Waiting for virginity is a shame. That’s right, I said it. People pushing abstinence have a mythical understanding of the history of humankind and its purpose. I admire those who have chosen to wait until marriage to have sexual relations, but they are few and far between. And while they may be waiting under the façade of morality, the original moral basis in religion for waiting until marriage involved far different circumstances.

Waiting for sexual activity until you enter an institution created by man negates the beauty of nature. Sex is wonderful; it can be an act of love or an act of animal magnetism, but either way it is beautiful—and natural. To make it sound bad or unnatural is an affront to one of nature’s true beauties.

The idea that the sanctity of marriage should include premarital abstinence is based on a time and society where waiting until you were 13 for intercourse meant you were an old maid. In the times of the Bible, a person was married before an age at which today, we haven’t even graduated high school. On the other hand, in modern times (even up until the 1970’s, when the typical age of marriage was younger than it is now), a couple’s life together usually starts after high school.

According to the 2000 US Census, the average age for marriage is 26 years. Why should we expect women (because let’s face it, society does not hold the same stigmatism of loss of virginity on men) to wait until this old age for a beautiful and natural act? We continue to preach abstinence as a part of “morals,” yet the standard of age by which those morals were established no longer exists. While it is reasonable to expect humans to wait until they are 10 or 11, or even more recently until they are 18, to wait until the typical age of marriage now does nature an injustice.

The power of abstinence was never intended to fight the nature of NATURE. Nature is ready for sexual activity when puberty hits at 13 and 14, and time was, society regularly accepted that sexual contact at what we now perceive as such an early age was natural. To believe that, as humans, we are not meant to delve into sex before we get married at something like 26 is ridiculous.

When I have a son or daughter, will I be OK if they have sex at 13 or 14?

No, but I want them to be informed. As an adult I should understand that teenagers’ yearning for sex is just part of a wonderful, natural transition. Instead of preaching the useless tool of abstinence until marriage, I will arm my children with an appreciation for the beauty of sex, the soul-enhancing connection that can only be gained by two consenting, loving individuals. I will prepare them to meet these perfectly natural urges for sexual activity with the respect for themselves that embraces safe decisions.

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