VIRGINITY PLEDGES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

This piece was written for YM in 2001 but did not run. A similar story crediting reporting from this piece ran in 2001. Many thanks to the many teenagers who I talked to for this story and thanks to Norwell Middle School for allowing me to attend the sex ed classes. All statistics are from data available in 2001. New data is now available.

by Margie Borschke

Ashley Ferguson just sat there. Every other girl in the classroom, including her good friend Carolee, stood next to their desks smiling nervously and looking left and right to see who else was standing. Ashley, on the other hand, looked down at the Limp Bizkit scrawls on her blue Trapper notebook and wondered what everyone else was thinking of her. Anne Munson, a cheerful 32 year old woman with curly dark hair, smiled broadly and handed anyone who was standing (that is to say, everyone but Ashley) something that looked like a credit card. "It's kind of cool," Munson squeaked. Ashley knew this was coming. This was the climax of a mandatory five-day course for eighth graders at Norwell Middle School. "You can make a stand for abstinence," said Munson, an instructor from True Life Choices, a group contracted by the public school board to teach "Creating Positive Relationships." And yet Ashley was sitting.

Ashley is 14 and lives in the nearby city of Fort Wayne, Indiana. She's wearing jeans, like every other girl in the class, a t-shirt and strappy platform sandals with no socks despite the frigid mid-western winter day. Her toenails are painted dark blue. She's into cats and hip-hop (not necessarily in that order) and watches a lot of MTV. She hangs out with more boys than girls but doesn't have a boyfriend and worries about what the more popular kids think. According to Ashley, she and her friends are 'known' but not popular. They sit in the back part of cafeteria in between the preps and the freaks. The nerds try to sit close by but they'd rather they didn't.

"Signing this card means you know that you don't want to have sex until your married, " Anne continued solemnly and read aloud the 'terms' printed on the back of the "ATM" (Abstinence 'Til Marriage) card. They included "drawing the line" at kissing and "creat[ing] positive peer pressure by choosing friends with the same values." She also emphasized the expiry date-your wedding day. "That's the day you'll be able to make love to your husbands," Anne promised and the girls who had been silent and reverent for most of the class giggled and blushed. A few looked back at Ashley before they bent over to sign their cards. A girl with bobbed blonde hair mouthed something to Ashley. Ashley stayed put. Ashley didn't take the pledge.

Vanessa Schafer did. She signed a similar pledge card last October in front of her Junior girls Phys Ed. class at Highland High School, a public school in sunny suburban Gilbert, Arizona. She carries the card in her wallet next to her school ID, a picture of her boyfriend Nate and her lunch money. "I see it everyday. It's a little thing to remind me that I'm not going to [have sex,]" she says. The card is white with black and purple lettering and it was given to her by Karie Hughes, a woman who runs a local group called Passion and Principles. It says, "Save Sex For Your Mate: Believing that true love waits I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage." Underneath Vanessa's signature is a quote from the New Testament, "Love is patient, Love is kind." Vanessa is thinking of getting it laminated.

Vanessa and Ashley's classmates are not alone: Well over 2.5 million young people in America have made similar public pledges to abstain from sexual activity until marriage during the past decade. Most have done so with church groups like the Southern Baptists' well publicized True Love Waits program but more and more kids like Ashley and Vanessa are being given the opportunity to take virginity pledges as a part of mandatory sex ed classes at their public schools. True Life Choices and Passion and Principles are just two of hundreds of community based groups who received some of the $450 million in federal and state funds earmarked for abstinence until marriage programs, a peculiar spin-off of welfare reform. The money is currently being spent by all but two states (California and New Hampshire turned it down) and president Bush has said he wants to spend even more.

In the place of condom demonstrations and information about birth control and STD prevention, Ashley and Vanessa's classes talked about church weddings, romantic honeymoons and happy families as the expected way for teenagers to prevent pregnancy and STDs. About a third of high school sex ed classes now emphasize this "abstinence until marriage" message over what's known as comprehensive sexuality education-classes that say teenagers should wait to have sex until their older but if they don't they should use birth control, practice safer sex and get tested regularly for STDs-an approach supported by 81% of Americans. A report by the US Surgeon general David Satcher was similarly wary of the abstinence-only approach, saying there was no evidence such programs were effective.

