Virginity pledge
Encyclopedia
Virginity pledges are commitments made by teenagers and young adults
to refrain from sexual intercourse
until marriage
.
They are most common in the United States
, especially among Catholic
and Evangelical
Christian
denominations.
The efficacy of virginity
pledges has been extensively studied. Some studies have found that virginity pledges may be effective at delaying vaginal intercourse
, but that they are ineffective in reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) because pledgers may replace vaginal intercourse with other sexual activities, such as oral sex
and anal sex
; other research, however, has suggested no such substitution among pledgers, though pledgers may partake in vaginal or oral sex. Virginity pledges may also reduce the likelihood of contraceptive use once pledgers decide to engage in sex. Though studies have reported this and found that pledgers are more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who do not pledge and that those who do become sexually active report fewer sexual partners, at least one study found no difference in the sexual behavior of pledgers and non-pledgers after controlling for pre-existing differences between the groups.
, started in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Convention
, which now claims over 2.5 million pledgers worldwide in dozens of countries. A torrent of virginity pledge programs followed.
Another prominent virginity pledge program was the Silver Ring Thing
(SRT) which started in 1995 has been featured in hundreds of media features worldwide. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union
sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services because it believed SRT used tax dollars to promote Christianity. SRT presented a two-part program, the first part about abstinence; the second about how the Christian faith fits into an abstinence commitment. The ACLU claimed federal funding given to this program violated the separation of Church and State
.
On August 22, the department suspended SRT's $75,000 federal grant until it submitted a "corrective action plan." In 2006, a corrective action plan was accepted by the department, the lawsuit was dismissed and SRT received its Federal Funding.
Virginity pledge programs take a variety of stances on the role of religion in the pledge: some use religion to motivate the pledge, putting Biblical quotes on the cards, while others use statistics and arguments to motivate the pledge. Advocacy of virginity pledges is often coupled with support for abstinence-only sex education in public schools. Advocates argue that any other type of sexual education would promote sex outside of marriage
, which they hold to be immoral and risky.
(Add Health), in which 13,000 adolescents were interviewed in 1995, 1996, and 2000. The other peer-reviewed study used a study of virginity pledges in California
.
The first peer-reviewed study of virginity pledgers (by sociologists Peter Bearman
of Columbia
and Hannah Brueckner of Yale
) found that in the year following their pledge, some virginity pledgers are more likely to delay sex than non-pledgers; when virginity pledgers do have sex, they are less likely to use contraception than non-pledgers. This study found, however, that virginity pledges are only effective in high schools in which about 30% of the students had taken the pledge, meaning that they are not effective as a universal measure. Their analysis was that identity movements work when there is a critical mass of members: too few members, and people don't have each other for social support, and too many members, and people don't feel distinctive for having taken the pledge. This study was criticized for not being able to conclude causality, only correlation, a criticism which applies to all studies of virginity pledges thus far.
A second peer-reviewed study, also by Bearman and Brueckner, looked at virginity pledgers five years after their pledge, and found that they have similar proportions of sexually transmitted infections
(STIs) and at least as high proportions of anal
and oral sex
as those who have not made a virginity pledge. They deduced that pledgers may substitute oral and anal sex for vaginal sex. The data for anal sex without vaginal sex reported by males does not reflect this directly.
This study also estimated that male pledgers were 4.1 times more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who did not pledge (25% vs. 6%), and estimated that female pledgers were 3.5 times more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who did not pledge (21% vs. 6%). The study also noted that those who pledge yet became sexually active reported fewer partners and were not exposed to STI risk for as long as nonpledgers.
A third peer-reviewed study — by Melina Bersamin and others at Prevention Research Center, in Berkeley, California — found that adolescents who make an informal promise to themselves not to have sex will delay sex, but adolescents who take a formal virginity pledge do not delay sex.
A fourth peer-reviewed study — by Harvard
public health researcher Janet Rosenbaum published in the American Journal of Public Health in June 2006 — found that over half of adolescents who took virginity pledges said the following year that they had never taken a pledge. This study showed that those who make the pledge but have sex are likely to deny ever pledging; and many who were sexually active prior to taking the pledge deny their sexual history, which, it is speculated, may cause them to underestimate their risk of having STIs.
A fifth peer-reviewed study, also by Janet Rosenbaum published in the journal Pediatrics in 2009, found no difference in sexual behavior of pledgers and similar non-pledgers five years after pledging, but found pledgers were 10 percentage point
s less likely to use condoms and 6 percentage points less likely to use birth control than similar non-pledgers. Rosenbaum's study was innovative for using Rubin causal model
matching, instead of relying on regression analysis
, which makes potentially untrue parametric
assumptions. According to Rosenbaum, past research findings that virginity pledgers delayed sex may have been affected by their statistical method's inability to adjust fully for pre-existing differences between pledgers and non-pledgers: pledgers are much more negative towards premarital sex
prior to even taking the pledge, so would be predicted to delay sex even if they hadn't taken the pledge. Comparing pledgers with similar non-pledgers is the only way to be certain that the effect comes from the pledge rather than the pre-existing greater beliefs of pledgers that sexuality should be restrained to the matrimonial context.
