Rael: ‘Pledge education is criminal. To ward off STDs and teen pregnancies, forget pledges and offer protection!’
LAS VEGAS, Jan. 2 – After hearing about a study showing that virginity pledges – in and of themselves – don’t lead teens to delay sex but instead make them less cautious and considerably less likely to use condoms, Rael, founder and spiritual leader of the International Raelian Movement, reaffirmed the danger of pledge teachings in the schools. He insisted on the necessity of offering free condoms in the schools instead, as he has advocated for the past 25 years, starting with his first free-condom campaign.
“The only good policy to protect young people would be to make free condoms available for all students in every school and university,” he said.
“The study showed that taking a virginity pledge does not change the age at which teens start their sexual life”, said Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, a biochemist who is also the international spokesperson for the Raelian Movement. “After taking the pledge, they typically start their sexual life around age 21 – like all other kids educated in a conservative environment. The main difference however is that the pledge takers are drastically less likely to use condoms – by a 10 percentage point difference compared to other religious or conservative teens – and this is a direct and terrible result of the abstinence teaching.”
The virginity pledge effectiveness study, headed by Janet Rosenbaum, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., and reported last week in the journal “Pediatrics,” suggested that kids in abstinence-only programs often have negative, biased views about whether condoms work.
“Teens being told such biased information end up thinking they might as well not bother using birth control or condoms,” Boisselier said. “To me, it’s criminal to let teens face STDs unprotected when their hormones dictate their actions and make them forget they ever even took a pledge.”
She said the Raelian philosophy explains that a happy sexual life without taboos between consenting individuals is key to the balance needed to be a fulfilled human being, and that teens should have an early sexual education that eliminates guilt and taboos and explains how to have and give physical pleasure without harming anyone.
“Federal funding for abstinence programs, launched 15 years ago by conservative Christians, has increased almost threefold in the last seven years, but without giving any useful results,” Boisselier said. “With the $208 million budgeted for such programs this past year, I bet all schools could have free condoms available all year long. Teens would be less handicapped starting out in life if that money were used to help them go safely through the turmoil of discovering sex.”
“The only good policy to protect young people would be to make free condoms available for all students in every school and university,” he said.
“The study showed that taking a virginity pledge does not change the age at which teens start their sexual life”, said Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, a biochemist who is also the international spokesperson for the Raelian Movement. “After taking the pledge, they typically start their sexual life around age 21 – like all other kids educated in a conservative environment. The main difference however is that the pledge takers are drastically less likely to use condoms – by a 10 percentage point difference compared to other religious or conservative teens – and this is a direct and terrible result of the abstinence teaching.”
The virginity pledge effectiveness study, headed by Janet Rosenbaum, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., and reported last week in the journal “Pediatrics,” suggested that kids in abstinence-only programs often have negative, biased views about whether condoms work.
“Teens being told such biased information end up thinking they might as well not bother using birth control or condoms,” Boisselier said. “To me, it’s criminal to let teens face STDs unprotected when their hormones dictate their actions and make them forget they ever even took a pledge.”
She said the Raelian philosophy explains that a happy sexual life without taboos between consenting individuals is key to the balance needed to be a fulfilled human being, and that teens should have an early sexual education that eliminates guilt and taboos and explains how to have and give physical pleasure without harming anyone.
“Federal funding for abstinence programs, launched 15 years ago by conservative Christians, has increased almost threefold in the last seven years, but without giving any useful results,” Boisselier said. “With the $208 million budgeted for such programs this past year, I bet all schools could have free condoms available all year long. Teens would be less handicapped starting out in life if that money were used to help them go safely through the turmoil of discovering sex.”