Posted on 06/15/2003 10:39:14 AM PDT by Mister Magoo
He's celibate until marriage, and dates won't tolerate it
June 15, 2003
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Ten years ago, Darren Washington, 33, made a dramatic lifestyle change. He decided to abstain from sex until he got married. It is a choice that makes sense in a world where sex can literally kill you. But the fear of sexually transmitted diseases was not the only thing that motivated Washington to try celibacy. Given the pain sexual relationships can cause, he wanted to be part of the solution--not part of the problem.
On Saturday, June 21, he will be one of the panelists for "What Men Don't Like To Talk About" at Being Single Magazine's 5th Annual Bachelor Breakfast.
Washington, director of external affairs for SBC Indiana, says his celibacy has frustrated some women.
"A lot of women wanted to be sexually active," he said. "And you have so many people fronting. What I found out is that women wanted a man who was going to be faithful to her because a lot of men are juggling different women, having sex with different women, and so women thought it would be OK if I was only having sex with them."
Some women backed away after realizing Washington took abstinence seriously.
"I told one woman I just wanted to be friends and she said she already had enough friends," he said.
Then, there's the hurry-up-and-get-on-with-it sister.
"I dated a very intelligent woman, an attorney, who was OK with celibacy," Washington said. "But after six months, she wanted me to make a commitment. She felt if she knew we were going to marry then she could abstain. I couldn't make that promise."
Washington, a state-certified HIV/AIDS counselor, regularly speaks out about abstinence. He says he does so because it is the best alternative, particularly for African-American couples.
"I think a lot of people--men and women--don't understand the emotional and psychological effects that premarital sex cause besides teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
"When you give your body, you open an area to them that is really sacred. You exchange spirits with that person and that is how you end up with heartaches, pain and jealousy. There are women out here who are cheating just like men. You can't blame one [gender] more than the other. If men stood up and took the initiative and treated women with more respect and respected their bodies, women would want their bodies respected."
Sex shouldn't be part of a dating relationship, Washington said.
"You really truly have to be patient and wait for the right man to come into your life," he said. "There are a lot of men out here who have their pick of the litter. They date a lot of women and they know they are a good catch. They are financially together and a lot of these men are having sex with a lot of different women."
In the abstinence world, a date is a date.
"There are certain things that are off limits if you are not willing to be married," he said. "I can go out with different people to have fun, but I don't expect sex and I don't expect them to take their clothes off."
But for a lot of men, sex is seen as their reward for showing his date a good time.
""I don't expect a woman to have sex with me because I took her out to dinner and spent $100," Washington counters. "That should be normal if I am trying to win her hand and to prove to her I'm the man of her dreams.
On the other side, women who do not have romantic feelings for a man may get involved with him sexually because he is financially solid and drives a nice car, Washington pointed out.
"We have to stop using each other," he said. "One way to do that is to abstain."
Of course, the real question is whether Washington is really one of those brothers on the down-low. He chuckled when I asked, but admitted it wasn't the first time he's been asked about his sexuality.
"People live an alternative lifestyle for sexual liberation, not sexual resignation," he said. "Right now, a lot of people are looking for a cure to AIDS. My issue is, yes, we need drugs that will stop the spread of AIDS, but what about the people who don't have it. They need to abstain. If you can't put a ring on a woman's finger or you don't want to marry the brother, you shouldn't be out there."
As noted in a recent Sun-Times special report on marriage, African Americans marry at a significantly lower rate than other racial groups in the United States. By age 30, 81 percent of white women and 77 percent of Asians and Hispanics will marry, but only 52 percent of black women will do so, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After talking to Washington, I recalled something my father used to say when his daughters started dating: "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?" Of course, we didn't listen. As things have turned out, fathers knew best after all.
For additional information about next Saturday's panel discussion, please call (312) 567-9900.
your honesty and insights add much to the discussion.
