Virginity: a Renewed Conversation

Pop culture seems to have a renewed obsession with talking about virginity, ranging from incredulity at Tim Tebow’s public commitment to wait until marriage, to a new TV show, Virgin Diaries, devoted to the subject.  In an age when it seems like “everybody’s doing it,” voices are being heard more and more, saying “I’m waiting.”  In fact, recent research indicates that a surprising number of young people have not been sexually active.  “A report issued last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found from 2006-08, 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men ages 15-24 had had no sexual contact with another person, up from 22 percent in 2002.”  The article I read referencing that statistic has a couple of quotes from unashamed virgins…one of whom is a young man I met when he attended college with my daughter.  Kevin has become a good friend of mine, and I tell his story to students I speak with about the choice to be abstinent.  They need to know there really are  guys who choose to wait…decent guys…the kind of guy a girl would want to marry some day. In the same article, our program, Amplify Youth Development, even gets a mention, with a quote from our program director about her decision to wait until marriage.