The other day I was standing in line at the grocery store behind a young teenage girl who was decked out in the latest rags from head to toe. Earrings: CoCo Chanel. Shirt: DKNY. Jacket: Phat Farm. Bracelet: Tiffany. Jeans: Rocca Wear. Shoes: the latest Nikes, straight out of the box! Her hair was laid and her nails were as freshly manicured as if she had just stepped out of the salon, rhinestones and all. Some, but certainly not all, of her threads were knock-offs. (I am the queen of knock-offs, so I would know.) I thought to myself, Where does a teenager get money to buy such extravagant clothing?
Her parents could be wealthy, or maybe she married early to a rich dude. But when she reached inside her Louis Vuitton bag and pulled out her food stamps, it all became clear to me. I noticed that her entire grocery basket was full of formula for her baby. I said to myself, Either she has found a great secondhand shop or clothing bank, or I’m paying for my groceries and hers, all while she sports the latest designer wear.
Somehow this just doesn’t seem fair. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in helping those who find themselves in a difficult situation (i.e., they made a mistake … or maybe two) or circumstances beyond their control (i.e., Hurricane Katrina). But why should I support reckless and irresponsible behavior when she has no intention of changing such a lifestyle? Why is it that I pinch pennies like a miser, search for sales as if it were the lost term paper that my whole grade depends on, and work harder than a slave to pay my own bills, bills, bills—but girlfriend can use my money and some of yours (if you have a job) to buy designer clothes?
Direct medical costs associated with STDs in the United States are estimated at $13 billion annually.1
What you do behind closed doors is nobody else’s business—as long as you don’t get knocked up, infect other people, or come out from behind closed doors, and then demand that others pay for the consequences of your irresponsible behavior. These consequences don’t just impact you, your friends and your family; they can also affect total strangers you will never meet, both financially and socially.
Teen parents are more likely than other teens to
• drop out of school
• have additional out-of-wedlock children
• change jobs
• be on welfare
• have mental and physical health problems2
Children born to teens are at increased risk for
• low birth weight
• lower cognitive scores
• school failure
• becoming teenage parents
• incarceration
• drug abuse3
The news media once labeled a young New Yorker, Nushawn Williams, as “The One Man AIDS Epidemic.” The 20-year-old seduced girls and young women with shopping sprees, flowers and CDs.
“He made me feel special,” one of his partners confided on The Montel Williams Show.
It turns out that Nushawn infected at least 28 women with HIV/AIDS and may have indirectly infected as many as 53 others. One man is also believed to have been infected by one of those women. A 13-year-old became infected, and so far, six babies have been born with HIV. At last report, county health officials identified 110 individuals who had sex with either Nushawn or his partners.
Once the Chautauqua County health alert hit the community, it caused a ripple effect. More than 1,400 individuals—many of them teenagers—flocked to local clinics for testing. Dr. Neal Rzepkowski, who works at the Chautauqua County AIDS clinic, knows 9 of the 13 women infected by Nushawn Williams, and he’s currently treating 5 on a regular basis.
According to Rzepkowski, two of the young women have brought in their new boyfriends for counseling. Another confided in him, however, that she had not informed her new partner that she is HIV-positive. They always used condoms. Then one day she called the doctor in tears because a condom had broken. He advised her to immediately tell her boyfriend the truth about her status—she refused. Rzepkowski recalls saying to her, “You’re mad at Nushawn for having sex with you, and now you’re doing the same thing!”
Dr. Jeff Birnbaum, head of the adolescent HIV clinic at King County Hospital in Nushawn Williams’s hometown of Brooklyn, believes that there are thousands of people like him.4
When all is said and done, there may be potentially hundreds—if not thousands—of individuals put at risk of the deadly virus whose origins can be traced to Mr. Williams. Should it be any of these people’s business what their partners’ HIV status is at the time of intercourse? Or if they are considering having sex, is it any of their business if their partner has had sex with someone who is infected with HIV/AIDS?
