Shocker:
Coming down with an infection like chlamydia or gonorrhea should be a giveaway that you've been intimate with someone, but more than 10% of young adults who get the diagnosis won't admit to sexual activity, according to a study published in Pediatrics. And, according to public health officials, that's a major problem. How can we teach teens and young adults about safe sex if they won't even admit they're having any?
Wait a minute. Kids who claim they're saving themselves for marriage are still getting sexually transmitted diseases? How is that possible?
Maybe it's because, according to a 2004 report on chastity pledges, 88 percent of teens who promise not to have sex before marriage actually do have sex before marriage. And then there's this:
Yet the teenagers who had taken pledges were less likely to know they had an infection, raising the risk of their transmitting it to other people, said Dr. Bearman and Hannah Brückner of Yale University, the other author of the report.
Dr. Bearman said that telling teenagers ''to 'just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk'' of sexually transmitted diseases.
In other words, kids who claim to be saving themselves for marriage are just as likely to have sex and more likely to have stupid sex that leads to diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
But thank god we've got America's favorite born-again virgin, Bristol Palin, making ads that tell those teens they don't even need to bother learning about how to protect themselves, as long as they promise to remain celibate. Because obviously, that's working so well.
Just ask those 10 percent of teens who, despite their promises of purity, now have to live with an STD.