The abstinence until marriage crowd, a loose knit collection of community-based groups predominately led by evangelical christian parents, feels that comprehensive sex ed classes sends kids the message that they can't control themselves and gives them too much faith in contraceptives, none of which are foolproof. What both sides agree on is that STDs and teen pregnancies are a problem: about 3 million teenagers contract a STD every year and 4 out of 10 teenaged girls get pregnant at least once before their 20th birthday. Though the rate of teen pregnancies has declined steadily throughout the nineties (a trend both sides want to claim responsibility for) the US still has the highest rate in the industrialized world. That's right, number one. America has a problem.

But are virginity pledges the answer?

Vanessa's school district thinks so. Passion and Principles was hired by her school to teach their abstinence-only program. Vanessa, a soft-spoken honors student who lives with her who parents and two brothers said she really liked the class. "I thought it was good. [Miss Karie], showed us virginity rings and stuff," she said. After the class she and a few friends from her cheerleading squad agreed that they'd all get one, although Vanessa is the only one who did. Her ring, bought at a Christian bookstore, is silver etched with a heart, a cross and a key and she wears it everyday on her ring finger on her left hand.

"I don't want to have sex until I'm married because I don't want to get a disease and die or have it for the rest of my life," says Vanessa, adding that pregnancy was also a concern. Her mother got pregnant with her half-brother Chris when she was still a teenager and was unable to go to college because of the responsibilities. Vanessa, who wants to be a dental hygenist and looks forward to living in the dorms at Northern Arizona University, feels that sex, could jeopardize her plans. "Miss Karie told us that [your virginity] is a special gift that you can only give away one time," she said with confidence. Her friends and family, she says, are behind her as is Nate, her boyfriend of a year and a half.

"I think its great," said Nate who is 19 and works assembling circuit boards at a local electronics company and wants to join the marines. "I think you should wait until marriage to have sex because there are so many diseases and you don't want to give them to your spouse." Nate, however, is not a virgin. He says he changed his mind about sex because of the emotional pain he experienced in his last relationship. "I'm a recycled virgin," he laughs adding that he hasn't taken a formal abstinence pledge but says he would if he had the opportunity. Almost all pledges encourage kids who aren't virgins to stop having sex and embrace what they call 'secondary virginity'. "I had sex before and it was a big mistake," Nate continues. "When you're young and you have sex, your whole relationship is based on sex. You can't base a relationship on sex so you might as well not have it."

Vanessa didn't exactly go it alone–pretty much every one who took the Passion and Principles course at her school signed a card. Things were similar at Ashley's school. "I don't know anyone who wouldn't sign them," Ashley told
me a couple weeks before this year's class. She’d signed one every year since the fourth grade. "I didn't want people to think I was easy, " she says of her pervious pledges. This year she and a couple boys were the only kids in the eighth grade who didn't sign. "There are people at my school who are sexually active who sign pledges because they think it might help their reputation," she says, adding that she knew kids who signed the pledges but continued to have sex. "People are going to do what they want. I know some people who are sticking to it but a lot of people are really pressured into doing stuff." Including signing pledges, as it turns out.

Ashley did feel pressured to sign and she worried that deciding not to pledge might give some of her classmates the wrong idea.

"I decided I didn't really care what they thought of me," says Ashley, confessing that she did worry about being called a slut by the more popular kids. "My friends know I'm not having sex and I don't plan on it." And while one such popular girl did a broadcast Ashley's decision around the cafeteria no one seemed too concerned and they continued comparing notes on their sex ed classes over luke warm pepperoni pizza and fried fish sandwiches. Ashley decided to confront the girl: "I said straight up,'You shouldn't be talking about me because I was standing up for what I believed in.'” A couple of her male classmates told her they admired her and said they thought she should be proud of herself. And that was that. A few friends asked her why she didn't sign that weekend, but come Monday, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the pledge entirely.