True Love Waits more recent pledge reads:
True Love Waits recent pledge (2009):
Young adult (psychology)
A young adult, according to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, is generally a person between the age of 20 - 40, whereas an adolescent is a person between the age of 13 - 19, although definitions and opinions vary. The young adult stage in human development precedes middle adulthood. A...
to refrain from sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
until marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
.
They are most common in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, especially among Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
and Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
denominations.
The efficacy of virginity
Virginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
pledges has been extensively studied. Some studies have found that virginity pledges may be effective at delaying vaginal intercourse
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
, but that they are ineffective in reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) because pledgers may replace vaginal intercourse with other sexual activities, such as oral sex
Oral sex
Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...
and anal sex
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
; other research, however, has suggested no such substitution among pledgers, though pledgers may partake in vaginal or oral sex. Virginity pledges may also reduce the likelihood of contraceptive use once pledgers decide to engage in sex. Though studies have reported this and found that pledgers are more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who do not pledge and that those who do become sexually active report fewer sexual partners, at least one study found no difference in the sexual behavior of pledgers and non-pledgers after controlling for pre-existing differences between the groups.
History
The first virginity pledge program was True Love WaitsTrue Love Waits
True Love Waits is an international Christian group that promotes sexual abstinence outside of marriage for teenagers and college students. TLW was created in April, 1993 by the Southern Baptists, and is sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources...
, started in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Convention
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
, which now claims over 2.5 million pledgers worldwide in dozens of countries. A torrent of virginity pledge programs followed.
Another prominent virginity pledge program was the Silver Ring Thing
Silver Ring Thing
Silver Ring Thing is a virginity pledge program which encourages teens and young adults to remain celibate until marriage. It is based in the United States and was until 2005 funded by the U.S. federal government...
(SRT) which started in 1995 has been featured in hundreds of media features worldwide. In 2005, the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services because it believed SRT used tax dollars to promote Christianity. SRT presented a two-part program, the first part about abstinence; the second about how the Christian faith fits into an abstinence commitment. The ACLU claimed federal funding given to this program violated the separation of Church and State
Separation of church and state in the United States
The phrase "separation of church and state" , attributed to Thomas Jefferson and others, and since quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States, expresses an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States...
.
On August 22, the department suspended SRT's $75,000 federal grant until it submitted a "corrective action plan." In 2006, a corrective action plan was accepted by the department, the lawsuit was dismissed and SRT received its Federal Funding.
Virginity pledge programs take a variety of stances on the role of religion in the pledge: some use religion to motivate the pledge, putting Biblical quotes on the cards, while others use statistics and arguments to motivate the pledge. Advocacy of virginity pledges is often coupled with support for abstinence-only sex education in public schools. Advocates argue that any other type of sexual education would promote sex outside of marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, which they hold to be immoral and risky.
Efficacy
There have been numerous peer-reviewed studies of virginity pledges with varying results. Four of the five peer-reviewed virginity pledge studies and the non-peer-reviewed study discussed below use the same federal data, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent HealthNational Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health is the only nationally representative study of adolescent sexuality, which has spawned over one thousand peer-reviewed publications on many issues related to adolescent health and sexuality, and other adolescent health risk behaviors.The Add...
(Add Health), in which 13,000 adolescents were interviewed in 1995, 1996, and 2000. The other peer-reviewed study used a study of virginity pledges in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
The first peer-reviewed study of virginity pledgers (by sociologists Peter Bearman
Peter Bearman
Peter Shawn Bearman is an American sociologist. He is Jonathan Cole Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University....
of Columbia
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and Hannah Brueckner of Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
) found that in the year following their pledge, some virginity pledgers are more likely to delay sex than non-pledgers; when virginity pledgers do have sex, they are less likely to use contraception than non-pledgers. This study found, however, that virginity pledges are only effective in high schools in which about 30% of the students had taken the pledge, meaning that they are not effective as a universal measure. Their analysis was that identity movements work when there is a critical mass of members: too few members, and people don't have each other for social support, and too many members, and people don't feel distinctive for having taken the pledge. This study was criticized for not being able to conclude causality, only correlation, a criticism which applies to all studies of virginity pledges thus far.
A second peer-reviewed study, also by Bearman and Brueckner, looked at virginity pledgers five years after their pledge, and found that they have similar proportions of sexually transmitted infections
Sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease , also known as a sexually transmitted infection or venereal disease , is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans by means of human sexual behavior, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex...
(STIs) and at least as high proportions of anal
Anal sex
Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...
and oral sex
Oral sex
Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...
as those who have not made a virginity pledge. They deduced that pledgers may substitute oral and anal sex for vaginal sex. The data for anal sex without vaginal sex reported by males does not reflect this directly.
