When my daughter's pediatrician handed me a prescription for an inhaler and told me I would have to administer it to my three-year-old three times a day for the next week, I almost cried. This kid does not like taking medicine and I, having recently lived through the eye-drop battle of the century, knew I needed a plan.
So on my way out of the pharmacy, I picked up a big bag of M&Ms. For some reason, my daughter thinks these are the most special treat ever. We don't really restrict her candy intake- the girl's eaten a lot of jelly beans, gummy worms, and lollipops in her short life-but, if that's what she thinks, I'm not above using it. I dangled that bag of colorful, candy-coated chocolate in front of her eyes, and said, "Three of these are all yours as soon as you take your medicine."
My reward system is working so well that in the coming weeks I'm planning on using it for potty training and getting her to sleep in her own bed too. The trick, as any good briber knows, however, is to make sure the treat stays a treat. She can't have too many M&Ms and she can only have them as a reward for good behavior - if they become too easily available, my plan will fail.
After reading the recent USA Today article "Wait for sex and marriage? Evangelicals conflicted," it occurred to me that that the Far Right has been using the same ploy for years when it comes to marriage and sex. They want us all to marry (as long as we're heterosexual, of course), and like a desperate parent fighting a toddler, posit sex as the ultimate reward - as if to say, "We know you want this and there is only one way you can have it."
Where their plan may be backfiring, according to the article, however, is that those young people who are taking this message to heart, notably young Evangelicals, are torn between the "don't have sex until you're married" message they hear from their church and the "don't get married until you're in your thirties" message they hear from, well, pretty much everyone else. Some Evangelical leaders admit that this added decade or so of celibacy may be unrealistic. One even suggested that doing so was "battling our creator's reproductive designs."
So, what are some religious leaders recommending? Well, they're not backing off of the prohibition on premarital sex (that would be like allowing M&Ms on any old Thursday), leaving them only one choice: promoting young marriage.
As horrified as I was at the suggestion that it is preferable for twenty-somethings to commit to a life-long relationship with someone they may not know well than to have sex outside of marriage with that same person, I was relieved that abstinence-only champions were finally admitting that the abstinence-only-until-marriage movement is, in fact, about marriage. For years the leaders of this movement tried to convince parents, reporters, and politicians that it wasn't about marriage and it wasn't about religion, it was about public health and prevention.
But, after ten years of reading these curricula, I can tell you that the real goal of abstinence-only programs is not to prevent teen pregnancies or STDs and it's not even to prevent premarital sex - it's to make sure that all people get married. Sex is pretty much just the M&M. Of course, just in case bribery doesn't work, these programs also present sex as the scary tiger in the corner that may eat you if you misbehave-a tactic that I just can't bring myself to use with my preschooler.
One curriculum, branded under the name of A. C. Green, an NBA player who famously remained a virgin until he married in his thirties, refers to marriage as the finish line. Another asks eighth graders to imagine their wedding and write a letter to their future spouse with descriptions of the bride's dress, the groom's tux, the friends who will stand up as members of the wedding party, and the color of the flowers. (Reading this one, I did wonder how it is that thirteen year olds are too young to learn about basic reproduction but the perfect age to become wedding planners.) Another, Aspire. Live Your Life. Be Free, asks young people which future choice is the most important-college, career, or marriage. The right answer: marriage because "College is for a few years, and you may have a number of careers. But marriage is for life."
Others compare sex to fire and have teachers lead students through elaborate visualizations of lighting a fire on a cold rainy day in the middle of your living room, instead of the obvious safer choice, which would be to light it in your fire place - as you guessed, the fire is a metaphor for sex. The goal is to show how safe and happy the confines of marriage really are-marriage, according to these programs, is the panacea.
Married people, students are told, live longer, stay happier, and have better sex. They never have to worry about STDs or unintended pregnancy. And, they certainly raise happier children, a statement which the curricula "prove" by laying out lists of just what is wrong with the children of divorced or single parents. In contrast, unmarried people are said to be selfish and lacking the character traits necessary to be a good citizen. One curriculum even points out that unmarried people are far more likely to go to jail.
There are many problems with this approach. Let's put aside for a moment that as many as half of the students in these classes probably come from single or divorced parents. Let's even put aside the fact that this focus on marriage discounts and discriminates against lesbian and gay students as well as students whose parents are lesbian or gay. The fundamental issue is a simple one; unlike getting a kid to take medicine or use a toilet, marriage is not the only acceptable behavior. It is one of many relationship options that are and should be available to adults.
Whether these programs are promoting early marriage or just promoting marriage early is up for debate, but either way, mandating one lifestyle for all is inappropriate.
For many, including young people interviewed in the USA Today article, the call to marriage and the prohibition on premarital sex are deeply held religious beliefs and I respect that. The problem, however, is that the conundrum discussed in the article is not unique to young Evangelicals. The abstinence-only-until-marriage industry has spent billions of dollars, most of them courtesy of Uncle Sam, giving the exact same message to all young people whether they believe in God, organized religion, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
As one young bride explained the mixed message of waiting until you're married to have sex and waiting until you're settled to get married is unreasonable: " ‘I think that's just inviting people to have sex and feel like they're bad people for doing it.' " Is this kind of a guilt trip really the best we can do for our young people?
It's time to stop using sex as an incentive for marriage and it's definitely time to stop using it as a scare tactic. Instead, we should find all possible teachable moments and opportunities to help young people really think about and understand sexuality and relationships, whether they choose to get married at 20, 50, or never, and regardless of when they first have sex.
