Just as Virtue isn't exclusive to religious folks, Abstinence isn't a Religious Thang!
No matter what the Little Devil on your other shoulder tells you... it's a HUMAN THANG and It's a control issue and granted, humans have control issues, but it is not laughable or out of the question to stress abstinence as the best form of contraception... BECAUSE IT IS!
You're not gonna get a DUI if you don't drive intoxicated... and you're NOT gonna get koodies or make a baby if you're not dancing the horizontal strut... it's simple!
People tend to think that to abstain is to not live fully or naturally as a human, when ironically it could be the other way around. STDs are natural and, if not God's way, then evolutions way of keeping randy humans in check. STDs seems to be a natural deterrent for societal swinging that too many of us don't heed. Certainly choosing monogamy is the most wise and logical choice, but even that is, by some, considered to be an unmaintainable existence for the excessively free spirited among us.
Society has slacked in too many ways so just because many Christians, at least try to keep certain values in the midst of overt pornography, shouldn't be laughed at. If you personally have control issues then you should look at that and not imply that abstinence is a crazy, outdated idea just because you can't relate.
I was arguing the state of our sex driven culture with a fellow secular friend and I mentioned something about the importance of virtue. She abruptly stopped me in mid sentence and says "OH why do you have to bring religion into it?" ....now this is an intelligent, 40 something college educated MOM, so to me, this just shows how pervasive this mode of thinking has become.
So does her sentiment imply that non religious people cannot be virtuous... of course not, BUT...
her misconception of the meaning might factor into her moralistically relative existence for herself and her children. If she is non religious and shuns virtue as being religious then that could become a generational problem. Granted, this is one person, but maybe this is indicative of why the culture seems on the verge of becoming a mooing and moaning cattle call for a massive jerry springer episode.
Many problems have risen from gradually going off the moral reservation so for the secular and semantically challenged it might be better to speak of morals in terms of natural law and other real world terms as opposed to the 'God Says No' mantra. That's why I don't completely disagree with the ACLU in this article below. If these particular Christians are theolocally heavy handed and Bible Belting these students into moral submission then there may be a problem.
For starters they may alienate some secular teens and or other faiths and lose a portion of them when they may have taught them something. Maybe having overt religious overtones is not the best way to get this message out and just may be unconstitutional since they are spending millions in Federal, non-denominational bills.
ACLU Asks Court to End Government Funding of Religion in Mississippi Abstinence-Only Program - Jackson, MS -- The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Mississippi today asked a federal court in Mississippi to end government funding of religion in the state's abstinence-only-until-marriage program.The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District on behalf of a teen and two community members who attended a state-sponsored abstinence summit in May of this year. [The ACLU]