A recent study by the National Institutes of Health found that kids who took virginity pledges did wait longer to have sex than kids who didn't. But it also found that the more kids in a school that signed them, the less effective they were in delaying sex. Taking a pledge, the researchers explain, creates a clique of sorts, just like being a jock or a raver or whatever. If the majority of kids take a pledge it's no different than if no one took one because pledging is no longer special. This means that Ashley's classmates are no more likely to wait to
have sex until marriage than she is. For that matter, they're no more likely
to wait than kids who took a comprehensive sex ed class are. (Research shows that teaching teenagers about contraception and STD prevention does not make them have sex. Some studies even shows that it decreases the chance a teenager will have sex.)

Plenty of teenagers, pledges or no pledges, are happy to be virgins–more than
half of those 17 and younger to be precise. Including Ashley.

"I know I'm not ready to have sex right now. I'm not ready to settle down if
something happens and, you know, we're still kids ourselves," she says. Pregnancy is something she's seen happen to older teenage friends and relatives and she knows that if that were to happen to her, her plans to go to college, perhaps to study to be a veterinarian would have to be put on hold. Ashley, however, like most kids her age, is pretty curious about sex and while she isn't usually too fond of school she paid close attention to her TLC instructor, taking careful notes and answering questions. Unlike in her science and history classes where she sometimes goofs off, Ashley was quick to raise her hand and was pleased that her questions about sex and relationships were answered first.

This the third year that True Life Choices has come to her school. The group is a non-profit organization run by a veteran of the local Crisis Pregnancy Center, the anti-abortion arm of Focus on the Family, an evangelical Christian group with whom many of the abstinence educators contacted had ties. None of the TLC instructors are public health professionals nor do they have teaching credentials. Over the course of a week they go over basic male and female anatomy, the role of respect and commitment in relationships, the consequences of sex (pregnancy, STDs, emotional scars), how to say no to sex and safe dating situations (message: avoid being alone with your love interest and draw a line at sexual activity before what they call "the underwear zone.") Students played a game about STDs (the answer to most of the questions: “abstinence until marriage”) , watched videos about why to choose abstinence ("Just because some of our parents had no self control doesn't mean we don't" scowled the Multi-culti teens in an episode on STDs) and watched demonstrations that likened premarital sex to unwrapped candy bars (message: those who have premarital sex are used and dirty.) TLC also mentions marriage about every five minutes complete with talk of church weddings, string quartets, white dresses and fabulous parties.

"I don't think they really should have been talking about marriage as much," Ashley said. "We're teenagers– we're a long way from getting married." Romance may be TLC's secret weapon but Ashley wasn't buying it.

TLC also says that kids should "check their signals" which mostly means that girls are told to dress in a way that makes boys think they have chosen abstinence. (Tell that to Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, both publicly professed virgins 'til marriage who will wear what they like, thank you very much!) According to Ashley's instructors this is because guys are turned on by sight whereas girls are turned on by touch. Vanessa's instructor also talked about supposed difference between the sexes. According to Vanessa, "Miss Karie said that guys don't really care much about love they just care about sex and girls are the opposite," a claim that curiously didn't come up in the boy's class.

Possibly the most controversial element of these classes is what they teach kids about condoms. Proper use is tossed out in favor failure rates and the instructors seem preoccupied with HPV, an STD that condoms aren't so good at preventing over the infections they can help prevent such as the deadly HIV virus. As a result many kids who take abstinence until marriage classes are left with the impression that condoms don't work. "[Passion and Principles] talked to us about condoms," Vanessa reports. "They told us that they have
tiny holes in them and you can still get a disease or get pregnant with a condom on." Vanessa's class workbook says that “condoms are only 70-90% effective", "They leak!", "They break!", "They deteriorate!" and, cryptically "Naturally occurring defects in condoms are 5 microns-50 times larger than HIV."

