Premarital sex
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Premarital sex (or nonmarital sex) is what happens when people who have not yet got married play hide the salami make beautiful love. The sex drive is so strong (well, at least for most people) that it happens. It always happened and will always happen. This classification has a particularly negative influence in societies where marriage is valued as a prerequisite to sexual intercourse, such as where religions, which emphasize rules of conduct for sexual relationships and the family unit, are prominent.
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[edit] Historical attitudes
In Britain, before the 20th century, young unmarried girls from the upper and middle classes were not allowed out without a chaperone. Nothing less drastic could protect their virtue until they became the property of their husbands. Upper class boys were allowed out on their own, and were tacitly expected to get sexual experience with lower class women and respect the purity of girls from their own class. In Europe and America, unmarried girls who became pregnant were often turned out of their family home without support. That discouraged the practice further.[citation needed]
Then birth control came along and clouded the whole picture.
[edit] Stopping premarital sex?
Without drastic and forceful measures, premarital sex will always happen. Teaching "abstinence only" doesn’t work. When young people have the freedom to go out and meet attractive partners (or unattractive partners, with the addition of alcohol), sex happens. Abstinence only education just ensures a high rate of extramarital pregnancy and/or abortion.
[edit] Biblical view
The Bible says that any unmarried person indulging in sex is guilty of the sin of fornication, for which the penalty is death by stoning. Sex with a married person is either adultery or fornication, for which the penalty is death by stoning. A woman who is not a virgin at her wedding may be killed by her husband, preferably by stoning.
The Bible is really against premarital sex, and really into getting stoned.