Punchline of a Cosmic Joke

After high school, I continued to save sex for marriage and suffered all the slings and arrows as a result. However, there was no safe harbor for people who made this decision despite the growing popularity of the “What Would Jesus Do?” trend which basically amounted to nothing more than a few young people wearing W.W.J.D. bracelets. I also remember talk of purity rings back then but in liberal Massachusetts that idea never caught on either.

During a meeting at St. Mary's rectory in the 1990s, I saw a magazine called You! which was geared toward the Catholic Church's young people. On the cover of one issue was singer Amy Grant and on another was actor John Stamos. I questioned the latter's commitment to the Church's views on sexuality given his rock star image and wondered if the publisher had trouble finding qualified role models.

While some TV shows like Blossom, Beverly Hills 90210, Family Matters and L.A. Law respectfully portrayed characters who refrained from sex, many others like Seinfeld used virginity as comedy relief. Then came the film The 40 Year Old Virgin which only reinforced the notion that late adulthood virginity was a result of ineptitude rather than a beautiful moral choice. One of my friends who thinks the Church's values are foolish occasionally teases me by quoting this movie's line, “What you just gotta do is just get you a bunch of these hood rats...”

During high school and college, I was eager to defend the Church's values at the drop of a hat but as the years passed, I found myself living in the closet in order to smooth things over with the vast majority of people who just couldn't understand. When a married coworker talked about how awkward he was in high school, he admitted to losing his virginity “very late in life” at age 18. I pretended to sympathize with his plight. On more than one occasion, I was put on the spot by coworkers who wanted to know about my past sexual experiences. I either made up a number or said that I didn't really talk about such things. Situations like these are painful because like St. Peter, I was denying a very important aspect of my faith.

I did share my secret with a married Catholic female coworker who never embraced the Church's values on premarital sex. We exchanged knowing looks when Friends was on the television in the break room and the episode airing featured a high school student comically losing his virginity to Monica.

If virginity isn't played for laughs then it's often viewed by society as something of a sideshow attraction...curiosity mixed with disbelief. That was the reaction when actress Rebel Wilson wrote in her autobiography that she didn't lose her virginity until the age of 35. Woke newscasters couldn't mock her “choice” but they found it odd to say the least. Despite our culture of diversity, there was simply no room to consider how waiting so long to have sex could be a laudable goal. Remember when Olympian Lolo Jones gained more fame for her decision to save herself for marriage than for her sporting abilities?

During a recent interview on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, the host embarrassed Kirsten Dunst by reading an old interview she did for Teen Magazine where the actress said she and all her friends were proud virgins having attended Catholic school. Like many who once professed these values but no longer embraced them, she tried to distance herself from her old remarks and found them humiliating.

Even abstinence's one-time role model, Brooke Shields admitted that she lost her virginity during college and was so guilt-ridden by the experience, she tumbled out of bed and ran out of the dorm room naked. She now regrets waiting so long to have sex because she missed out on “a sense of joy and freedom” and largely blames her mother for forcing abstinence upon her. What a role model, but even Lolo Jones partially blames her lackluster performance in sports on her virginity.

On YouTube we see social experiment videos played for laughs when a guy being filmed with a hidden camera blurts out to passing women, “I'm a virgin!” Another video asks women if they would sleep with a virgin. Most of the amused respondents answer with a resounding no because they figure there's something wrong with the guy or he won't know what to do in bed. And then there's the Virginity Exchange on Reddit where dateless wonders (mostly guys) plead for someone to sleep with them for the first time. There aren't many things in the world that are more pathetic.

If abstinence did indeed have some kind of counterculture edginess to it during the 1990s, it's mostly viewed as creepy, comical or sad in today's day and age. For those Catholics who took the Church's stance on premarital sex seriously and never wavered from it, there needs to be a place we can call home...where our moral decision can be seen as an attractive and rewarding one instead of the punchline of a cosmic joke.

