught me, and have not inclined my ear to masters?
5:14 I have almost been in all evil, in the midst of the church and of the congregation.
5:15 Drink water out of thy own cistern, and the streams of thy own well:
5:16 Let thy fountains be conveyed abroad, and in the streets divide thy waters.
5:17 Keep them to thyself alone, neither let strangers be partakers with thee.
5:18 Let thy vein be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of thy youth:
5:19 Let her be thy dearest hind, and most agreeable fawn: let her breasts inebriate thee at all times: be thou delighted continually with her love.
5:20 Why art thou seduced, my son, by a strange woman, and art cherished in the bosom of another?
5:21 The Lord beholdeth the ways of man, and considereth all his steps.
5:22 His own iniquities catch the wicked, and he is fast bound with the ropes of his own sins.
5:23 He shall die, because he hath not received instruction, and in the multitude of his folly he shall be deceived.
Hmmm...so did my mother...but she was married.
It *may* be this woman's irresponsibility that has brought on dire circumstances...or it *may* be an unfortunate situation and that she is truly *in need*.
Could you share exact information? I'm wondering if it's speculation on your part so far. Thank you kindly.
bttt
*love* your screen name!
oh...and yes, I think it'd be an excellent next book for Dr. Laura. :o)
Mrs., TW,
Aaahhh ... glad we agree on that.
Big grin!
PwMp
VERY good point!! Kids just don't understand that when they are sexually intimate with someone, it's not just their bodies, but also their minds and hearts that are connected. Even though they think they are not committed to each other in any way, humans are wired for that mental 'connection', and it's gonna happen.
My comment sounded really arrogant! I really didn't mean it like that.
I am interested in your quote file. Mine is random, just stuff I find here and there.
I am singularly uneducated, so things that may be really obvious and well known are astonishing to me. Kind of like an aborigine with matches.
I agree 100% with your comments and IMHO you are not a bleeding heart liberal!
Wonderful verses.
Says it all.
Four kids, three different dads. She doesn't work, and has applied for government assistance in this state, as she got kicked out by her live-in in another state, where she received assistance. So excuse me for being a little less than sympathetic for a woman who is bleeding our system dry.
Like I said before, I feel sorry for the children put in this situation. The only good thing I can say for this woman is that she didn't abort any of them.
If you read the posts above, I DID NOT say she got pregnant to cement a relationship. That scenario was brought up by someone else. Maybe you could tell ME why a woman would keep getting pregnant when she knows she will rely on the taxpayers to support her children. Do you have an answer for that one? Thank YOU kindly.
I believe in helping those who want to help themselves.
Nice to be ganged up on when expressing my opinion, though...LOL. You all have a great day!
I agree. One thing that isn't prominently featured in sex education is self-respect. Respect for our bodies, respect for life, and respect for marriage. Teachers don't advocate the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. Marriage is seen as a social event... if it doesn't work, there is another event coming your way. Self-respect and moral values aren't taught at schools.
Students can buy condoms, but not self-respect.
That is so arrogant. I'm not there yet, but in 6 years, when we hit two decades, I'll let you know.
LJ, normally I find you semi-amusing, but that one was so far removed from reality that it prompted a genuine belly laugh. You might argue that married sex is better, and I might agree with you up to a point, but to see it's miserable? Hell man, I'm 41 years, and I haven't had a miserable sexual experience yet.
You must be a man. To quote Billy Crystal--"Women need time, men just need a place."
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