Forget sex? Virginity pledgers lie about past

[Sportsdude]

 [DIV class=head]Forget sex? Virginity pledgers lie about past

[DIV class=abstract]Teens who promise to wait for marriage more likely to deny sexual history

[FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=1][A href="vny!://www.reuters.com/"]Reuters[/A][/FONT]

[DIV class=updateTime]
 [DIV id=udtD]Updated: 5:29 p.m. CT June 1, 2006[/DIV]

[SCRIPT language=DOH!script]       function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) (          var n = document.getElementById("udtD");          if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) (             var dt = new DateTime();             pdt = dt.T2D(pdt);             if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) (n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,(('false'.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true))          )       )       UpdateTimeStamp('632847977778170000');    [/SCRIPT]   [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]NEW YORK - Teenagers who take pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to deny having taken the pledge if they later become sexually active. Conversely, those who were sexual active before taking the pledge frequency deny their sexual history, according to new study findings.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]These findings imply that virginity pledgers often provide unreliable data, making assessment of abstinence-based sex education programs unreliable. In addition, these teens may also underestimate their risk of exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]"Teenagers do not report their past sexual activity accurately, with virginity pledgers giving more inaccurate reports of their past sexual activity," study author Janet Rosenbaum, of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Reuters Health.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]Consequently, rather than rely on self-reports, "studies of virginity pledges must focus on outcomes where we know we can get good information, such as medical STD tests," she added.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]Previous research shows that survey respondents tend to answer questions about sexual activity according to their current beliefs, particularly if their current attitudes conflict with their past behaviors. Survey respondents may also underreport or overreport their health risk behavior.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]Rosenbaum evaluated retractions of virginity pledges and reports of sexual histories among a nationally representative sample of seventh- through twelfth-grade students who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]The students were first interviewed in 1995 and followed-up in 1996. The first survey included responses from 79 percent of 20,745 students. The second survey included responses from 88 percent of 14,736 students from the first group.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]In the initial survey, about 13 percent of adolescents reported that they had taken a pledge of virginity. Just one year later, however, more than half of this group said they had never taken such a pledge, Rosenbaum reports in the American Journal of Public Health.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]In addition, more than 1 in 10 students who reported being sexually active in 1995 said that they were virgins in 1996. Students who reported they were sexually active in second survey were more than three times as likely as their peers to deny they had taken a pledge of virginity.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]The adolescents' denials of virginity pledges and sexual histories were associated with changes in their sexual and religious identities, the report indicates.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2][/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]For example, adolescents who abandoned a born-again Christian identity were more than twice as likely as their peers to say they had never taken a virginity pledge.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]On the other hand, 28 percent of nonvirgins who later took a virginity pledge retracted their sexual histories during the 1996 survey. The same was true of 18 percent of nonvirgins who later adopted a born-again Christian identity.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]Sexually active teens who later took virginity pledges were four times as likely to deny previous reports of sexual activity than were those who had not taken virginity pledges.[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]According to Rosenbaum, "it's not possible to know why pledgers retracted their sexual history since it's impossible to know whether respondents actually had sex."[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]"Psychology studies in a variety of contexts seem to demonstrate that people's memories of their behavior are consistent with their beliefs rather than their actual behavior," she told Reuters Health, adding that "anecdotally, some people seem to feel like the answer which is strictly true may not represent themselves accurately."[/FONT]

 [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]"If those who deny their sexual pasts perceive their new history as correct, they will underestimate the sexually transmitted disease risk stemming from their prepledge sexual behavior," Rosenbaum adds.[/FONT]



[FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2](c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.[/FONT]

[SCRIPT]var url=location.XXXX;var i=url.indexOf('/did/') + 1;if(i==0)(i=url.indexOf('/print/1/') + 1;)if(i==0)(i=url.indexOf('&print=1');)if(i]0)(url = url.substring(0,i);document.write('[font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"]URL: [a href="'+url+'"]'+url+'[/a][/font][/p]');if(window.print)(window.print())else(alert('To print his page press Ctrl-P on your keyboard \nor choose print from your browser or device after clicking OK'))[/SCRIPT]  [FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2]URL: [A href="vny!://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13088669/"]vny!://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13088669/[/A][/FONT]

[Sportsdude]

Also don't forget about those "Born again Virgins" who get there hymen sewn back on.

[tenkani]

Ah, also studies have shown that teens who commit to "abstinence" more often engage in oral and anal sex. Daddy would be so proud.  

[Dissident]

SD, you'd enjoy this:

[a href="vny!://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/05/12/notes051206.DTL"]vny!://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/05/12/notes051206.DTL[/a]

It's up there with the whole quinceanera craze.  A Mexican-American woman I worked with used to laugh about how they've become the Latino bar mitzvahs.  In her words:  "Why they bother with the white dresses I don't know.  It's not like they're virgins anymore."

These big virginity ceremonies are even sadder--not even a good party.  At least you can expect decent food and sometimes good music at a bar/bat mitzvah or a quinceanera.
 

[Sportsdude]

Oh my lord what is wrong with america.  Whats next? Are they going to go back to the old old days where the parents watched there daughter loose it on there wedding night?  I've been thinking this all along for a while now, pretty soon right wing fundies are going to call the menstrual period an act of murder because it disgards eggs.  I f*cking hate those losers.

[Dissident]

 tenkani wrote:
Ah, also studies have shown that teens who commit to "abstinence" more often engage in oral and anal sex. Daddy would be so proud.



Don't forget Rick Santorum.
 

[tenkani]

How could I forget that f*cking lunatic.

"In his Senate office, on a shelf next to an autographed baseball, Sen. Rick Santorum keeps a framed photo of his son Gabriel Michael, the fourth of his seven children. Named for two archangels, Gabriel Michael was born prematurely, at 20 weeks, on Oct. 11, 1996, and lived two hours outside the womb.
 Upon their son's death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen's parents' home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
 "That's my little guy," Santorum says, pointing to the photo of Gabriel, in which his tiny physique is framed by his father's hand. The senator often speaks of his late son in the present tense. It is a rare instance in which he talks softly.
 He and Karen brought Gabriel's body home so their children could "absorb and understand that they had a brother," Santorum says. "We wanted them to see that he was real," not an abstraction, he says. Not a "fetus," either, as Rick and Karen were appalled to see him described -- "a 20-week-old fetus" -- on a hospital form. They changed the form to read "20-week-old baby."



From:
vny!://www.poormojo.org/pmjadaily/archives/005521.php
 

[Dissident]

 Yes, well, thanks to Dan Savage all those nice Christian "virgins" will pay homage to Saint Rick every time they clean up after anal sex.