Abstinence
Perhaps a thread has already been done on this before if it has you all have my sincere apologies.
Now in my High School the moment you declare to be a believer of abstinence you are ridiculed. I have always wondered why the teenage population and (in some of my own experiences at least) adults get so antagonistic against abstinence. Or not exactly antagonistic, but... uncomfortable seems to be the best way to describe it. Perhaps I am wrong, but it just seems to me from my own personal experience that some if not many people seem to view abstinence as foolish. In some ways it scares me to see the lack of sexually responsibility in my peers. At the moment in my High School there are two Freshmen pregnant, one Sophomore and one Junior. Out of a student body of 2,000 yes I understand that these are incredibly small numbers; however, the number of students who actively engage in intercourse (or at least claim to do so) is a frighteningly much higher number.
Understandably sex plays a powerful and dominate role on modern day society (and I suppose all of human history as well), but I fail to see any harm in restraint. I'm not even talking about the religious viewpoint, but the simple fact that abstinence seems at least to me a gesture of common sense. Or perhaps I am simply bias towards abstinence due to the heavily religious household I live in.
Now I am only 16 so my experience in life and the complications of relationships in general are limited so perhaps I am speaking more from ignorance than common sense. I make no claim to understand the complications of a close relationship (as I have never been in one) and nor to I claim to assume that what I believe is correct. However, my ears (or I suppose I should say eyes) are open to other's thoughts on the subject.
-JM