Virgin counterculture emerging

A growing number of teens are “Choosing Virginity,” as highlighted in a headline atop a cover story in Newsweek magazine Dec. 9.
   
“Visit any American high school and you’ll likely find a growing number of students who … have decided to remain chaste until marriage,” Newsweek says of “this wave of young adults … a new counterculture, one clearly at odds with the mainstream media and their routine use of sex to boost ratings and peddle product.”
   
And, Newsweek acknowledges, the growing abstinence movement has been “largely fostered by cultural conservatives and evangelical Christians.”
   
Since 1993, LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention has sponsored a worldwide campaign to challenge students to choose abstinence. More than a million young people have signed True Love Waits covenant cards, which state: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”
   
To back up his words, the Bush administration plans to increase federal funding for abstinence programs by nearly a third, to $135 million in 2003.
   
Teenagers appear to be taking notice of the abstinence message — a recent Centers for Disease Control report noted that the number of high school students who said they’ve never had sexual intercourse rose by nearly 10 percent between 1991 and 2001.
   
Newsweek found some of those students and questioned them about their decisions to abstain. Some said religion had played a role in their decision, others said it hadn’t.
   
Lenee Young, a 19-year-old college student in Atlanta, decided in high school that sexual activity was not the best option for her after she observed the behavior of so many peers who did not choose to wait.
   
“I feel that part of me hasn’t been triggered yet,” she told the magazine. “Sex is one of those things you can’t miss until you have it.”
   
Last summer, Young and her friends attended a Silver Ring Thing in Pittsburgh, a free event that combined music videos and live teen comedy sketches with messages about the dangers of premarital sex. Teens can purchase a silver ring and a Bible for $12, and at the end of the program, they recite a pledge of abstinence and put on their rings, Newsweek said. Then they have a bonfire and dance to celebrate their decisions.
   
Latoya Huggins, an 18-year-old living in a rough neighborhood in New Jersey, told Newsweek that peer pressure is heavy as young people in her world engage in sex outside marriage. But Huggins told the magazine she started thinking seriously about abstinence five years ago when a national outreach program called Free Teens began teaching classes at her church.
   
Alice Kunce, an 18-year-old who described herself as a regular churchgoer, Sunday School teacher and feminist, told Newsweek that religion was not the reason she chose abstinence.
   
“One of the empowering things about the feminist movement is that we’re able to assert ourselves, to say no to sex and not feel pressured about it,” she told the magazine. Kunce also said that besides fears of pregnancy and STDs, she is not emotionally mature enough for the deep intimacy sexual encounters can bring.
   
Among the statistics Newsweek quoted in its Dec. 9 issue regarding teens and sex:
   
–More than one-third of U.S. high schools teach abstinence until marriage and 700 abstinence programs spread the news that sex can wait in all 50 states.
   
–Teens are making these choices at a time when the most recent study shows that more than 80 percent of Americans didn’t make it to their wedding night as virgins.
   
The True Love Waits (TLW) theme for the current year, “True Love Waits Goes Home,” reflects a broadened wording of the TLW commitment, stating: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.”
   
In connection with the emphasis, LifeWay released a new “True Love Waits Goes Home Manual” in October for use by youth ministers, volunteer leaders, families and other student leaders. (BP)