Kids that make chastity pledges are not keeping them. Well I never.
The debate over sex education vs abstinence rages on in the US. There are pitfalls with either approach. But a comment by an abstinence advocate who tours schools caught my eye;
(Yet) the effect of all that “sex ed”, argued Keith Deltano, a former teacher who tours schools advocating abstinence, is that the average American is exposed to between 240,000 and 480,000 sex acts before reaching the age of 18.
I have no idea what he means. Do you?
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8 comments:
No. I suspect he doesn't know know what he's talking about either. However it makes school sound a lot more interesting then when I went.
Yeah, America. Can't wait to get over there!
Probably a "sex act" is everything from holding hands on a soap opera from a page in a woman's magazine to this guy.
I don't either. But in NZ all the sex-ed imposed on ever younger children seems to have had no effect in slowing the increasing numbers of ex-nuptual births and STDs, quite the reverse in fact.
I have Hannah Bruckman and Peter Bearman's last study into this matter. "After the Promise".
And I can assure you it is junk science.
Basically they examined the rate of STDs amongst virginity pledgers and compared it to the rate amongst non pledgers.
I don't know how you are with staistics Lindsay but the trick they pull is to set up a Null hypothesis: 'There is no difference in the rates of STDS between Pledgers and non pledgers" and the alternative: "the rate of STDs is lower amongst Pledgers".
Then, Stats 101, they examine the data and find that with the data they have cannot reject the Null Hypothesis.
So far so good, but now they claim that this shows that there is no difference in the rates of STDs between the two groups
Not necessarily so, it actually means that there wasn't enough data to conclusively show there was a difference.
Not surprising since their survey population did not contain many pledgers in the first place and even less pledgers with STDs.
From that point they more or less dispense with statistical reasoning altogether and move into double talk to show why pledgers have the same rate of STDs.
Actually buried within the paper you will find that those who took pledges had their first sexual experience far later in life than those who didn't, had far less sexual partners and married younger. (The people in this survey were about 25 when the data was collected.)
The exact same data was analysed by Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., and Jennifer A. Marshall in 2004 and they found Pledgers
Are less likely to experience teen pregnancy;
Are less likely to be sexually active while in high school and as young adults;
Are less likely to give birth as teens or young adults;
Are less likely to give birth out of wedlock;
Are less likely to engage in risky unprotected sex;
Will have had fewer sexual partners.
This study would not of course generate the headlines that the other would.
Liberals do not like chastity, even though people who practice it never have unwanted pregnacies or nor catch STDs.
Both studies have severe limitations but the first actually violates elementary statistical reasoning to make its point.
I doubt this new one will be any better.
Andrei says that they pledgers had sex "far later" than average. All the material I saw put that "far later" at about six months. The state with the most abstinence programs is the Theocratic Republic of Texas. It also has some of the worst rates for teen sex, pregnancy, VD, etc. Nor does he even address the bogus claims of the man you discussed.
Interestingly enough anonymous, the paper "After the promise", cited in my previous comment and actively hostile to the idea of virginity pledges puts the median age for first intercourse for non pledgers at 17 years old.
For "consistant Pledgers" however the median age for first intercourse rises to 19 years.
The second study I cited, and drawn from the same data ussing the same definitions for "consistant pledgers" but using the term "strong pledgers" in its place.
Tabulates the following
Median age for first intercourse
Non Pledgers 16 years 9 months
all pledgers 18 years 8 months
weak pledgers 18 years 3months
Strong pledgers 19 years 9 months
The data source for this was " National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health" A study which followed the health and developemnt of 20,745 American Teenagers from 1995 until 2002 (15,170 (73%) remained in the sample by this time).
I'd suggest to you that those that take virginity pledges do significantly delay their transition to first intercourse.
But of course it is highly plausible that those who make such a committment are more inclined to a later transition to sex in the first place and the pledge is just a public acknowledgemnt to that effect, rather than the cause.
However the yadda yadda yadda that such pledges are worthless and those that take them are screwing like rabbits anyway is just liberal drivel. In fact it is an attempt to make people who have taken a moral stance look like hypocrites.
I suppose watching MTV for a day will already account for a fair percentage of these numbers.
I should have noted before, but better late than never.
The quote Lindsay excerpted from the Times article is not in quotes in that article.
In other words it is not Keith Delatanos exact words but the reporter's paraphrase of them. Therefore if they seem unintelligible blame the reporter not the alledged utterer
What he actually said will forever remain a mystery unless an actual recording of what he said is available.
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