Comments on Did You Have Sex Before Marriage?

Wow. I never knew I was a failure... until now. Thank you, President Bush.

Well, I find it rather redundant that the children close with the statement, "C'mon mom and dad...you can do it!"

Yeah...because they're married!!

Stupid kids and their short attention spans...pay attention.

It's more than insulting, it's dumb. And it's hypocritical. As our own state legislature was debating the "benefits" of abstinence-only education, I was wondering how many of those on the pro side abstained until they were married. And on a somewhat related topic, I was wondering how many of them, while spouting their tired old "family values" rhetoric were truly monogamous (sp?). I can't wait for the Bush administration to be gone already.

So THAT'S been my problem all these years. Damn it!

pre-marital sex is best because its dirtier.

I can't wait for this motherfucker to be out of office.

Abstinence-only education cracks me up. Okay, I'm married and I don't want kids. What now?

i think i was about 10 or 11, on my way with mom to return movies at the rental store, when she told me that she didn't want me to wait until marriage to have sex. why? she didn't want me to marry someone to find out that our marriage wouldn't work simply because the sex was lousy. she wasn't advocating wild promiscuity (whatever my brother's and my own private practices may be) but compatibility with your partner across the board, as every aspect of your relationship is important. anyone that suggests that a sexually compatible relationship with your partner isn't essential hasn't been reading the news of those closeted republicans and dead kinksters.

mom's the best.

i can't believe they even have the "script" online, in case anyone wants to reenact the commercial:
http://4parents.gov/tv_script_talk_to_me_60second.pdf

As a male one of the biggest regrets I have about my teenage years is not having had more sex and should have made it more of a priority. I think women may have the opposite feeling.

Is social conservativism just a mental illness? I sometimes honestly can't see how anyone could hold the various dissonant beliefs social conservatives hold, in the face of a world which empirically contradicts said beliefs on a regular basis, and not have it regarded as such.

Too bad Jenna Bush is preggers.

So bizarre. I have a 13-yo son and an 18-yo daughter and it would never occur to me to tell them to wait till they're married. It's a pointless ideal, even if it were realistic, and it would shut down all communication on the topic as soon as they deviate from that ideal.

OTOH, "wait till you're ready to take responsibility for your choices," is a reasonable goal I'd like for my kids, followed by, "...and here's how to do that..."

My boyfriend said something really sexy a couple of weeks ago that this story reminded me of.

We were talking about how we both used to be religious in high school, and I said that it used to give me so much guilt, because of all my deeply repressed sexual urges. I asked him if he had felt the same and he goes, "Hell no! I loved to sin!"

If only everyone took their religion as seriously as my boyfriend used to, this world would be a much better place.

You know I would totally be open to waiting to have sex until I was married, but oh wait, I cant get married.

It's not premarital sex if you don't plan on marrying, though.

Damn, when I started having sex, my life got notably more successful.

Why can't some independent group run ads stating the opposite of this? "Hi I'm and I fucked a lot as a teenager, but I made sure not to knock anyone up or get an STD and you should too... Sex is great, but you need to take responsibility, so here's how."

I'd want to see that commercial just to see what sort of reaction these guys would have.

@16 - it's also not premarital sex if you're married and have a mistress (or boy toy).

If I had to wait until I got married, I'd still be a virgin in my mid-40s, and my boyfriend of 20 years would be getting mighty frustrated by now.

Stupid Christians...

Well, you could always move to BC.

Maybe they're preaching such a lofty goal as a high point in a compromise.

Dad: Katie, no sex until you're married!

Katie: But daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad...

Dad: Oh, alright, not until you're an adult.

Katie: Deal!

Dad: Let's go to Wendy's for some Frostys!

Paid for by The Association of Parents Who Want To Say "Hey, We Tried!"

Ten Things All Married Couples Should Be Required (By Law) To Do Before Marriage:

1. Have sex. Lots of it.
2. Spend the night together (the sleeping/snoring/morning breath kind).
3. Live together.
4. Travel together.
5. Visit each other's relatives.
6. Buy something together.
7. Nurse each other through an illness.
8. Have the religion/politics/children talk.
9. Have a fight/Break up.
10. Get back together (with sex--lots of sex).

