Fundamentalists tell us it's important to strip away quality sex-education and replace it with "abstinence only" classes that offer youth moralizing sermons instead of educaitonal lectures. They like to point to a flawed study that suggested teenagers who loose their virginity at a younger age are more likely to become criminals.
Well, guess what. It turns out, surprisingly enough, that the fundamentalists are less than accurate. (Somebody get the smelling salts!)
The University of Virginia recently conducted a serious study on the matter. They studied more than 500 pairs of twins, teenagers growing up in identical environments with identical genes. What did they find? On average, the twin who lost his virginity first was slightly less likely to get involved in graffiti, shop-lifting, drugs, or other illegal behavior.
I can't wait to see what radical changes this inspires in the religious right. Now that the truth is known, I'm sure the Pat Robertson crowd will immidiately demand an end to abstinence only education and start calling for 'hedonism only' sex ed in order to help curb juvenile delinquency.
Of course, it's possible they'll claim the study was conducted by minions of Satan and is therefore unreliable, but let's give them more credit than that. After all, that would make them look silly.
Story here.