the true love revolution

When I first learned about the True Love Revolution, a student group at Harvard that puts an emphasis on saving 'yourself' for marriage, it was from an article in Boston Magazine aptly named "Sextracurricular Activities". The Boston Magazine article poked a bit of fun at the student group, hinting to the fact that they were 'preachy' and perhaps even a little backward, and focusing mostly on the counter movement, the True Lust Revolution (cute). When I read the article, I could not have agreed more; I couldn't possibly imagine a group of college students could actually endorse not having sex, especially in the liberal atmosphere that is Harvard and Massachusetts.

But lately I have been thinking more and more about the message of the True Love Revolution. TLR believes, as stated on their website, that it is imperative to uphold the institutions of marriage and family by abstaining from sex until marriage, which I think leaves many of our generation scratching their heads. We've all heard it: save yourself, blah blah, from adults, but none of us heeded that. It was more of a formality than anything else to be told to save yourself for marriage. In high school if you were a virgin, it was embarrassing. "What's wrong with you that no one wants to have sex with you?" was the common sentiment. The fact that now people our age have saved themselves and are now advocating that others do the same is, by some measure, pretty remarkable.

However, what I at first thought was nuts, now makes a lot of sense. Looking back, I have to wonder what I've learned from the sexual relationships of myself and my peers, and if I'm honest with myself, I have to say it's not much: only that most guys will never call you again, in fact will have a difficult time looking you in the eye, and that you're only more hard up for love than ever before.

What this might boil down to is the need to be loved. Because we are so free with our bodies and simply have a "do what feels good" attitude toward everything, including sex, we make it easy for people to use one another, and never develop true feelings of much merit. What if this is the new progressive movement, the refusal of bodily pleasures simply because it's more freeing to do so?