Great Sacrifice Demands Great Reward

The last blog entry mentioned some of the statistics my educators in Sunday school and Catholic high school used to promote the Church's views on premarital sex: Couples who saved themselves for marriage enjoyed increased happiness and fewer divorce rates. While such claims helped buttress my decision to forgo sex until marriage, there was more to it than that.

Even as a teenager with raging hormones, I saw the beauty of two people who had abstained from sex their whole lives joining in the bonds of Holy Matrimony. Without even knowing each other, they chose to make a huge sacrifice in the here and now for an unseen future together. Despite all the pressures and temptations an oversexed society forced upon them, they would still be able to say to each other, “I saved myself for you.”

While my classmates were sowing their wild oats, I wanted to be with just one woman. I wanted a relationship where we would grow together, truly know each other and pass every milestone together. Of course, it didn't hurt that my Catholic high school nuns talked about how saving yourself for marriage was the ultimate gift you could give your spouse. It was also the time of AIDS and a common phrase meant to scare us was, “When you sleep with someone, you're sleeping with everyone they ever had sex with.” Most of us took that statement with a grain of salt.

For me, the Church's views on premarital sex just made sense and as a devout Christian, I always tried defending these values even if it brought ridicule. When I told a friend about my decision to save myself for marriage and my hope to find a spouse who had done the same she said the only way I'd ever accomplish that would be to move down south and marry a redneck. At one high school party, the host's older brother made some wisecrack about how I should sleep with one of my female friends. When I asserted my belief in the Church's teachings, he blurted out in front of all the guests, “You need to get laid!” One of my aunts doubted my moral convictions and proclaimed at some point I'd have sex outside of marriage. Well, she's long dead and I'm still a virgin.

My steadfastness wasn't a result of being a dateless wonder either because there were one or two opportunities to lose my virginity in high school had I chosen to pursue it. Some of my friends thought I should have gotten sex over with whether it was good, awkward or not so great but my standards were much higher than that.

I found somewhat of a role model in Brooke Shields when she reluctantly admitted on the Arsenio Hall Show that she was still a virgin. (At the time, I was unaware of the fuss she made a few years earlier on the subject.) The 1990s saw various campaigns to promote abstinence and one involved billboards with the word VIRGIN spray painted in bold letters. Below that a caption read, “Teach your kid it's not a dirty word.” The Rush Limbaugh television show featured professional basketball player A.C. Green's efforts to encourage young people to save themselves for marriage. A slightly cool counterculture vibe started to emerge and along with the more conservative elements of the “straight edge” subculture some young people were pushing back against a society that seemed far too immoral and exploitative.

Despite all this, however, it was still largely uncool to hold onto these views and one by one most of my friends from Catholic high school rejected the Church's teachings regarding premarital sex. Oddly enough, one female friend admitted to me that she respected my moral fortitude and thought my beliefs were right even though she was sexually active. (All the good it did.)

For all the ridicule and isolation the decision to save sex for marriage brought, it didn't really bother me at the time because I never lost sight of that beautiful vision for marriage and sexuality my Catholic educators presented. Sure, abstinence was a great sacrifice but the reward was also great. While there are no guarantees in life, we usually give something up to get something worth struggling for. Why do we do good things even when it's a major inconvenience? To get into heaven. Why do we work long hours in jobs we can't stand? To provide for ourselves, our family and hopefully a better future.

My Catholic educators didn't say, “Sleep with whoever you want because in the end it doesn't matter.” If that were the case, then why did I save sex for marriage in the first place? The reward should match the sacrifice and if a career no longer offers just compensation for our hard work, don't we demand more money? Don't we start to question staying in that job?

Some people in the online dating community have actually told me my hope to marry a fellow Catholic who also saved themselves for marriage is wrong because “fetishizing virginity” is not what the Church is all about. (Keep in mind, this is the same faith that venerates the Virgin Mary, demands celibacy for priests and has consecrated virgins.) I couldn't help but think what kind of message it sends our young people if everyone who ignored the Church's teachings reap all the rewards while those who stayed true to those teachings are forced to endure a lifetime of empty suffering.