Public health officials including the World Health Organization, disagree. While not having sex (as in no intercourse, no oral sex, no anal sex and no genital contact) is obviously a teen's best bet if they want to avoid the question altogether, for teenagers who do choose to be sexually active using a condom as a form of protection is clearly better than nothing. According to the World Health Organization Condoms are 99.9% effective in preventing pregnancy and STDs when used consistently and correctly, something teenagers aren't so good at if they haven't been instructed on how to use them. Not surprisingly, neither Vanessa or Ashley's class showed them how to do so. In fact, when questioned about condoms, the head of TLC told a classroom full of eighth grade boys that the FDA allows 3 out of every 1000 condoms to go to stores with a hole in them, a claim which is simply not true. It's no wonder then that some health providers have reported that sexually active kids are turning down condoms saying that they were taught at school that they don't work. A boy who took the Passion and Principles class said he thought the most effective way to prevent pregnancies and STDs during intercourse was to pull out before ejaculating.

Critics point out that teaching teenagers only about abstinence is not realistic-there are teenagers who are having sex and they need to know how to prevent pregnancy and STDs. Pledges might help some kids avoid sexual activity but, well, promises can be broken. And studies have found that by the time pledgers leave their teens, only about half are still virgins.

"It was on July 28th," says Kirsty Douglas* [not her real name], a 17 year old junior in Greenville, South Carolina. "My parents were at work and we got caught up in the heat of the moment." Kirsty and Taylor* [not his real name], her 19 year old boyfriend, had been dating for 6 months. They were both virgins. "We had talked about it before about how we didn't want to [have sex until we were married] and, I don't know, things just carried on each time we were alone and then it just happened." Kristy was walking on air for the rest of the day. "It was fun," kristy giggles.

But the next day Kirsty felt badly about what she and Taylor had done, not so much because of the sex itself-she loves her boyfriend deeply and expects that they might marry after she finishes college–but because she, along with everyone else on her cheerleading squad, had pledged at a True Love Waits rally at her school. Kirsty told her mom-they're very close-and they decided it wasn't something she should do again. But they found themselves alone again and, well, they did it again. And again. Today, Kirsty seems ambivalent. She and Taylor continue to have sex but not very often (about once a month) and it is by no means at the center of their relationship. Kirsty is happy about this. Still, she says she is disappointed that she broke her pledge.

"Ever since I knew what sex was I always said that I was never going to have sex until I was married, " says Kirsty, an honor student and a cheerleader, who adds that it is also what her church, the Southern Baptists, believe in. "That was my goal. I pledged because I wanted everyone to know that I wasn't going to [have sex] and I was going to stand up for what I believed in."

Kirsty's best friend who also pledged at the rally didn't wait for a wedding ring either. And she has reason to suspect that most of her teammates on the cheerleading squad, all virgins when they pledged, have changed their minds as well. Although more teenagers are putting off having sex until their older by the time their 20, less than a quarter of girls are still virgins.

Kirsty and Taylor used a condom.

"I was kind of surprised that he had one," says Kristy. She now takes birth control pills and they use condoms every time they have sex. But her best friend didn't use anything and the same study that found that pledge takers waited longer to have sex also found that kids who broke their pledges were much less likely to use protection when they had sex than kids who didn't pledge. Some weren't prepared, others didn't know how to get or use contraception and still other's thought that romantic love (the kind they'd heard so much about in their abstinence classes in the place of real information on contraception) would save the day.

"I think that if somebody wants to have sex, for any reason–if they have a long-time boyfriend, say - then they should know where to get protection and how to use it," says Kristy.

Ashley also points out that marriage is simply something that not all adults choose to do.

"At first I was going to stand up and pledge but then I thought, no, go with what you believe," she explains. "I thought about it a lot. I even thought about it at the Kid Rock concert last night. You know, my mom wasn't married when she had me [and she still isn't.] I don't plan on getting married for a long time. I don't think I'll have sex [as a teenager] but I think I'll probably have sex before I get married." Given that only 7% of men and 21% of women were virgins on their wedding night, Ashley's probably being realistic. "I didn't want to look back and say yeah I signed that [virginity pledge] but I went and had sex anyway. Then I
probably would feel bad."