The Blog of Harald

I land firmly on the “sex education good” side of the fence, so I like seeing study results like these :

CBS News | ‘Abstaining’ Teens Still Get STDs

bq. Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those who don’t pledge abstinence, according to a study that examined the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents.

bq. Those who make a public pledge to abstain until marriage delay sex, have fewer sex partners and get married earlier, according to the data, gathered from adolescents ages 12 to 18 who were questioned again six years later. But the two groups’ STD rates were statistically similar.

And the kicker:

bq. The problem, the study found, is that those virginity “pledgers” are much less likely to use condoms.

I’ll have to go dig up the other study I found that showed that self-described “abstainers” were, in fact, having lots of sexual contact (with multiple partners); they sidestepped their “vow” by redefining “sex” as “full penetration”. Well surprise, surprise; you can get STDs other ways :-)