You know which one I'm talking about. This one from the Alan Guttmacher Institute which says that 99% of people have sex by the time they are 44 and that 95% had sex before marriage. You know, the one some people believe because it fits their built-in biases.
I suppose it isn't surprising that liberals who think a condom in every Christmas stocking was a terrific gift idea (or maybe it was an IUD...I forget which) would see these results and not use 1/10th of the skepticism they use on, say, screeds on Feminists for Life.
But, no, they haven't. There are other groups who are a bit more skeptical of results so skewed, however, according to this piece from Agape Press:
Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America (CWA) sees Finer's report as a ploy to cast doubt on the need for abstinence-until-marriage programs. "My eyebrows went up when I first saw the numbers," she recalls, "and I thought that the results were a bit too pat because they fit so specifically into the agenda of Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute."
For that reason, Crouse says she is "quite suspicious" about the numbers cited in the Institute's report. "They are so extreme," she contends, "I think you'd have to have another study done to replicate those results before I would buy into them."
One reason the CWA spokeswoman feels the credibility of this report on Americans and premarital sex needs to be questioned is that Finer works for a group which she believes actually favors both extramarital sex and abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that investigates sexual and reproductive issues, is an organization that strongly discourages government-funded abstinence-only programs and instead promotes so-called "comprehensive sex education," which is condom-based and emphasizes the concept of "safe sex."
I've looked at the Guttmacher site and can't find a list of the questions they asked. I am highly skeptical of any research that says 99% of anybody has done anything other than breathe (the 1% not breathing are liberals). For one thing, I was interested to know what the Guttmacher definition of sex was. Are they talking only intercourse or are they talking about the whole variety of activities that Bill Clinton insisted weren't sex?
Secondly, what is "premarital sex"? Does that include a person who has been divorced but has sex before they remarry? And isn't that a different category from people who have never been married but have sex before marriage?
Finally, is it really amazing that 99% of people (supposedly) have sex by the time they are middle-aged? I don't find it unbelievable at all that halfway through life most people had sex at some point. This could include people who are now chaste but had sex at some earlier point in their lives.
In short, without the questions asked and a better breakdown of the information, the conclusion that has been touted by so many liberal blogs is, shall we say, unsubstantiated.
Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.
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