This study also estimated that male pledgers were 4.1 times more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who did not pledge (25% vs. 6%), and estimated that female pledgers were 3.5 times more likely to remain virgins by age 25 than those who did not pledge (21% vs. 6%). The study also noted that those who pledge yet became sexually active reported fewer partners and were not exposed to STI risk for as long as nonpledgers.
A third peer-reviewed study — by Melina Bersamin and others at Prevention Research Center, in Berkeley, California — found that adolescents who make an informal promise to themselves not to have sex will delay sex, but adolescents who take a formal virginity pledge do not delay sex.
A fourth peer-reviewed study — by Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
public health researcher Janet Rosenbaum published in the American Journal of Public Health in June 2006 — found that over half of adolescents who took virginity pledges said the following year that they had never taken a pledge. This study showed that those who make the pledge but have sex are likely to deny ever pledging; and many who were sexually active prior to taking the pledge deny their sexual history, which, it is speculated, may cause them to underestimate their risk of having STIs.
A fifth peer-reviewed study, also by Janet Rosenbaum published in the journal Pediatrics in 2009, found no difference in sexual behavior of pledgers and similar non-pledgers five years after pledging, but found pledgers were 10 percentage point
Percentage point
Percentage points are the unit for the arithmetic difference of two percentages.Consider the following hypothetical example: in 1980, 40 percent of the population smoked, and in 1990 only 30 percent smoked...
s less likely to use condoms and 6 percentage points less likely to use birth control than similar non-pledgers. Rosenbaum's study was innovative for using Rubin causal model
Rubin Causal Model
The Rubin Causal Model is an approach to the statistical analysis of cause and effect based on the framework of potential outcomes. RCM is named after Donald Rubin, Professor of Statistics at Harvard University...
matching, instead of relying on regression analysis
Regression analysis
In statistics, regression analysis includes many techniques for modeling and analyzing several variables, when the focus is on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables...
, which makes potentially untrue parametric
Parametric statistics
Parametric statistics is a branch of statistics that assumes that the data has come from a type of probability distribution and makes inferences about the parameters of the distribution. Most well-known elementary statistical methods are parametric....
assumptions. According to Rosenbaum, past research findings that virginity pledgers delayed sex may have been affected by their statistical method's inability to adjust fully for pre-existing differences between pledgers and non-pledgers: pledgers are much more negative towards premarital sex
Premarital sex
Premarital sex is sexual activity, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex, practiced by persons who are unmarried. Although it has always been practiced, in the West it has increased in prevalence since the mid-1950s...
prior to even taking the pledge, so would be predicted to delay sex even if they hadn't taken the pledge. Comparing pledgers with similar non-pledgers is the only way to be certain that the effect comes from the pledge rather than the pre-existing greater beliefs of pledgers that sexuality should be restrained to the matrimonial context.
Examples
True Love Waits 1993 pledge read as follows:
"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage."
True Love Waits more recent pledge reads:
"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a Biblical marriage relationship."
True Love Waits recent pledge (2009):
"I am making a commitment to myself, my family, and my Creator, that I will abstain from sexual activity of any kind before marriage. I will keep my body and my thoughts pure as I trust in God's perfect plan for my life."
(quote on card) "It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his/her own body in a way that is holy and honorable." 1 ThessFirst Epistle to the ThessaloniansThe First Epistle to the Thessalonians, usually referred to simply as First Thessalonians and often written 1 Thessalonians, is a book from the New Testament of the Christian Bible....
4:3-4
See also
- Silver Ring ThingSilver Ring ThingSilver Ring Thing is a virginity pledge program which encourages teens and young adults to remain celibate until marriage. It is based in the United States and was until 2005 funded by the U.S. federal government...
- Purity ringPurity ringPurity rings are worn as a sign of chastity. The practice originated in the United States in the 1990s among Christian-affiliated sexual abstinence groups....
- Purity BallPurity BallA purity ball is a formal ball dance event attended by fathers and their daughters. Purity balls promote virginity until marriage for teenage girls, and are almost exclusively associated with Evangelical Christian churches in the United States...
- Adolescent sexuality in the United StatesAdolescent sexuality in the United StatesAdolescent sexuality in the United States relates to the sexuality of American adolescents and its place in American society, both in terms of their feelings, behaviors and development and in terms of the response of the government, educators and interested groups.For teenagers, sex is considered...
- Born-again virginBorn-again virginAn individual can claim to be a born-again virgin if, after having engaged in sexual intercourse, s/he makes a commitment to not be sexually active until marriage...
- Sexual abstinenceSexual abstinenceSexual abstinence is the practice of refraining from some or all aspects of sexual activity for medical, psychological, legal, social, philosophical or religious reasons.Common reasons for practicing sexual abstinence include:*poor health - medical celibacy...