I’ve decided to add a ‘Sex For Beginners‘ section to my website because after talking to a group of teenagers recently I was surprised by many of their questions. They just weren’t the kinds of things I was expecting, nor the kinds of things I would have written about. So I’d like you ‘beginners’ to send me your questions and I’ll answer as many as I can in my blogs. That way, I’ll be writing about the things you want to know, rather than the things I think you ought to know.

One of the things we discussed was the ‘purity ring‘. There were two points I made:

• ·         A ‘purity ring’ should not be instead of sex education, as many parents seem to wish. The evidence is that many young women do eventually have sex despite their ‘purity rings’ and that a proportion of them do become pregnant or contract STDs. So it should be ‘purity ring’ and sex education. In any event, young women who defer sex until after marriage still need sex education.
• ·         My other point is that I’m against the name ‘purity ring’. Calling it the ‘purity ring’ suggests that to refrain from sex is ‘pure’ and that to have sex is ‘impure’. That’s very wrong. It can take years to overcome the inhibitions caused by that kind of teaching and some people never ever manage it. Contrast that sort of thinking with Tantra, which teaches that, far from being in opposition to spirituality, sex can be a path to enlightenment. If you’d like to know more about Tantric Sex, click on the button.

So why not just call it the ‘deferment ring’ or the ‘not until married’ ring? Other suggestions, please.