It was the 1980’s. I was 12 years old and in sixth grade. My classmates and I were all beginning to experience the changes that come with puberty. The boys sexually tormented the girls at every available opportunity. They would grab the girl’s breasts or behinds as they walked by them in the classroom or in the halls, look up their skirts as they walked up the fire escape after a drill, and try to lure them into isolated places to kiss them.

Today, this would be called sexual harassment and would be grounds for the boys to be suspended from school or their parents to be sued, but back then it was just “mischief.” If the teacher knew about it, it wasn’t taken seriously since nothing was ever done about it. And although the girls pretended to be upset they weren’t entirely innocent. They egged the boys on and played along with everything that happened. There were even a couple of times when the tables were turned and the girls sexually harassed the boys. And what the girls did was considerably worse than anything that the boys ever pulled. I just looked on. I never got involved and I hardly had to worry about being bothered as I was the class nerd, a total outcast, and not on anyone’s hot list.

Sister Martha, the school principal and Mother Superior at the convent next door, was a very patient woman but had a hard time containing her growing outrage with the immature sexual antics of kids too young to know what they doing. The last straw came one day during recess. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but apparently the boys had done something that finally crossed the line. I was standing alone by the wall as usual, so I was not involved with whatever had happened when whistles started blowing and all the supervisors came running toward a group of kids huddled together at the center of the playground. The group was broken up, and Sister Martha shouted at the supervisors that recess was over and get the kids inside. It was not time for recess to end but we were driven off the playground and herded into the classroom where we were made to be quiet and put our heads down with the lights out.

A few minutes later, Sister Martha came in, and she was not pleased. She proceeded to give us a talking to that would turn out to be a defining moment in my life. I’m paraphrasing here, but what she said went something like this: “What happened at recess was unacceptable! It has come to my attention that this sort of behavior is becoming a problem and it must stop! I realize that you are at that age when you are becoming curious about sex and your bodies but there is a thing called self-respect. Sex is meant to be something special shared between a man and a woman who love each other within the bonds of marriage. When you treat it as something cheap you not only devalue what is meant to be holy but you also devalue yourselves when you treat your bodies so carelessly. God wants what is best for you and your virginity is a gift from God. The thing that would please God most is for you be respectful of yourselves and to stay pure until you are married… because your body is the most beautiful gift that you could ever give someone.”

I remember that last part word for word. It was a revelation! And at that moment, at 12-years-old, I vowed that I would remain a Virgin until I married. It was as simple as that. There was no Virginity pledge, no purity ring, no T-shirt, no bumper sticker. I never told anyone about it. I didn’t even tell my parents and they never knew. It was just a private affair between me and God.

People who would try to find a reason to explain why I and other Virgins are Chaste would say that it is because we were “brainwashed” by religion. Nonsense! You may be able to manipulate some kids for a while and have them to superficially go through the motions of being abstinent, but you can’t change who and what they are inside. You can teach kids about abstinence but no one can be made to be Chaste that was not already intrinsically Chaste to begin with. This is why abstinence education has no effect on the average kid and why the majority of Virginity pledges don’t last. Looking back, I realize that I have always been Chaste. When I used to go to the convent next door to the school for reading lessons I found myself fascinated with the life there and I had a closeness with the nuns that the other kids did not. Sister Martha’s speech just the nudge that was needed to start me down a path that I unknowingly was already on. There must have been thirty other kids in that classroom that day who heard the same speech. I have run into some of them over the years and whenever I did they would always tell me about this or that girl who had got pregnant before finishing high school. I’m probably the only person out of the class who still remains a Virgin to this day.

How I came to be a Perpetual Virgin menu