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. Some smaller societies make no distinction between dating and being married, hence the "common law" marriages recognized in many governments. So in these cases, the concept of "nonmarital sex" would not apply to such societies.

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.

Stopping premarital sex?

Without drastic 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, since young people who can't contain their urges won't know how to satisfy said urges safely. (The fact that abstinence-only groups also tend to frown upon another safe outlet for sexual urges doesn't help matters.) More importantly, the idea that sex must be saved for marriage assumes that marriage is a good option for most people, and that sex is somehow "dirty" or "bad" outside of marriage. In some small societies (i.e. small bands of people living in rural areas), the lines between dating and marriage may be blurred, and wedding ceremonies may not even be practiced, so the distinction between sex while dating and sex while married would not apply to these societies.

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 except one's own spouse 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.

Shakespeare had it right

Escalus: How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?

Pompey: If the law would allow it, sir.

Escalus: But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.

Pompey: Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?

Escalus: No, Pompey.

Pompey: Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then.

--Measure for Measure, Act II Sc. 1

See also

• Abstinence
• Adultery
• Marital rape
• Marriage
• Silver Ring Thing

External links

• "The moral case for sex before marriage", Jill Filipovic, The Guardian