Give Up Blog

Monday, May 08, 2006

Big surprise, teens lie about sex.

This is how gullible anti-sex right wingers are, they believe teenagers when they say they're not having sex.

Ha! Anyway, I like this article, not because it tells us the obvious, that virginity pledges do not work.

The 14,000 survey subjects were interviewed in 1995 and reinterviewed in 1996 and 2001. They ranged in age from 12 to 18 and came from across the country.

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

"This may indicate that they are not that closely affiliated with the pledge," Rosenbaum said.

The adolescents also were unreliable in reporting their sexual experiences, Rosenbaum said. More than a quarter of nonvirgins in the first interview who later took a virginity pledge said in the next interview that they had never had sex.

"That puts a lot of error in these studies," Rosenbaum said. Virginity pledgers, she concluded, "are more likely to give bad information — unreliable data — about their sexual history."

But of course, conservatives instantly deny the scientists found anything resembling the truth.

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

"The Harvard report is wrong," said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

"This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years," Crouse said. "Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage."

Um, no. That's just what they've been telling you, and for some stupid reason you believed them. Then the scientists come along and look at it very carefully and find all these teenagers are actually lying about their sexual history, whether they took the pledge etc. Which result should any reasonable human being believe? The scientists? Or the teenagers?

Hmmm.

3 Comments:

minimalist said...

Well to be fair, it's not so much a choice between believing the scientists or the teenagers, as the study does rely on the teenagers' own words.

Rather, it's a matter of believing either the scientists who conducted the interviews anonymously and signed non-disclosure agreements; or the Nosy Biddies Of America, who probably threatened to tell the parents of anyone who was having sex. And probably massaged the data (if they even have any). If they know nothing of scientific research, they know nothing of research ethics.

11:08 AM, May 08, 2006

Another Anonymous Poster said...

I'll try to find the article, but the NY Times had a piece that included one of the creepiest things I've ever read. It was talking about some kind of 'purity pledge', where daddies take their daughters to a dance, and the girls pledge to save themselves until marriage. And daddy gives his little angel a 'purity ring'. She keeps the ring and gives it to her groom at the wedding. So creepy. So very very creepy to me.

12:10 PM, May 08, 2006

Rev. Dr. said...

Yeah, that much parental involvement in the status of a little girl's hymen is fundamentally creepy. Notice too, it's just the girls, not the boys.

I definitely remember seeing that article too. **shudders**

1:47 PM, May 08, 2006