"Teens are disproportionately affected by the nation's epidemic of STDs, including HIV. By age 25, one of two sexually active young people will acquire a sexually transmitted disease...

While the majority of the 500 teens age 15 to 17 who participated in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation phone survey knew about birth control pills, more than one in four of that majority didn't know that oral contraceptives offer no protection against sexually transmitted disease."

(Source: Susan J. Landers, "Doctors can bridge sex knowledge gap for teens," American Medical News, Aug. 23/30, 2004; http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/08/23/hlsc0823.htm .)

"Our culture and even our healthcare profession seem to be suffering from schizophrenia. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and other professional groups have endorsed providing morning-after pills over-the-counter (OTC) despite the evidence that it will further remove teens and young adults from their most important source of healthcare--their doctors." 

(Source: Gene Rudd, "Teens & Sex: Doctors Bridging the Knowledge Gap," CMDA News & Views 08-19-04, The Christian Medical and Dental Associations.)

That not all religious groups are equal when it comes to mediating sexual mores has found support from a team of researchers at the University of Florida who explored the relationship between the effects of religiosity on sexual behavior and the extent to which faith groups proscribed nonmarital sexual relations. As might be expected, the researchers found that "those faith groupings which are the most proscriptive in their moral condemnation of non-marital relations, conservative Protestants and Catholics, report either the greatest number of significant religiosity effects or the strongest effects."

However, the researchers did not find as robust a level of support as they had expected for their hypothesis that religiosity is inversely related to nonmarital sexual relations. Using logistic regression analysis with data from the National Opinion Research Center/General Social Surveys of approximately 12,400 adults between 1988 and 1996, the researchers found that only 14 statistically significant inverse effects reached statistical significance (p<.10) among 62 measures of personal religiosity on the prevalence of premarital, extramarital, and homosexual relations.

These 14 correlations nevertheless reveal a pattern. The most inverse correlations (6) were found among conservative Protestants, as church attendance and strength of religious identification were found to lower incidents of premarital as well as extramarital sex; strength of religious identification and belief in the afterlife were inversely correlated with homosexual relations. Catholics revealed a similar pattern, as church attendance and strength of religious identification lowered the odds of premarital sex, although extramarital sex was only inversely correlated with church attendance. Belief in the afterlife also correlated with homosexual relations among Catholics.

Although fewer effects of religiosity were found among liberal Protestants, church membership and belief in the afterlife nevertheless were associated with lower premarital sex in this religious category. Church attendance registered lower levels of extramarital sex among the same while church membership was associated with lower levels of extramarital sex among moderate Protestants.

An irony that the researchers do not fully address is their finding that the inverse effects of personal religiosity are significantly more evident when it comes to premarital sexual relations - which are less uniformly condemned across various faith traditions - than with extramarital or homosexual relations - which at least until the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson in the Episcopal Church last summer, were more uniformly condemned across various faith traditions.

(Source: John K. Cochran et al., "Religion, Religiosity, and Nonmarital Sexual Conduct: An Application of Reference Group Theory," Sociological Inquiry 74 [2004]:102-127.)