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They made their vows of abstinence in school. vanessa, who lives in Arizona, had a weeklong sex-ed course called Passion and Principles, a statewide abstinence-only program paid for by the government as part of her 11th grade curriculum. In ninth grade, Kirsty, of South Carolina, had a one-day workshop run by the Christian youth abstinence organization True Love Waits. Hers was coed.
One presentation from the class really sticks out in Vanessa's mind. "There was a big heart made out of construction paper at the front of the room," she says. "The teacher asked a question like, 'How much of your heart goes to the guy you had sex with?' And girls would rip off the whole thing or a big chunk. Then a guy came in and just tore a little piece of it. I was shocked! It's a lot more special for a girl than a guy."
On the last day of the course, Vanessa's teacher passed out white cards with black and purple lettering that said, "Save sex for Your Mate: Believing that ture love waits, I make a commitment to myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure for the day I enter marriage." Students were instructed to sign it if they agreed.
Vanessa scribbled her name at the bottom of the card. "I had my mind set that I was gonna not have sex till marriage, so I signed it," She says. Under her signature is a quote from the New Testament, "Love is patient, love is kind." Vanessa carries the card in her wallet at all times.
Abstinence promoters think pledges will make teenagers more committed because they'll feel like the thing to do is to stay a virgin. They're hoping that famous pledge signers like Jessica Simpson and self-proclamed virgins such as Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova will up the movement's cool quotient. However, studies show that the larger the number of kids taking pledges at a school (either because that's what everyone's doing, or the pledges are part of a required sex-ed class), the less meaningful and effective they tend to be.
At the end of Kirty's class, all 100 students signed the pledge. Others who were known to be promiscuous just didn't attend the workshop. "One girl who didn't go already had a reputation as a hoochie. She COULDN'T have pledged," says Kirsty.
Then all of the pledgers wrote their names on Popsicle sticks and glued them onto a poster that was displayed outside of the school for a week. It was a lot like what True Love Waits (TLW) did in 1994, when it displayed more than 210,000 pledge cards on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Some of the girls in Vanessa's class had already had sex, but they were encouraged to pledge, too. Like one of Vanessa's close friends, who's also a cheerleader. "She could still pledge her secondary virginity," says Vanessa. "When you wait to have sex again until you're married."
Card or no card, Vanessa had always known that she wouldn't have sex before she got married. Although she studies the Bible on Sundays with her grandfather, she doesn't consider herself very religious. It's her family's past that has had the strongest influence on her decision. "My mom got pregnant when she was 18 and had my brother," she says. "She didn't marry that guy; she married my dad instead. I don't want to ruin my kid's life from my mistake. My brother was lucky because my dad is like his dad."
Vanessa wears an abstinence ring on her wedding-ring finger. She asked her mom to buy it for her last Christmas. "It's sterling silver and has a heart that stand for love with a key inside, and then a cross that represents God goes through them," she says. "It's like I really wanna give my heart to that special guy that I have sex with."
Kirsty says she and her friends would gossip about sex, but she still planned to wait. "People would be talking about who they slept with this weekend, or about other people, and I'd always say, 'THat's horrible! Oh gosh, I'm definitely not going to have sex until I"m married,'" says Kirsty.
Then there were the boys...
Vanessa officially started dating Nate in Decmber 1999, at their school's winter formal. They'd known each other for about five months, but they had been going out with different people. When they both became single, Vanessa asked Nate (who's really buff and has spiky brown hair and brown eyes) to the dance. "HE was the nicest guy I knew, and I really didn't want to go with anyone else," she says. "But I liked him more as a friend." When he dropped her off at home that night, Nate touched Vanessa's face and kissed her while they were standing by his car.
On Vanessa's Sweet 16 birthday on February 6, 2000, Nate gave her a CD player, a dozen roses, and tons of balloons (to be sure she got plenty of attention in the school hallways).
From the very beginning, Vanessa had told Nate how she felt about having sex. After she pledged she showed him her card. He was into it. Nate's a born-again virgin: He's decided not to have sex again until he's married. "He doesn't pressure me or anything like that. He knows that I don't wanna have sex yet," she says.
Kirsty met blond-haired, blued eyed, football player Taylor at church. "I'd always had a crush on him," she says. So her friend invited him to her Sweet 16 part on January 21, 2000. But I still didn't really think he would come," she says.
He did. Later, on the night of the party, Taylor, Kirsty, and a few others were in the hot tub in her aunt's yard. "I kept thinking, If only I could hug him or something!" she says. " I took a picture with him, and then we kissed."