No Catholic Street Cred Here

(From the files of Catholic Match)

Before joining Catholic Match, I wondered how the website's women would perceive me especially since I still embraced the Church's teachings on premarital sex after all these years. My optimistic side hoped they would find this continuing sacrifice to be admirable especially since we lived in such an oversexed culture.

Only a couple of profiles even mentioned the subject with one woman from Texas flat-out stating: “I am a virgin. You be one too, please.” Another female mentioned the shame and anguish abstaining from sex brought her. Other than that, most profiles avoided the subject altogether which is somewhat understandable given the need to avoid creepy guys.

My profile confronted the issue head-on and I clearly stated that I was looking for someone who shared the same sacrifice. Saving myself for marriage brought me loneliness, isolation, rejection and ridicule. Was it so wrong to want a woman who understood these bitter fruits all too well? It wasn't until I participated in the Catholic Match forums that I saw how controversial such an opinion really was.

One of the forum regulars named Jessica* talked about her disdain for the purity movement that had gained popularity in the 1990s. She felt placing such an emphasis on virginity only undermined the Church's teachings on chastity and forgiveness. For her, a person's past didn't matter as much as who they were in the present especially if they were sorry for their sins and now lived a chaste life. Catholic Match's co-founder echoed this sentiment by stating that life was messy and we shouldn't dismiss people based solely on their past.

I could see the point they were trying to make but for someone who had “walked the walk” when it came to this one particular but important Catholic value their statements bothered me. Why were we telling generations of young adults how wonderful it was to save themselves for marriage if people could get an automatic do-over when it came to sex? Doesn't a person's past carry some weight? A certain talk radio host liked to warn against defining deviancy down. Must we lower the bar so that the people who gave in to their carnal desires don't feel so bad?

I refuted a few of Jessica's points only to be shot down by forum users in ways I had never imagined. Jessica claimed virginity in and of itself wasn't a perfect indicator that someone had embraced the Church's values. According to her, a person could be such a dateless wonder, they never had the chance to lose their virginity in the first place. She asserted that chastity was a far more important value because that hypothetical virgin could have a porn addiction or masturbate frequently. Other forum users said there were also “technical virgins” out there meaning people who had engaged in everything BUT sexual intercourse.

I thought they were reaching and said, “If someone on Catholic Match is still a virgin it's probably because they took the notion of saving themselves for marriage pretty seriously.” I also thought they were going overboard with their definition of lust. So what if every now and then you had a sexual fantasy? In my opinion, this was focusing on a very small thing at the expense of a very significant Church teaching.

Catholic Match's co-founder chimed in again to say having a “virgin or bust” mentality bordered on the perverse.  Well, I posted a 2021 article from Catholic Match's own blog where it was stated that couples who waited until marriage to have sex:

“rated the quality of their martial sex 15% higher than people who had premarital sex”

“expressed 22% more stability in their marriages with a 20% higher satisfaction rate”

“are less likely to get divorced.”

Statistics like these were pitched to me in Catholic high school and Sunday school and they're a big reason why I hold the opinions I do. One 60-year old forum user named Pauline appreciated my perspective and wrote in my defense: “He has made a huge sacrifice, saving himself for marriage and, knowing the cost of this sacrifice, he wants a woman who has suffered and sacrificed as he has. Not because he is better, but because he wants to relate to another woman on this HUGE value for him. I get that. I respect that.”

Unfortunately, her comments failed to make an impression and one forum user named Max would later accuse me of being obsessed with wanting to deflower a virgin. It's sad when such an innocent perspective is maligned like that. Sadder still is when something so virtuous is seen as depraved...on a Catholic website no less. God help our religion.

* All names have been changed to protect the innocent.