Celibacy Seduces Some Weary Singles

CHICAGO —  The sexual revolution has spawned a group of counter-revolutionaries: Single adults committed to celibacy.

Bucking societal trends, more than 400 men and women of varied ages and backgrounds have found a haven in the National Chastity Assn.

Some members have never had sex, but others have been married. Many say they didn’t join for any religious or moral reasons; they’re just fed up with the singles’ bar scene and empty relationships.

Many admit they’ve had a difficult time convincing others they are not weirdos.

“I’ve been humiliated, ridiculed, laughed at, made fun of,” says Janice Hodge, 30, of Holbrook, Mass., who has never dated and believes in premarital chastity because “it was the way my mother brought us up.”

When she heard about the group, “I was totally psyched because I was saying to myself, there are finally other virgins out there besides me.”

Elaine Marsh, a 35-year-old legal secretary from Orange County, Calif., found her husband through the group.

They began corresponding in November and decided to get married in May. But impatience intervened, and they eloped March 30, one day after they saw each other for the first time.

“When you can’t do certain things before you get married, you want to hurry up,” Marsh says.

Marsh has been single since her divorce six years ago. Three years ago, she became celibate.

“It comes from my religion, but it’s more than that,” she says. “I just feel it’s such a precious part of yourself, you don’t give it to someone when you haven’t made the commitment of marriage.”

The decision wasn’t easy.

“I had friends try and talk me out of it,” she says. “I had a man say to me, ‘Why should I spend money on you if you’re not going to have sex with me, because 99 out of 100 women will?’ ”

The pressure became too much to handle.

“I stopped dating; it was that difficult,” she says. “I got tired of wrestling matches basically, so I just said forget this.”

She joined the chastity association last June.

Experts say there’s no evidence of any major national trend toward chastity, but concede the AIDS scare has made many singles shy away from intercourse.

The National Chastity Assn., a non-religious group founded less than two years ago by a divorced suburban mother of two, functions as a kind of dating service and support group.

Mary Meyer, 37, says she formed the group after suffering too many heartaches from bad non-platonic relationships. She tried joining a singles club and placing personal ads in local newspapers, but failed to meet a man who shared her values.

“I love hand-holding, I love kissing, I love caressing, I love sex,” she says. “But even more than I would love to experience these things right now, I want to be able to have a relationship where I can experience them forever.”

Convinced that the best way to find an ideal mate is to build a non-physical relationship before marriage, Meyer formed the group based on what she calls the “19 Desires.”

They include the desire to save hand-holding, kissing and sex until marriage, and to be close friends with someone for at least two years before considering marriage.

Members pay $15 a year and get their names published in a group directory that lists brief descriptions of members and their values.

Lorraine Althea, a model in her 30s from Los Angeles, joined about a year ago.

“I have fooled around a lot, but I just reached a point where I’d had enough, and I just wanted something more,” she says. “It gets to the point of being boring. Men are after you all the time.”

Fear of AIDS had something to do with her decision, but more than that, Althea says, she “was just tired of that shallow feeling.”

Since joining, Althea says she’s met lots of celibate people.

“You begin to feel like you’re the only one, but you’re not,” she said. “We’re not prudes. We’ve been around.”

David Dismore, 43, a video archivist for feminist groups in Southern California, says chastity is the sexual revolution’s forgotten ingredient.

“Some people think liberation means glorification of casual sex,” he says. “I think the definition of sexual liberation is the right to freely and comfortably say ‘no.’ ”

Clergyman Joe Leonard of Wayne, Pa., who is involved in a project on human sexuality for the National Council of Churches in Christ, says he sees no trend toward chastity.

“I don’t see any evidence of it, frankly,” despite the National Chastity Assn., he says.

Neither does Jerome Sherman, a Houston psychologist and president of the American Assn. of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.

“We don’t find that more people are saying no to sexual activity,” Sherman says.

“The question is not should you have any sexual activity before marriage, because it depends on each individual.”

In other words, to each his/her own.