Fri, 17 Jun 2005

Virginity study bashed

Why is this listed in my Asatru section? It's true that heathenry has no real problem with premarital sex, or with sex in general. But what we do have a problem with is what was left out of the Heritage Foundation report, and what US News saved for the last paragraph of the article:

For all the verbal barbs exchanged this week, no one is arguing about the fact that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of teens who take virginity pledges break them.

An oath is a sacred thing, and breaking an oath has serious spiritual repercussions. Encouraging hormone driven teens to take an oath they almost certainly can't keep is only teaching them that pledges and oaths don't matter - which is fine, I suppose, for an "instant salvation" faith like Christianity, even if Jesus himself advised followers to "swear no oath" (Matthew 5:33-37).

But I sometimes suspect that Christians use these kinds of oaths (that they know will be broken) to foster guilt, and then offer redemption. This is often followed in the case of the particular oath under discussion by another required oath, this one to "secondary virginity". And the cycle continues, guilt piling upon guilt, always followed by "salvation" ...

The closest thing we heathens have to a version of the Christian Hell is Nifelhel - which is reserved for murderers, kinslayers and oathbreakers. I'd like to think that those who encourage kids to make false oaths in order to ensnare them in a web of guilt for religious reasons would be consigned to the lowest rung of Nifelhel, if there is such a place.

A report released by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, spurred another skirmish this week in the battle over what teens should be taught in sex ed class. The report criticized a study published in April in the Journal of Adolescent Health, by Hannah Bruckner and Peter Bearman, which found that teens who take virginity pledges have the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as those who do not take the pledges. Made popular by programs such as True Love Waits, virginity pledges, which encourage teens not to have sex until marriage, are a big component of the Bush administration-backed abstinence-education programs.

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

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