The AIDS epidemic has led to a big fight between liberals, who want sex education and condom (safer sex) instruction in schools to save young people from disease and conservatives who believe that such teaching will only encourage sexual activity and exacerbate the spread of STDs. They call instead for chastity education, pre-marital abstinence, and marital fidelity. As Phyllis Schlafly says, there is only one sure way to avoid herpes and AIDS: “Remain a virgin until you marry, marry another virgin, and be faithful to each other.”
Most liberal-conservative discussions don’t get past this point. So many questions are left begging and the chastity partisans are not called on to explain the mechanisms they propose for restraining youthful sexuality. Some questions are (for both biological and cultural reasons) specific to the boys; others to girls.
Here I deal specifically with the boys. To wit, a “return to traditional morality” and virgin/virgin weddings are two very different things. The old-fashioned code allowed for experienced men to marry “hold-out” virgin women. Though pariahs to other females — and unmarriageable to males — there were always girls with whom boys gained experience (the rebellious, the unattractive and socially desperate, those who had been sexually over-stimulated in the home).
Indeed, conservatives frequently point to the power of the male sex drive, its restless insistence, especially in youth when guys are not yet used to their “raging hormones.”
So, how do can we keep boys virgins until the ring? What can counteract the sudden testosterone surge as well as the cultural imperative to “prove his manhood?”
Also, how are young women to know with certainty that the men they marry are in fact virgins? People are notorious for lying, especially in the sexual area and many a young woman has fallen for the one man who seemed to “respect” her only to discover sometime later that her husband was gay — and that can hardly be what conservatives want for their daughters.
I look forward to your suggestions.
