Why Sex Before Marriage Is the Moral Thing to Do

Americans love to tout the value of waiting until marriage to have sex. We teach
abstinence-only education in schools across the country, and even
comprehensive sex-ed programs often point out that "abstinence is best." Pop stars
from Britney Spears to Jessica Simpson, to the Jonas Brothers, to Miley Cyrus, to
Justin Bieber routinely assert that they're waiting 'til marriage putting them into the
Good Role Model category (at least, until someone leaks a sex tape). There's a
booming "purity industry", complete with jewelry, elaborate events, books, t-shirts and
DVDs.
Our state and federal tax dollars have long been spent promoting "chastity". While
conservative commentators are happy to assert that waiting until marriage is the best
choice for everyone and people who don't wait aren't doing marriage "the right way", sexpositive liberals hesitate to say that having sex before marriage is an equally valid if not
better choice for nearly everyone.
So here it goes: having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone.
How do I know? Well, first of all, nearly everyone has sex before marriage 95% of
Americans don't wait until their wedding night. And that's a longstanding American
value. Even among folks in my grandparents' generation, nine out of ten of them had sex
before they wed.
Of course, just because lots of people do a thing doesn't mean it's a good thing. But
sex is. In terms of happiness, sex is better than money, and having sex once a week
instead of once a month is the "happiness equivalent" of an extra $50,000 a year. People
with active sex lives live longer. Sex releases stress, boosts immunities, helps you sleep
and is heart-healthy.
Sex is good whether you're married or not, and certainly folks who wait until
marriage can have a lot of sex once they tie the knot. But waiting until marriage often
means both early marriage and conservative views on marriage andgender and people

who marry early and/or hold traditional views on marriage and gender tend to have
higher divorce rates and unhappier marriages. We know that, on the other hand, there are
lots of benefits to marrying later and to gender-egalitarian marriages. Couples who both
work outside the home and also share housework duties have more sex. Financially
independent, college-educated women who marry later in life have extremely low divorce
rates.
It turns out that feminist values not "traditional" ones lead to the most stable
marriages. And feminist views plus later marriage typically equals premarital sex.
Most adult human beings naturally desire sex. And despite the rightwing emphasis on
concepts like "purity", having sex does not actually make you a dirty or "impure" person.
On the contrary, sex is like most other pleasurable things in life you can have sex in
ways that are fulfilling, fun, good and generous, or you can have sex in ways that are
harmful, bad and dangerous. Marriage is not, and has never been, a way to protect against
the harmful, bad and dangerous potential of sex (just read the Bible if you want a few
examples). Instead of fooling ourselves into thinking that waiting until marriage makes
sex "good", we should focus on how ethical, responsible sexual practices taking
precautions to protect the physical and mental health of yourself and your partner; having
sex that is fully consensual and focused on mutual pleasure are part of being an ethical,
responsible human being.
Sexual morality isn't about how long you wait. It's about how you treat yourself and
the people you're with.
Sex, of course, isn't all ponies and rainbows. The United States has one of thehighest
unintended pregnancy rates in the world. We have one of the highest abortion rates. We
have one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted infections. But our problem with sex
isn't that we're having it before marriage; it's that we've cast it as shameful and dirty. And
when our collective cultural consciousness says that sex is shameful and dirty, we don't
have the incentive or the tools to plan for sex, to see it as a positive responsibility and
to make healthy sexual choices.

We're obsessed with sex on television, in music and in advertisements, but we

somehow lack the ability to talk about sex as a positive, moral, pleasure-affirming choice
that, like any other adult decision, comes with a set of responsibilities. And when
government money is going toward telling people to just wait until marriage, we are
literally funding an idea that has never worked in all of human history, instead of
supporting tried-and-true policies that could mitigate the harm of a sex-obsessed, but
pleasure-starved, culture.
If waiting until marriage were simply an individual choice with no political
consequences or backdrop if it were as arbitrary a marker as waiting until the third date,
waiting until you knew your partner's middle name or waiting until she wore really
awesome high heels it wouldn't be a problem. And personally, I don't really care when
you, as an individual, choose to have sex. As long as you feel ready and it's consensual, I
say you do you. But "waiting until marriage" as a cultural phenomenon albeit one that
isn't actually happening for nearly everyone in the western world has some nasty views
about women and sex lurking behind it. Using "purity" as shorthand for "doesn't have
sex" by definition means that people, and mostly women, who have sex before marriage
are impure, dirty or tainted. As Jessica Valenti says in her book The Purity Myth:
"While boys are taught that the things that make them men good men are universally
accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere
between our legs."
It's all the more troubling when those beliefs are federally funded.
From a more practical standpoint, not everyone is going to get married, or even
legally can get married. The instruction to wait forever to experience a fundamental
human pleasure is pointless and cruel. And while the old adage tells women that men
won't buy the cow if they can get the milk for free, if I'm buying a cow, you can bet I'm
going to make sure the milk is to my liking. But our cultural view of premarital sex as
morally tainted makes it harder for couples to engage in real talks about their sexual
needs and desires before marrying, the same way they would talk about their religious

values, how many kids they want or whether the wedding cake will be chocolate or
vanilla.
Sexually frustrated marriages are both miserable and common the inboxes of
advice columnists from Dan Savage to Dear Prudie are filled with letters from couples
with mismatched sex drives and bad sex lives. We'd be a lot better-off if we recognized
that sex is incredibly important to a lot of people, and, for most couples, sexual
compatibility is necessary for a great marriage. You really can't tell if you're sexually
compatible unless you have sex. The insistence that premarital sex is dirty or perverse
makes it a whole lot harder to have necessary conversations. And a worldview that
positions sex as shameful and bad also isn't going to evaporate on your wedding night.
Purity peddlers construct a false universe where there are pure virgins who wait until
marriage, and then there are slutty whores who are going home with different men every
night of the week. The truth is that most adults will have a great many important
relationships in their lives some of those relationships will be romantic, and some of
those will be sexual. That's a good thing: our relationships with other people, sexual or
not, are how we grow, evolve and learn about ourselves. They're how we figure out what
love is, what we like physically and emotionally, and how to negotiate our own needs
with someone else's. Despite the claims of the wait-till-marriage camp, waiting to have
sex won't protect you from heartache, frustration or love lost. But a variety of fulfilling
relationships, sexual and not, will make you a more well-rounded, compassionate and
self-assured person.
My point isn't that everyone should have sex before marriage people should
determine for themselves when they are ready to have sex. For the vast majority of
people, that's going to be before they're married. Making that choice isn't a moral failing.
On the contrary, it's often a great, healthy, overwhelmingly positive choice. Whenever
you choose to have sex, the cultural message that waiting until marriage is the best choice
is simply wrong. And it's wrong for almost everyone.