Only then should anyone even broach the subject of marriage (in a casual, half-jesting way).

Rightwingers are quite prone to dichotomous dualistic thinking. i.e. your either with us or with the terrists. This carries over into sex, you can either be abstinent till marriage, or you can whore the place up sticking your penis in everything that moves. The fact that there might be a middle point at which one has sex responsable with various people over their lives or all at once escapes them.

Though in weird notions of innocence, purity and misogyny and you got the abstinence only movement.

I'm sorry - but that girl standing outside the stables saying "Tell me what you want from me..." made me laugh out loud.

At least it's nice to know that somewhere within the ranks of the people putting these things together are some good ol' fashioned pervs getting their yuks deftly in as they go along.

Yes. Wait until your wedding night, even though you'll be too drunk and tired to actually do it.

Which is good because you wouldn't have the slightest idea what you're doing.

Which wouldn't matter, because you wouldn't be doing it very well anyway.

In the past week the deaths of Spc. Vincent G. Kamka, 23, and Lance Cpl. Jeremy Burris, 22, marked the 100th and 101rst Washington state related deaths in the Bush/Savage war on Iraq.

Excerpt from "Say Yes To War" by Dan Savage October 2002:

In the meantime, invading and rebuilding Iraq will not only free the Iraqi people, it will also make the Saudis aware of the consequences they face if they continue to oppress their own people while exporting terrorism and terrorists. The War on Iraq will make it clear to our friends and enemies in the Middle East (and elsewhere) that we mean business: Free your people, reform your societies, liberalize, and democratize... or we're going to come over there, remove you from power, free your people, and reform your societies for ourselves.

Well, it would go a long way towards explaining why 5% of the population seems to have as much money as everybody else put together. Maybe they're the 5% that waited.

Uh. Wow. O.O That would never, ever fly here. I mean, we have strip clubs *everywhere* in the city centre, and they're right out in the open, with blinking neon signs, not tucked away in dark corners. There's sex shops right next door to decent restaurants and electronics stores. Sure, we're Catholic, but that just means we put a church around every corner so you never have to stumble very far to go to confession.

Premarital sex is just wrong. In fact, all sex is wrong. Deny the body, and when the urges come do what I do: flog yourself with an electrical cord, and tape pieces of broken glass to parts of your body that rub against your clothes. Pain builds character.

I, for one did not have sex before marriage, and I am completely happy with that decision. Sure, I wonder sometimes what it would have been like to have slept around with a bunch of people, but I don't for one second regret my decision and the decision of my wife.

I certainly agree that these "abstinence ads" are more of a joke than anything (the 2 people in a relationship must decide for themselves not to have sex), I still think it is pretty pointless of you to judge and think less of those who have decided that they want to wait until their wedding night to consumate.

We have been married for 5 years and could not be happier with our decision to abstain.

J @ 31,

I'm not judging you, nor do I think less of you for abstaining. You are (or were, anyway) perfectly free to make that choice for yourself. If that's what makes you feel better, super.

I'm judging the Family Values asswipes that feel it is the business of the federal government to insist that abstinence be everbody's goal. The asswipes that insist we spend our tax money on abstinence-only education, despite all the evidence that points to its complete ineffectiveness. The same asswipes that bury their heads in the sand when you point out that we have the highest teen-pregnancy rate in the industrialized world due to our lack of fact-based sex education.

And most of all, I'm judging the asswipes that insist that I shouldn't have sex until I get married, and then tell me I'm not allowed to get married. To them, I say fuck you.

Not to mention the asswipes who themselves probably didn't wait until marriage to have sex, and who, based on recent new accounts, seem completely incapable of maintaining any semblance of sexual fidelity to their wedded spouse AFTER saying "I do".

They're fucking hypocrites, the lot of them, and each and every single one of them should be called to account for it. Seriously, the next time one of these sanctimonious asswipes stands up in front of a bunch of reporters to tout the virtue of "no sex before marriage", all I want to see is ONE fucking reporter with some cohones asking them, "Excuse me, but did YOU abstain?"

