The gum or sticky tape analogy is so gross. As if having some experience inherently made you unsellable goods instead of just a goddamn human being who wants to explore what being human means.
Not to mention abstinence only education doesn't work.
1) What is the argument?
2) Is there not a middle ground between total purity and "treating sex as a leisure activity"? Because as far as I know people who argue against the former rarely argue for the latter.
The argument is generally just that there's a sort of taboo/sanctity to sex that shouldn't be degraded, and society seems to bear that out still, for the most part.
Also, what do you consider "total purity"?
That's a good question. There are people who would consider kissing before marriage too impure, or even hugging. Y'know, the type of people who would use the chewed gum analogy and mean it.
I don't disagree that sex, at least the way I see it, is a private thing, and a sort of bonding ritual I guess. Personally I'm not the type to sleep around either. However, a) you can have a beautiful bonding experience with a boyfriend/girlfriend you're not married to, premarital sex doesn't make you a chewed gum, and b) me feeling the way I do shouldn't dictate what other people do. Maybe for some people there's a disconnect between sex and love because of traumatic experiences. Maybe they have attachment issues but a high libido. I can't judge their situation and honestly forcing people like that into marriage would be even worse. What we have now is better than marrying someone you know for half a year because you wanna bone without breaking the purity promise and then regretting it forever.
"marrying someone you know for half a year because you wanna bone"
I think this is the part where they would say that sounds a lot like sex being a vice.
Maybe, but that's how it works in reality. Even if your intentions are good and you want to prevent people from "sinning", telling them they can't have sex before marriage and refusing to talk about methods of birth control does way more harm than good. Why do you think the Bible belt has the highest number of teen pregnancies?
I'm not saying the current form of abstinence education is any good, I'm just saying that there seems to be reasonable space for the argument for a, sort of, boiler-plate conservative view where abstinence can be seen as a sort of virtue.
Yeah, I agree with that, not for reasons of virtue and such but rather because if you're not selective about your partners, you may find yourself in some shitty situations, and also because of diminishing returns, you may find that sex isn't even fun anymore if you do it everyday (that's why I think some people find themselves stuck in hookup culture, they think more sex with strangers will solve the problem but the opposite is true). There are arguments for being more reserved about sex just like there are arguments for being reserved about eating or drinking, though personally I'd rather focus on the practical ones rather than "virtue", because of how abstract a concept it is. That's why I said in my first reply that there is a middle ground, you can sleep with your boyfriend/girlfriend and still be "virtuous" about it.
Not to mention abstinence only education doesn't work.
2) Is there not a middle ground between total purity and "treating sex as a leisure activity"? Because as far as I know people who argue against the former rarely argue for the latter.
Also, what do you consider "total purity"?
I don't disagree that sex, at least the way I see it, is a private thing, and a sort of bonding ritual I guess. Personally I'm not the type to sleep around either. However, a) you can have a beautiful bonding experience with a boyfriend/girlfriend you're not married to, premarital sex doesn't make you a chewed gum, and b) me feeling the way I do shouldn't dictate what other people do. Maybe for some people there's a disconnect between sex and love because of traumatic experiences. Maybe they have attachment issues but a high libido. I can't judge their situation and honestly forcing people like that into marriage would be even worse. What we have now is better than marrying someone you know for half a year because you wanna bone without breaking the purity promise and then regretting it forever.
I think this is the part where they would say that sounds a lot like sex being a vice.