Abstinence only does work for preventing pregnancy and the transmission of STDS in the same fashion that not eating anything will prevent weight gain and continuity of one's life. No, jk, this is nothing more than imposing strict father fundamentalist morality onto children and teens through lack of information, fear of disease/death/punishment for sins, and the denial of biological/human needs and urges that are completely normal. 

  Why not just destroy the sex organs at birth , then just make test tube babys as needed, .....  after all,  sexual pleasure is a sin .....    <------ just say NO .... no to touching one another !   

ummm, I think more touching get togethers are needed. Taught from grade one.  A "Hug everyone all day day" , and at clubs too,  365 days a year ..... work and hour , hug an hour,  24/7 ...... everywhere a hug hug !  

Abstinence, huh?

 

What is that? Do  you wear it, or is it one of those jellies?

 

I'll be sure to look for that the next time I'm shopping before a shag.

The sad thing about this is that our own government researched this, and knows that abstinence-only not only doesn't work, it works in reverse.  I put the link in a post somewhere, but I don't feel like fishing it out.  You can google it easily enough.  It's the PDF of the congressional report from a couple of years ago.  Anyway, while comprehensive sex ed, including the option of abstinence and alternative sexual practices (mutual masterbation, etc...), has been correlated to lower rates of STDs, pregnancy, etc, abstinence-only has been correlated to higher incidences of both than in those districts where no sex ed was given.  It works in reverse.

And yet, we spend millions on it because God hates it when people fuck.

 

Oh, great.  Now we're going to have all the google ads with:  "Pregnant?  Worried?  There are Options available.  Call us at 1-800-DONTKILL, or visit us at abortionismurderyoufuckingsinner.com"

 

I may be able to help get this image out of your head.  See if this helps:

[SCIENCE ON]

In primates, there is a direct correlation between the shape and size of the penis and testicles, and the degree of polygamy in the species.  For instance, in strictly monogamous species, the head of the penis is barely any wider than the shaft, if at all.  Also, the testes are quite small, and sperm production is relatively low.  In bonobos, on the other hand, the testes are huge and the head of the penis quite wide.  Humans fall in the middle, demonstrating biologically that we are not strictly monogamous, nor are we rampantly polygamous.

The reason for this correlation is simple.  In species where a female mates with multiple males in a short period of time, it's in the males' best interest to reduce competition as much as possible.  Big balls mean big money shots, and this means a good chance of overwhelming the competition with sheer numbers.  Of course, all males have the same goal, so the whole species gets big balls.  Similarly, the shape of the head of the penis is all about competition.  If you imagine the head of a male penis, and picture it being inserted, you can imagine that if there is already sperm in the vagina, the tapered shape of the head will push the sperm out towards the sides and away from the cervix.  When the penis is withdrawn, the ridge at the back of the head will pull out the sperm.  The human penis, then, is specifically designed as a sperm-remover.

There.  Now you have a much more graphic image, and you never have to worry about perverted old Mr. Farquar anymore.

 

Thats the very thing im trying to remove >.<

Well it seems to be working... the "Dont Kill Me" Baby is gone and is now replaced by adoption ads >.>

 

I need to find a sure fire way to undermine those ads...

(cant have prolifers depleting my supply of fetuses! tasty... tasty... fetuses )

*ponders the outcome of "Children are Tasty" *

Oh yeah... pedophilia...

 

Hmm... "Kill the Children"? no no... stupid google will just splice it from "Dont Kill the Children"

 

Uh... AH! i got it!

 

I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE! I LIKE PIE!

 

Phew, for a second there I thought I was seeing things.

 

It's nice to know that I'm building up a strong reputation as the local jello fucker. =]

Precisely.

Consider:  Somewhere around the time of The Great Shift (as coined by Joseph Campbell) there was a change in the meaning of the concept, 'virgin.'  Before the gods became patriarchal sons of bitches, they appear to have been nature/mother oriented.  During this time, the concept of virgin was that of a woman who was free of obligation to any man.  It had no particular reference to her degree of sexual experience, or lack thereof.  In fact, in the legend of the Oracle of Delphi, there were sacred prostitutes who were called the holy virgins.

The artist, Gaugin, encountered sexual egalitarianism in... what was it... Tahiti?  I think Tahiti.  My brain is freezing up.  Anyway, the women there were free with their sexuality, offering themselves when they wanted and refusing when they wanted.  They felt no compulsion or debt to a man just because they'd had sex with him.  Only after marriage did they pledge their sexual allegiance to a man.  The Western concept of premarital celibacy as a virtue was unknown to them.

Anyway, as sociology goes, abstinence before marriage is so rare as to be a statistical anomaly.  I don't mean the people who say they are for it.  I mean the people who actually do it.  It's just another example of religion declaring that something is true despite being completely opposite to what science tells us is normal.

