[lbo-talk] pre-marital sex

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Wed Dec 20 15:29:32 PST 2006


from Sam Smith's Progressive Review:

AT LEAST 90% OF ALL BUSH VOTERS HAD PRE-MARITAL SEX

[We have extrapolated this fact by assuming that all of the 5% of the American public that did not have pre-marital sex were Bush voters, which leaves 90% of those casting a ballot for Bush having violated the sanctity of marriage and the abstinence only principles promulgated by their leader]

AP - More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past. . . Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people -- about 33,000 of them women -- in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to [the] analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

[A researcher] said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods. The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.

"The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said. Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/19/premarital.sex.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories



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