College students unite in abstinence

CU group echoes national trend on sexual activity

By Aimee Heckel, Camera Staff Writer
October 24, 2005

Not if a girl begged him. Not if she was super hot. Not even on a deserted island.

Jonathan Butler's friends have challenged his resolve with endless what-ifs. But the 19-year-old says there's no fathomable reason he'd have sex before marriage. He's proud to be a virgin.

So proud, in fact, that last week he started an abstinence club on the University of Colorado campus.


He's expanding the club to include relationship education, hoping that will earn his efforts acceptance in a liberal community known for its "condom zaps" — groups burst into bars, scatter condoms and spread the gospel of safe sex.

Instead, Butler wants to spread the belief that it's not only all right to be a virgin, but it's also cool. He said he wants to bring in big-name guest speakers to teach students about healthy relationships and self-esteem.

Butler said he expects to attract several hundred members, and not just virgins, CU students or Christians. He welcomes anyone to the College Coalition for Relationship Education.

"We'll talk about relationships, not about how to be abstinent," he said. "It's not virgin versus non-virgin.

Virgins of the nation, unite

Butler's club joins a national surge in abstinence-friendly organizations for youth.

Most efforts, such as Longmont-based Friends First, take aim at middle- and high-schoolers. Butler was a member of Friends First when he attended Silver Creek High School in Longmont.

Then he started college. There, he said, it was even harder to be an open virgin. Students teased him that he just couldn't "get any" or asked him if he was gay.

"No, the risks are just too high," he said. "And personally, I don't want the No. 1 thing I'm worrying about right now to be who I am going to have sex with this weekend."

He said he watched many of his previously abstinent friends change their minds at CU.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found about a third of teens age 15 to 17 said they'd had sex. That number more than doubled — 71 percent of women and 65 percent of men — for 18- and 19-year-olds.

Butler said he thinks many college students get swept into the "sex-sells" culture, especially at a school like CU, plagued by allegations that sex was used to recruit football players.

So-called "virgin clubs" first sprung up in the South, but the idea is spreading, said Gina Harris, national program director of Friends First. Last year, Princeton University students started a group, a first for the Ivy League.

Harris said most college programs are initiated by students, like Butler, because funding for abstinence programs is often specified for teenagers. She said she hopes Butler's college club becomes a national model.

Beyond abstinence

Sabrina Weill, a national expert on teens and sex, said a greater devotion to abstinence has accompanied more teens becoming religious.

Weill, of New York, is the former editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine and author of the book, "The Real Truth About Teens and Sex."

Valuing virginity can give teens a self-esteem boost, Weill said. But adults need to continue talking to young people beyond, "You're a virgin? Great. Stay that way," Weill said.

More than half of teenagers are having oral sex, she said. Some think they can do it and remain virgins — "and they've been taught that virginity is what's most important," she said.

The push for abstinence without clarifying the risks of other sexual activities can lead to a false sense of safety against sexually transmitted infections, as well as cause an intimacy crisis as young adults, she said.

"Teenagers who have oral sex thinking it's not intimate often discover after the fact that they regret it, because it is intimate," Weill said.

CU's sex education program at Wardenburg Health Center doesn't go into the emotional aspects of sex, said Jonna Fleming, program coordinator. She refers students to the school's counseling center and Rape and Gender Education Program.

But students like Butler say they need more than that.

Butler wants a supportive circle of friends and access to experts to strengthen his relationship skills and reinforce his own definition of abstinence.

He said he's all right with hand-holding and kissing, but that's where he draws the line. Deserted island or not.

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