My friend Tammi (who you’ll hear about later) was required by law to notify her many sexual partners that she may have exposed them to Chlamydia and crabs, which are not only common but curable. Yet what about a possibly fatal virus like HIV? Should individuals be required to notify sexual partners if they have been exposed to a potentially deadly virus? In the case of Nushawn Williams, authorities knew that he was infected before it ever hit the media outlets. What did they do about it? Nothing. Because that is what the law required.
“What about syphilis? What about tuberculosis? Why is AIDS so different, especially now that is has become a treatable condition? Why have we, because of political pressure, singled out this one disease as having special privileges?—Geraldo Rivera5”
In an interview, Dr. Rzepkowski responded to two questions that caught my attention:
Interviewer: What is the law for partner notification? Are you allowed to contact the people possibly infected?
Dr. Rzepkowski: A person’s HIV status cannot be given over to someone without the written consent of the person being tested. I could not, if I was testing some teenager, just go out into the waiting room where their sexual partner was waiting and tell them that they were HIV positive … That teen would have to give me written permission to discuss it with the person. But if they were to give me the names and telephone numbers of their sexual partners, I can contact the local Health department authorities and give them the information and then they can go out and knock on their doors and say, “We have reason to believe you have been exposed to HIV through sexual contact and we recommend you get tested.”
Interviewer: When a patient tells a psychiatrist that he might murder someone, the psychiatrist is required by law to break confidentiality because another person is at risk. Shouldn’t the same principle of life endangerment be applied in HIV/AIDS cases?
Dr. Rzepkowski: The responsibility is on individuals to protect themselves, to look at every sexual partner as being potentially HIV-positive.6
It seems that in this instance, what you do behind closed doors is other people’s business if it is a curable disease, but is nobody else’s business if it is a deadly virus. Somehow that just doesn’t make sense.
“We’re educating more but education does not always translate into behavioral change.—Dr. Neal Rzepkowski7”
Recently on a flight, I started talking to the guy next to me. He opened up about losing his wife to AIDS. They were madly in love, and they had two beautiful children. Their daughter fell ill, and they discovered that the man’s wife had contracted HIV/AIDS through a blood transfusion and passed it on to both of their children. He had to watch his children and his wife die, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Hearing him tell his story made me feel so powerless. What could I say to this man other than their lives were not in vain, and while it might not seem like it now, God had a purpose in this tragedy. He was very encouraged and said, “You’re right. I do believe that. My wife’s life and children’s lives have not been lived in vain.” We continued to talk about prayer, and I asked him if I could pray for him. He agreed. All the time, I didn’t know who this guy was.
I got off the plane, walked down the jetway and passed by a concession stand with lots of magazines. I saw a photo on the cover that looked like the guy I had just been talking with on the plane. Looking closer, I realized it was the guy I had been talking with—it was Paul Michael Glaser, who portrayed Starsky in the wildly popular series Starsky & Hutch.
Sexual actions don’t only affect the direct participants. There are innocent victims: babies. As a result of Nushawn Williams’s actions, at least six babies were born HIV-positive, though only one of the babies was directly confirmed as his biological child. Innocent babies! Babies who are now casualties of the choices made by others, and this drama is played out everyday across the country and around the world.
Debbie Olson, a good friend and mentor of mine, is a retired pediatric nurse of 30 years who now teaches abstinence education because of all the damage she has seen throughout the years, particularly among young girls. She tells similar stories of innocent children damaged by others’ bad choices.
“I can’t tell you how heartbreaking it is to see a baby screaming in pain in an incubator with its eyes red and swollen shut because it came through the birth canal of an infected mother,” she says. “What’s even sadder is a mother’s grief as she stands over her baby, crying, ‘I’m so sorry. Mommy is so sorry. Mommy would change the past if she could.’”
I hear this same sad song when I travel overseas to Africa, where the AIDS virus has taken its highest toll. An estimated 15 million children have been left orphaned by AIDS. In many countries in Africa, it’s not uncommon for a man to leave his family to find work for weeks or months at a time. While away from home, he might engage in an adulterous affair with a prostitute, only to bring his wife the gift that keeps on taking: HIV/AIDS. Their children are often born with the disease, and those who are not are soon left alone when the parents die. If they’re lucky, they go to live with an elderly grandmother, who might already be raising a half dozen children. If they’re unlucky, the uninfected children become orphans.
