purityringOne thing that hasn’t been abstaining from the news in the past fortnight is culture’s attitude towards sex. There are two counts in particular that caught my interest: one was State-side, aroused by curious questions from Oprah Winfrey on her namesake’s show; the other was a reactive orgasm from Australia’s media and some members of it’s Federal Government (including the Deputy Prime Minister, no less) towards remarks made by the Opposition Leader.

Both instances concerned the topic of sexual abstinence and, while both were delivered a world apart, both were raised in praise of abstinence. In the US, it was Bristol Palin’s (daughter of 2008 US vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin) commitment to abstain from sex until marriage; in Australia, it was Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott’s parental exhortation for his three daughters to remain virginal until marriage.

In either case, neither of the comments made were received with any measure of intellect. Just an incredulity and a penchant for political power play.

Ms Palin confesses on Oprah

Bristol Palin, interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey Show (22 Jan 2010), dumbfounded the host when she reaffirmed that she would be abstaining from sexual intercourse until she marries. Bristol was previously engaged to Levi Johnston, who is the father of her son, Trigg.

Appearing on Oprah with her mother, Bristol was offered the opportunity by Oprah to retract a statement she made to Touch magazine in which she was quoted as saying: “I’m not going to have sex until I’m married. I can guarantee it”. While on the show, Oprah pressed Bristol about the certainty of the statement, stating that she wondered if abstinence was a “realistic goal” and that she was only setting herself up for failure.

Opposition Leader encourages his daughters to remain virgins

When Tony Abbott – the Opposition Leader of the Australian Liberal Party, and a professing Catholic – was interviewed by the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine, Australia didn’t have to wait until the publishing of the interview last Wednesday (27 Jan 2010) before they heard of his statement on abstinence. No, such news was too good to pass up – it had to be leaked to the populace straight away.

In the interview, Mr Abbott commented that virginity was a “great gift” and encouraged his three daughters to remain chaste until they married. He spoke of his regret having fooled around with sex prior to marriage and urged his daughters not to do the same. While Mr Abbott has only daughters, he was by no means suggesting that sexual purity ought to be restricted to only just women; had he sons, it is clear that his comment would have encompassed them just as equally. To believe otherwise would be pure speculation – which Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, delved right on into, accusing Mr Abbott to be preaching to women only.

An orgy of a response

Evidently, Oprah’s bristled response to Bristol’s commitment and Julia Gillard’s (Australian Deputy Prime Minister) jibe at Tony Abbott’s exhortation for his own daughters, presuppose something so cunningly unfounded that the media overlooked (or chose to overlook) the absurdity of the response.

With Oprah, she implies with caricature wide-eyed shock that sexual restraint is out of the realms of teenage control. Consequently, teens like Bristol ought just give in to their sexual urgings rather than attempt to restrain them, as if they are nothing more than glorified – yet helpless – animals. Better to just give in rather than set a goal and fail. (Mind you, as Dr Jennifer Roback-Morse remarked on her Facebook account, “If Bristol were saying, ‘I would like to be President of the US someday,’ Oprah would say, ‘You go, girl.’ Only when a young woman admits that she wants marriage and sex and child-bearing to be linked in one organic package, do the adults try to talk her out of it.”)

With Julia Gillard, having a political axe to grind, the opportunity of slamming a few ad hominems into her political rival was too enticing for common sense to prevail. Accordingly, Ms Gillard labelled Mr Abbott as being out of touch, stating that Australian women don’t want to be lectured at and that in Mr Abbott their worst fears would be realized. This is a surprising comment considering that: 1) Mr Abbott’s comment, in its proper context, was a personal sentiment aimed at his own daughters, not Australian women as a whole; 2) Ms Gillard is herself childless – as Mr Abbott’s sentiments were ones of a father to his daughters, the Deputy Prime Minister’s attack is based on little authority, and; 3) Ms Gillard’s response didn’t even address the context in which Mr Abbott made his comment.

But what did Mr Abbott say?

“It (sex before marriage) happens … I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question … it is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving, and don’t give it to someone lightly, that is what I would say.”

Others in the Australian media jumped aboard the whooping bandwagon, too. Journalist Jill Singer, writing a vapid article, lambasted Mr Abbott with charges of hypocrisy, likening him to Osama Bin Laden and as an enemy of feminists in general. Apparently, Ms Singer believes that Mr Abbott is stuck in the dark ages for even suggesting that such a thing as abstinence – whether to his own flesh and blood or otherwise – is a palatable option. Far from it: according to her, abstinence is an act that seeks to class women as commodities that men may barter with. (Hence, the more virtuous a woman, the more valued she is to a man. Well, virtuousness – in either sex – is a quality to be valued, to be sure, but it’s clear Ms Singer is simply dressing up a straw-man with garments of cheap rhetoric as Mr Abbott never even hinted at such a notion). Ms Singer’s article was so malnourished of fact and reason one would have to have a steady supply of multi-vitamins just to survive to the end.

