by Lore Sjöberg

You may or may not have heard of "True Love Waits," which, contrary to what you might expect, is not a Portland-based acoustic alternative band, but is rather a Christian movement to get teenagers to stop having sex. The idea, near as I can figure out, is that the reason teenagers so often end up having sex is because we haven't made them sign anything. So you rally the youngsters, give them T-shirts and buttons, and have them sign a paper (or, in a pinch, put their names on a Web page) saying that they aren't going to have sex until they're married.

Now, I'm not actually convinced that having a fifteen-year-old sign a document is going to accomplish anything. If, at fifteen, I had signed a paper that listed all of my most dearly-held beliefs, with a promise that I would always stand by them, I would have violated that contract several times over by now, especially the bits about how cool El DeBarge is. At best, the contract provides something to physically throw in their faces when they give into rampaging hormones sometime between the prom and graduate school.

But hey, if people of whatever age want to save themselves for whatever future event they're anticipating, I'm all in support. The thing that makes me thoughtfully tug at my goatee is the bit where you can sign this puppy even if you've already had sex. If you do so, you become a "secondary virgin." (Or, as I like to think of it, Virgin 2.0.)

The implications of this are truly mind-boggling. To begin with, how many chances do I get? If I have gobs of sex, sign up, claim my secondary virgin status with accompanying discounts at local eateries, and then go ahead and have gobs of sex again in a moment of forgetfulness, am I still a secondary virgin? Or do I have to pull up the Web page and sign up again? And if I did sign up again, would I then be a tertiary virgin? And isn't "Tertiary Virgin" a Portland-based acoustic alternative band?

Frankly, "secondary virgin" sounds like the moral equivalent of the "Certificates of Participation" you used to get in grade school when you had done something, but not won anything. Plus, it'd piss me off when the primary virgins got all stuffy and wanted me to get them drinks and stuff.

The kicker for me, though, is that to get "materials or further help" you can call 1-800-LUV-WAIT. If the ghost of my aged Jedi master gave me any good advice, it was "Don't trust an 800 number with 'LUV' in it." None for me, thanks.