Teen-agers who take virginity pledges - public declarations to abstain from sex - are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.

Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they were also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with riskier activities such as oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities.

"The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior," said lead author Peter Bearman, a professor at Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. "From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement that encourages no vaginal sex may inadvertently encourage other forms of sex that are at higher risk of STDs."

Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge. Just 2 percent of youth who never took a pledge said they had had anal or oral sex but not intercourse, compared to 13 percent of "consistent pledgers."

The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the study found.

The findings are based on the federally funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey begun in 1995 that tracked 20,000 young people from high school to young adulthood. At the start of the project, the students were ages 12 to 18 and agreed to detailed, sexually explicit interviews. They were re-interviewed in 1997 and again in 2002, when 11,500 also provided urine samples.

Virginity pledges emerged in the early 1990s based on the theory that young people would remain chaste if they had broader community support to remain abstinent. In most cases, teenagers voluntarily sign or announce publicly their intention to abstain from sex. Often pledgers receive a pin or ring to symbolize the promise and team up with an "accountability partner."

Since it was founded in 1993, the group True Love Waits says 2.4 million youths have signed a card stating: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage."

The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that 20 percent said they had taken a virginity pledge. Bearman and co-author Hannah Bruckner broke them into two categories -"inconsistent pledgers"and "consistent pledgers"- to reflect that some changed their status or their responses between interviews. Among those youngsters, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews.

Almost 7 percent of the students who did not take a pledge were diagnosed with an STD, compared to 6.4 percent of the "inconsistent pledgers" and 4.6 percent of the "consistent pledgers." Bearman said those differences were not "statistically significant," although Robert Rector, who studies domestic policy issues at the conservative Heritage Institute, said he interpreted the data to mean that young people committed to the abstinence pledge were less likely to become infected.

The study also found minorities were far more likely to have an STD. About one quarter of African-American girls tested positive for at least one STD in 2002.

The report sparked an immediate, bitter debate over the wisdom of teaching abstinence until marriage.

Deborah Roffman, an educator and author of Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex, said youths who take virginity pledges are often undereducated about sexual health. "Kids who are engaging in oral sex or anal sex will tell you they are practicing abstinence because they haven't had 'real sex' yet," she said.

Conservative academics said the paper overlooked earlier important findings about adolescents who take virginity pledges, most notably that they have fewer pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births.

"It's hugely successful on those variables," Rector said. "Bearman has focused in on the one variable he thinks can show they (pledgers) don't do better."

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