On one of my most recent trips to Tanzania, East Africa, my group was brought to tears when an eight-year-old boy begged us to return to his home to meet his six-year-old sister, hoping to find a sponsor like he had. What was so sad wasn’t the fact that this eight-year-old boy was now the man of the house and that he and his sister lived alone, sleeping on the dirt floor of a mud hut. It wasn’t even the fact that their only valuable possession—a cow—littered their dirt floor with dung, because it slept inside the hut at night to avoid it being stolen or attacked by wild animals. What ripped our hearts out were the graves of their parents, each marked by a cross, next to the doorway of their home. Those two precious children had to pass the graves each day, constant reminders of sadness, abandonment and death.
Why do children such as these have to suffer unnecessarily? They had no choice in the matter. Many would say, “Well, if their parents had just used condoms …” But by now you should know that condoms are not safe. They may be safer, but why would any caring person put their family at risk? How would you feel if one of your parents were to put your entire family at risk by committing adultery? Would you feel better if they said, “At least I used a condom”? Would you jeopardize the lives of your future spouse and children by gambling with your sexual behavior? If the answer is no, then the time to make a decision to never jeopardize them is not after you get married, but now.
Whatever decisions are made in the boardroom, bedroom and even the bathroom will be revealed. People have a right to privacy, but never forget that what is done in secret will always come out into the light. Think about it:
• What if surgeons didn’t wash their hands behind closed doors before performing surgery?
• Forget surgeons, what about the guy with the suspicious grin on his face at the fast-food restaurant? How would you like it if he didn’t wash his hands before preparing your food?
• Pedophiles almost always commit heinous acts behind closed doors.
• Drug deals happen behind closed doors, but the transactions impact entire communities.
• The largest theft in American history, the WorldCom scam (in which hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen from countless millions of Americans, leaving many bankrupt and some destitute), was committed behind closed boardroom doors.
• Remember Nushan Williams? He had sex with each of his girlfriends behind closed doors and infected many of them with HIV. Many of them infected countless others behind closed doors, too.
“When you have sex with someone, you are having sex with everyone they have had sex with for the last ten years, and everyone they and their partners have had sex with for the last ten years.—C. Everette Koop, MD, former U.S. Surgeon General”
How many people do you think it’s okay to have sex with before you’re married? Consider the following:
| Number of Sexual Partners | Number of People Exposed |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 7 |
| 4 | 15 |
| 5 | 31 |
| 6 | 63 |
| 7 | 127 |
| 8 | 255 |
| 9 | 511 |
| 10 | 1023 |
| 11 | 2047 |
| 12 | 4095 |
Note: Data assumes that every person has only the same number of partners as you.
Before Dr. Drew, the sex doctor, there used to be a little old woman known as Dr. Ruth. She used go around and say things like, “Asking young people to control their libido is asking too much. Their libido is too strong. Sex is a natural bodily function.”
Listening to that kind of logic, I can’t help but think, Diarrhea is a bodily function, too, but I wouldn’t want to participate in that with anybody on a daily basis. Dr. Ruth’s argument sounds crazy, but I hear those tired old lines of reason all the time.
People talk as if sex is as uncontrollable as the beating of your heart, breathing oxygen or going to the bathroom. They talk as though if they were deprived of sex, they would die.
Let’s take going to the bathroom for an example. Kids learn from an early age to control the urge to go to the bathroom. If you are reading this book, chances are everyone in your peer group, including yourself, no longer wears a diaper. By the time you entered kindergarten, you were expected to have mastery over your bladder and your bowels. And if you came to school and lost control of these functions, what happened to you? You were laughed at because all of your classmates—and some of the teachers, for that matter—thought that something was seriously wrong with you.
As necessary as it is to empty one’s bladder and bowels, we still have full expectations and confidence that five-year-olds can master them. I’ve yet to hear about diaper distribution programs at elementary schools for those who choose not to control themselves. If a child cannot or chooses not to control himself, what do we do? We send them home until they learn, or send them to a special school.
