Virgin Promotions 2001

The sexual abstinence movement has arrived in Ireland. One key player in the new chastity zone is Margaret Davin, a concerned parent in Ballsbridge, Dublin. She has distributed 2,500 copies of the video Sex has a price tag - which features former crisis pregnancy counsellor Pam Stenzel, herself conceived in a rape - to parents, teachers and interested local groups. She has other videos, too, in similar vein.

It seems to me that another advocate of the chastity movement, although less obvious in her intent, is Carmel Wynne, who has written Sex & Young People: the knowledge to guide the teenager in your life (Mercier, price not on book).

Both women are singing from the same hymn sheet. The only "safe sex" is when two virgins marry and remain faithful . . . Otherwise sex can kill you.

While Stenzel states this explicitly, Wynne implies it. While Stenzel's terror tactics are emotionally explosive, Wynne is more discreet and in many way it is unfair to lump the two together. What they share is the belief that by telling teenagers about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases, emotional harm and unwanted pregnancy, they can convince them to abstain from premarital sex and remain virgins until marriage.

Both women have the same values: there is no such thing as safe premarital sex (sex they define as anything with genital contact). Condoms fail. Anybody who has ever had another sexual partner presents a risk. If you stray from the chaste path and disease doesn't get you, then the guilt will.

Their chosen method is fear. In Sex has a price tag, Pam Stenzel harangues an audience of young teenagers with all the fire and brimstone of a revivalist preacher. It is disturbing to see these young people, many of whom couldn't be more than 13 years old, staring with traumatised faces as they hear that premarital sex could kill them. And if they don't get HIV, they might get genital warts for a lifetime. Or cervical cancer. Or herpes, and their future babies might die 24 hours after birth. Or they may not have babies at all if made infertile by chlamydia - a silent disease with no symptoms.

And, girls, Stenzel asks sneeringly, you think your boyfriend "loves you"? She has news for them: there's no such thing as true love without a marriage contract. "True love waits." With many Irish people delaying marriage until their 30s, and others choosing not to marry at all, it's hard to see how true love can wait this long. And is there really any such thing as having one true love?

But what really concerns me is the linking of premarital sex with an assumption that the relationship is exploitative. This idea that young men are cynically out to get women into bed, no matter what the consequences, is damaging to young men and also to women, who may expect nothing more.

Wynne writes: "Young guys think about sex all the time. They lust after girls, and many - but not all - will have sex with whoever is willing. I know this is a generalisation and some guys are saving themselves for the right relationship.

"Young women, on the other hand, think less about sex and more about love, and meeting a man who will be faithful. This is not because women don't enjoy sex; it's because they want a man who has sex with them to love them only. They are looking for a committed relationship, as early as the first date."

So are young women who feel lustful - and have a realistic understanding that long-term commitment may not be a runner with a particular boyfriend - supposed to feel like sluts? Not all lovers end up getting married. Many shouldn't. But the thing that most concerns me is the use of fear to influence sexual behaviour. It smacks of the repression of the past.

Stenzel uses the image of duct tape sticking to her arm to describe the effects of multiple, premarital partners. The first time she uses the tape, it comes away from her arm with bits of skin and hair stuck to it. If she puts the tape on someone else's arm, it doesn't stick as well and comes away with bits of their skin and hair too. Stick the tape to yet another person's arm, and you've got biological matter from three people and a tape that doesn't bond very well. People, she says, are like that too.

Each partner a teenager has sex with has all the filthy matter from every other partner, and the more partners a teenager has, the less able the teenager is to form a bond with another human being. Conclusion: premarital sex is dirty and destroys your ability to truly love.

So to stop adolescents from having premarital sex, Wynne and Stenzel are giving the message - sex can hurt and even be fatal. While Stenzel belittles teenagers' yearning for love and passion, Wynne repeatedly uses the word "crazy" to describe adolescents' expectations about sex.

To believe you can, as an unmarried teenager, have passionate, erotic, fulfilling sex without open communication and commitment is "crazy". To think that having sex with someone will make them love you is "crazy". And so on. "Crazy" is a strong word. Personally, I think the behaviour she describes is "human".

Wynne writes: "Recent studies suggest that when people grow up and become more mature, they often regret their sexual past. In hindsight, they wish they had been more selective about who they went to bed with, and the majority think they would have been better off if they had waited."

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. What feels right in the heat of the moment may be regretted years later. But painful experiences also make us grow and you cannot have intimacy with anyone without risking pain.

Marriage to a "dream" partner protects people from the pain of failed intimacy, Stenzel and Wynne argue. This is a dangerous concept.

Marriage is no protection against emotional pain and sexual problems. To set up such expectations of marriage by two virgins is as misleading as saying that you can never have real sexual ecstasy outside a committed relationship. And what happens when chastity is used as an excuse to hide a dysfunctional sexuality that only becomes apparent on the wedding night? What happens when inhibition, created by fear of sex, is so intense that people cannot let go enough to experience intimacy?

It's true what they say, that real sexual ecstasy is most likely happen within the context of a committed relationship - but why is a marriage licence necessary?

Teenagers aren't stupid. While they may dream of one day meeting a special person with whom they can be committed, they also know that relationships are fragile. They know that sex can be exciting without commitment.

They know it, because they are doing it.

The potentially fatal danger is that given a stark choice - be chaste or die - they will throw the baby out with the bathwater and take no precautions at all.

Yes, sexually transmitted diseases are dangerous and rampant among teenagers. Yes, promiscuity can be emotionally damaging and the more sexual partners a person has had, the greater the risk of disease. That's why it's important to choose partners carefully. Yes, condoms are not fool-proof. That's why many doctors recommend that teenagers use other birth control as well.

Spermicide, with condoms, can kill the HIV virus, for example. If young people are sexually active, regular medical checkups are important.

As a parent, of course I would rather see my children having intimate relationships with people who care about them. I don't want my children to feel used and I don't want them to use other people.

But to say that any kind of sex outside marriage will inevitably have hurtful and possibly even fatal consequences is to deny human experience.