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PhotographySome people do think it is morally wrong to have sexual intercourse before marriage. I will not go into the historical details from which this tradition derives, but want to point out that in the olden times women were considered ready for wedding (and bedding) after their first flowering. I don’t say that’s a good thing, but I underline that the whole no-sex-before-marriage thing was a different one back when the whole business started, because before the marriage women were usually 12, and not 22 (like today).
Anyway, it has religious roots, and is a religious thing. And because the Church is more and more seen as a rather immoral institution in the public, they can’t really work with ethical arguments anymore. So they try to make up new reasons, medical ones, for example.
The current Pope was the first to announce that wearing condoms actually increases the chances of getting AIDS – he did that last year at a press conference in Africa. I was shocked and outraged, and still hold that he should be imprisoned for that statement.
The health care reform in the US (which President Obama signed recently) includes $250 million for abstinence-focused education. The reason for this is that “sex before marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects” (yes, that is actually a quote).
Now, there are two things nearly everybody likes – one of them is pizza. If one wants to avoid that his children become obese and die of arteriosclerosis with 30, one will have to teach them why eating too much pizza can be bad, and why a bit of pizza now and then will most probably not have adverse side effects – as crossing the street responsibly will most probably not get you killed (unless you live in Moscow, but that’s another story entirely).
It’s all about responsible behavior, about common-sense, about judicious assessments of situations. Telling children they mustn’t eat pizza (“because I say so, and I am your father!”) might work for some, but it clearly won’t work for the majority, and that is very well known.
The same applies to the second thing most people enjoy very much – sex. It’s a rather basic human thing, we’re more or less built to enjoy it. Having sex in a responsible way – and that, fortunately, does neither say something about the quality nor quantity of sex – has extremely little chances of causing physical harm. But the side-effects can be severe, if certain measures (CONDOMS!!) are ignored.
Let’s take another look at the abstinence programmes: “Abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems”.
Yes! That is entirely true. Not crossing streets will clearly reduce the chances of getting overrun by a car – from 0.0004% to 0.0000%. Is that tiny little bit of risk reduction worth staying at home all the time?
Not being born will most definitely reduce the chances of dying … if you catch my drift.
People simply do cross streets. And they have sex. So please tell them how to do it, and how to do it responsibly. Children and adolescents deserve to be informed, in order to make their own choices! That’s what freedom is all about. Freedom of choice, on the basis of unbiased information.
Now, the good thing is that there are programmes doing exactly that. I have two friends (one living in Berlin, one in Edinbourg) who are currently doing MA programmes in Psychology regarding (sexual) health education. And there are a number of institutes as well. Heather Boonstra is senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive and sexual health research firm in the US. She says it is troubling that $250 million will be spent on state programmes that have not been shown to work.
“Just the fact that we continue to pour money into programs that have no evidence of effectiveness at all just doesn’t seem to us to be good evidence-based health policy.”
She quotes different studies. One of them (congressionally mandated study in 2007) found that “none of four abstinence programs showed a significant positive effect on sexual behavior among youth”. Another one (January 2009) “found that religious teens who take virginity pledges are less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active, and just as likely to have sex before marriage as their peers who didn’t take pledges”.
One last thing I want to point out: sex is important for nearly all close relationships I know. With some people, sex works very well, with others it does not. It is the same with humour really … if you would be forced to marry someone without ever having talked to that person, it would reduce the chances of a stable and longlasting relationship quite a bit, I’d argue.
The same applies to sex. It is clearly not the single most important thing, but it is one of many dimension that simply need to fit properly in order to have a healthy relationship. Forcing people to ignore a possible “mis-fit” before marrying is just another way of rising the changes of divorce.
— Source: cnn.com
(I also want to use the opportunity to link to Stephen Fry’s talk about the Catholic Church and sex again – it’s worth watching)
April 2nd, 2010 at 02:21
…Marry me. <3
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:26
I’d need to know first if your current wife is as hot as she looks on FB :p
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:37
Interesting thing, calling the catholic church immoral. I absolutely agree, considering the recent revelations about abuse.
