The Joy of No Sex By: Wasley, Paula, Chronicle of Higher Education

Justin F. Murray and Sarah M. Kinsella can barely keep their hands off each other. On a recent sunny afternoon, the two newly minted Harvard University graduates greet with a lingering embrace. They share a lemonade. She nuzzles his arm, rubs his back, and boasts about his dance moves. He massages her shoulders and coos, “Look how cute she is!”

One thing these lovebirds won’t do, however, is go to bed until they’re wed. Last year the pair founded a Harvard student group called True Love Revolution, which promotes sexual abstinence. While other abstinence advocates have used the threat of fire and brimstone to discourage co-educational hanky-panky, these “true love” revolutionaries cast chastity in secular terms, as a practical choice with physical and emotional rewards.

On a campus they describe as saturated with casual sex, Justin and Sarah have helped put abstinence on the map. As they prepare to take their commitment to chastity - and each other - off campus, they leave behind a handful of devotees of a countercultural movement that says abstinence is sexy.

True Love Revolution, or TLR, is hardly the only group pushing self-restraint among young adults. Religious organizations on college campuses have long advised students to harness their hormones. At Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students have founded chapters of the secular Anscombe Society (named for Elizabeth Anscombe, a British Catholic philosopher) to advance moral and ethical reasons for keeping one’s clothes on. And there are high-school-focused groups, including the religiously affiliated Silver Ring Thing, a social club whose members wear silver rings to signify their pledge of chastity.

TLR’s approach is more practical. The group’s founders say abstinence is not only a foolproof means of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, but also the ticket to a better romantic life.

Both Sarah and Justin say that abstinence has strengthened their own bond, helping them savor the intimacies of kissing, holding hands, and long late-night talks. Their relationship has impressed some of their fellow students. “They say, ‘There might actually be something to this because you guys seem really happy and you’re not even having sex,’” says Ms. Kinsella.

‘Everything I Am’
The two arrived at abstinence by different paths. Ms. Kinsella, a practicing Catholic, came to Harvard knowing she wanted to save sex for marriage. Her conviction grew after more than one suitor broke up with her because she wouldn’t sleep with him. “I felt like I had been objectified,” she says, “that this guy is not interested in me for everything I am.”

Mr. Murray, who is also Catholic, was once “vaguely committed” to abstinence. During his freshman year, he observed his classmates’ relationships. “I saw a lot of people looking for sex on a Friday night as a stress relief from a difficult week,” he says. “I started asking, Is that really what sex is all about?”

Although Mr. Murray says he had sex in previous relationships, he had recommitted himself to chastity by the time he and Ms. Kinsella began dating, a year and a half ago. The two agreed that they would not even sleep in the same room with each other, a relationship rule they have broken only a few times, such as when they shared a hotel room during a ski trip to New Hampshire, to save money.

Last summer, as they strolled along the Charles River, they decided to start a club that might attract other students like them. They obtained university sponsorship and established True Love Revolution in November.

True Love Revolution now has more than 150 members, according to its Facebook page, and an equal following of men and women. Ms. Kinsella and Mr. Murray spend several hours a week answering e-mail messages from the curious, including students from other college campuses.

True Love Revolution has become part activist group, part support network. It challenges a campus culture that, its founders say, promotes sex through university-sponsored how-to seminars on female orgasm. The group has advertised the benefits of abstinence through flyers and ice-cream socials. In April they held an open dinner discussion called “Living in a Hookup Culture,” which attracted supporters and critics alike. The founders hope their successors will bring speakers to the campus, and perhaps approach the university’s health center about incorporating information on abstinence into its sex-education programs.

When she and Mr. Murray founded the group, says Ms. Kinsella, their friends called them brave. Still, she was not prepared for the strong reactions TLR has generated. “People take this more personally than just a discussion of ideas,” she says.

True Love Revolution has attracted members of various religions, as well as agnostic students. The group has avoided taking stances on same-sex unions or abortion. Many of its members are virgins; some who are not have recommitted to abstinence. The group even has couples who have managed to “turn things around” midrelationship, says Ms. Kinsella.

“The reason to save sex for marriage is not because sex is bad, but because it’s so great that you want to share it with someone who means something extremely special,” says Mr. Murray. “Part of the fun is the anticipation of how important it’s going to be.”

Stirring Controversy
The organization caused some controversy at Harvard. On Valentine’s Day, for instance, the group mailed chocolate hearts to all freshman women, along with cards that said, “Why Wait? Because You’re Worth It.” That raised the ire of some campus feminists who said the organization was promoting a patriarchal view of female sexuality. The Harvard Crimson published a few editorials mocking the group. And Mr. Murray has friends who enjoy taunting him with explicit details of their sex lives.

But most of their fellow students have been understanding, the couple says. “I have friends who say, I like the idea but I could never do that,” says Ms. Kinsella.

Plenty of college students are abstaining from sex. A 2006 survey by the American College Health Association found that 29 percent of college students reported not having had sex in the past school year. The same study showed that students often overestimate the extent of their peers’ sexual activities.

“People tend to perceive that other people are more sexually active and wilder than they themselves are,” says Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University and author of a forthcoming book, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (New York University Press, 2008). “When you interview people who are virgins, they think they are the only ones. But it’s not anywhere as rare as they think it is.”

Abstinence groups like True Love Revolution, she says, are a reaction to a campus hookup culture.

Leo J. Keliher, a freshman at Harvard, credits True Love Revolution with keeping him on the straight and narrow during the tempting first weeks of his freshman year, when opportunities to hook up were all around him. He says the group appealed to him because in high school he experienced some unsatisfying romantic relationships that had more to do with physical attraction than mutual respect.

During freshman orientation, he passed out the group’s list of “Top 10 Reasons to Wait.” “It helped put out a public image right away that this is what I want to be known for,” he says.

Next fall Mr. Keliher and Janie M. Fredell, a sophomore, will take over as co-presidents of the organization. Ms. Fredell is from Colorado Springs, where she says many teenagers proudly identified themselves as virgins. At Harvard, she says, abstinence carries the stigma of prudery. She and Mr. Keliher hope to give abstinence an image makeover by organizing dances and other social events for the chaste.

Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg, a recent Harvard graduate and co-founder of the university’s much-hyped sex magazine, H Bomb, first encountered True Love Revolution when she was handed a hot-pink flyer that said “Sex. Why Wait?” Reading further, she was surprised to see a list of reasons why she should.

“I thought it was kind of funny that someone would take so much time out of their day to try to stop other people from having sex,” she says. But she has been impressed by what she describes as the group’s open-mindedness. “They just want to have a group and a place where people can feel that they’re not alone in their opinions,” she says, “like any other student group.”

She finds it strange that True Love Revolution is often viewed in opposition to H Bomb, since both, she says, formed to start conversations about sexuality. “The two groups might be reflected in each other more than you would expect,” she says.

Now that they have left Harvard behind, Mr. Murray and Ms. Kinsella say taking abstinence into the real world will be a cinch.

The couple plans to move to Washington soon. He will attend Georgetown University’s law school; she will enroll at Georgetown’s medical school. They say they will continue to set aside at least one evening a week for a proper date. In a few years, they hope to marry.

For now, though, they will live in separate apartments.