In the wake of it, we can do one of two things. We can tell our young people, Go forth and “do what you do” in the muck-laden valley. Or we can attempt a reconstruction project by giving them encouragement, information, and a higher standard to live up to. They still may not save themselves for marriage. But then again, some may. Short of that, they may save themselves for somebody, which will increase their chances of having a responsible, adult sex life that will be a source of joy rather than sorrow.

Okay, I need to understand this ‘victory,'” Jeannie started in. The governor of our state had just signed legislation stripping abortion giant Planned Parenthood of about $4 million in annual taxpayer funding. “First, you do not want to teach sex-ed and provide condoms in schools. Second, you do not want to fund an organization that provides contraception to prevent pregnancy. And you do not want abortion as an option. Do you really think that more teens will practice abstinence because of this?”

A mother of three, Jeannie’s approach to teens and sex is, They’re going to do it anyway, so you might as well give them birth control so nobody gets pregnant. Setting aside all the loaded presumptions in her diatribe, I was left thinking, We’re talking about people, here, not animals in heat. Why should we accept such a low view of them?

Social commentators point to the sixties as the time when the sex-is-for-marriage dam broke, giving way to this “liberated” sexuality of If it feels good do it—with anyone, anytime, anywhere. Some two generations later, though, observant commentators—and not just religiously minded ones—are suggesting that maybe that dam wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The Truth for Women

In an op-ed called “Why Monogamy Matters,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat reports the findings of sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, authors of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think About Marrying. Emphasizing the “significant correlation between . . . monogamy and happiness—and between promiscuity and depression,” Douthat distinguishes between relationship sex and hook-up sex. “There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.” The latter is emotionally hazardous for women, he states, pointing to extensive research showing that “a young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed.”

Whereas Douthat coolly relates research findings, Tracy McMillan speaks hotly from personal experience. In an in-your-face missive called “Why You’re Not Married,” which appeared on the Huffington Post on the eve of Valentine’s Day 2011, the TV writer directly addresses those promiscuous (and likely depressed) young women. “[I]f you’re having sex outside committed relationships, you will have to stop,” she tells them bluntly. For this thrice-married, now single woman in her forties understands something important about the female heart and soul: Women want security and love, and sex is not the way to get either one.

She explains the biology of it for females. “[C]asual sex is like recreational heroin—it doesn’t stay recreational for long,” she writes. “That’s due in part to this thing called oxytocin—a bonding hormone that is released when a woman a) nurses her baby and b) has an orgasm—that will totally mess up your casual-sex game.” It’s why you can be hooking up “with some dude who isn’t even all that great and the next thing you know, you’re totally strung out on him. And you have no idea how it happened. Oxytocin, that’s how it happened.”

Even setting aside moral and religious standards about sex, the practical reality is that, for the female half of every random pairing, casual sex is an emotional train wreck. Males give love to get sex, Dr. James Dobson has often observed, while females give sex to get love. The morning after a couple hooks up, only one of them has gotten what he was after. Rinse and repeat a few times—bond and break, bond and break—and pretty soon a woman finds herself either angry or sinking into a pit of despair, not knowing why.

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