The hole in your reasoning is that you make no allowance for abstaining as a viable choice, long term. Certainly we all engage in risk-benefit analysis to varying degrees in everything we do. But, unless there is some sort of standard, it become nothing more than situational ethics. I argue for a moral standard that is not meant to deprive anyone of true benefit, but merely states where and when that benefit is to be found and enjoyed.
See, it's not enough for you to go out and live your life morally and be happy. You have to criticize my life and my attitude knowing essentially nothing about me. Why can't you accept that you are happy the way you are and that I am happy the way I am? I'm not telling you that there is something wrong with the way you live your life. What gives you the right or authority to deem my attitude and life shallow?
It is my opinion, based on what you have said. Obviously you have a different one. That doesn't, on the face of it, make either opinion more or less valid than the other. But, if there is a higher moral standard, then our respective opinions can be weighed against that, and their relative shallowness or lack of such can be assessed. I believe there is a higher moral standard than what benefits me and satisfies my needs and wants. I would say that you probably don't believe that, based on what you have written here to various other posters.
I don't understand. You say that you hurt a bunch when you broke up with a woman that you were just fornicating with? And you say that if I never experienced that pain, then I've never really loved? So the only way I can have loved is by breaking up with a woman I'm fornicating with and experiencing the rending of that spiritual union? I really don't get it...
I felt that pain when I divorced my wife (due to her infidelities). I experienced the same pain subsequently after having been sexually involved with several women after my divorce (relationships of some length). It finally became clear to me what that pain was, and how to avoid it in the future. You, on the other hand, are trying to twist what I said into something I didn't say. You are not going to win any points through intellectual dishonesty. Perhaps I should have stated it thusly: If you have ever really loved, especially when sex is involved, if that union is torn apart by breakup or divorce, you would know the pain I am talking about.
Of course. Do you even understand what a risk-benefit analysis is? It's not placing a moral judgement on anything. All it is is a way for people to make decisions based on the perceived risk and perceived benefit of any given course of action. It is a basic cognitive process and everyone does it - even you. You are correct when you say that the risk-benefit analysis is a selfish act - by defintion, it has to be. This doesn't mean one has to exclude others from the analysis - for instnace, if I choose a course of action that hurts someone, it makes me feel bad so I don't choose that course of action.
Yes, I understand perfectly well what a risk-benefit analysis is. And I do not deny that it is at its base a selfish analysis. What I am trying to get across, as I stated earlier, is that a higher moral authority should be a consideration in the analysis of risk vs benefit in order to take into account the unintended and sometimes unknown side-effects of any action, no matter how carefully things may have been considered. Otherwise, the whole analysis is primarily a self-centered exercise in self-gratification, with only passing thought given to the effects of that action on another or others. The higher moral authority gives principles and a code of conduct that is for the greater good, with provision made for when a given course of action is not only proper, but beneficial. It is an impartial and uninvolved witness to what ultimately is a selfish and partial analysis.
Don't you see that even your statement that you would avoid a course of action, if after analysis you felt it would hurt some and make you feel bad, is still a self-centered action? It's still all about you. True love isn't about you it's about the other person. True love will disregard its own benefit to be sure that the object of that love receives its benefit.
There is no truer love that what Jesus Christ did in dying for the sins of His People. All other love pales in comparison to that. Lately, I have decided that living by His standards is more beneficial to me, both short and long term, than living only for my own gratification.
I am still interested in what you might feel and/or do in the event of an 'unplanned' human life that might result from your sexual activity in the event that your partner decided to abort the child.
Cordially,
Not true. I've been looking for three years now and there isn't a one to be found.
Yeah. Scientists too.
However, I can't remember the last time my normal life brought me in contact with someone who would even be worth dating. Once one leaves college, the opportunities to meet people just aren't there.
Again, yes. I know what you're writing about.
I try to word my posts as carefully as possible. You in fact do need to be revived, but in a way that I think you have not yet seen. And yes, you need to be invigorated, too, with true life. Have I said any untrue words to you? Is there something necessarily uncordial about speaking the truth in love?
