why practice abstinence?
More important, though, an emphasis on abstinence as “sex education” trivializes the issue of healthy sexuality and allows it to be defined by the forces operating in the broader culture. And if you don’t think boundaries of healthy sexuality are blurred these days, consider the study that found that middle-school girls who performed oral sex on classmates claimed they were not sexually active. Were they in danger of getting pregnant? No. Of getting a sexually transmitted disease? Probably not. Were both the girls and the boys degrading themselves, abusing their God-given sexuality and setting themselves up for alienation and self-destructiveness? Absolutely. Consider G.K. Chesterton’s comment on the subject: “A young man may keep himself from vice by continually thinking of disease. He may keep himself from it also by continually thinking of the Virgin Mary. There may be question about which method is the more reasonable, or even about which is the most efficient. But surely there can
