"The Guttmacher Institute found, for instance, that 9 out of 10 American men have intercourse before they turn 20. One in six men, ages 15 to 49, have genital herpes; 11 million men in all have it."

(Source: Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Men's Reproductive Health Care Gets New Emphasis," The New York Times, March 19, 2002.)

"'Hollywood gerrymanders the definition of "good" to fit their own pet sins,' Poland said.  'So, generally speaking, if it's terrorism and the destruction of innocent life, then they'd be on the same page as [other] Americans.  But if it's anything that relates to sexual morality, then-of course-we're in different galaxies.'"

(Source: Larry Poland, quoted in Gary Schneeberger, "Hooray for Hollywood?", Citizen, vol. 16, No. 3 [March 2002], p. 20.)

No communities have been more enthusiastic about cohabitation as a substitute for marriage than those made up of university intellectuals.  It may even be said that the nation's universities, more than any other institutions, have given cohabitation its new status of semi-respectability.  That personal relationships within cohabitation typically prove far less reliable and far more treacherous than those within wedlock apparently does not much trouble the professors who have helped affect this shift in attitude toward what our ancestors regarded as living in sin.  Still, the evidence exposing the comparative deficiencies of cohabitation does keep accumulating.

The latest proof that cohabitation hurts those who try it comes from American Journal of Public Health, proffered by a team of researchers from the United States (Harvard in Cambridge; the Population Council in Washington, D.C.) and Mexico (the Mexican Ministry of Health in Mexico City).  In scrutinizing data on extra-relational sex among 3990 men living in Mexico City, the researchers noticed "a cohabiting relationship [was] associated with extrarelational sex."  Indeed, compared to married peers, cohabiting men were almost twice as likely to cheat on their partners (Odds Ratio of 1.81; p < .001).   Of course, the authors of this new study point out that the female partners of unfaithful men "may be exposed to HIV and other S[exually]T[ransmitted]D[isease] risk via the sexual behavior of their male partners."

Interestingly, the authors of this new study also found that "men with a higher education reported more extrarelational sex than did men with a primary-school education" (Odds Ratio of 1.51; p < .001). 

Perhaps in Mexico, as in the United States, the partiality of the university set for cohabitation has less to do with enlightened liberalism than it does with the unrestrained libido.

(Source: Julie Pulerwitz, Jose-Antonio Izazola-Licea, and Steven L. Gortmaker, "Extrarelational Sex Among Mexican Men and Their Partners' Risk of HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases," American Journal of Public Health 91[2001]: 1650-1652.)