Yes, as a matter of fact I did read your #440 soon after you posted it. That's the post to which I first responded to you. And yes, I did later use the word "partner", to soften my answer, if you will re-read my reply. But I must say that I don't think your analogy of a car crash is analogous to voluntary acts of fornication. Your driving is voluntary, but in most instances it has absolutely no chance of causing the creation of another human being. Your driving normally does not create a spiritual and physical union between you and another person (unless of course you smash someone else into a telephone pole, but that's a different thing than a sexual union.) Anyway, I think from what you've said that if you did kill someone through negligent driving that you would feel terrible, and you would acknowledge that you were one at least partially responsible for the death. If that is true, how much more responsibility lies in actions that may result in the creation of a life?
Cordially,
So, if there's no opportunity, then what? Self-control level is irrelevant if there are no willing members of the other sex.
Thanks for your concise and clear answer.
I don't quite understand how you got that out of what I wrote, but the answer is "NO". I'm not saying that at all. Falling in love is a separate thing from having sex. The problem is, sex creates a physical/spiritual union between a man and a woman that was meant to be shared within the bounds of a committed relationship, i.e. marriage, where there would be love between the two, and that love could be expressed on all levels up to and including sexual union. I say marriage because it is supposed to be a life-long commitment, not just an arrangement of convenience. There are vows exchanged, a commitment made "til death do us part", which sets the stage for love to grow and flower into something truly wonderful. Can you have sex without love? Sure. Can you have love without sex? Yes. Marriage provides the framework for the highest expression of both. Marriage is also to ensure survival of the species through the sexual union and the raising of children by both parents, not just one. Look around you today. There's a lot of messed up people who are that way, at least in part, because they didn't have a two-parent family growing up. Statistics bear that out, and psychologists agree that a child needs both parents to be emotionally and mentally healthy.
As for intellectual dishonesty, you turned around what I said into something I didn't say, and tried to base your answer back to me on your wrong interpretation. I restated the core of my statement. Does that clear it up for you?
That doesn't mean I make no allowance for it - just that for ME, I don't believe I would be as happy and fulfilled as a person if I practiced abstinence.
I'm not talking about lifetime abstinence, and I don't think that's what you think I'm saying, but I also am puzzled as to why it seems such a burden to abstain until such time as you have found and married a woman that you can and would want to spend a lifetime with, and be able to then enjoy the sexual union that much more? It would be worth the wait, and it would not do you any harm.
I have only stated that the bible isn't the ultimate source of my morality. If you believe that any morality outside the bible is inoperative, then I suppose that as far as you are concerned, you are correct, but I don't agree. I believe there are other sources one can look to to determine morality.
Well, then, what source(s) of morality do you look to? How do they compare with the Bible? Certainly that is a fair question, and a worthwhile exercise. Wouldn't it also be a fair statement to say that the morality which shows itself to be the highest one should be the one to be followed?
I'm not trying to force my beliefs on anyone, nor could I. Standing up for what one believes is not forcing anyone to adopt the same belief. In fact, the Bible is clear that God's ways are higher than our ways, and His ways are spiritually discerned. The natural man does not receive the things of the spirit, neither can he, because they are foolishness to him. It is when one surrenders his life to God, and God's spirit enlightens him, that the truth and wisdom of God make sense.
Well, there are many people familiar with biblical Greek who have written commentaries.
In fact, some of them even knew St. Paul or St. Paul's close friends. There are called the Church Fathers, and you can find very easily what Church Fathers thought about fornicators who refuse to admit that fornication is both immoral and sinful.
That is true, to a point. So are you saying that if there was a willing member of the other sex, you'd jump on it just because it's there? then you prove that you don't have self-control. Circumstances can make you celibate involuntarily, but the test is when circumstances do not prevent you from having the opportunity. It's a little thing called "character".
Believe me, I know that it's slim pickings. There are an awful lot of truly messed up women out there, an awful lot who say they want a good man, but won't take him when they have him. Same way for women. Real men are few and far between.
But he's becoming an expert on the emotional and psychological effects that a LACK of premarital sex can cause.
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