This is consistent with my anecdotal experience.

Though to be honest, I would not fault abstinence education or make the inference that religious teens are dumb or anything like that. No one ever told me how to use a condom (er...is it really that hard, if you'll forgive my pun?).

The problem was that shame and fear was not enough for most people to say no...but certainly prevented them from presenting a box of condoms for a middle aged man to scan at the drugstore or grocery store. Even in college I knew people who were embarrassed to buy condoms (a public activity) more than they were to violate the moral code they supposedly believed in (though I can understand, that is a private activity...hopefully, anyway.)

I wonder if the age of the pledges was taken into consideration. I noticed growing up that there was strong peer pressure (on the surface) to be part of these abstinent pledge things when you are A) at the youth group meeting on Wed. nights and/or some of your YL friends are in your class, or B) in middle school and the first half of high school. In college there is the added pressure of the meat market of campus christian activities (supposedly for marriage, those energies have to be channeled somewhere).

I'm sure some of my friends here might be horrified to know that I particiated in several abstinence rallies (including one where we stuck little promisory notes in the grass on the Mall in Washington DC) when I was in high school.

Maybe I'm a freak, though, because when I became sexually active I NEVER entertained the thought of not using protection! Abstinence education did not make me stupid, even though I sincerely believed in it at the time. There's got to be more to this story.

-Kitty, mama to Fiona, Thomas, and Dylan.