And then publish the visual and spoken response on every public news service that will post it.

Among the many hypocritical nut jobs that had sex before they got married.

The Bush girls, I have a hard time believing they were virgins until marriage. Well ... only one is married, right?

Yup, those stupid ads play continuously where I live, and right afterwards they run the "don't have an abortion, a kid won't ruin your life, really!" ads. Which is dumb since, I swear to god, I've never seen so many knocked up teenagers in my life. When I lived in Washington, if you saw a twelve year old pushing a stroller you'd think the kid was babysitting or something. In the heavy Babtist/Mormon/Catholic regions of the U.S. you see a twelve year old pushing a stroller you automatically assume she's the mom and has got 4 more at home and is probably knocked up as well.

J,
I'm happy that you're happy. However, remember that perceptions change over time and there is no evidence to suggest that your current happiness will persist over time.

Premarital sex is still a big big deal in our family, as in, my mom practically had a heart attack when she discovered I'm sexually active. At 22. The Midwest Teen Sex Show should be given equal air time to these commercials... we'd all be better off and our moms could sleep a little bit easier.

I think you'd have an impossible time finding any successful politician, businessman, or celebrity who was a virgin when they married.

Speaking of which, a politician's support of abstinence only education makes the status of their own virginity a legitimate matter of public interest. Why does no one ask?

Well, I think the intelligent ones will see through these ads. The Republican pain to us, though, is that they're authorizing all this outreach money to snare the - what - 30 percent unintelligent ones who won't see through this. Thirty percent is about what the Mormon/Baptist/Catholic family-values population holds and they seem to have taken their third and managed to turn it into the whole enchilada. Sounds like a reasonable strategy to spend a few bucks, snare a third of the next-gen population, and still run around doing whatever they want. It's what the two-thirds of the rest of us don't do which bothers me. Like, how could anyone who would vote Republican still feel that way when they have had friends or relatives come back home in a body bag - and yet some still do. Puzzling.

What the fuck? A bunch of blue state voters getting upset when Republicans hop on the nanny state bandwagon? Congratulations, fucktards, our penchant for banning everything from guns, to transfats, to smoking, to hurt feelings has finally trickled down to something we like. No sense calling foul now, because we're part of the goddamned problem.

@29: I get the very strong feeling you're talking about Ste-Catharines in Montreal. They got it so right there.

I love the benefits of marriage section. Unfortunately, when you talk to your gay teenager you are going to have to tell them they can't get married and enjoy all the benefits listed below.

http://www.4parents.gov/talkingtoteen/marriage.htm

They talking to the gay child is worded carefully to not be antigay, but also in no way endorse it either. At least they don't refer to ex-gay ministries.

!!I love that there are no email addresses to reply to only a snail mail address!!

I love the benefits of marriage section. Unfortunately, when you talk to your gay teenager you are going to have to tell them they can't get married and enjoy all the benefits listed below.

http://www.4parents.gov/talkingtoteen/marriage.htm

They talking to the gay child is worded carefully to not be antigay, but also in no way endorse it either. At least they don't refer to ex-gay ministries.

!!I love that there are no email addresses to reply to only a snail mail address!!

