Not Much Else Going On, So How About Some Abstinence Talk?

Aimee Short (of the BreakDown abstinence Shorts, as ABB might say) is back. She left a lengthy comment while I was away, so I've not gotten around to responding until now. I'll give her this much; she's persistent.

Now about the blog posted on June 18th in response to my comment. It is encouraging to know that the blogger is not heartless and has the ability to step away from her strong opinions and see not just the values of another person, but the PERSON behind those values. It's easy to put another person into a box that they do not deserve when you know very little about them or what they really do. I have been guilty of that myself from time to time. But, I do not, nor does BreakDown as an organization fit into the "abstinence" box.

There is one major difficulty that I have with this blog. It is stated as a fact that "Ms. Short offers no solution beyond don't have sex." Now how would you know that? Have you been to a high school classroom with me anytime over the last 6 years while I am teaching a 5 hour course on sex, abstinence and relationships? How can you be so sure that I say "just say no" for 5 hours and throw a ring or a pledge card at the students as they are running as fast as they can from my class? Let me answer my own question. Because you put me, and the entire "abstinence movement" into a tiny little box.

Well, like you are with your responses to the postings and comments on my blog, I'm only going with the information I have. The newspaper articles I referenced didn't give details about the curriculum of your five-hour classes; they focused on encouraging abstinence through dancing and positive messages about self-worth. If I came away with the impression that your abstinence program presented an overly simplified view of human sexuality, it's because that's how it was presented.

You are correct when you say that sex is a powerful, powerful thing. I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I do what I do. Because sex is so powerful it has the potential to be so painful. 2 minutes of sex can destroy a lifetime. Young people usually find this out the hard way. I just want to be the voice of encouragement that inspires some young people to avoid the consequences all together, possibly even save their lives. People can write what they want and criticize, but I for one do not want to be remembered for sitting back and allowing the young people around me to have the accuse that nobody cared enough to tell them the truth and that they are worth more than our society gives them credit for. I want to be one who offers hope of a better way, inspires young people to believe in and value themselves, their bodies and their futures.

I'm all over that. Seriously, I am. Could it be that you've done your own bit of box-building, assuming that people like me, who object to abstinence-only education, are hedonists trying to rid society of the last remaining strictures against personal pleasure at all costs? I think abstinence is absolutely necessary for the vast majority of teenagers. Hell, there are plenty of emotionally immature or unstable adults who would do well to take a vow fo chastity until they get their personal shit together.

My objection has never been to the idea of abstinence for kids, but to the school of thought that demands abstinence education be completely devoid of accurate information about physiology and birth control methods. Let's face it--if you communicate your message of abstinence effectively enough, if it really takes root in a kid's head, the additional knowledge about condoms and less risky sexual behaviors is not going to compel him to run out and have sex despite truly believing he shouldn't. If your message doesn't convince a kid to remain abstinent until marriage, accurate information about safer sex practices will greatly reduce the risk of him impregnating someone or contracting a disease. I mean, it was drilled into me fairly early in life that shooting people is wrong. Subsequently learning to fire a rifle when I was in high school didn't make me more disposed to chuck my moral framework and start plinking folks from a clock tower.

I fail to understand how presenting the full spectrum of information necessary for healthy sexual behavior falls into the category of disrespecting kids, or is somehow designed to convince them their intrinsic worth is less than if we don't bother to teach them about condoms, or mutual masturbation, or piggybacking barrier contraception with the pill.

Yes, I understand that abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and STDs. I truly hope that your curriculum does all you claim, that you present kids with realistic, workable options for making good choices and protecting themselves against coercion. I simply don't believe that withholding information about protection is morally defensible, given human nature and the extent to which teenagers are hard-wired to get it on. Yes, I believe that humans can rise above their instincts, if you want to look at it that way, and that teaching kids accurately about the risks of sexual behavior should and can make them decide to put it off until they're physically and emotionally ready. But knowledge about contraception has to be there as a backup. Withholding that knowledge puts kids at sea without a life raft, and I find that unconscionable.

Good old anecdotal evidence can prove anything you want it to, but I was fully versed in the physiology of reproduction from a young age. The sex ed curriculum in my grammar school covered the range of contraception available at that time, along with the effectiveness rates of each when used correctly. It also talked about the emotional risks of becoming sexually active too early. I decided I wasn't ready to do something that had even the remotest chance of landing me in the spot my parents found themselves in as teenagers (namely, pregnant with me and frog-marched to the altar). I made it through high school with my virginity intact, and when I later became sexually active, it was a carefully considered decision fortified with highly reliable, properly used birth control. My sole pregnancy was carefully planned, the baby wanted. Storybook. And in that storybook, knowledge is power.

