Time Magazine's article "The Pursuit of Purity" in their July 28, 2008 issue gushes on the purity ball. It's an event where a father and daughter go to a glorified high school prom and the child can make a promise to take on abstinence, or at the very least promise not to be entirely sexually promiscuous. Another article on abstinence verses the call for contraceptives. Two paragraphs jumped out at me in this article. One outlines the pros of making virginity pledges. They are as follows:
Virginity Pledgers
PRO:
- do postpone having sex longer
- have fewer partners
- get pregnant less often
- if they make it through college, are twice as likely to graduate from college
The article goes also speaks to the other side and says, "...there is no evidence that giving kids complete and accurate information about sex and contraception encourages promiscuity".
As much as I support abstinence, I do think that what we teach in our schools in not the reason so many teens engage in sexual activity with numerous partners. The research is done. Turn on your television and watch any teen show or worse, adult show (need I mention MTV?). Yes, these boys and girls on screen battle with tough issues that real kids face every day: homosexuality, pregnancy, sexual promiscuity and other topics.
Often times there is a good moral, and often times the characters receive real life consequences, but not always.
Honestly, good moral or not, when every television show shows kids dealing with these issues, the issues become normal. All of a sudden, it's not the worst thing in the world for a teen to lose his or her virginity and have multiple partners. They've seen it done a hundred times, on television.
I know the effects myself. Sometimes I will read a couple books in a week or watch a few movies that all contain sexuality (which is sometimes hard to avoid) and all of a sudden, I think I could just go sleep with a random person. It's far-fetched, I admit. The television in no way pulls me over to a random stranger and commands me to sleep with him. But it does make the activity seem more normal and more desirable than it did before. For some teens, that's all it takes to push them over the very thin line. It's certainly not a black and white issue, but that doesn't mean we should overlook the obvious.
