Do Virginity Pledges Keep Teens Safe?
Abstinence Promises Claim to Prevent Teen Sexual Activity
© Kat Long
Jan 19, 2009
In some abstinence education programs, students are encouraged to make “virginity pledges:” promises to remain virgins until marriage. Abstinence educators consider virginity pledges a useful tool to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. But the pledges’ effectiveness is disputed. At least three peer-reviewed studies have debunked the theory that virginity pledges prevent teen sexual activity, and advocates of comprehensive sex education argue that students who make virginity pledges are more likely to forgo condoms and birth control if they break their pledges.
Origins and Controversies
Virginity pledges were first introduced in 1993 by True Love Waits (TLW), a pro-abstinence program of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. The concept of pledging sexual purity in the eyes of God proved popular, and a number of similar programs emerged during the 1990s. At the same time, evangelical Christianity exerted a strong influence on the sexual health policies and programs of the federal government. Beginning in 1996 with the Welfare Reform Act, Congress appropriated millions of dollars for abstinence-only sex education in America’s public schools. During the George W. Bush administration, federal funding increased from $73 million in 2001 to $204 million per year by 2008.
That created a situation wherein taxpayer money was going to fund religion-based sexual-abstinence programs in public schools, a violation of the Constitutional separation of church and state. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union won a federal lawsuit in which it charged the Silver Ring Thing (SRT), an abstinence program that employed Biblical verses and evangelical Christian doctrine was improperly receiving federal funds. SRT has since rejected federal funding so it can continue teaching its faith-based curricula.
Are Virginity Pledges Effective?
Researchers have found it difficult to prove a causal relationship between taking virginity pledges and later patterns of sexual activity, but four major studies of students who take virginity pledges have suggested that taking a pledge offers no guarantee of the pledger’s long-term abstinence.
The most recent study, published in the journal Pediatrics in December 2008, found that virginity pledges are neither harmful nor helpful in teens’ decisions about sexuality. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health analyzed data in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (conducted in 1995-1996), examining a group of 934 teenagers of similar religious and sexual views. Of that number, 289 had taken virginity pledges, and 645 had not.
Over a period of five years, researchers discovered that religious pledgers were just as likely to have premarital sex than religious non-pledgers, but the pledgers were less likely to have safe sex (only 42% said they used condoms regularly) or use birth control (46% didn’t use it) than their peers.
After the five-year period, 82% of pledgers had forgotten or denied they had taken a virginity pledge, and exhibited no difference in specific sexual practices or rates of sexually transmitted diseases with their peers. The average age of having sex for the first time for both groups was 21, and 75% percent of all the young adults had had sex by that age.
Pledges Today
The idea of preserving [especially female] sexual purity through virginity pledging remains popular among religious teens and evangelical Christian churches despite mainstream criticism of their message and effectiveness. If anything, such faith-based abstinence programs--which are non-profit, yet very profitable--like True Love Waits, the Silver Ring Thing, Worth the Wait and many others will increase their efforts to preach to the choir.
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