So keep fighting your good fight, Aimee. I hope you can understand why those of us on this side of the fence think your curriculum should be augmented with precise instruction on what to do should the individual's informed conscience lead him or her into sexual activity before marriage.

Massive Sunday Morning: A Response to Aimee Short

Last month I wrote a post that mentioned a Christian abstinence-promoting teen dance group that plans to travel to Uganda to help Ugandans find God and swear off sex until marriage (please ignore the maddening formatting-that-didn't-quite-take and just read). I was less than optimistic about their chances of success and more than a little cynical about the entire aggressive abstinence movement as a whole.

The founder of the Tucson chapter of the group, one Aimee Short, took the time to leave a lengthy comment on the entry, so I'll return the favor and respond to the points she raised.

I was a virgin on my wedding night. If you knew what happened with my marriage you would feel like a jerk for even attempting to presume I did anything wrong. And just so everyone knows, I will not have sex again until I am married.

I respect Ms. Short's intention to not have sex until she gets married again, and am genuinely sorry for whatever hurt she experienced that makes this even more imperative for her than just religious conviction. I know too many women who have experienced sexual and emotional abuse to ever belittle someone's personal experience, so I do apologize for seemingly callous remarks.

Nobody is trying to deny any young person of having fun or "getting their freak on" as you put it. We ARE trying to help young people avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, STDs, and the emotional heartbreak associated with pre-marital sex.

I am not even going to try and convince the readers of this blog (which I am sure already share your viewpoint, however uneducated it may be) that what we do helps teenagers and that it is effective.

My viewpoint may have come across as a bit snarky, so I'll try to explain it clearly. While I simply do not believe that all people need to abstain from sex until they're married, I do believe that it's a big mistake to be sexually active before you're emotionally mature enough to handle it. Our brains are hard-wired to go, go, go, and what seemed like a great idea at the time can come back to bite you in the ass the next morning, or even five minutes later, if you went into it thinking true love and the other person was just looking to get off.

Sex can be a powerful, powerful thing and has the potential to create emotional trauma. It can be bad enough when you make a mistake that's just centered on you (damn, that was stupid, he/she was just using me; crap, I was drunk, I hope she doesn't call me back). It can be a hundred times worse when your mistake also means you broke a sacred vow you signed your name to, let down your parents who thought you were great because you were a virgin, and pissed off your god.

And it can be a million billion gazillion times worse when all of the above happens and--because your abstinence education didn't provide it and your personal abstinence pledge gave you a compelling reason not to research it--you either didn't use protection or used it incorrectly because you had no idea how it works. And that's where the problem lies. Ms. Short says she's trying to help kids avoid pregnancy and STDs, but offers no solutions beyond "don't have sex."

That advice is golden in a perfect world, but does exactly nothing to protect people who get caught up in the moment, or in situations they have zero preparation for because they were told--and told themselves--that they simply would never do that. The membership of Short's own group belies that assumption; at least one guy, quoted anonymously in the original newspaper article this story came from, admitted to losing his virginity at 14, although he's since re-committed himself to abstinence. Did he use a condom? The paper didn't say. If any of the other BreakDown dancers get carried away at some point and have a sexual encounter, will they know how to protect themselves? Look at the numbers of abstinence-pledge kids who engage in oral or anal sex because they don't think it's the "real sex" that their pledges proscribe. I don't think those activities are inherently immoral, but they are risky from a physical health perspective and carry the same potential for emotional trauma good old penis-vagina sex does.

The other problem I have with the abstinence movement is the need of its proponents to formalize the decision and cover it with so many symbolic and ritualistic trappings that it moves into the realm of the sacramental--which comes with its own attendant problems (my, I'm feeling self-referential today). I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of kids wearing jewelry serving as a prominent statement about their sexuality. Deciding you're not going to engage in sex for recreation is admirable, but wearing the locket or ring every day seems, in my heathen opinion, to put an inappropriate emphasis on a kid's sexuality, to draw more attention to it--even when it's in the negative sense--than is warranted. But that's just me.

Where this becomes troublesome in my mind is when the kid who has made such a huge deal about being abstinent stumbles and does something. When the girl who's gone to the Purity Ball with her dad, or done the Silver Ring Thing and made her pledge in front of the group and wears the ring ends up having sex anyway. Hard enough to wake up the next morning after doing something you feel violates your own personal principles, your own private promise to yourself. Throw in betraying your community and all hell breaks loose.

