Sexual Issues and Controversies

Sexuality lies n the heart of a number of controversies in the United states today. Here are a few key issues: teen pregnancy, pornography, prostitution, and sexual violence. These are all major issues when it comes to teens and sex, but I'm only going to focus on abstinence. The reason I chose abstinence is because my 14 year old son was just in a Purity Ceremony this weekend.

A purity ball is a formal dance  event attended by fathers and their daughters which promotes virginity until marriage for teenage girls. Typically, daughters who attend a purity ball make a virginity pledge to remainsexually abstinent until marriage. Fathers who attend a purity ball make a promise to protect their young daughters' "purity of mind, body, and soul."^[1] Proponents of these events contend that they encourage close and deeply affectionate relationships between fathers and daughters, thereby avoiding the premarital sexual activity that allegedly results when young women seek love through relationships with young men.^[2]Critics assert that the balls promulgate messages encroaching upon women's freedom,^[2] promote anti-feminist ideals, and ignore homosexuality.^[3] They also assert that purity balls define a woman's worth by her virginity rather than her whole being, actions and attitudes, and emphasize her role as a possession to be passed by her father to her husband.^[4]

The children went through 12 weeks of educational classes that lasted an hour to and hour and a half long, where they were given opportunities to ask different guest questions. The classes ranged from sexually transmitted diseases, to how to build a relationship with God, budgeting, peer pressure, violence, teen pregnancy, and there were even a Psychologist once as a guest speaker.
The ceremony was frowned upon by some people because they felt that the children were too young. Truth of the matter is the children made the commitment on their own free will and the ages ranged from 14- 18 years old. The two oldest pledgees were upcoming Seniors in High School. They were told to just lead by example,everyones journey will not be understood by society,nor does it have to be. Even though the teen pregnancy rate has declined over the past few decades, the fact of the matter is that the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of the Western industrialized world. It is true that the teen pregnancy and birth rate was much higher prior to 1980 (and especially in the 1950s and 1960s), but at the time young women were getting married and having children before the age of 20. Most of the teen pregnancies occurring before 1980 were to married women; now most of today's teen mothers are unwed. Here are some more interesting teen pregnancy statistics:
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