Men and women should refrain from premarital sex, avoid pharmaceutical birth control even in wedlock and discourage peers who manifest same-sex attractions from acting on their inclinations, abstinence proponent and author Jason Evert told an audience of approximately 50 students and locals Tuesday night.
In a talk titled "Sexual Propositions: Romance Without Regret," Evert — the author of several books and a member of the lay apostolate organization Catholic Answers — stressed the potential emotional damage, physical risks and denigration of women he said sex outside of marriage fosters.
Dressed in an untucked button-down shirt and ambling in front of the audience stand-up comedian-style, Evert punctuated his promotion of traditional sexual mores with quips and anecdotes, frequently drawing laughter from the audience.
"Every guy in here has the desire to lust after girls, but he also has a deeper desire to love a woman," he said, arguing that men should practice self-control while women should dress modestly and avoid tempting male peers to objectify them.
"All guys have been lied to about what it means to be a man. We've been told that if you want to be a man today, you gotta get some with the ladies. We've been told that look, if you're still a virgin, something's wrong with you."
Claiming that pharmaceutical birth control violates nature and can pose physical risks such as deteriorating a woman's uterus lining, Evert said married couples should avoid unwanted pregnancies through "natural family planning," abstaining from sex at strategic times of the month.
"No way on earth am I going to put my wife's body on birth control," he said. "Is fertility some kind of disease?"
Though he did not mention homosexuality until the lecture's question-and-answer section, Evert expressed socially conservative views on the subject after a student asked how he would advise talking to friends who are attracted to members of their own gender.
"Nature itself argues against homosexuality," Evert said, adding that he does not advocate homophobia or mockery of gays and lesbians. "If you're born gay, why do you have sperm? If you're born lesbian, why do you have ovaries?"
"Nature created us for a man and woman to bring a child into the world. This is a tough, volatile issue, but we should challenge these people to live a pure life because it's truly what's best for them."
Noting that practicing abstinence at universities "can be difficult," Evert showed a diagram of sexual behavior at a college campus he studied recently, in which he said he "mapped" the liaisons of sexually active students and charted the chain of who had slept with whom. He said the linked data show that intercourse even with one person can pose a high risk of exposure to STDs.
"You could be in bed with one-fourth of the campus with one act," he said.
Evert, who encouraged students who are no longer virgins to "start over" with vows of chastity, showed the audience a pile of memorabilia from students who have "made a 180" after hearing him, and who wanted to get rid of reminders of their previous lifestyles. The items included Playboy bunny necklaces, "sex bracelets" and birth control pills.
One student who attended the talk, Andrew Tsavaris '10, said Evert reinforced his beliefs.
"I liked him a lot," Tsavaris said. "He said stuff I could relate to, and he was very positive, uplifting and encouraging."
The lecture, sponsored by the Anscombe Society, was the organization's third event of the year.
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