There are few things held in more disdain by the "mainstream" media quite like people serious about their faith and traditional sexual mores. So imagine the pleasure of the media when a report came out that teens who signed purity pledges to remain chaste until marriage were not any different in their sexual behavior than teens who didn’t sign them. “Hah, see it is all a sham!” crowed the media. From the Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn Like A Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex :
The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.
Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in.
"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."
But not so fast…
Here's the rub: It just isn't true.
In fact, the only way the study's author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. The study is called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.
The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of both the Red Cross and the National Institutes of Health. Today she serves as health editor for U.S. News & World Report. And in her dispatch on this study, Dr. Healy pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."
What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:
- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.
- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.
- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.
- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.
- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.
Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."
So the reality is that virginity pledges aside, the bigger factor in teen sexual behavior is their religious upbringing. Far from being a discouragement, this should encourage parents that what they are teaching their children has an impact on the way they live later on. The numbers are still very disturbing and we still live in a sensuality driven culture that wars against what we try to instill in our kids, but the effort is worth the while. (jumping on soap box) I would still insist that trying to stem the tide of the secular worldview with a couple of heart to heart talks, an hour of Sunday school and another hour of youth group is not going to counteract the pervasive diet of sexual permissiveness that is rampant in public schools (jumping off soap box) .
This is yet another example of selective “reporting” designed to twist data to reach a predetermined outcome. This was not accidental. It is either sloppy journalism or more likely a willful attempt to twist data to push an agenda. That agenda is a simple one, and one that manifests itself in ways subtle and not-so subtle and seeks to tear down every wall of morality in our society and give cover to every sort of sin. We do a fine job of justifying our own sins as it is; I am a champion at it. I certainly don’t need the media helping me out in trying to rationalize away my own sinful behavior. Every Christian, heck any thinking person period, needs to examine what is coming out of media reports with a keen eye. All the more reason to base our worldview on the unchanging rock of Scripture. Media fads come and go but the Word of God is true and endures forever!
(Dr. Mohler featured this issue on his radio program Tuesday, I haven’t downloaded it to my iPod yet but I am sure it was excellent!)
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