This article was taken from the San Jose Mercury News, February 11, 1996, section B, pages 1B & 5B.
The gathering at Stanford auditorium was like a trashy TV talk show turned upside down. About 100 junior high, high school and college students were talking about sex and lust, relationships and cheating partners. But the twist to all this sex talk: Everyone was vowing to stay celibate until marriage. "When you base a relationship on sex, it's like you have no foundation," Jon Gomez, 16, of San Jose told the group. "You're going to be jealous, critical and have a 'me first' attitude. It's going to be a very shaky relationship." It was no uptight collection of nerds and goody-goodies who attended the "Know Love" conference at Stanford University Saturday. The group was young, but world-wise - survivors of a culture reeling from AIDS, divorce and teen-age pregnancy. And they're joining a "new sexual revolution" that stresses self-respect, discipline and sharing emotional honesty with someone before baring all. It's a generation weary of "meaningless gratification," said Vincent J. Mooney III, 26, co-president of True Love Waits, the Stanford student group that organizes the conference and holds regular campus meetings to "promote the traditional institution of marriage and the virtue of chastity." "It's not that sex is bad," a young woman told the group during the forum. "It's because it's so good it can become the focus of the relationship and you ignore everything else." The conference was attended by students from around the Bay Area. The keynote speaker was Lakita Garth, Miss Black California, who has preached chastity to some 250,000 students across the country. "Whether I'm talking to college students or junior high kids, they all really want the same thing: an intimate relationship," said Garth, 27. Garth began by screening her MTV-slick video that showed her crusading on TV talk shows, proclaiming: "No orgasm is worth giving up the rest of your life." Garth, who credits the strong role models of her strict mother and grandparents for helping her escape a crime-ridden housing project in San Bernardino, urged the youngster to ignore taunts that they're "square" virgins. "All those girls who were 'popular' in high school are working at the Kmart check-out today, and they have children." Gomez said he's chosen celibacy from observing the mistakes of others. His sister got pregnant at 16, and last week, he counseled a classmate who was considering an abortion. "When you hear some of my friends talk about sex, it's really sad. To me, it's something special and important. To them, it's just one-two-three: quick satisfaction," Gomez said. Most of the unaffiliated True Love Waits groups around the country are rooted in religious organizations. But the 18-month-old Stanford group avoids preaching religious dogma or moralizing, instead offering a blitz of research supporting the wisdom of "waiting until you're married." Mooney, a graduate student in electrical engineering, is armed with a stack of studies stating that people who abstain until marriage report greater sexual satisfaction, lower divorce rates, better relationship communication than people who sacrificed their virginity before saying, "I do." But what really seems to win converts is the group's emphasis on discussing the emotional fallout from getting in bed with someone before you really get to know them. "First and foremost, (premarital sex) is just not smart," said Rachel Daniel, 21, the Stanford group's co-president. She comes from a family that has struggled with illegitimate pregnancy and divorce. "I see a lot of my friends throwing away their futures because of sex" and the health risks that go with it.