Saving sex for marriage is a positive and realistic choice for young people, according to a new leaflet from Family Education Trust that is currently being mailed to every secondary school in the UK.
The Trust’s director, Norman Wells commented:
‘We are convinced this leaflet contains a message that today’s teenagers desperately need to hear, but too many are currently being deprived of the opportunity. That is why we are drawing it to the attention of PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education) teachers in all 5,000 British secondary schools in the hope that they will use it as a classroom resource.
‘All too often teaching aimed at encouraging young people to refrain from sexual intimacy outside the marriage bond is portrayed in a negative way – a matter of ‘just saying no’, when in reality it’s positive and liberating. Divorcing sex from marriage has not only led to high teenage conception rates and the sexual health crisis in the UK, but it is also has a major part to play in family breakdown and the untold human misery that flows from it.’
The Trust rejects the fatalistic and defeatist view that it is unrealistic to expect young people to save sex for marriage and that any teaching or encouragement to that end simply ‘doesn’t work’. It argues that teenagers are not like animals at the mercy of their sexual urges and instincts, and that it is an insult to treat them as if they were.
Entitled Why Save Sex? the attractively produced leaflet states:
‘Saving sex for marriage – and keeping it there when you are married – is the way to real freedom: freedom from fear, embarrassment, shame and emotional pain, as well as freedom from physical disease.’
The publication presents sexual intimacy as something powerful and special, and offers four positive reasons to save sex for marriage:
· Because it’s healthy;
· Because marriage is the best setting in which to bring children into the world;
· Because it leads to a more trusting marriage;
· Because it’s worth the wait.
Norman Wells urged:
‘We need to challenge the culture that views sexual intimacy as a casual recreational activity and present it as something that belongs in marriage where it expresses the total self-giving of a husband and wife to each other. Sex was never intended to be just about the joining together of two bodies, but about the joining of two lives.’