New York Times Magazine Examines Abstinence-Only Clubs At Colleges

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs;  IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 01 Apr 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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The New York Times Magazine on Sunday examined clubs on some college campuses that promote abstinence until marriage. Until recently, organized efforts aimed at promoting abstinence until marriage have taken place mainly in high schools, the Times Magazine reports.

Abstinence-only clubs at many Ivy League universities began to form around the same time that student sex blogs, columns and magazines began to emerge at some colleges. According to the Times Magazine, some college students who participated in abstinence-only classes and clubs while in high school are "uncomfortable" with the sexual culture on many college campuses. Students involved in forming abstinence-only clubs said the groups were created in response to university-sponsored safer-sex education programs, which they view as "institutional encouragement of promiscuity," the Times Magazine reports.

Princeton University students in 2005 formed an abstinence-only club. Although many of the students involved in the club were Catholic, the club was not presented as a religious organization. Kevin Joyce, a former president of the club, said it aimed to "provide the intellectual basis" for abstinence. The Princeton club takes the position that promiscuity "deeply compromises human dignity," and it uses psychological and sociological rationale to justify its claim that casual sex can lead to "personal unhappiness and social harm," according to the Times Magazine.

Students at Harvard University formed a similar club in 2006 called True Love Revolution, or TLR. Justin Murray, one of the club's founders, said that although he and other members admired the Princeton group's "intellectual discourse," they did not want to force people to "dig deep into the philosophical catacombs" to decide to be sexually abstinent. The Harvard group on its Web site says that safer sex is "not safe" because effective birth control can fail. The Web site also claims that early sexual activity is associated with negative outcomes, such as increased risk of depression or a greater risk of marital infidelity, divorce or poverty. Martha Kempner, a spokesperson for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, said that although TLR and similar clubs provide support for students who choose abstinence, the club uses "inaccurate information and distorted data to sell" its message. Kempner added that no "legitimate research" has proven that premarital sex has the "harmful consequences" the club claims.

Janie Fredell, current head of TLR, and Lena Chen, a student at Harvard who blogs about sex, recently conducted a debate about sexuality issues that drew a crowd of about 100 students. According to the Times Magazine, the two focused on finding "common ground," and both of the students said that they were, in their own ways, "advertising sex appeal" (Patterson, New York Times Magazine, 3/30).

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