When I was 13 or 14, my mom took me on a weekend trip to go back-to-school shopping and have guided discussions about sexual purity from a man on a cassette tape that read from the Bible and explained things like how boys like girls with large round breasts and why we feel funny urges in our private parts. At the end of this incredibly awkward trip, I promised to save myself until marriage and got a purity ring to wear on my wedding ring finger. Yes, I'm for real, and yes, this stuff happens to people who aren't Amish or the Jonas Brothers.

I was skeptical even then but what the hell was I supposed to do? I still had to live under my parents' roof for another 5 years, and refusing to make a sexual purity promise would've been like a huge red flag to keep me locked indoors.

Panties on a young girl
If there's grass (or at least turf) on the field…
Back in the day, when girls were given away as brides upon reaching a nubile age—so, like 13—to grown boys or men who probably lost their last wives at childbirth due to highly unsanitary conditions and lack of conveniences of modern medicine, it was completely feasible to go your entire premarital life without sex. Also, there was the threat of being shunned from your village or stoned to death for being a whore. That always helps keep your panties on.

Sex is a way for men to release all their pent up man aggression … women need it to not go bat crazy.In our generation though, people are waiting longer and longer to get married. Girls no longer graduate from high school with the sole mission of becoming some guy's baby making machine, and guys don't settle down immediately when they can enjoy a few more years of freedom with their sleeping partners and their bank account. It's not uncommon for people to hold off on marriage, or even begin considering it, until they've completed their college education and/or started a professional career, which could put them into their late twenties. The current average age people get married in the US is 26 for women and 28 for men. By that point, it's just weird to be a virgin, unless you've chosen the ascetic life of a monk or priest (cough), and people will start to think there's something wrong with you.

Part of the reason people used to get married so early is so they could have a sexual partner without being looked down upon by society or their families. But marriage should be for love, not a ticket for sex. Now that premarital sex is generally accepted in Western culture as normal, it's safe to assume a proposal is genuinely because a man loves a woman or because he wants to make it illegal for her to have sex with anyone else.

Juicy steak
Not as appetizing 365 days a year.
Either way, it's unfathomable to me to marry someone having never seen their goods or finding out what they're like in bed. That is the equivalent of committing to one food for the rest of your life, solely from the description on a menu. No picture, no taste test. Are you getting the filet mignon or an old can of flake tuna? Who knows. Imagine the disappointment of all the brides who have, on their wedding night, ripped off their husband's whitey tighties/boxers to find a 4½" dick, or the disappointment of all the husbands who have undressed their beautiful little virgin for the first time to find some floppy, loose vagina lips. That's what they're stuck with ‘til death do them part. Of course, if you hadn't seen anything else, you would have nothing to compare to, but still. What a gyp.

Fire burning in a street mob
Make sex, not chaos.
Sex shouldn't be confined to the one person we decide to marry (before marrying, that is) because finding a good sex partner takes far less time than it takes to find a good life partner. More than that, sex is a way for men to release all their pent up man aggression so they don't kill each other, and women need it to not go bat crazy. Yes, I said it. Women need sex, too. No way in hell do I want to live in a society where the most quick-witted, physically attractive, and generally most awesome portion of the population aren't putting their talents to good use. If sex outside of marriage were somehow legally banned and enforced, workplace productivity would decrease, violent crimes would increase, and abuse of controlled substances would be, well, out of control. I envision buildings burning down, small children crying in the streets, angry people bashing in windows and looting as the thin façade of civilization crumbles around the carnage.

Yaz birth control pill pack
Science is half the battle. Yazzzir.
Of course, something as amazing as sex would have to have a catch. Random, unprotected sex leads to fun surprises like unexplained bleeding, genital sores, and discharges of pus. Yummy! Some radical Christians are of the opinion that educating kids on safe sex is promoting the idea that promiscuity is "okay"—most likely the same Christians blowing up abortion clinics. Hm. Well, I think we all know what happens to them. Even wise old Sue Johanson, from Talk Sex with Sue, will tell you safe sex is perfectly natural—and she's been doing it for at least the past hundred years. While I'm on the subject of contraception, the next time the US tries to end world hunger by sending aid to some third world country, instead of food, can we just send a couple tons of Yaz and condoms?

Anyway, as I was saying, in modern society celibacy ‘til marriage is all but impossible, and given the average age of marriage now, it would actually be counter-intuitive to natural selection. When a woman gets preggers past her childbearing prime, which is in her late teens, it becomes more difficult to conceive, and risk of complications like Down's syndrome increases dramatically. Women have the baby-making apparatus, so we are the limiting factor here. So what would the good Christians have us do? Oh that's easy, girls can marry a man with a good job as soon as they're legal and make babies immediately. In essence, return to the 1950s.

Let's be honest though, no one really fucks to make babies. Babies are painful to bear, stinky, loud, and expensive, all of which are very unpleasant and stressful. It's amazing anyone still intentionally reproduces.

So for people who have sex for recreational purposes (so, everyone who has sex), let's examine the point of waiting ‘til marriage. I'm pretty sure God made that a "rule" because back when they were writing the Bible, things like birth control didn't exist to keep men from producing broods of little bastard hellions to be raised by a single mother who couldn't support herself and who didn't have DNA tests to prove paternity. Now that we have those things, the whole "saving yourself ‘til marriage" thing is an out-of-place anachronism. Maybe we should just come to terms with the fact that humans are animals and take care of our instinctual needs in a responsible way that doesn't put other people at risk or create a new generation of accident children.

Thanks for reading. You may now burn me for heresy.

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