While these two stories are completely independent of each other, the respective responses are closely linked. No, I’m not suggesting a conspiracy, but I am suggesting that there is an attitude that is so prevalent in Western culture that it permeates geographical bounds and freely skips across the ocean waves. And here’s how:

The responses – by and large – presuppose that sexual restraint is futile. Some argue this because we live in a culture that is saturated with sex at every turn and street corner (a point with which I agree) – yet, even if that is true, it doesn’t make certain actions right. As the Apostle Paul says, while everything may be permissible, not everything is beneficial (1Cor 10:23). There are practical downsides to engaging in premarital (and extramarital) sex – both Bristol Palin and Tony Abbott realize this. It is the collective “wisdom” of our sex-saturated, sex-orientated culture that largely does not.

Bristol’s response to Oprah’s attack was short and sharp – it needn’t be otherwise. Bristol demonstrated a firm resolve; after all, she well understands where her unrestrained sexual (and emotional) rompings landed her: pregnant and without a committed man to fulfil the role as father and as a support (beyond finances) to both her and child. Considering that Bristol’s last rummage in the sack led her to fall pregnant, I think she’s smart enough to know what the cause and effect relationship between the two events are. Single-parenting as a teen mom is difficult enough without engaging the foreplay of another uncommitted lover into the mix. Bristol’s resolve to not engage sexually with a man until that man is her husband is surely a decision based – at least in part – on the fact that she doesn’t want any further “un-intentionals” from occurring, nor does she wish to engage in the travails of further premarital sexual exploits that may serve her and her partner’s interests alone. (Any sexual relationship she may have prior to marriage would most decidedly not be serving the interests of her son).

With Mr Abbott the regret is more emotional. Being male, he has the statistical advantage that he would have been impacted the least by the casual, sexual dalliances he had when he was in his teens – females are the ones who can end up pregnant; females have a higher likelihood of contracting sexual diseases; females typically become emotionally connected to their lovers and are more prone to depression and poor self-esteem. Men, on the other hand, become addicted to the sexual act and can move more easily between partners. Contraception and legalized abortion has now made this even easier for them (and those advents were supposed to liberate women?).

In light of these reasons, is there any non-vacuous reason to promote and encourage (through culture and contraception) premarital sex? If we exhorted our teens to pursue every whim and fancy they felt urged to do, would this not lead to destructive results? Sure, you could argue that more people tend to marry in their 30s rather than their 20s nowadays, but is that any excuse not to abstain? Wouldn’t the engagement in premarital sex naturally delay the event of marriage, on the whole?

The issue today is that society places little value on self-restraint. In fact, self-restraint appears to be viewed as an un-reasonable, un-obtainable and un-admirable virtue – especially with regards to sex.

Two good (practical) reasons to abstain from sex

While we can truthfully say that God tells us in the Bible that abstinence before marriage is the right thing to do, you could say that it is science, the medical and psychological establishments and our cultural failings today that detail for us why the Bible is right. (In fact, if we just relied on common sense, we’d arrive at the same conclusion, too.)

If you abstain from pre-marital sex, you are 100% guaranteed to: 1) have zero unwanted pregnancies; 2) remain free from sexually transmitted diseases.

Our culture’s propensity for “sexual liberation” has resulted in the opposite of these two undisputed benefits of abstinence, even with the advent of contraception. After all, contraception can and does fail to prevent pregnancy and disease; more over, contraception – having created the perception that sex is now “safe” – increases people’s desires to take greater sexual risks. Ironically, safe sex is riskier sex, as studies reveal that 40% of sexually active teens have at least one sexually contracted disease.

Sex is not supposed to be safe – it is supposed to be responsibly and appropriately engaged in.

There’s a big difference and the clear winner with regards to responsible, appropriate sex is that between husband and wife. Bristol Palin learned this the hard way; Tony Abbott learned this in light of his own experiences as a red-blooded teen and now in his reflections as a father. They are not the only ones who think so; and the reasons they give are not from their Christian teaching – rather, the negative effect of their experiences validate the Christian teaching they hold dear.

And in boldly speaking out about what they’ve learned and realized, they magnify God’s glory as well as the truthfulness of His Word.

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