Daily Circuit Blog

Op-Ed of the Day: The moral case for premarital sex

Jill Filipovic in The Guardian says that we should stop spending so much time and money promoting abstinence and that "having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone."

Here's the main part of her argument:

Sex is good whether you're married or not, and certainly folks who wait until marriage can have a lot of sex once they tie the knot. But waiting until marriage often means both early marriage and conservative views on marriage and gender - and people who marry early and/or hold traditional views on marriage and gender tend to have higher divorce rates and unhappier marriages. We know that, on the other hand, there are lots of benefits to marrying later and to gender-egalitarian marriages. Couples who both work outside the home and also share housework duties have more sex. Financially independent, college-educated women who marry later in life have extremely low divorce rates.

It turns out that feminist values - not "traditional" ones - lead to the most stable marriages. And feminist views plus later marriage typically equals premarital sex.

Jill Filipovic will join us on Monday to talk about why premarital sex is a good thing.

--Stephanie Curtis, social media host