The Abstinence Clearinghouse Blog

About a week and a half ago, musicians, actors, actresses, and fans flooded Hollywood’s Paramount Studios for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards.

The event featured performances by Rihanna, T.I., Paramore, the Jonas Brothers and the comedic styling of the evening’s host, Russell Brand, replete with his oh-so-subtle remarks regarding the purity rings which the Jonas Brothers are notorious for sporting.

Brand understood that these rings were a mark of the Jonas Brothers’ commitment to God and to sexual purity but would “take it a little more seriously if they wore [them] on their genitals.” He also deemed the Brothers ungrateful, failing to understand how they could abstain when they, essentially, could have their choice of the screaming teenage girls who are constantly throwing themselves at them and likened the Brothers to “Superman just deciding not to fly and to go everywhere on a bus.”

As was to be expected, these remarks drew attention to themselves, so much so that, later on in the show, Brand apologized, clarifying that he didn’t mean to “take it lightly” and was “well up for” promise rings but even then finished by saying that a “bit of sex occasionally never hurt anybody.”

These remarks also drew the attention of Martha Brockenbrough, author and humor columnist, who put down her own thoughts in her article, “In Defense of Losing Your Virginity.”

(http://music.msn.com/music/opinion/in-defense-of-losing-your-virginity/?GT1=BUZZ1&silentchk=1&)

If you haven’t already gathered it from the title, Brockenbrough’s article is not exactly purporting abstinence and will never be considered as promotional material for the selling of purity rings. What it is though is an excellent look into a worldview that continuously heralds ideas such as this one, quoted from the article,

“Having sex in a committed relationship does not make a person a slut. It makes a person human.”

Brockenbrough, if having sex in a committed relationship is one of the things on the list that distinguishes me from my cockatiel, I would be more than willing to provide a list of monogamous animals who do the same thing. That’s simply not a good enough defense of the anti-abstinence lifestyle for me. In fact, if this was a debate setting, complete with podiums and microphones and Robert’s Rules of Order, I would counter with this:

The way I see it, the act of abstaining holds more truly human characteristics than the act of sex in a non-married, committed relationship. Some of the greatest characteristics that humans can possess are those of self control, discipline, and, yes, even self denial—and these are the traits that make us distinguishable from the animal kingdom.

But Brockenbrough seems to think that “virginity itself is actually way less important than self respect, self control, and the ability to keep both intact in tough situations. Those are the lessons parents ought to teach. Ultimately, that’s what will keep our kids safer in a big, bad world.”

Does anyone else see what I see here? Why does it have to be one or the other? Why is it apparently so difficult to see that virginity/abstinence/purity is indistinguishable from these virtues of self control and self respect—the words are practically synonymous!

Throughout the article, Brockenbrough returns to ideas such as the “fixation on virginity,” and “the creepy virginity obsession,” like there is some sort of cultic activity that takes place among virgins worldwide where we don our whitest clothes, polish up our purity rings and dance in a circle around a picture of Jessica Simpson. Brockenbrough even writes that, “taken to the extreme, the creepy virginity obsession is the sort of thing that leads to the inspection of newlyweds’ sheets for telltale blood.” What?! That’s not what abstinence is, or virginity, for that matter. Abstaining until marriage is the only guaranteed way to protect from STDs and unwanted pregnancies.

In fact, I could counter with the equally effective argument that, taken to the extreme, the creepy obsession with exploring human sexuality outside the realm of marriage leads to a 22-year-old auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder in order to fund her education (http://www.usmagazine.com/news/22-year-old-auctioning-off-her-virginity).

Clearly, this debate will never end. In fact, I’m pretty confident that after an official declaration has been made concerning which came first, the chicken or the egg, this debate will still be going on.

So what to do? Live in such a way that, at the end of the day, you know without a doubt that you did not compromise the things that you held so dear at the beginning of your day.