I suppose that's the point; fear of tribal approbation keeps most people in line to some extent. And, the Abstainers might argue, if there's no threat of shame or other consequence hanging over your head, what's the point of making a promise in the first place? I simply prefer to see more holistic approaches taken that do not require perfection in order to be effective, and that includes acknowledging, accepting, and being honest about realities that don't conform to your ideal world. Vaginal sex doesn't always result in pregnancy or STD--but it can, so you need to be prepared. Oral and anal sex don't always result in STD--but they can, so you need to be prepared. Pre-marital sex does not always result in heartbreak--but it can be very messy indeed, so yes, you need to be abstinent if you're not emotionally mature enough to handle the potential trainwreck.

The last point the Abstince Movement regularly fails to acknowledge is that a marriage license and minister's blessing don't magically make you immune to either STDs or heartbreak. A woman can be a virgin who's never been with a man unaccompanied and still end up with a nasty virus on her wedding night if her husband was neither "pure" nor careful in his youth. Sexual abuse still happens within marriage, as does sexual incompatibility. In short, human sexuality is maddeningly and wonderfully complicated. Just saying no before marriage will solve some problems, but it ain't a magic fix for everything, and it isn't free of its own unintended side effects.

Endnote: My concern that BreakDown's message is overly simplistic for Uganda stands. Emphasizing self-esteem and self-worth as reasons to decline sex outside of a committed relationship, especially for teenagers, and especially for girls, is a praise-worthy goal. But it's hard enough to make that kind of thinking stick in America. I'm not sure that trying to transplant that model wholesale onto another culture will be hugely successful without simultaneously (or first) addressing the issues of gender inequality, the sexual expression of male power and dominance, and poverty.

Arizona Daily Star of Bethlehem

The Tucson Daily Star was purchased by Lee Enterprises some time ago, maybe a year, maybe a bit more, went through a couple of editors and format changes, and now appears to be seriously challenging the Phoenix paper for the coveted position as biggest religious trumpet in Arizona. Faced with so many choices for today's above-the-fold front page story, the editors bypassed the rising earthquake toll in Indonesia, the anti-American riots in Kabul, another 48+ dead in a Baghdad bombing, and the deaths and critical injuries suffered by a CBS news crew in a separate bombing for this story about a Christian teen abstinence dance group.

The real news was tucked away on page 2, conveniently flogged as "a second Page One" for national news, in the Star's quest to place local news more prominently. Yet again, a piece far more suited to the Accent section (if not the Sunday morning religion page) is popped into the hot spot, complete with links to more articles about faith.

Don't get me wrong. The fewer kids getting pregnant the better, and if taking an abstinence pledge contributes to that, great. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way, and the abstinence kids are at least as likely as the rest of us to engage in sexual activity before marriage; unlike the rest of us, they haven't--for the most part--been properly educated about the physiology of human reproduction, STD transmission, or barrier contraceptive methods. They're more likely to engage in oral or anal sex because they think only penis-vagina action is banned.

More disturbing is the fact that they're taking this act on the road in a huge way:

On July 14, BreakDown will travel to Kampala, Uganda, where it will connect with pastor and Pentecostal leader Alex Mitala with hopes of educating Ugandans about finding God and waiting until marriage to have sex.

Though they will not be promoting the use of condoms, group members hope their message, which is also anti-abortion, will help reduce the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

Phenomenal. I hope they include some mention of marital fidelity in their spiel, and perhaps also do something to disabuse men of the belief that sex with a virgin cures HIV, and maaaaaaybe clue the Ugandan women in on the fact that being married won't do shit to keep you healthy if your husband comes to the relationship already infected. I'm not holding my breath on that one, though.

The founder of the Tucson group is one Aimee Short.

Short's paying job is director of the Sexual Abstinence Values Education Program for Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Tucson, where her mother also works, and where Short said she practically grew up.

She practically grew up in a conservative Christian setting, so perhaps we should not be surprised that

Short, who was married briefly in her early 20s, also has re-pledged.

There seem to be plenty of those folks in this movement--they got their freak on as teenagers and young adults, but now get to "re-pledge" and become not just virgins again, but righteous virgins set on shaming other teenagers and young adults out of any sexual experience, set on reducing sex ed for these people to "don't." Maybe it's because the ringleaders of these movements know full well that they don't work, but will result in more pregnancies incurred by young women who have been taught that the only resolution to their shameful behavior is to have the babies and bring 'em up as succeeding generations of uninformed true believers who will beget prodigious numbers of their own uninformed progeny.

Anyway. Thank you, Daily Star, for the news that matters.