I recently met a high school advisor that gives high school advisors a good name. She is really trying to make a difference with the students that she works with. I asked her what her biggest concern for her students was. Her reply surprised me. She said that in the county where she works the students are twice as likely statistically to contract a STD as compared to the national average. She said that "the kids here are just not letting STD's slow down their sexual activities". She had a student who just found out that she had herpes, when told, she said, "I guess I never considered this as a permanent thing.You know like a lifetime or untreatable. Now I am marked forever. My friends are all like "as long as you don't get pregnant everything else goes..." What a lie!".
Not one to be defeated by this type of thinking this advisor is offering a different way of thinking to these kids. She has started a "True Love Waits" course that teaches all the benefits of waiting till marriage for sexual intimacy. When I spoke to her she had just finished her first class with 8 kids deciding to wear a purity ring.
Her students had some interesting comments on completing the material:
"I thought that abstinace was just some attempt by the "moral majority" to kill our fun, not a way to be protected from all the things that could destroy my future."
"I don't want to look back in 10 years and think that my whole life was changed forever by a few minutes of pleasure.."
This advisor said "These True Love Waits Purity Rings are just silver objects, but if they are visual reminders of what is at stake to the person wearing it, they are certainly worth the cost".