This is my Gift for You

According to a study from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, it appears that abstinence until marriage pledges don’t  seem to make any difference in the likelihood of a teenager’s sexual behavior. The major public response of individuals that have reached any age between 13 and dead is, “Well, duh!”

Janet E. Rosebaum published the new article in Pediatrics evaluating how 17 year-old teenagers who say, “Listen, I’ll write my name down and take this stupid pledge if you shut up, leave me alone, and stop looking at me like I’m a whore,”  mysteriously and amazingly have sex by the age of 21, with a variable number of partners. The study itself reveals that students who have pledged for virginity are just as likely to have sex as students who receive the same sex education and have not pledged to virginity are. Furthermore, the study reveals that teenagers who do pledge to virginity are less likely to use a condom or practice actual safe sex than those  who don’t.

This aspect of the study is also creating an impact on not only sex education levels, but sex intelligence levels of students (education being the amount of facts a student knows, and intelligence being their ability to apply facts and other knowledge.) Preparing for a new study, researchers are noting that somehow students are lacking enough sexual intelligence to believe that saying, “No, I won’t” during Phys Ed., is enough preparation for when a libido says, “Oh, yes, you will!” For people who have lived between the ages where puberty ends and death, most are asking how anyone could allow a student to think that. “Look at the amount of literature that has been written about youthful proclivities towards sex,” says a concerned English teacher, “If Shakespeare knows that teenagers are going to make rash, sexual decisions even with the full weight of the Catholic church on them, why don’t we?”

“This is what we call a ’sexual intelligence crisis’,” explains Professor Holbert of Berkeley. “Not just for the students, but for the people coming up with this information. This reveals a ‘Too cool for school’ mindset, but instead it’s more of a, ‘Too cool to be a raging ball of hormones’ mindset. Student’s need to be aware that if they put themselves in situations that can become sexually charged, they’re going to be idiot, raging balls of hormones and need to be able to handle their stupid decisions in the safest manner possible.”

There is opposition to the results. “The author inaccurately equates the holistic breadth of an abstinence education program to the one-time event of a virginity pledge,” says Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, “A pledge and an abstinence program are not synonymous.” This is an assumption that researchers must contend with. “We can’t say students who have taken the pledge have mentally ‘completed’ the program,” says sociologist Jennifer Whitberg, “I mean, at the point of being asked to take a pledge like that, most students realize the severe retardation of the curriculum, go through the motions of taking the pledge, and end up getting their information from a place that’s a little more grounded in reality; such as the guy they buy their pot from.” Of course, just because the students believe their new sources are grounded in reality, Whitberg adds “It doesn’t mean they are actually reliable.” Meanwhile, the students who don’t take the pledge may view themselves as challenging the program, so they “scrutinize it for what little, relevant information is available,” which allows them to discover that condoms do exist, and are useful.

Valerie Huber contends that the study reveals a later age at which students are becoming sexually active, which is not average for their peers. Of course, being that abstinence only programs are the only programs are allowed in public schools, research is now being done to discover what peers public school students may have that don’t receive the education. “This study looked only at individuals who have specific skills that are taught or reinforced in an abstinence program, so we are not at all surprised that they abstained about 4 years longer than their peers. This study simply reinforces the need to continue the skill building practices found in a typical abstinence-centered class,” Valerie Huber literally says.  Literally. No, there’s no joke here, that was actually said, and investigation is underway to discover what possible programs could be proposed for continued abstinence education among college aged and adult students that will not be laughed out of existence for trying to prevent pre-marital sex amongst people who live outside partental supervision, and are legally allowed to drink.

Parents who support the program are also thrilled with this prospect. “If my child is waiting until 20, or even at least 18 to have sex, instead of 17, well when he goes and has sex without a condom like these kids are likely to do, I can at least callously throw him out of my house without being charged with negligence!” says ecstatic mother, Tracey Smith.  ”21’s close,” says Matthew Rodriguez, “I’d rather have them off my health insurance when they start having sex, especially if it’s likely to be without condoms.”

The NAEA itself is expected to maintain its position. In its literature to parents, it states that it wants to safeguard children who are most likely not psychologically and emotionally developed enough to deal with the physical and emotional impacts of sex. “The program’s working if kids are waiting until they’re adults; in essence it’s doing its most basic goal,” says an efficiency analyst, “Even if when they do start having sex, they start having the most dangerous and riskiest sex because they mistakenly believe that condoms have a 44% failure rate due to the education they receive from the current materials out for abstinence only education, at least they’ll be 21, and that should make being diagnosed with HIV much easier for them.”