My single brothers and sisters, we need to talk.

After reading a great article from Bella M. DePaulo about single life, it seems single people get the shaft on many levels: the workplace, getting housing (despite having the means to pay for it), the notion married people are happier than single people in the workplace, etc. The one area I think Ms. DePaulo is missing that’s a slight towards single people is sexuality.

Consequences of promiscuous sexual behavior 

For a long time, you’ve been warned from parental units to the street preachers not to engage in promiscuous sexual behavior. Many single people — Christians or non-believers — would spend moments worrying if God has a lightning bolt with your name engraved on it for having a sexual thought or touching yourself in an inappropriate way.

Funny how you’re asked to put your life on the line by joining the military, drive a car, pay taxes, hold a job, and find housing for yourself and you still can’t be trusted for your own sexual lives.

Many in the church think single people are unable to control yourself and that you’re one step away from being an extra on a Girls Gone Wild DVD. I believe its time for the church, parents and our government to stop treating you like children and give the information needed to face your sexual life with confidence.

Save yourself for marriage? 

Too often many in the Christian circles try to scare you into a forced life of single celibacy (what the rest of us call abstinence): Save yourself for marriage lest you become a raging sex fiend. In their minds, fear and guilt can cause many to avoid sex and save themselves from contracting STDs or risk pregnancy.

The ultimate cure all to sexual activity is marriage. One problem: Marriage doesn’t give you automatic knowledge about sexuality on the same lines as becoming a single persons can’t make you fully knowledgeable about handling an adult relationship.

Add to it the fury is the misuse of the word “fornication” from many pulpits and Bible scholars and you have young adults confused as to what God means about sex outside of marriage. Instead of its proper usage, they lump this word with every abnormal expression of sexuality instead of normal expressions of sexual intimacy.

Singles are reduced to sitting at the kiddy table of life. “Here, here little Johnny or Jane, we’ll cut up your plate of what you can have sexually for you and you’ll eat what we tell you to or else you can do without.”

Enough!

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