INFIDELITY is rampant in nature. Birds, mammals, amphibians and even fish all cheat if the conditions are right, forcing mates to remain perpetually vigilant. People are no different. Although cheats are publicly condemned, or in some cases impeached, infidelity is common and public disapproval does little to dissuade the sinner. The disapproval of God, however, is a different matter, and a new study suggests that prayer can indeed guide people away from adulterous behaviour.

Frank Fincham at Florida State University and his colleagues knew from looking at past studies that couples who attend religious services are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages and less likely to be unfaithful than those who do not, but they did not understand why. Speculating that the act of praying might itself cause romantic relationships to become more resilient, the team set up an experiment to explore prayer and fidelity.

The researchers recruited 83 undergraduates who reported both being in a romantic relationship and praying at least occasionally. Participants were given a survey that is used by psychologists to measure levels of infidelity on a nine-point scale (with nine being highly unfaithful). The survey instructed them to think of the person that they were most attracted to besides their partner and then asked questions like how aroused they felt in that person’s presence, how emotionally intimate they had been with him or her, and how physically intimate they had been. In a second survey, participants were asked to state how strongly they agreed with statements like “my relationship with my partner is holy and sacred”, by rating levels of agreement on a nine-point scale (with nine indicating very strong agreement).

Following the survey, the participants were randomly assigned to one of four daily activities: praying for the well-being of their partner, engaging in undirected prayer, thinking about positive aspects of their partner or reflecting upon their day. Participants did as they were asked for four weeks, and kept written logs of what they were praying (or thinking). At the end of this period, the team again measured infidelity and how sacred the participants felt their romantic relationships were.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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...It’s easy to dismiss this case as just one more bizarre news story from Down Under, but May-Welby’s case could also represent the future of gender identity. Although no one is keeping statistics, researchers who study gender say a small but growing number of people (including some who have had sex-change operations) consider themselves “gender neutral” or “gender variant.” Their stories vary widely. Some find that even after surgery, they simply can’t ignore previous years of experience living as another gender. Others may feel that their gender identity is fluid. Still others are experimenting with where they feel most comfortable on what they see as a continuum of gender. “For some, it’s a form of protest because gender is such a strong organizing principle in our society,” says Walter Bockting, an associate professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has been studying transgender health since 1986. “Their identities expand our thinking about gender.”

In fact, some researchers compare the evolution in thinking about gender to the struggle that began a generation ago for gay and lesbian rights. Dr. Jack Drescher is a member of an American Psychiatric Association (APA) committee that is currently reviewing changes to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is used around the world by clinicians, researchers, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies to classify mental disorders. DSM-5, as it’s called, won’t be published until 2013, but Drescher’s committee is reconsidering the diagnosis of gender-identity disorder, which encompasses people who do not identify with the gender assigned to them by biology. ...

How all the debate will play out in this country is still unclear, but college students may be among those leading the charge for change. Many campuses—including Harvard, Penn and Michigan—now offer gender neutral housing and more unisex bathrooms to accommodate students who don’t fall neatly into male or female categories. The Common Application, which is used by most college applicants, just announced that it is considering adding voluntary questions that would give students a broader array of choices to describe their gender identity and allow them to state their sexual orientation, after gay advocates urged the change. How long before such changes begin to show up in other parts of society is unclear. But Drescher says he is certain of one thing after a lifetime of working with gender: "There is no way that six billion people can be categorized into two groups." Now if we could only figure out the pronoun problem.

Labels: culture, gender, professional associations, universities

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It appears Seton Hall University will offer a controversial course on gay marriage over the objections of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, according to the professor scheduled to teach the class.

The undergraduate seminar course — called "The Politics of Gay Marriage" — is to begin Tuesday with about two dozen students, said W. King Mott, an associate professor of political science. ...

The syllabus for the class says the course will focus on gay marriage as a contemporary political idea and may bring guest speakers to campus to share their personal stories.

"This point of view does not dismiss those that hold a religious belief; all perspectives are welcome in this discussion," the syllabus says.

Mott, one of the few openly gay professors at Seton Hall, came up with the idea for the elective class for upperclassmen. He said students will explore the social and political issues surrounding the gay marriage debate without advocating for either side.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, universities

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“Girls can’t be guys in matters of the heart, even though they think they can,” says Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, published in 2007.

