Breeane Myers has been a little edgy about promising to hold onto her virginity until marriage. Her friends back home tease by saying no one wants to marry a virgin.
“I told my friends I’m going to Washington, D.C., for the True Love Waits rally and explained to them the whole thing and they’re like, `Oh, you’re never going to find a husband-you’re still a virgin,’ ” said the 15-year-old from Dover, Fla.
But as Myers looked over the nearly 200,000 plastic stakes on the National Mall holding signed promises of chastity collected from across the nation for The Great Stake Out, she felt reassured in her beliefs.
“I look at all these people who’ve said that `I’m going to wait until I’m married until I have sex’ . . . and this makes me feel a lot better.”
About 1,000 teenaged boys and girls who had pledged to be “sexually pure” until the day they “enter a covenant marriage relationship” pounded the stakes into the ground of the Mall at dawn Friday. The brightly colored rows of standing, index-sized pledge cards, which had been sent from across the country, made the grassy parkland resemble a miniature Arlington National Cemetery in a spectrum of color.
The youths, overwhelmingly southern and white, are part of an abstinence movement born of the politics of the religious Right that has spread quickly over the last year. Nevertheless, the movement is downplayed by government policymakers and clinic counselors who say contraceptive devices are the best answer to the sharp rise in pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS among teenagers.
More than half of the nation’s teenagers remain virgins until age 17, and 20 percent of adolescents abstain from sexual intercourse throughout their teens, according to a recently published report. But by age 18, just over 70 percent of youths have had sex, concluded the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit research affiliate of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Of the nation’s sexually active teenagers, about one-quarter-or 3 million-contract a sexually transmitted disease each year, including 40,000 to 50,000 infected with the AIDS-causing virus, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study cited by the institute. Pregnancy among teenagers has reached an all-time high, with 11.7 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds becoming pregnant each year, according to the Guttmacher study.
To combat the idea that teens will inevitably have sex, Richard Ross, a youth ministry consultant for the Southern Baptist Convention, started the True Love Waits campaign about a year ago at Tulip Grove Baptist Church in Nashville. The campaign, which teaches that the Bible outlaws premarital sex, is aimed not at teens determined to have sex or those already committed to abstaining, but at the still large group who are undecided.
“They are simply living day by day, responding to the pressures of the day,” Ross said. “We have seriously underestimated the willingness of that middle group to choose abstinence. Virtually no group of adults in our society has carried to that middle group the positive advantages of waiting.”
The movement, which appeals to adults who believe the Clinton administration’s new condom ad campaign encourages teen sex, spread through the Southern Baptist Convention and to other fundamentalist churches and organizations.
Cindy Moore of Danville, Ill., is a school counselor who joined the campaign immediately and accompanied her son, Grady, 14, and students to Washington this week.
“Today’s society is saying to kids, `Safe sex,’ ” Moore said. “We are saying to them, `We don’t think you are strong enough.’ “
An abstinence-based curriculum developed in Illinois by Kathleen Sullivan, the founder of Project Reality (formerly Project Respect), has provided its “Sex Respect” and “Facing Reality” material to thousands of schools nationwide.
“Abstinence really needs to be a part of every sex education campaign, but it cannot be the sole part,” said Judith DeSarno, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents 4,000 reproductive health clinics, including Planned Parenthood clinics.
DeSarno said many young women cannot identify with moralistic slogans like “Pet your dog, not your date,” because they come from disadvantaged families, where they feel most valued when pregnant.
