People who don’t have sex before marriage are kind of like people who voluntarily go gluten-free. Of course I respect the decision, as should all non-assholes, but internally, my knee-jerk reaction is to disagree.
Maybe it’s because most of the time I only hear about “abstinence” when it’s followed by “only” and “education.” Regardless, I wanted to know more about what drives people to write off so much delicious sexuality. To find out, I spoke to Jonathan James Deuling, music and philosophy alumnus of UBC and practicing Catholic.
“Key word is chastity. That encompasses celibacy and abstinence, even hot passionate sex, but in the first place the overarching idea is chastity.” He starts. “Chastity in a nutshell: deep, erotic desire is good and wholesome and leads to a happy life and even God.”
The first Google result for “Why is chastity important” took me to a Church of Latter-Day Saints webpage where a picture of a beaming child accompanied a paragraph which informed me that God commanded sexual intimacy to be reserved for marriage, and that sexual purity protects people from the “emotional and spiritual damage of sexual sin.”
Deuling has a more positive approach: chastity brings people closer to god, and sex, rather than being inherently sinful, gives them a glimpse of heaven. “Erotic desire points us upward, a foretaste of what we could call ‘The Great Orgasm of Heaven’, which will be a hundred times more hardcore — it will be eternal intimacy with God! That’s sexier than sex.”
3% of the population waits until marriage, according to waitingtillmarriage.org (an admittedly contentious source.) While many of them, like Deuling, are religious, many are not. Sex positivity means respecting everyone’s choices when it comes to their sexuality. As any vegan knows, there’s something about swearing off an experience, whether it’s dairy or penetrative sex, that makes people decide it’s their job to change your mind.
Obviously, that’s not to say that abstinence is the “right” choice. Each situation carries a unique set of risks and benefits. Sex-havers risk STIs, unsatisfying experiences, and the usual pitfalls that accompany increased human interaction. Non-havers risk incompatibility, a lack of comfort with their own bodies, and they stake a lot to that risk.
There’s plenty of stories out there about couples who wait until marriage and their sex life suffers as a result. Thankfully, Deuling’s story balances them out: neither he nor his wife had ever had sex before their marriage, and he reports that now, their marriage is “strengthened in a unique way.”
“That power of the intimacy of sex solidified our commitment to each other unlike anything imaginable. The gift of sex – our two children – also bring us closer together, naturally, because of the love we share for them.”
Deuling is also a musician and would shoot himself in the foot if he didn’t broadcast that his next show is March 24th in East Van
(FB: @JonDeuling).