In her view, “hooking up”—casual sexual activity ranging from kissing to intercourse—places women at risk of “low self-esteem, depression, alcoholism, and eating disorders.” Stepp is only one of half a dozen journalists currently engaged in the business of detailing the dangers of casual sex.

On the other side, pop culture feminists such as Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (2010), argue that the problem isn’t casual sex, but a “moral panic” over casual sex. And still a third set of writers like Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (2005), questions whether it’s empowering for young women to show up at parties dressed to imitate porn stars or to strip in “Girls Gone Wild” fashion. Levy’s concern isn’t necessarily moral, but rather that these young women seem less focused on their own sexual pleasure and more worried about being seen as “hot” by men.

Following on the heels of the mass media obsession, sociologists and psychologists have begun to investigate adolescent and young adult hookups more systematically. In this essay, we draw on systematic data and studies of youth sexual practices over time to counter claims that hooking up represents a sudden and alarming change in youth sexual culture. The research shows that there is some truth to popular claims that hookups are bad for women. However, it also demonstrates that women’s hookup experiences are quite varied and far from uniformly negative and that monogamous, long-term relationships are not an ideal alternative. Scholarship suggests that pop culture feminists have correctly zeroed in on sexual double standards as a key source of gender inequality in sexuality. ...

The pervasiveness of casual sexual activity among today’s youth may be at the heart of Boomers’ concerns. England surveyed more than 14,000 students from 19 universities and colleges about their hookup, dating, and relationship experiences. Seventy-two percent of both men and women participating in the survey reported at least one hookup by their senior year in college. What the Boomer panic may gloss over, however, is the fact that college students don’t, on average, hook up that much. By senior year, roughly 40 percent of those who ever hooked up had engaged in three or fewer hookups, 40 percent between four and nine hookups, and only 20 percent in ten or more hookups. About 80 percent of students hook up, on average, less than once per semester over the course of college.

In addition, the sexual activity in hookups is often relatively light. Only about one third engaged in intercourse in their most recent hookup. Another third had engaged in oral sex or manual stimulation of the genitals. The other third of hookups only involved kissing and non-genital touching. A full 20 percent of survey respondents in their fourth year of college had never had vaginal intercourse. In addition, hookups between total strangers are relatively uncommon, while hooking up with the same person multiple times is common. Ongoing sexual relationships without commitment are labeled as “repeat,” “regular,” or “continuing” hookups, and sometimes as “friends with benefits.” Often there is friendship or socializing both before and after the hookup. ...

Contemporary hookup culture among adolescents and young adults may rework aspects of the Sexual Revolution to get some of its pleasures while reducing its physical and emotional risks. Young people today—particularly young whites from affluent families—are expected to delay the commitments of adulthood while they invest in careers. They get the message that sex is okay, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize their futures; STDs and early pregnancies are to be avoided. This generates a sort of limited liability hedonism. For instance, friendship is prioritized a bit more than romance, and oral sex appeals because of its relative safety. Hookups may be the most explicit example of a calculating approach to sexual exploration. They make it possible to be sexually active while avoiding behaviors with the highest physical and emotional risks (e.g., intercourse, intense relationships). Media panic over hooking up may be at least in part a result of adult confusion about youth sexual culture—that is, not understanding that oral sex and sexual experimentation with friends are actually some young people’s ways of balancing fun and risk.

Labels: culture, feminism, gender, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, universities, women

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One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it's not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a "closeted faith." ...

And it appears that climate may extend beyond science departments. A poll of 1,200 academics by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found that more than half said they have unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. ...

French cites the case of an adjunct professor in California who was dismissed for suggesting that homosexuality might be a choice. A graduate student was thrown out of a counseling program after she declined to conduct relationship therapy for gay couples. And recently the University of Illinois dismissed an adjunct professor for offending students when discussing the Catholic church's view of homosexuality. After an outcry, the university reinstated him last week.

Labels: Christianity, culture, homosexuality, religion, universities

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A graduate student in school counseling is accusing Augusta State University in federal court of violating her constitutional rights by demanding that she work to change her views opposing homosexuality.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., the student, Jennifer Keeton, argues that faculty members and administrators at the university have violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion by threatening her with expulsion if she does not fufill requirements contained in a remediation plan intended to get her to change her beliefs.

Ms. Keeton's lawsuit accuses the university of being "ideologically heavy-handed" in imposing the requirements on her "simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity." It argues that her views, which hold that homosexual behavior is immoral and that homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, would not interfere with her ability to provide competent counseling to gay men and lesbians.

