These stats are insane....

I pulled this from CNN.com This article really shocked me. I read the title 3 times before I could actually believe what it said. These numbers are absolutely out of control.
It's really weird to think that I'm among a group of less than 5%. It's insane to think about 9.5 out of every 10 people. All I can say is wow...
The thing that made me stand back and say "what the crap?!" was when they said that it dates back to the 1940's, at a time which most people consider to be much more pure than today.
Read my comments after the article...



Reality check: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex
POSTED: 8:42 p.m. EST, December 20, 2006


NEW YORK (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.

"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports. (Sex by the numbers)

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 Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

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.

Finer 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.

"It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will."

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers.

"One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity," he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease."

He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.

"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

Horn said he found the high percentages of premarital sex cited in the study to be plausible, and expressed hope that society would not look askance at the small minority that chooses to remain abstinent before marriage.

However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only education, said she was skeptical of the findings.

"Any time I see numbers that high, I'm a little suspicious," she said. "The numbers are too pat."

Copyright 2006. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


Is this what I have to look forward to in the future? Fellow Americans who can't keep their pants on past their 20's? It makes me wonder how much further that number will rise before any children that I might have grow up to my age. In 2006, at the age of 20, I'm among the 5% of people who don't see premarital sex as the norm.

And here's what gets to me--I know for a fact that more than 5% of the U.S. is Christian. I don't just mean the "yes, I believe in God and I'm a christian" sort of "Christian". I mean real deal Christians who are saved and going to Heaven. There are most certainly more than 5% of us out there. We of all people should be able to abstain. I mean, I realize it's a struggle and all. I'm not saying it's not. But shouldn't we trust in God to give us the strength to shy away from situations that may not be the best for us? Of that 5%, I doubt they're all Christians. Some people abstain for medical reasons, or some other religion reason. So that brings the number of Christians involved in premarital sex up even higher.
I know that even Christians fall. We're all human here. But 95% of Americans is a pitiful number.