 

I'm not a linguist, so I can't comment on this.  My sources are basically credible myth scholars like Joseph Campbell.  My understanding has always been that ierodoules (hierodules?) were referred to as "The holy virgins," and I'm not claiming that the roots translate exactly.  Children born out of wedlock were referred to as 'parthenioi' which, as I understand it, means approximately 'virgin-born.'  Again, I don't know the roots, but I accept the scholars' assessment that the connotation of the words is correct. My main sources: Briffault, Robert.  The Mothers.  New York:  Atheneum, 1977. Harding, Esther M.  The Way of All Women.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1970. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God. New York: The Viking Press. Highwater, Jamake, Myth and Sexuality.  Meridian, 1971    

I'm pretty sure from my reading that the claim is not really about the roots of the words, or the exact translation.  To make a really bad analogy, someone five thousand years in the future might read about baseball and note that a bullpen is from the root "bull" and "pen," which means a large hoofed animal, and a place where animals live.  Even so, a bullpen was a place where pitchers warmed up for baseball games.  In the same way, the heirodules were the holy prostitutes, and virgins were unmarried women, so you could say of a heirodule that she was a parthenos, etc, etc.

At any rate, it's a minor point.  I just picked a single example from a pretty vast pool of evidence that virgins were not sexually chaste before the coming of patriarchal gods.

 

Out of all my friends, the most religious ones, that were taught at home that only abstinence was the way, where the ones to either A) have a child at a young age (17 - 19 all of them in high school) oh have contracted some form of STD, yet I was sent to sex ed, talked openly about sex at home, yet no STD and no child until I was 29 and financially stable (ok some what stable). Most of my friends that did take Sex Ed and were able to speak to other about sex all had children later, and no STD's (none that I know of) and all had multiple partners. Yet when I point this out to my christian friends parents, they all freak out, and how we are a minority of people that took sex ed and didn't have children or STD's (what can you do, the truth is hard for them), yet I point out that abstinence doesn't work and that places that do teach it only have higher STD's and teenage pregnancies say it's a conspiracy....go fig.

I don't know about the other words but parthenos meant 'virgin' in ancient greek the way we understand it (someone who hasn't had sex). I'm sure you've heard of the Parthenon, which is the temple to Athena Parthenos or Athena the virgin. I don't actually know much ancient Greek but this is what my professor told me in my greek archaeology class. Also, wikipedia appears to agree with me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena

Not only didn't she know she was pregnant, she probably doesn't even know how the baby got in there.  Ignorance is bliss: from the people that brough you such classics as "don't worry they've moved on to a better place now."

 

A christian being amoral?  Well I never...

 Damn.  How much was the bet?  When did you make the bet?  I'm trying to think of how much you'd have to pay me to go celibate for one year, much less multiple years.  It would be a lot.

In olden times, he'd have just fucked you and checked for blood on the sheets.  Why wasn't that an option?

 

 

That surely wouldn't have ended well.  In olden times, they had ways of dealing with uppity women.  They were very unpleasant.

Apparently, you already had the idea in your head that you ought not have sex until you were 21, and the bet was just a nice way for you to make a public display of it, or something.  Am I about right?

 

 

 

 

I figured as much.  I'm always torn when I hear girls say this because on the one hand, the fewer 19 year olds having sex... well... the less for me.  On the other hand, most 19 year olds aren't prepared for the consequences of a condom breaking (or of their own stupidity if they don't use one) so it's better for the world in general if they keep their pants on.

 

 

 

 Well, it does and it doesn't matter.  We still have approximately the same reproductive window, though as you point out, more women are alive at 40 now, so by extension, more women are reproductively viable at 40.  On the whole, though, I don't think there are enough 40 year olds having babies to really affect the population that much.

It's kind of callous to say so, but evolution doesn't give a shit about us once the kids are out of the house.  From a biological point of view, old people are just taking up resources.  (No, I'm not in favor of eugenics, and I don't think old people are worthless.  I intend to be a very productive old man one day.)  In theory, we could have exactly the same birth rate (but not population growth) if everybody died at fifty or even 45.

I think there's definitely something to the length of schooling and the onset of "adulthood."  Another thing to consider is that in the past fifty years, Americans have had a nearly unique ability to live comfortably without working if they don't want to.  Between living with the folks, college grants and scholarships, and a host of other easy to obtain resources, it's pretty easy to put off making any adult decisions well into your thirties.  So it's not just education -- distribution of wealth has a lot to do with it.

Of course, you would predict (and you would be right) that as wealth became unevenly distributed, you would run into problems with people who did have to work but were functioning as if they were part of the culture that could put off adulthood.  Welcome to Reaganomics 101.

 

This one goes out to you, Alison.

Looking back on my childhood and adolecence, I was very lucky not to have been raised by religious fanatics. My dad was never religious. My mom claimed to be Baptist, yet we never went to church. I'll never forget when I was 14 what my mom said to my aunt one day when my aunt brought up me having sex with my girlfriend, "Hey don't be sayin stuff like that. I don't want him even thinking about having sex at least til he's 16."

So now that you know abstinence was never preached to me, you will better understand where I'm coming from. I think it's the stupidest of all things to try to teach a horny teen. A simple understanding of human biology and puberty would tell anyone that once your body hits puberty, your sex drive starts. Period. Think about it on a more primitive scale. When humans were running around the African savanna, being chased by lions and such, one would want to reproduce as soon as possible. Thus as soon as our sex organs and brains are ready, which begins by age 14 for pretty much everyone, we will naturally want to have sex. No matter what anyone says.