As a recent high school graduate, I can sincerely say that one’s social success as a teenager is entirely based on the amount of sex one is NOT having.
Every time a football player walked down the hall, the girls would be all like, “Wow, Evan is so fine. Have you seen his promise ring? It makes me want to get down on my knees, lick my lips, open my mouth, and praise Jesus. I bet he’ll be even cooler once he gets married!” And once I was friends with this girl, but then she had sex so I of course had to cut my losses and never speak to her again. I mean, there’s being a nice person, like sticking up for the special education kids if they get bullied, or helping a freshman find a classroom. Then there’s just being an idiot, which is what you are if you see a person who has had sex and you don’t spit in their face or knock their lunch tray out of their hands. So anyway, this girl I used to know was really beautiful but when she had sex she got all this acne and gained like 38 pounds and had to wear orange leggings. Her parents’ bosses found out about their ho-ass daughter, so they got fired, her family’s house got reposessed, and now I think she works in the back room at Wal-mart because the clientele at Wal-mart just don’t want to have to look at someone who’s had sex. It’s a good thing she’s in the slut-face union there, otherwise she’d totally be fired for being a slut-face. With zits.
Obviously you’re all deluding yourselves into thinking that you’re successful. You need to take a step back, look into the crystal ball that God gave to President Bush, and see how successful your lives would have been if you had waited until you were married to have sex. I mean, seriously. Cut out your snarky comments. It’s just how you’re masking your bitterness. In your hearts, you know that you could have been really rich and happy, like a professional golfer, by now if you’d just resisted all your biological instincts, like the cool kids do. Fear not. One day God might give the President a time machine, and you can go back and stop your past self from sleeping around.
Honestly, you guys. It weirds the Bush administration out to have to talk to you about how much you’ve screwed up your lives by not waiting to screw your wives, but they’ve gotta do this.

P.S. In Social Science classes in American high schools, they no longer introduce the topic of the separation of church and state, so I am wholly ignorant of any reason for me to be outraged about the way the government uses the money I am required to give them.

I will just add that I suffer for the kids who were in those ads. What an embarrassing thing to be a part of - they don't even know what they are talking about. Did their parents pressure them, or are they part of some middle school Fundy church? Well in 4 years, when they have forsaken Jesus and are having lots of sex (I hope), I pray that those idotic ads won't be running any more.

Dear Average Teen:
As a newly reborn Christian, I am absolutely appalled by your suggestions that being an idiot "which is what you are if you see a person who has had sex and you don’t spit in their face or knock their lunch tray out of their hands". You are the type of person that scares people away from faith in God. Additionally, it is not your place, or my place, or anyone's place to judge another for their choices and actions. What you suggest is cruel and wrong, not only because it is devaluing another person, but because you are so self-righteous about it. How would you even know if persons were engaging in sexual acts but for gossip and rumors? Its shocking that someone who should believe for the best in people doesnt seem to care about the good at all. I realize that my posting this is in essence, me judging you, and for that I ask your forgiveness, but I also ask that you wise up, learn to not be so concerned with the private business of others, and realize that having premarital sex does not ever negate all the good things that people do (this should include, but not be limited to: sticking up for those being bullied, doing community service, working to better society through scientific advancement, aiding those in need, etc.)
Life is too short to get your fundie-undies in a bunch over things that others do-not you yourself do, but things that are based on the personal choices of others.
Be Well,
Concerned Exceptional Teen

@26 - too drunk and tired to do it on your wedding night? Man, that's why you book a cruise somewhere and never leave the room ...

Nothing sexier than doing it w/o birth control just after getting married ...

You're failing to grasp that the chief point of abstinence only education programs is not to reform teen behaviour, but to funnel federal money to conservative religious organizations, thus garnering support for Bush from these groups. Thus viewed, the programs are actually a great success.

@48: plus all the inevitable resulting babies can then be indoctrinated into the GOP.

I live in a very backwords world. Where now I'm the guy women want when their "perfect" marriages fairy tale lifes succumb to reality. When I was busting my ass trying to create a career, take care of myself, and have a few normal girlfriends here and there, women are so fucking baby wrecklessly baby happy they end up settling for piss poor relationships and up with broken embittered familys.

News flash people, the 50's are fucking over. We live forever and now it takes a lifetime to get our lives in order before we get to have our world in order for marriage. It's an ever evolving world, many of us will change careers and locations so many times in our 20's, and people niavly think their relationships are going to remain the same. And ass hole GOPs expect us to maintain monogomous and married in our 20's. And so what if biology is against women for having children later in life, is it worth it having a child you are able to provide for than another miserable lost soul ... being provided for best as they can by another working single mother.

Abstinance before marriage made sense when it came to garanteeing that your offspring was your own. Thanks to DNA testing, we've pretty much complicated that further. It also made a lot more sense when we worked 40 years in the same factory, raised a simple family, retired for 10 years and then died.