Labels: Christianity, culture, homosexuality, professional associations, religion, religious liberty, universities

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... In 2008 and 2009 we asked close to a thousand students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to tell us about their sex lives. In this anonymous web-based survey we also asked them to which religious denomination they belonged. Almost everybody who claims to belong to a religion also believes in God. A lot of students -- just shy of a third -- don't identify with any religion. But just because somebody doesn't belong does not mean they don't believe. About a quarter of those unaffiliated nonetheless believe in God. Most commonly, they believe in a higher, ordering power or cosmic force, but not God, not the big Who. True atheists are a tiny minority in the sample -- about eight percent.

With all these God-believers, it is striking that most students -- nearly 60 percent -- don't think sexual intercourse before marriage is wrong, at all. If you look at the table below, you can see that very small proportions -- even among the conservative Christians -- think it is absolutely wrong. Eighteen percent of the Evangelical students think such sex is absolutely wrong. That's less than the 25 percent of those students who took a virginity pledge. ...

If, within a particular religious community, the percentage who think sex it is not at all wrong is less than the percentage who have had sexual intercourse, you have a kind of "guilt gap," a rough relative likelihood that young people in that community will have had sex but think there is something shameful in what they have done. For the Protestants, unlike the Catholics and the Jews, the "guilt gap" is huge: 21 percent more mainline Protestants have had sex than think there is nothing morally wrong about it; for Evangelicals the gap is 29 percent. That is a lot of guilty sex. For Catholics and Jews, the gap is 10 percent and 2 percent, respectively. For those who don't belong to any religion, there is a guilt deficit.

The problem with guilty sex is that it is sex students don't expect to have, for which they are not prepared, executed in the heat of passion, often -- if students came out of an abstinence-only sex education -- without much knowledge. (In this respect, these religious differences are even more striking because the State of California stood by its comprehensive sex education approach and opted out of Federal abstinence funding. That means that most of these students had some school-based sexual education.) Although the numbers are small, the pregnancy rate is also much higher for Protestant girls. Catholic and Jewish girls hardly ever get pregnant. Half of those Protestant pregnancies, mainline and Evangelical alike, ended in abortion. Protestant guilt is killing the unborn.

Labels: abortion, Catholic Church, Christianity, contraception, culture, Judaism, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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A Catholic professor has been fired from the University of Illinois for sending an email to students in a course on Catholic doctrine, explaining how homosexual activity is contrary to the natural moral law.

Kenneth Howell of Champaign, IL, also lost his job with the diocese of Peoria at the Newman center on campus, where he had been employed for 12 years, after university officials confronted Howell about the email.

Howell had taught “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought” at the university's Department of Religion since 2001.

In an account posted by CatholicVoteAction.org, Howell says that although students in the course have often disagreed with Catholic teaching in the past, in Spring 2010 he "noticed the most vociferous reaction that I have ever had" regarding the Catholic teaching against homosexuality as morally wrong. ...

In the email, as quoted by the Associated Press, Howell had written: "Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same."

After the end of the semester, Howell says he was summoned to the office of Robert McKim, chairman of the Department of Religion, where he was told his email had been forwarded to the Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Concerns, and that he would no longer be able to teach at the university. Despite discussion of the email's contents, said Howell, McKim "was quite insistent that my days of teaching in the department were over."

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, freedom of speech, homosexuality, religion, universities

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Articles about teenagers having sex are often laments by adults about how all teens now are hooking up right and left (which then inspires debunking like this piece by Matt Yglesias). When people do get down to actual statistics, they usually talk about the average age at which teenagers have intercourse for the first time. What’s the age now? Is it going down or up? How does it compare with the rest of the world. (In the US, right now, it’s around 17.)

But averages aren’t all there is to statistics. There’s also the spread. What’s the standard deviation here? Just how unusual is it, for example, not to have had sex yet at the age of 20 (three years above the average age for losing your virginity). Are you some rare freak, obviously a religious nut or obviously socially inept, or taking sex way too seriously? Or some rare paragon of virtue, amazing in your self-control, a model of chastity for others to follow? Or are you, perhaps, a little later than average in having sex, but really pretty normal overall, and not all that rare?

How rare are 20-year-old virgins? Google is my friend, and I have found several answers for you.