I don’t think that the concept of no-sex-before-marriage has religious roots. I think it had practical ones. I think it made sure that there was someone to provide for the family. The fact that nowadays it’s the churches that promote that concept has more to do with their conservatism than their religion.
What surprises me is how openly stupid church representatives (and politicians) can be and get away with it. Maybe I should stay abstinent from news, that way I’m absolutely safe from stupidity.
April 2nd, 2010 at 12:18
Religion is a practical thing, I consider it very advantageous in terms of social evolution (and always use the example of two tribes, one with Christian laws, and another with laws like “rape your children regularly” or “eat your elders”).
Therefor I would argue that you can’t really seperate these two things, practicality and religion.
“Maybe I should stay abstinent from news, that way I’m absolutely safe from stupidity.”
Haha, very well said!
April 2nd, 2010 at 15:32
Ah, did I have that Fry video from you? I tend to forget quite fast where I get my stuff from as I just save most of it for later inspection.
Regarding the catholic approach I can state that reasonable people there dont advocate “no sex before marriage”, but also go the “be responsible with everything” path. When I asked for an explanation some years ago, I was told though that it was common law back in the good ol’ days to prevent sexual diseases from spreading. The logic is quite simple: If everyone sticks to one partner (more or less), there is only a very low chance of infections. I am not 100% sure that the Bible tells no word on this topic, but if you look at the first couple of books, there is an abundance of sex scenes with anyone except the partner, and in most cases God does not intervene and the connotations are fine. So it almost has to be not of religious origin, but a common law of times where prevention and contraception technology was not as developed as today. Still today we have some STDs that are still dangerous. I think the case is closed when you make your valid point that total abstinence leads to total security, but is not in the scope of most of the people. Responsibility is the way to go. But it will take another century or two (if ever) until that message reaches the Vatican.
On a side note, I wonder more and more how the catholic church intends to substitute closeness and the feeling of being loved among their clerics. The celibacy forbids any closer relation and afaik being close (hugging etc.) to other people is a primary human drive. None of the other monotheistic religions know celibacy of this amount – for a reason, I would say.
Throughout the text you mention the $250 mill. subsidies for sex ed. They were only included into the bill to get it signed. Dont think anyone outside the conservative camp believes in the seriousness and salience of this part of the bill. The conservatives demanded it, so they got their goodie. It was a silencer, nothing more.
April 13th, 2010 at 16:39
I’m not sure if you heard about the Fry video from me first, but yep, I had it in one of my church-bashing postings a couple of months ago.
“Reasonable people in the Catholic Church”, huh. I know very reasonable people, no doubt. The problem is, that they tend to do important things, and stop climbing in the hierarchy. A well known problem, it’s the same with politicians really.
And, very honestly: I don’t buy the sexual disease thing. Yes, it works. That’s what I call social evolution. A group of people being rather nice to each other will survive better than a group with the rules “eat your children” and “kill your grandparents”. I can’t believe the rules were done on purpose in order to “protect humanity”.
Interesting comment about the closeness issue, to be very honest I have no idea if this is true or not, I have never heard of it before, that’s for sure.
April 20th, 2010 at 20:01
Eine kurze Anregung: Die besagte Afrika-Predigt des Papstes mal im Zusammenhang lesen. Ich habe das auf Anregung eines reichlich säkularen Mediums mal getan und war plötzlich ziemlich irritiert über die öffentliche Empörung. Der Papst hatte gut recherchiert und sauber formuliert. (Und das schreibe ich als jemand, der prinzipiell einiges gegen die Verhütungs- und Sexualmoral-policies der kath. Kirche hat.)
April 20th, 2010 at 22:44
Danke für die Recherche. Ich habe die Zitate übernommen, die tagesschau.de und sueddeutsche.de abgedruckt hatten, das waren 2 zusammenhängende Sätze, obgleich ich mich nicht mehr an den Wortlaut erinnere.
Aber im Prinzip stand da, dass Kondome AIDS nicht nur nicht einschränken, sondern sogar fördern, ziemlich direkt. Wurde dass von den Medien tatsächlich so falsch zitiert?