Reaching In, Reaching Up, Reaching Out
Carolina HOPE’s uncompromising yet compassionate message about healthy relationships and sexual abstinence outside marriage
fills a significant need on the UNC campus. Many sexual health education efforts on campus stress the importance of
protecting oneself through ‘responsible sexual behavior’: a combination of condoms, contraceptives, and a little caution.
Carolina HOPE is unique in that it challenges the widely held assumption that these three C’s are sufficient.
HOPE’s message of abstinence-outside-marriage as a vital alternative to merely ‘responsible’ sexual behavior is
an important encouragement for students living on a campus where being single and sexually
active is considered the norm. And HOPE’s work goes beyond simple affirmation.
It furthermore works to educate students about the facts and figures of sexual health and offers
students opportunities to become involved in community service opportunities like this past spring’s Baby HOPE Day,
which provided free baby clothing and supplies to single parents and needy families in the campus community.
Other HOPE-sponsored campus initiatives included the biweekly on-campus student discussion group and this past February’s
first HOPE Valentine’s Day Square Dance, the profits from which went to support a local crisis pregnancy center.
Why Abstinence?
The media today presents sex outside marriage as having few, if any, consequences. Yet unplanned pregnancy, abortion, disease,
broken relationships and loss of self-respect are all potential consequences of sexual involvement outside of marriage.
Freedoms that come from choosing to save sex for marriage:
- Freedom from sexually transmitted diseases.
- Freedom from the problems of birth control (possible unreliability and unexpected side effects).
- Freedom from untimely pregnancy.
- Freedom from the pain and expense of abortion.
- Freedom from the stresses and challenges of parenting alone.
- Freedom from the pain of placing your child for adoption.
- Freedom from exploitation by others.
- Freedom to respect yourself and be respected by others.
- Freedom to be in control of your own body.
- Freedom to plan for the kind of life you want to live in the future.
- Freedom from the doubt, disappointment, guilt, worry and rejection that can come with sexual relationships.
- Freedom to get to know each other better as friends.
- Freedom to be unselfish—not take pleasure in sex at the expense of the other.
- Freedom to look forward to marriage and committed intimacy (physical and emotional).
- Freedom to choose and be chosen by the kind of person you want to be the father or mother of your child.
- Freedom from having to tell your spouse about your sexual past.
- Freedom from having to work through your sexual past in your marriage.
- Freedom from severe pain and regret when relationships end (because you have given much of yourself away).
- Freedom to maintain friendships with other people.
- Freedom to remember your dating experiences with pleasure and without shame.
- Freedom to form a strong marriage bond with one person. Such couples can trust each other to be sexually faithful
in marriage because they have practiced resisting sexual temptation before marriage.
Resources for More Information
Community Resources
- Our sponsoring community organization's webpage: http://www.thehope4youth.org
- Pregnancy Support Services: Our faithful sponsors and a
wonderful resource for the Carolina and Triangle communities.
- Carolina Students for Life: CSL has partnered with us for many events and share the desire
to prevent unplanned pregnancies and support those who are pregnant, especially those who are a part of the Carolina community.
Web Resources
- Abstinence Clearinghouse
- www.mikelong.com: Mike Long, Durham native, nationally-known speaker, trainer, writer, and pioneer in
Abstinence education. His program is called "Everyone Is NOT Doing It." He was a Carolina HOPE keynote speaker
on November 12th, 2003.
- http://www.clubvarsity.org: One of the main supporters of abstinence
speaker Lakita Garth. Some personal information is available here, as well as multimedia resources.
- The Medical Institute for Sexual Health: The website for the organization
that makes a number of our brochures.
Articles
Return to Top
Last update: 23 August 2006
