Reality Check
From USA Today: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex. I’m among them, as I suspect are my adult children, but a natural revulsion for even considering that idea prevents my knowing for sure. They assure me they find the idea of our having sex similarly disgusting. This is inexplicable.
But we’ve strayed. It’s looking like the decades-long PR storm from highly influential religious conservatives about staying pure before marriage has turned out to be about as effective as “gay cures” and scientific creationism. A skateboard-sized religious dogma colliding with a locomotive-sized reality. Or an (arguably) good idea that folks who call themselves “Christians” support vociferously, but don’t actually do. Like tithing.
Naturally, the current conservative Republican administration is spending “millions of dollars” on abstinence-only education programs.
I think it’s about time to start saying that if only 5% of us actually practice premarital purity, that takes believers in this dogma out of the category of “vocal minority” (like the 30% or so who still support the President’s war in Iraq), knocks it down below “fringy” (like people who believe in alien abductions or who would vote for an atheist for President), and drops it straight into the bucket of “weird little cult” (like people who think Rhodes Scholars are members of a secret cabal, fans of Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh, or wearers of magic underpants).