Going to the bathroom is a bodily function so necessary that if you don’t go, you can and will die. Toxins will back up into your system. Not going to the bathroom would be 100 percent fatal for all six billion people on this planet. You will die if you do not go to the bathroom. Yet we entrust five-year-olds to have mastery over this bodily function before they start kindergarten.
We have higher expectations for kindergarteners to master a function that has fatal consequences if not performed than we have for young adults with a function that is not fatal if not performed. I am not denying that the desire to have sex is not powerful—it is—but sex is a bodily function that is under your complete control. If you never had sex, nothing bad would happen to you. Nobody has ever died from not having sex. I have yet to read the obituary section of the newspaper where it says, “Johnny, 16, died of virginity.” Yet there are young people dying everyday because they bought into the lie that they can’t be expected to control their sexual urges.
Before my wedding I was asked to speak to the football team at my alma mater, the University of Southern California, on the topic of sexual abstinence. I was a cheerleader at my university, and I counted it a privilege to be invited to address my team (who happened to be national champions!) during a chapel service. I jumped in feet first on the topic of sex.
As I talked with the football players, I heard answers and comments that I hadn’t anticipated. They were far more mature and took the subject of abstinence a lot more seriously than I had expected. When I asked whether or not sex was uncontrollable, one young man responded, “There are few things that are uncontrollable to a disciplined man.” I wanted to bow down and kiss his feet and wipe his cleats with my hair—but I abstained. The entire team agreed that having sex is a matter of choice—sometimes a very hard one—a choice under your complete control.
Kobe Bryant, one of the NBA’s biggest stars, was once the darling of the American public. He was voted “Favorite Athlete” by Nickelodeon and had endorsements from all the highest Fortune 500 companies, brands like Nike, Coke and McDonalds. The endorsements brought in more than $12 million a year, on top of his $13 million-a-year contract with the Lakers.
All of this came to a screeching halt one season when a Colorado woman accused Kobe of rape. He adamantly denied any involvement. People wondered how it could be true. After all, he was married to a wife who made most models look like mud ducks, and she had just given birth to a baby girl. When the facts came out, he admitted having sex with the woman but claimed that it was consensual. The whole trial boiled down to he-said-she-said, and all we really know is that something sexual happened.
Though the charges of rape were dropped, Kobe’s sponsors weren’t willing to lose money. They quickly released him from his contracts for violation of the morality clause. He lost millions a year in endorsements. Over time, Kobe will probably regain the confidence of the companies that dropped his endorsement contracts, but he will never regain his reputation. Gee, I hope the sex was good.
I asked the No. 1 college football team in the nation if they thought Kobe was able to control himself and if they could control themselves if they were offered a huge sum of money.
“Gentlemen, would you zip it up and keep it zipped until marriage for the amount of money Kobe lost in endorsements?”
“Absolutely!” they responded with enthusiasm.
Everybody wants to be a comedian, so one player piped up that he’d join a monastery for that amount. Trying to top him, his friend swore that he’d line up to be castrated for that kind of cash.
“Would you lock it down for the amount of his athletic endorsement?” I asked.
“Yes!” everyone answered.
“How about just one million dollars to keep it on ‘Clank!’?” Everyone agreed.
Our negotiations continued, and ended at a far lower number—which makes perfect sense, as they were poor college students. (When you’re a starving student, 75 cents to do laundry is ample change.) But I believe the point was made: Sex is completely controllable when given the right motivation.
What is your motivation? What motivates you to do the right thing, not just in the area of sex, but overall in life? Your motivation might be money. That’s an obvious choice, but The Naked Truth is that convictions based on money can’t be the ultimate motivator, because the highest bidder might demand that you sell out those convictions. Perhaps money isn’t your motivator—is it the respect of your peers? Approval of your friends? Whatever it is, you should know that anything apart from God will fail. If you are under His complete control, none of your actions are uncontrollable.
You can control your body, including the decision to have sex. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Notice that the Bible doesn’t say you can do “something” or “a few things” or even “most things.” You can do all things—and that includes waiting for His best and His time.
• Why is what you do behind closed doors so important?
• In what areas are you most tempted to compromise?
• What decisions do you need to make today about the areas where you’re most tempted?
• What motivates you? How healthy are your motivations?
• What decisions do you need to make to stay pure?