Archive for April, 1994
Teens and Sex
Thursday, April 14th, 1994
“The State”
By Tanya R. Fogg
Staff Writer
While adults are debating textbooks and ‘straight talk,’ teens are making their own decisions.
There are three reasons Melissa Lampkin, a 16-year-old mother of a 2-year-old, is abstaining from sex until marriage.
A fear of AIDS is one. The desire to have no more children until she’s married is another. And growing up in a church that condemns sex before marriage is yet another.
“It’s been very hard, and there are so many pressures,” said Lampkin, who is part of as group of teens who talk to students about drugs, sex and peer pressure.
“And since I have a son, people say, ‘Why should you stop?’ “the W.J. Keenen High junior said. “Most people don’t think it’s cool to be a virgin and not have sex. But I’m satisfied with the decision I made.”
Some are waiting for their true love.
Some are obeying religious principles.
Whatever the reason, a growing ‘in’ crowd has chosen chastity.
More and more, teen-agers – virgins and secondary virgins like Lampkin – are deciding to remain to remain chaste and save sex for their wedding night (if it ever comes). “Secondary virgins” are people who have been sexually active but have decided to abstain from sex until marriage.
Whether their reasons are religious conviction or concerns about avoiding sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, teen-agers across the nation are part of a budding youth chastity movement.
Youngsters and adults alike say many of today’s teens are turning a deaf ear to the ribbing from sexually active peers, and they are dismissing views of virgins as nerds or geeks who can’t “score.”
Some teens have even gone so far as to sign pledge cards vowing to be “sexually pure” until marriage as part of the national campaign True Love Waits.
Many of these same teens receive rings from their parents as “visual reminders” of their abstinence pledge.
Though launched last spring by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Sunday School Board, True Love Waits crosses religious denominational lines.
South Carolina’s teen chastity effort, which officially began last fall, culminates Saturday with a rally at the Carolina Coliseum. The event, which organizers expect will draw more than 10,000 teens, is the theme of this year’s S.C. Baptist State Youth Rally, said Seth Buckley, assistant state coordinator.
Sherrie Garner, 15, who plans to attend the rally, said she’s looking forward to celebrating sexual abstinence with other teens.
The Lower Richland High sophomore said she’s saving sex for marriage because of religious reasons, and wants her first time to be special.
“I don’t want it to be a one-night stand in the back seat of a car,” said Garner, a member of Eason Memorial Baptist Church in Eastover. “Some people at school think it’s real wimpy or stupid to wait and that it’s a waste. They really don’t believe in waiting.”
At the beginning of his junior year at Lower Richland, senior Jeff Kirby decided to make the “Promise of St. Joseph,” a Catholic pledge to remain chaste until marriage.
But his decision didn’t come without some soul-searching and bouts with temptation, he said.
“Sometimes I felt like everybody was doing it and I wondered what was wrong with me,” Kirby said, laughing. “My sophomore year was probably the hardest because it looked like everybody was going out and doing it. What I was hearing at church and what I was hearing at school were two different messages.”
Kirby said he thinks a lot more teens would stand up and say they were virgins or were practicing chastity if it wasn’t for the inevitable taunts of peers.
Despite some students’ misgivings about being vocal virgins and carrying the banner for sexual abstinence, the Rev. Mike Gonzales of Trinity Baptist in Cayce said he thinks more teens are willing to stand up and speak out about saving sex for marriage.
“They seem to be moving back to where our parents started us from. It’s almost like a push back for that time period, and it’s spreading through the nation,” said Gonzales, minister of youth and college career at Trinity Baptist.
Kirby, who is considering entering the priesthood, is taking a five-week teaching training course in abstinence/chastity-based sex education, “Principles of Teaching Human Sexuality.”
“I want to talk one-on-one with teens and singles and have the facts to back it up,” said Kirby, 18, a member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, as he explained why he’s taking the course.
DEPPA of South Carolina, Inc., or Development and Enrichment Programs for Parents and Adolescents, offers the nondenominational but biblically oriented course, which teaches that chastity is sexual freedom – from worry.
”Chastity is positive sexual energy when it is rightly directed,” said Ann G. Nerbun, a former public health nurse who teaches the course. “You gain all sorts of freedoms when you’re not locked into genital sexual activity – freedom from making difficult decisions about contraceptives or abortion.”
Shelia Massey, a youth teacher at Harbison Baptist Church and director of the anti-abortion organization African-Americans for Life, is taking the course to promote abstinence among the youth in her church and spread the message through African-American communities.
“As African-Americans, we have been in bondage too long,” she said. “We need freedom from not having to worry about being pregnant or getting sexually transmitted diseases.”
Like Massey, Lampkin said she wants to help quell the notion among some people that chastity is a “white, middle-class virtue.”
“I want black people to know that just because sex is a natural part of life (that) doesn’t mean you can’t do without it,” Lampkin said. “And just because you’ve started doesn’t mean you can’t stop.”
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