Contemporary Sexuality - February 2009 - (Page 8) Quick Hits — Sex in the News “Five years after the pledge, 82 percent of pledgers denied having ever pledged. … Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms in the past year and at last sex.” — Janet Elise Rosenbaum Study: Virginity pledges don’t work Virginity pledges don’t help teenagers remain abstinent or avoid sexually transmitted infections. In fact, adolescents who took virginity pledges were less likely to use birth control and condoms than a similar population of nonpledgers. Janet Elise Rosenbaum, PhD, a Harvard University professor, reached those conclusions in a new study published in the January issue of Pediatrics. During the 1990s, virginity pledges became a popular part of the abstinence-only sex education landscape. By 1995, 13 percent of American teens had promised to avoid sexual intercourse until after they married. In previous studies of virginity pledgers, researchers compared teens taking the pledge to all nonpledgers. That resulted in a “past finding that pledgers were less sexually active than the general population of nonpledgers,” Rosenbaum writes. In her study, Rosenbaum used a matched sampling method to compare virginity pledgers to nonpledgers of roughly the same religious, socio-economic and vocabulary test score background. As a result, “our refined sample (both pledgers and matched nonpledgers) is more religious and sexually conservative than the general population of adolescents and would be predicted to delay sex without virginity pledges.” Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a representative sample of all U.S. teens, Rosenbaum compared 289 virginity pledgers to 3,440 non-pledgers over a five-year period. Her findings? “Five years after the pledge, 82 percent of pledgers denied having ever pledged,” Rosenbaum writes. “Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers had 0.1 fewer past-year partners but did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms in the past year and at last sex.” The federal government is spending $204 million in the current fiscal year on abstinence-only programs. In April 2008, while a candidate for president, Barack Obama said sex education needs to “focus on abstinence” but “contraception has to be a part of that education process.” (Bloomberg News, Dec. 29 and “Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers” study, Pediatrics, Jan. 2009.) Norway outlaws the buying of sex Anti-prostitution laws have traditionally targeted the sellers of sex. Norway is now turning the tables, making it illegal for its citizens to purchase sex, both inside and outside its borders. “We think buying sex is unacceptable because it favors human trafficking and forced prostitution,” says Astri Aas-Hansen, the country’s deputy justice minister. Sweden and Finland have recently enacted similar statutes. Prostitution support groups in Norway estimate the country has 3,000 prostitutes, including many from Nigeria. As part of the new law, the Norwegian government will provide drug and alcohol rehabilitation and free schooling to prostitutes wishing to find other work. (AFP, Dec. 31) Gay youth have higher pregnancy rates than straight youth A new Canadian study finds that gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers are more likely to be involved in a pregnancy than their straight peers. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) evaluated data from adolescent health surveys in 1992, 1998 and 2003 and found that 10.6 percent of bisexual girls and 7.3 percent of lesbians became pregnant. That compares to just 1.8 percent of heterosexual girls. “Teen pregnancy is declining, but the risk is still higher for LGB youth,” says lead author Elizabeth Saewyc, an associate professor in the School of Nursing at UBC. “These results are linked to higher rates of discrimination and harassment among LGB teens at school.” The study was published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality. (Canwest News Service and University of British Columbia press release, Dec. 16) Study: Gay teens need supportive parents Gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers with unaccepting parents are more likely to have negative mental health outcomes. That’s the conclusion of a survey of 224 white and Latino men and women, ages 21 to 25, by Caitlin Ryan, PhD, ACSW, a professor at San Francisco State University. Ryan’s study, published in the January issue of Pediatrics, found that gays, lesbians and bisexuals who had been rejected by their families as www.aasect.org | February 2009 Vol. 43, No. 2 8 Contemporary Sexuality http://www.aasect.org
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