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VOLUME 1 • ISSUE 8   |   Release date: January 15, 2004

In This Issue
No Grace on Moon, Mars
Black Family Flees Emergent Church
THO Guide to Christian Capitalization
Benefits of Abstinence After Marriage
Bible Study Divided for Sex Talk
Survey Results
January Church Sign of the Month
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Group Touts Benefits of Abstinence After Marriage
Concerned Women for America leaders hope move will curb spiraling divorce rate
 
No Sex!

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a startling move, Beverly Lahaye, founder and president of conservative political action group Concerned Women for America (CWA), has announced that her organization will start a multi-pronged campaign aimed at promoting abstinence after marriage.

"With divorce rates in the church climbing even higher than those in society at large, we just felt we needed a whole new approach," Lahaye told THO in an exclusive interview. "We did a thorough study of what was going on in the good marriages of our members and the answer invariably came back: no sex."

Lahaye also filled THO in on CWA's plans to lobby the US Education Department to include teaching about post-marriage abstinence in health classrooms around the country. The group also has plans to launch a multi-million dollar, nation-wide print and broadcast marketing campaign using the slogan "Why Stop Waiting?" and starring actor Kirk Cameron.

"I think this is a really great idea, and I'm honored to be involved with it," Cameron said. "I already have five kids, and believe me I don't want to take any chances on making any more."

Lahaye says the new approach is a logical next step in what CWA has been doing over the years.

"This really gives us a good amount of consistency in what we're all about," Lahaye said. "For years we've been telling young people not to have casual sex for pleasure before marriage, and now we're telling them not to have that kind of casual sex ever. It really makes a lot of sense when you think about it."

The only acceptable sex under CWA's new policy is "sexual relations within the boundaries of holy matrimony for the explicit purpose of procreation."

"Of course we're allowing for that," Lahaye said. "We don't want to be unreasonable, but we're going to encourage people to try not to enjoy it at all."

The reaction from other leaders in the conservative, pro-family movement has been hesitant.

"I'm going to have to take a good hard look at what CWA is doing here, because it's decidedly contrary to what we've been hammering home for a long, long time," said Focus on the Family Founder and President Dr. James Dobson. "We've always taught that a healthy sex life is critical to a strong marriage, but come to think of it that's not really working, is it?"

"While this may work for some, I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to push for it across the board," said Dennis Rainey, executive director of Family Life Ministries, a division of Campus Crusade for Christ. "We certainly take anything that CWA does seriously, but I don't know if I'm ready to give up my date night just yet."

Leaders in the socially progressive community seemed almost confused by the move.

"In a way I guess it's a good thing," said a perplexed National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy. "This pretty much completes the decades-long process of completely polarizing the views of our respective organizations on the issue of sex."

For her part, Lahaye is not totally convinced that the abstinence after marriage movement will make a major impact, but with families crumbling across the social spectrum, she and others at CWA simply felt it was time to make a major play.

"If it doesn't work it doesn't work," Lahaye said. "We figure it can't really make things any worse, and when we finally decided that we needed to do something big, we figured why not push for something that we're all doing anyway."

"Why Stop Waiting?" ads are slated to begin running in top ten markets beginning this summer.

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