Anti-Abstinence Culture on the Left

William McGurn, at the Wall Street Journal, discusses the left's response to a research report on abstinence-only pledges out last week from John Hopkins University:

The chain reaction was something out of central casting. A medical journal starts it off by announcing a study comparing teens who take a pledge of virginity until marriage with those who don't. Lo and behold, when they crunch the numbers, they find not much difference between pledgers and nonpledgers: most do not make it to the marriage bed as virgins.

Like a pack of randy 15-year-old boys, the press dives right in.

"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.

In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."

Here's the rub: It just isn't true.

In fact, the only way the study's author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers. The study is called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and it was published in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics.

The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of both the Red Cross and the National Institutes of Health. Today she serves as health editor for U.S. News & World Report. And in her dispatch on this study, Dr. Healy pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."

What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:

- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.

- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.

- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.

- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.

- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

Or, more to the point, a deeply-flawed study tells us little about the efficacy of abstinence-only pledges. McGurn cites the mass-media frenzy over the results, but I was almost sick to my stomach over the outright cheering for this report on the radical left.

AmericaBlog jumps for joy in "Religious Right "Virginity Pledges" Do Not Work":

I'm sure the lunatic right will do their best to ignore the results. The big question here is whether Obama and the new Congress will put an end to funding this waste of money or if they will buckle under yet again to the anti-science, anti-rational American Taliban.

This is the kind of "smart" discourse we see among those of "the reality based" community. Here's some of the roundup I found last week on Memeorandum (Macmind's and Outside the Beltway are the rational outliers):

* Maria / Jezebel: "No Sh-t: New Study Finds ‘Virginity Pledges’ ..."

* Matt Corley / Think Progress: "Study: Premarital abstinence pledges are ineffective.»"

*Cecile Richards / The Huffington Post: "Can You Hear Me Yet? — Today's Washington Post features yet … "

* Scott Swenson / RHRealityCheck.org blogs: "Virginity Pledges Fail Says Johns Hopkins Study."

* PERRspectives / PERRspectives Blog: "Study Shows Teens Unfaithful to Virginity Pledges."

* Josh Rosenau / Thoughts from Kansas: "Abstinence pledges still don't work, still encourage unprotected anal sex."

* Jeff Fecke / Alas, a blog: "Sun Rises in East, Sets in West."

* Michael J.W. Stickings / The Reaction: "Captain Obvious! Your story is up!"

* Pam Spaulding / Pam's House Blend: "Study: teen virginity pledges don't work."

* Maha / The Mahablog: "Be Prepared — There's another new study out saying … "

* Steve Benen / Washington Monthly: "ABSTINENCE PROGRAMS STILL DON'T WORK.... I don't want to alarm anyone ... "

* Mac Ranger / Macsmind: "Flawed Study on Virginity Pledges."

* James Joyner / Outside The Beltway: "Virginity Pledges Don't Work, Except When They Do."