Labels: culture, premarital sex, sex, universities, virginity

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Many people regard marriage rights for same-sex couples as the civil rights issue of this generation. Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't have strong feelings one way or the other on this issue: Should courts recognize the marriage rights of lesbian and gay couples as a matter of dignity and equality, or should we respect opposition to same-sex matrimony based in religion and traditional morality?

This issue has taken a new turn in recent weeks as Seton Hall University political science professor King Mott was notified that the class he was planning to teach in the fall, titled "Gay Marriage," might be canceled by the university's governing board when it meets on June 4. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers said the course conflicts with the teachings of the Catholic Church (Seton Hall is a Catholic university). "This proposed course seeks to promote as legitimate a train of thought that is contrary to what the Church teaches," Archbishop Myers said in a statement. "As a result, the course is not in synch with Catholic teaching."

We have taken a special interest in professor Mott's class because we too are scheduled to teach a new class titled "Gay Marriage" this fall at Columbia University, through the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. The flier we put together to advertise the class poses two views of the marriage issue: One image captures gay rights demonstrators protesting laws that preclude them from marrying, while the other image, from the group Dyke Action Machine, asks: "Why Be Boring for a Blender? You Might as Well Be Straight."

Unlike professor Mott, we have little worry that officials from our university will step in and cancel our class for ideological or moral reasons. But that doesn't mean that we are immune from ideological criticism of the material we will cover in our course. Oddly enough, that criticism may come from the LGBT community itself.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, feminism, gay marriage, heteronormativity, religion, universities

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Health educators, feminist bloggers, and queer activists gathered at the Rethinking Virginity Conference on Monday to critique American society’s negative portrayal of losing one’s virginity.

“Why do we say ‘losing it’ anyway?” said Shelby Knox, a feminist activist and blogger. “Why don’t we say, ‘I am celebrating my first time!’?”

Many of the speakers at the panels, which were hosted by the Harvard Queer Students and Allies, agreed that sex and virginity are often associated with loss and even shame. They argued for a more positive approach to sexuality.

Labels: culture, heteronormativity, homosexuality, sex, sex education, universities, virginity

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A course on gay marriage will be offered by the Women and Gender studies department next semester at Seton Hall University.

W. King Mott, an associate professor of political science and a member of the Women and Gender Studies program, will teach the course.

The class is not an advocacy course, according to Mott. Rather, it teaches the issue of gay marriage from an academic perspective.

“It is one thing to say ‘I am for or against gay marriage,’” Mott said. “It’s another to actually understand the issue.”

The course will teach various cultural perspectives of marriage, such as Eurocentric and Asian views, Mott said.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, gay marriage, universities

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...Since my academic research centers on attitudes about sex in relation to faith on college campuses, I'll tackle part two of this week's question: Is religion a useful tool for helping young people navigate the treacherous world of sex, love and relationships?

In my survey work and interviews with college students across the U.S. at Catholic, evangelical, private-secular, and public universities, and subsequent campus lecture visits to discuss this very topic, I found three very different attitudes among young adults about whether religion is useful in navigating hookup culture, sexual decision-making and identity formation, romance, and love:

1) For the committed, evangelical college student, it is impossible to separate your religious affiliation and commitments from anything to do with sexual decision-making, activity, and identity. Your faith is at the core of who you are, and everything you think and do flows from there. With regard to navigating dating, sex, and romantic relationships, the Christian tradition can portray this task as overwhelming dangerous--as a series of extremely important don'ts--which adds enormous stress to an already stressful journey during adolescence. That's the not so good news participants offered in my study. But most evangelical college students want their faith to speak to them about everything, including sex and relationships, so even if they are struggling with what their religion teaches on this (the many don'ts), they are committed to that struggle and they are in it for the long hall because they love their faith tradition. Period.

2) Your average college students at Catholic, private-secular, and public institutions generally laugh at the possibility that religious tradition might have anything to say to them in light of the world they live in: hookup culture, where sex is perceived as simply a casual thing, and they feel pressured to go right along with this attitude, even though for most young women and men, privately they don't like this situation at all. Catholic students especially spoke with great sarcasm about the "don'ts" with regard to sex in the Catholic tradition, which make them feel alienated, and which make them think that Catholicism is utterly out of touch with the realities of what they face in navigating sex and hookup culture today.

