The Naked Truth About Sex
Published: June 02, 2008
People talk as if sex is as uncontrollable as the beating of your heart, breathing oxygen or going to the bathroom. They talk as though if they were deprived of sex, they would die.
Let’s take going to the bathroom for an example. Kids learn from an early age to control the urge to go to the bathroom. If you are reading this article, chances are everyone in your peer group, including yourself, no longer wears a diaper. By the time you entered kindergarten, you were expected to have mastery over your bladder and your bowels.
And if you came to school and lost control of these functions, what happened to you? You were laughed at because all of your classmates—and some of the teachers, for that matter—thought that something was seriously wrong with you.
As necessary as it is to empty one’s bladder and bowels, we still have full expectations and confidence that five-year-olds can master them. I’ve yet to hear about diaper distribution programs at elementary schools for those who choose not to control themselves.
If a child cannot or chooses not to control himself, what do we do? We send them home until they learn, or send them to a special school.
Going to the bathroom is a bodily function so necessary that if you don’t go, you can and will die. Toxins will back up into your system. Not going to the bathroom would be 100 percent fatal for all six billion people on this planet. You will die if you do not go to the bathroom. Yet we entrust five-year-olds to have mastery over this bodily function before they start kindergarten.
We have higher expectations for kindergarteners to master a function that has fatal consequences if not performed than we have for young adults with a function that is not fatal if not performed. I am not denying that the desire to have sex is not powerful—it is—but sex is a bodily function that is under your complete control. If you never had sex, nothing bad would happen to you.
Nobody has ever died from not having sex. I have yet to read the obituary section of the newspaper where it says, “Johnny, 16, died of virginity.” Yet there are young people dying everyday because they bought into the lie that they can’t be expected to control their sexual urges.
Before my wedding I was asked to speak to the football team at my alma mater, the University of Southern California, on the topic of sexual abstinence. I was a cheerleader at my university, and I counted it a privilege to be invited to address my team (who happened to be national champions!) during a chapel service. I jumped in feet first on the topic of sex.
As I talked with the football players, I heard answers and comments that I hadn’t anticipated. They were far more mature and took the subject of abstinence a lot more seriously than I had expected. When I asked whether or not sex was uncontrollable, one young man responded, “There are few things that are uncontrollable to a disciplined man.” I wanted to bow down and kiss his feet and wipe his cleats with my hair—but I abstained. The entire team agreed that having sex is a matter of choice—sometimes a very hard one—a choice under your complete control.
Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA’s biggest stars, was once the darling of the American public. He was voted “Favorite Athlete” by Nickelodeon and had endorsements from all the highest Fortune 500 companies, brands like Nike, Coke and McDonalds. The endorsements brought in more than $12 million a year, on top of his $13 million-a-year contract with the Lakers.
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The Naked Truth About Sex
Published: June 02, 2008
Author and abstinence advocate Lakita Garth-Wright shares the naked truth about sex
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