Being promiscuous can still kill you.

American researchers recently surveying 263 college student couples found 64 percent to be both infected with the same strain of cancer-causing human papilloma virus (HPV) within 4 months of starting to have sex with each other.

HPV causes cervix cancer.

Researcher in charge, Dr F. Coutlee, says that, because all these HPV transmissions happen early in new relationships, this “reinforces the need for prevention.”

What does he mean by “prevention”?

Presumably condoms: if so, the whole project has been a waste of time and money.

Everybody knows that young people sloppy enough in their lifestyle to be having sex outside marriage are not people likely to discipline themselves to use condoms each and every time they perform the deed.

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Condoms are not very on-turning.

Who prefers showering with their raincoat on?

Or washing their feet with their socks on?

* * *

What alternative is there to condoms as a way to prevent youthful venereal disease?

At the risk of seeming to offer a genuine alternative, one might suggest chastity, i.e. not having sex until you marry and then only having sex with the person to whom you are married.

To do this, it helps to believe in God, and to love him above all else.

If one really believes in God — really, not just half-heartedly — it becomes possible and normal and agreeable to restrict oneself in this way.

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Many Catholics recite daily a morning prayer called the Office of Prime, part of which goes like this:

“Now that the sun has risen, let us as suppliants ask of God that in today’s acts He preserve us from all that may hurt us . . . may our inmost soul be pure and the folly of impurity find in us no place . . . so that when day has gone, and night, as God planned, has returned, we may be found free from sin through our self restraint and thus sing praise to Him.”

Praying that prayer sincerely every morning, a person finds him/herself able to live a life filled with love, completely free of sexually transmitted diseases.