3) There is another type of student from across the four institution types who also might fit one of the other two categories as well, who is either really stressed about what religion tells them about sex, or thinks it's useless, but who has a feeling that in the realm of spirituality, there is a lot of possibility, flexibility, and exciting potential for them in the way of making their sex, dating, and romantic lives more fulfilling, meaningful, and generally, might offer more livable rules and is far more inclusive of same-sex relationships and sexually active histories. So spirituality--not institutional, organizational religion, but spirituality--is an exciting space where students suspect they might actually find useful tools for navigation. They just aren't sure how to find them or pursue these suspicions they have.

Labels: Catholic Church, Christianity, culture, Donna Freitas, hooking up, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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Almost every weekend, there is a tradition called raging at Vanderbilt University.

It's a recurring, drunken activity that isn't the proudest moment for student Frannie Boyle. After consuming large quantities of alcohol before a party, her night would sometimes end in making out with a stranger or acquaintance.

Casual hook ups fueled by alcohol may be the norm across college campuses, but Boyle, now a 21-year-old junior at the school, chose to stop. Her reasons to quit hooking up echo the emotional devastation of many college students, particularly girls whose hearts are broken by the hook-up scene.

"I saw it [hooking up] as a way to be recognized and get satisfaction," said Boyle, shaking her blond ponytail. "I felt so empty then."

The hook-up culture on campuses may seem more pervasive than ever, especially as media outlets, books and documentaries rush to dissect the subject, but some college women and men are saying no.

Some, like Boyle, experimented with hooking up and quit. Though she is Catholic, she says her reason for disengaging herself from the hook-up culture had more to do with the unhappiness she experienced afterward. Others influenced by religion have abstained from casual physical activity from the moment they set foot on campus.

The idea of rejecting hook-ups may not be as strange as it sounds in a generation surrounded by sex. Pop star Lady Gaga recently announced she was celibate and encouraged others to follow. In Kelly Clarkson's song "I Don't Hook Up," she addresses the dominant hook-up culture: "I do not hook up, up I go slow, so if you want me I don't come cheap." ...

Evidence of the backlash on hooking up on campuses can be seen in the growing popularity of the Love and Fidelity Network, a secular, nonprofit group dedicated to helping college students open the discussion for a lifestyle that doesn't involve casual sexual activity with anonymous or uncommitted partners.

Labels: culture, hooking up, premarital sex, sex, universities

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...A study published in the new issue of the Hastings Center Report suggests this issue is far from resolved and that voluntary guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine are sometimes ignored. Researcher Aaron D. Levine evaluated 105 advertisements from 63 different student newspapers (that's where ads for egg donors are usually placed). About half the ads met the ASRM guidelines of compensating egg donors $5,000 or less -- the amount considered fair for the donor and yet not high enough to be exploitative or to commodify human eggs. ...

Given that almost one-quarter of the ads studied are in violation, Levine suggests voluntary guidelines used for egg donor solicitation in this country don't work. Violating these ethical guidelines, Levine writes, "has few serious consequences."

In an editorial accompany the study, however, an ASRM member says the system works well. John A. Robertson, a law professor at the University of Texas who chaired the ASRM ethics committee, says that the amount of compensation is arbitrary; no one really knows what is appropriate compensation. Moreover, he says, there is little the reproductive medicine profession can do about this issue. Trying to enforce the ethical guidelines might force behind-the-scenes deals, he notes.

Labels: donor conception, universities

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They weren't looking to make a political statement or to be pioneers of gender liberation. Each just wanted a familiar, decent roommate rather than a stranger after their original roommates left to study abroad.

That's how Pitzer College sophomores Kayla Eland, female, and Lindon Pronto, male, began sharing a room this semester on Holden Hall's second floor. They are not a couple and neither is gay. They are just compatible roommates in a new, sometimes controversial, dormitory option known as gender-neutral housing that is gaining support at some colleges in California and across the nation. ...

Although the number of participants remains small, gender-neutral housing has gained attention as the final step in the integration of student housing.

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

Pitzer, which began its program in the fall of 2008, is among about 50 U.S. schools with the housing choice, according to Jeffrey Chang, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign in 2006 to encourage gender-mixed rooms. Participating schools include UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Haverford, Wesleyan and the University of Michigan.

College officials say the movement began mainly as a way to accommodate gay, bisexual and transgender students who may feel more comfortable living with a member of the opposite sex. Most schools say they discourage couples from participating, citing emotional and logistical problems of breakups. Officials say most heterosexuals in the programs are platonic friends. ...

