Some of us have abstinence thrust upon us...
Rather than painfully revisit which of these categories yours truly falls into, I'll simply refer you to this article (via Texas Law Chick):
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Teenagers who take pledges to remain virgins until marriage are likely to deny having taken the pledge if they later become sexually active. Conversely, those who were sexual active before taking the pledge frequency deny their sexual history, according to new study findings.
These findings imply that virginity pledgers often provide unreliable data, making assessment of abstinence-based sex education programs unreliable. In addition, these teens may also underestimate their risk of exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.
"Teenagers do not report their past sexual activity accurately, with virginity pledgers giving more inaccurate reports of their past sexual activity," study author Janet Rosenbaum, of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Reuters Health.
Wow...teenagers are liars, and the self-righteous are often hypocrites. And to think I never would have figured this out if not for the diligent researchers at Harvard.
Consequently, rather than rely on self-reports, "studies of virginity pledges must focus on outcomes where we know we can get good information, such as medical STD tests," she added.
Previous research shows that survey respondents tend to answer questions about sexual activity according to their current beliefs, particularly if their current attitudes conflict with their past behaviors. Survey respondents may also underreport or overreport their health risk behavior.
Don't worry kids, older people do this to. Only we call it "discussing your sexual history with your fiancee," and the results are roughly as accurate.
I assume "year X" actually had to be in the future?
In my day, the Methodists took us to Washington-on-the-Brazos. The Catholics took us to the Schlitterbahn.
Advantage: papists.
You haven't lived until you have one of your really good friends that you've known since high school bring over a former satan-worshipping converted fundamentalist Christian to save your soul. Very uncomfortable, combined with a good deal of what the F***? My favorite was when he wanted to take us down to the apartment pool and baptize us. I guess being already baptized Catholic doesn't count as being Christian. Funny, I thought we both kinda worshipped the same guy. Those wacky Pentacostals with their going all frothy and speaking in tongues and such. I will take repititious masses and slowly going into a trance induced coma from boredom any day.
As a kid raised by agnostics, I often had the opportunity to experience prosyletization first-hand, throughout my preteen and teenage years. These kids loved taking me to church, because it made them feel like they were saving me, and I liked going because it meant free food, or free admission to church trips to Six Flags or the Zoo.
On one morning, however, my megachurch-going friend took me to her youth group and we all had to sign a pledge to God saying we'd remain 'pure' until year X. We all had to pick a year.
Sadly, I remained 'pure' well past my conservative estimate, but I remember thinking it was odd to pick a year. I'm still not sure if the implication was that we'd expect to be married by year X or if the church was just discouraging teen sex in general.