They started going out. The subject of her TLW pledge didn't come up, but they never crossed a certain line when they were fooling around. "He's so sweet that he just never even tried to have sex with me," says Kirsty.
On Valentine's Day, Kirsty went to Taylor's house. "He gave me a box of rose petals with a bracelet, a teddy bear, and a card," she says. Then they went out to eat.
On that same day, Nate gave Vanessa two dozen roses during her third-period math class and a gold heart necklace with an amethyst, her birthstone.
By summer, both couples were celebrating six-month anniversaries. Vanessa and Nate made out, of course, but they'd stop themselves before having sex. "When I would start to feel guilty about what we were doing, I'd just be like, Okay let's go bowling or see a movie to get our minds off of it," says Vanessa.
Not surprisingly, Kirsty and Talor also hung out a lot that summer. They saw each other practically every day. Sometimes they went swimming at Taylor's aunt's pool or lake, or they'd go out to eat at a local steakhouse or see movies.
Then one evening in June, they had the house to themselves (as they often did). After watching HOPE FLOATS (Kirsty's favorite), they messed arou nd in her room. "We got carried away," says Kirsty. "All of a sudden it just happened--oh gosh, we had sex." Ironically, she had lost her plede card some time before. (She and Taylor wanted their names changed for this story, and Kirsty didn't want her picture taken.)
After Taylor left, Kirsty turned on the television to JERRY SPRINGER, which featured pregnant teenage girls. "It scared the crap out of me!" she says. "I thought, I don't know anything about sex. What if I got pregnany? And I cried."
According to a recent study, people who take abstinence pledges when they are 16 or 17 (Kirsty was 14, and Vanessa was 176) are more likely to wait to have sex--up to 18 months longer. But when they do lose their virginity, there's a bigger chance that they won't use contraception because they haven't learned about it--in sex ed at schoool or anywhere else. Kirsty and Taylor hadn't even talked about having sex. Luckily, when it happend, Taylor had a condom, which is 97% effective in preventing STDs and pregnancy, but only when used correctly and consistently. This is hard to do without learning how.
"I was worried about having a baby. Then I alos felt really guilty about losing my virginity," Kirsty says. "I was so distracted in school and couldn't think about anything else." A month later, she was at the mall with her mom and went to the bathroom. She was REALLY relieved to discover she had gotten her period. Kirsty was lucky--four out of every 10 girls get pregnant at least once before they turn 20.
Kirsty started taking the Pill. About two weeks after she got her period, she and Taylor had sex again. "At least I'm using protection. But there's always that one chance," she says. (She remembers hearing that in her True Love Waits class.)
The two started having sex more often--like every day. "I went crazy, I guess." she says. "Sometimes it was really romantic, and other times it was like, yea, we're done." Like many girls who take pledges, Kirsty still had sex, but felt horribly guilty about it. She would go through periods of up to a month where she wasn't into it at all. "I would tell Taylor, who never pressured me, [that] he just doesn't understand how it is to be a girl; I'm [only 16] and I don't want a baby. That would ruin everything."
Kirsty's best friend, who pleged with her, didn't wait for a wedding ring either. And she suspect that most of her teammates on the cheerleading squad have all broken their pledges. "I think the summer hit and we were older and kind of all got corrupted," Kirsty explains. It's still not something the whole team discusses. "Some of the cheerleaders are prudes and definitely wouldn't approve," she says.
Vanessa's team also avoids the topic. Vanessa and her friend haven't broken their pledges yet, but Vanessa's also not totally sure about the girls on her squad. "I know that some of them have had sex, but we just don't talk about it." So maybe a pledge didn't make abstinence the popular thing to do after all.
It's unclear what difference the pledges made for Kirsty and Vanesssa. Kirsty's still conflicted about breaking her pledge. "I signed and I promised myself I would wait until I got married," she says. "But then I'm also glad I didn't because I love him." Whether or not it has anything to do with her pledge, Vanessa stands firm in her decision to wait.
The number of teens graduation from high schools are virgins has gone up from 46% to 50% since 1990. Nobody's really sure if abstinence pledges played a role in this. Anyother thing: MOre teens are experimenting with oral sex as an alternative to losing their virginity, but it isn't safe, at least when it comes to transmitting some STDs. Three million teens contract STDs every year. And 25% of new HIV cases in the U.S. are found in people ages 13 to 19. Even scarier is that 58% of them are girls. So waiting can be a good thing, with or without a pledge. But the really important thing is that when you do decide to have sex, you know how to protect yourself. Sex-ed classes at your school can, and should, help you learn how to do just that. |