Parents cannot veto such a decision at Harvey Mudd, but Gerbick asks students to discuss it with their families ahead of time. He also asks applicants whether they are romantically involved; all of this year's participants said no. But if they were, the school could not forbid them from rooming together.

"If we are going into a post-gender world, then the regulation of private behavior is just not practical," he said.

Labels: culture, gay/straight differences, gender, heteronormativity, heterosexual couples, universities

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I’ve been blogging long enough and have witnessed enough scandals that it’s pretty hard to take my breath away anymore.

Well, “Sex Positive Week” at (Jesuit-founded, Catholic) Georgetown University did.

Folks, looking at what activities this week included, it’s pretty clear we’re not even on planet earth anymore. I can’t write about what they talked about, because I don’t want Google to blacklist my blog as pornographic.

Last year (yes, they’ve done it before) coincided with the first week of Lent. ...

Catholic News Agency notes that similar events are taking place at (Jesuit) Loyala University of Chicago and (Jesuit) Seattle University.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities

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More social science research findings regarding Catholic colleges and universities are being reported and discussed. The focus has been on an article in the peer-reviewed Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called, “‘Hooking Up’ at College: Does Religion Make a Difference?”

The study concluded that Catholic women attending non-Catholic and Catholic colleges “display roughly a 72 percent increase in the odds of ‘hooking up’ compared to those women with no religious affiliation” (p. 544). The study also finds that women [Catholic and non-Catholic] at Catholic colleges and universities “are almost four times as likely to have participated in ‘hooking up’ compared to women in secular schools” (p. 544). Thus, there are results regarding Catholic women at all colleges and for all women at Catholic colleges and universities.

There are some important methodological issues to consider:

* A “hook up” is very widely defined as “when a girl and a guy get together for a physical encounter and don’ necessarily expect anything further” (p. 540). As the authors caution, “‘Hooking up’ may refer to a broad range of physical acts ranging from kissing to sexual intercourse” (p. 548). It is difficult to know just what respondents are reporting in responding “yes.” ...

* Thus, there are only interviews with 39 Catholic women attending Catholic colleges in the study. A conservative estimate of the number of Catholic women attending Catholic college at the time is 85,000. The margin of sampling error for 39 interviews generalizing to a population of 85,000 is +/- 15.7 percentage points.
* Furthermore, these large margins of error are compounded by the small number of Catholic colleges these women attended at the institutional level. ...

The authors have made no mistakes—what they have produced is rather standard practice in academic social science survey research (although I would have strongly recommended controlling for household income which is related to college enrollment and choice). They have identified a compelling statistical association in the data. Rightfully, they note the limitations of the exploratory analysis and welcome additional research. This is what is needed. Replication with a larger sample would tell us if this is an anomaly of small sample size or a real effect (for both religious identity and college affiliation).

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, premarital sex, universities

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It was not so long ago, when singer Billy Joel's chiding plea to "Come Out, Virginia" resonated with thousands of young people born into the Sexual Revolution, many of them reveling in American society's defiance of the Catholic Church and traditional sexual mores.

According to a new study, Virginia may not be so reluctant anymore.

Researchers from Mississippi State University considered a survey of 1,000 college students nationwide and were surprised to find that "women attending colleges and universities affiliated with the Catholic Church are almost four times as likely to have participated in 'hooking up' compared to women at secular schools."

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, hooking up, religion, universities

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Even the Yale College Dean’s Office is interested in Yale’s sex scene.

With the overhaul of its Web site this coming summer, the Dean’s Office will post a new student-generated essay collection under the title “sex@yale.” The site will include 500- to 1,000-word essays by current undergraduates, allowing them to reflect anonymously on their sexual experiences at Yale and their impressions of the sexual culture here.

The Web site will not be password protected, so anyone can read it, said Melanie Boyd, director of undergraduate studies in Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies and the new special advisor to the dean of Yale College on gender issues. ...

Student organizers said the initiative will attempt to change Yale’s sex culture and overturn the perception that it is dominated by casual hook-ups. But Gottesdiener was careful to emphasize that the initiative is not against hook-ups per se; rather, it will elaborate on it by showing that sexual encounters at Yale go far beyond the hook-up scene, she said.

Boyd added that the content of the site will reflect core values of consent, desire and “being thoughtful.”

Labels: culture, hooking up, sex, universities

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