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Well, to be precise, what they really wanted to do was to separate out ethnicity and religion. The two are quite closely linked, especially in a multi-cultural place like Toronto. It\u2019s known that different ethnicities vary in their attitudes to sex, but perhaps it\u2019s really religion that\u2019s the deciding factor?<\/p>\n

So anyway let\u2019s dig into the data. They quizzed 666 university students, most of them (nearly 80%) women, about their love lives. As you might expect, the atheists and agnostics were the most sexually active, followed by Christians and Jews, with Muslims and \u2018Eastern religions\u2019 (they didn\u2019t have many Buddhists, Hindus or Sikhs, so they lumped them all in together. <\/p>\n

As far as unprotected sex (i.e. without a condom) goes, well it showed roughly the same pattern \u2013 except that the non-religious students ranked about the same as Christians and Jews.<\/p>\n

However, all that doesn\u2019t take into account ethnicity, or indeed other factors like whether the students were in a relationship (and whether it was long term), whether they knew about HIV and that condoms reduce transmission. Throwing all this into the analysis gave some clear results.<\/p>\n

Firstly, ethnicity isn\u2019t important. Taking all the other factors into account, Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Middle Easterns are all just as likely to have unprotected sex. <\/p>\n

What did matter was religion. Christianity, and especially Catholicism, was the biggest risk factor. Atheism too, but to a much lesser extent. Jews, Muslims and \u2018Eastern religions\u2019 were all similarly safe. <\/p>\n

Part of the reason for this is that Muslim students and those of Eastern religions just don\u2019t really fornicate much. When they restricted the analysis just to those students who were sexually active, then they found that Christians were about twice as likely as the non-religious to have unprotected sex.<\/p>\n

So what this study shows is that religion does actually seem to stop kids from having unprotected sex by scaring them off sex altogether \u2013 but only for Eastern religions and for Muslims. <\/p>\n

Christian kids are trapped, however. They live and participate in a liberal, permissive society, but their upbringing doesn\u2019t prepare them for it. As a result, they are placed at high risk for unsafe sex.<\/p>\n

$\"ResearchBlogging.org\"$ <\/a><\/span>
James, C., Hart, T., Roberts, K., Ghai, A., Petrovic, B., & Lima, M. (2010). Religion versus ethnicity as predictors of unprotected vaginal intercourse among young adults Sexual Health<\/span> DOI: 10.1071\/SH09119<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

$\"Creative$ <\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"