TALKING POINTS FOR WAIT TRAINING AND ABSTINENCE UNTIL AND IN PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE PROGRAMS

1. High risk sexual activity to abstinence providers means a teen engaging in vaginal, oral or anal sex. What it means to the "safe sex" proponents is having sex without a condom or multiple partners.
2. Sexual activity at an early age has multiple harmful consequences

3. WAIT Training teaches towards healthy relationships, healthy marriage, healthy robust economy, BEST SEX in marriage, getting to hopes and dreams, rather than away from teen pregnancy, STDs, HIV and AIDS

4. Sexually active teens are more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide. 
5. Nearly two thirds of sexually active teens state that they regret their initial sexual activity and wish they had waited until they were older before becoming sexually active. 
6. Ten scientific evaluations show abstinence education programs are effective in reducing teen sexual activity. For example, teens who make virginity pledges are 40 percent less likely to have children out-of-wedlock.
7. The problem is not teen pregnancy or STDs or even HIV/AIDS. The problem is teen sex. So why are all the healthy youth initiatives about reducing teen pregnancy, STDs and HIV? The initiatives should be focusing on reducing teen sex.
8. Government spends $12 to promote contraceptives for every $1 spent on abstinence. Government spending priorities do not match parental priorities. Only 8 percent of parents believe that promoting contraception is more important than abstinence.
9. Most school district policy on sexuality education states the teacher should first emphasize abstinence. What does emphasize mean to your school district or health department?
10. Parents overwhelmingly support the skill building and the positive engaging, motivational approach to abstinence and relationship education. Polls show that parents overwhelmingly support the main themes of abstinence education. For example, 79 percent of parents want teens to be taught that they should not engage in sexual activity until they are married or at least in an adult relationship leading to marriage. 91 percent of parents want schools to teach that “adolescents should be expected to abstain from sexual activity during high school years.” 
11. Years ago there was no research on what makes relationships work and what makes them fail. We now have that research and WAIT Training teaches the teens the science of healthy relationships!
12. Many programs teach teens to wait for sex. Teens want to know what to wait for. Abstract words like wait until you are "ready", "mature", "responsible”,” in love", "self sufficient" and even "in a mutually monogamous committed relationship" is confusing to teens since their brains developmentally are in concrete operational thinking patterns. WAIT Training uses the words wait "until and in preparation for marriage" because marriage is concrete and the message is developmentally appropriate.
13. There are many benefits of a healthy marriage. Many teens are cynical about marriage and they have every right to be given our culture of divorce and family fragmentation. WAIT Training helps these young people learn the benefits of marriage and value it.
14. Knowing the compelling research regarding the protective factors of healthy marriage and family on the well being of youth, why isn't every health department, educational establishment and community based organization promoting and helping to maintain safe and stable family formation and healthy marriages?
15. There is a purpose to waiting until marriage.. many times teens experience the drama and intensity of sexual relationships when attachment hormones like oxytocin cloud their thinking. Abstinent teens realize they must be be focused and intentional to reach their highest potential. This is especially true for our highest risk populations.
16. WAIT Training teaches that to be successful one must make things happen rather than let things happen. WAIT Training teaches teens how to retain their power.
17. WAIT Training uses a directive teaching style (leads a child to the healthiest choice) rather than a non-directive teaching style (give the child all the choices and expect them to make a choice that is right for them).
18. WAIT Training is a relationship, character, leadership, positive youth development, skills based, interactive abstinence, and marriage preparation program. Also, it is a poverty prevention, crime prevention, drugs and alcohol prevention, teen pregnancy out of wedlock birth rate reduction and a safe and stable family formation initiative!
19. Most health departments have an intervention for a teen that is drinking, or smoking, or taking drugs, teens who are in gangs or who have an issue with anger. Why is there no intervention for a teen that is sexually active other than condoms, contraceptives and testing?
20. WAIT Training helps teens who are currently sexually active evaluate the health of their current relationships and return to a healthy abstinent lifestyle.
21. WAIT Training is inclusive to cultural differences, ethnic differences, economic disparities and sexual orientation since the messages appeal to the needs of every heart...to love well, and live well!
22. WAIT Training is LOVE EDUCATION rather than SEX EDUCATION.
23. WAIT Training is a risk avoidance message, not a risk reduction message.
24. WAIT Training rejects the "safe sex", "protected sex" language used in comprehensive programs.
25. “Comprehensive Sex education” or “abstinence plus” programs are merely safe sex programs wrapped in a deceptive label. Such programs are overwhelmingly dedicated to promoting contraceptive use among teens. On average only 4.7 percent of the content of these programs deals with abstinence. Many times abstinence is just a form of birth control, not a lifestyle.
26. Parents overwhelmingly oppose messages of comprehensive sex-ed curricula. Comprehensive sex-ed curricula focus almost exclusively on contraception and include little or no material on abstinence. Comprehensive sex-ed programs teach, by repeated example, that it is okay for teens to have sex as long as they use contraception. Only 7 percent of parents approve of this message.
27. Comprehensive sex-ed programs contain sexually explicit material that is offensive to nearly all parents. For example, many of these curricula have students practice unrolling condoms on cucumbers, bananas or fingers. Curricula contain additional explicit and offensive material such as discussions of anal sex, homosexual role-playing, and language encouraging mutual masturbation and encouraging teens to watch erotic movies.
28. Claims that parents support comprehensive sex-ed or “abstinence plus” programs are false. These claims are based on the erroneous assertion that these programs contain the heavy emphasis on abstinence preferred by nearly all parents. In reality, these programs have very little abstinence content and contain much material that undermines abstinence.
29. Most parents want their children to be taught a strong abstinence message as well as basic biological and health facts about contraception; this does not mean parents dislike abstinence education. In general, abstinence curricula does not teach about contraception. However, in most schools where abstinence is taught, students will receive basic information about contraception in a separate class such as biology or health.
30. Since WAIT Training teaches exclusively about healthy relationships, marriage and family, if a school district wants us to teach about condoms and contraceptives we sometimes do an informational mini lecture on different contraceptive and birth control methods under the heading of marriage and family. For instance we start with, "This couple just got married and they do not want to have a baby right away".
31. We never promote contraceptives for "protection" or "safe sex" and we make sure teens know the failure rates so they can have all the information to make the healthiest choice which, of course, is abstinence until marriage and fidelity in marriage!