Casual Sex Not Detrimental: 'Experts'

Studies claim that sex outside of marriage has no ill effects on teenagers' grades in school, nor on future "long-term relationships."

How many intelligent adults over age 50 would actually believe this? This clearly doesn't pass the common-sense test.

-- From "Study: Casual sex doesn't kill chance of long-term relationship" by Robert Preidt, HealthDay 9/4/10

University of Iowa researchers analyzed relationship surveys and found that average relationship quality was higher for people who took it slowly than for those who became sexually involved in "hook-ups," casual dating, or "friends with benefits" relationships.

However, having sex early on wasn't the reason for this disparity, according to UI sociologist Anthony Paik. When he factored out people who weren't interested in getting serious, he found that those who became sexually involved as friends or acquaintances and were open to a serious relationship were just as happy as those who dated but delayed having sex.

"The study suggests that rewarding relationships are possible for those who delay sex. But it's also possible for true love to emerge if things start off with a more Sex and the City approach, when people spot each other across the room, become sexually involved and then build a relationship," [said UI sociologist Anthony Paik].

The study is published in the August issue of the journal Social Science Research.

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From "Teen sex not always bad for school performance" by Alicia Chang, Associated Press 8/15/10

A provocative new study has found that teens in committed relationships do no better or worse in school than those who don't have sex.

The same isn't true for teens who "hook up." Researchers found that those who have casual flings get lower grades and have more school-related problems compared with those who abstain.

The findings, presented . . . at a meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, challenge to some extent assumptions that sexually active teens tend to do poorer in school.

It's not so much whether a teen has sex that determines academic success, the researchers say, but the type of sexual relationship they're engaged in. Teens in serious relationships may find social and emotional support in their sex partners, reducing their anxiety and stress levels in life and in school.

Last year, nearly half of high school students reported having sexual intercourse, and 14 percent have had four or more partners, according to a federal survey released this summer.

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Recreational-only Sex Increasing in America

"The United States has seen a major shift toward nonromantic sexual partnerships -- people becoming sexually involved when they are just casually dating or not dating at all."

-- From "Casual Sex Increasing in U.S." by Robert Preidt, HealthDay 4/7/10

People in nonromantic sexual relationships today are likely to have multiple partners [according to] study author Anthony Paik, a sociologist at the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences . . .

He and his colleagues asked 783 heterosexual adults, ages 18 to 60, how many people they had been sexually involved with during their most recent nonromantic sexual relationship and found:

* 17 percent of the men and 5 percent of the women said they had been with someone other than their relationship partner.

* 17 percent of women and 8 percent of men said they'd been exclusive but their partner had not.

* 12 percent of women and 10 percent of men said neither they nor their partner had been monogamous.

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Dorm Brothel: The New Debauchery, and the Colleges that Let it Happen

I am prepared to ask whether America might not be lost because the great middle class was persuaded that they must send their children to college with no questions asked...

From "Dorm Brothel: The new debauchery, and the colleges that let it happen" by Vigen Guroian, posted at Orthodoxy Today

The Culpable College

The campaign against alcohol and drugs, which it seems every American college has proudly announced it is waging, is a smokescreen that covers the colleges' great sin. Regulating a substance like alcohol on an urban campus like Loyola's cannot succeed unless there is radical reform of the whole of college life. Nothing that the college does to limit alcohol consumption can make a significant difference until the major incentives to drink are removed, beginning with coed dormitories and apartments. Many of my students have explained to me that drinking, especially binge drinking, serves as the lubricant for the casual sex that living arrangements at Loyola invite and permit. There is no need to find the cheap hotel of yesterday. The college provides a much more expensive and available version of it.

The sexual adventures that follow can take a variety of paths, but what this young Loyola man describes is not atypical.

True story: I woke up at three in the morning one day last year to my roommate having sex in his bed five feet away from me. Taking a moment to actually wake up, I realized what was going on. I got up . . . heard what was going on, and . . . recognized the voice of the girl. . . . I had two classes with her the semester before and one that semester. . . . The next morning . . . there was no awkward exchange. No childish giggling. I simply told him that I could not believe that she didn't mind having sex with someone for the first time while someone else was in the room sleeping. I also couldn't believe that she hadn't stopped and covered herself up when I had walked out of the room. My roommate looked at me with a casual smile, the same smile I'd seen when talking about the Mets or Red Sox, the same smile I'd seen at our dining-room table over Taco Bell, and he said to me, "Whatever, she's a college girl."

This is a disturbing description of the demise of decency and civility between the sexes for which the American colleges are culpable and blameworthy. It is not that what this student describes was unheard of in the 1960s. Frankly, I can tell similar stories about my college experience. Nevertheless, this was the exception rather than a commonplace occurrence. For colleges made it clear to young men and women that such behavior was unacceptable, and had in place living arrangements with rules and sanctions that discouraged it.

There is nothing new or novel about human depravity or debauchery. Outrage over debauchery is deserved. Nevertheless, as I have suggested already, my outcry is not directed at the debauchery among college students, but rather at the colleges themselves. Today colleges not only turn a blind eye to this behavior, but also set up the conditions that foster and invite it. I am concerned about the young men and women who wish to behave differently, but for whom this is made especially difficult by the living conditions their colleges provide and often insist upon.

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