As a liberal, non-religious woman who does not personally agree with the idea of “saving” oneself for marriage, I fully respect the rights of others to live their lives as they please. To my friends who wish to remain virgins until marriage, I offer my full support and encouragement; when someone espouses views I don’t necessarily agree with, I politely change the topic of conversation.

The problem with people like John Bambenek is that they do not hold a similar respect for the lifestyle choices of others.

By labelling all sex outside of marriage as ultimately dissatisfying and harmful, he is actively choosing to disregard the opinions and experiences of millions of men and women who have experienced sex that doesn’t fall within the bounds of the strictly defined Christian norm of marriage but is still emotionally and physically satisfying. While he is fully entitled to his own opinion on sexual matters and even more entitled to writing about them for the opinions section of the newspaper, he is not entitled to blatantly ignoring the realities of other people’s lives for the sake of his own moral agenda. Perhaps in the future he could include actual facts and statistics to back up what he is saying about the inherent harm in pre- and extramarital sex so that people with views similar to my own could at least attempt to take him seriously.

Liz McGrew

freshman in LAS