WHEN MARIA CARTER talks about sex, she talks about marriage.
She believes that a message to “wait for sex within marriage and being faithful to your marriage partner” should be given the same prominence as “use a condom every time” that has dominated safe-sex conversations.
Carter co-founded the Pure Sex Centre with her husband Ambrose back in the mid-90s when they saw a need to outreach to young people, in particular young girls.
Carter said they acted when two young women died on the abortion table. In addition, in the community where she lived and worked she saw a lot of teenage pregnancies.
The couple decided that they would promote “pure sex” within a faithful marriage as an alternative to “safe sex”.
“The message has been very well received, contrary to what people would want to think: that it is not possible. it really is,” she said. “Testament to that fact is that when we go around to schools there are children who are waiting for marriage.
“I do not see why people should be concerned with us promoting the wait message because the government and the different agencies have already covered the condom message. I think young people need options then they can make well informed choices. I do not think we are doing the youth a favour when we say condomise. You are basically making the choice for them by saying, ‘they are going to have sex anyway [so] tell them to use a condom’.”
The Pure Sex Centre goes to schools, churches, youth groups and other gatherings spreading their message and they also host rallies to get their message across.
Every year, for the last six years, they have hosted a back-to-school rally on the last Friday of the summer vacation to help ramp up familiarity with the message that virginity is possible.
She said even for people who are no longer virgins the message is relevant since they can choose to be celibate.
Maria Carter gathering supplies that her group plans to give to the HIV/AIDS food bank.
“We have persons who may not be first-time virgins – we call it secondary virginity – and we also deal with them because they no longer have sex and they are waiting for that time that they can experience sex within the marriage relationship,” Carter said.
Last year they dealt with over 600 class 4 students in primary schools and some of them said they wanted to wait for marriage.
Carter said they decided to start at the primary level because of waning morals among incoming secondary school students.
“We have been asked questions at primary schools that we have never been asked at secondary, tertiary or adult level and it blew my mind. When a child asks a question it is out of curiosity and because they have some information,” she said.
Carter said they were looking to open a school for purity and have been working with a few retired educators to get it established.
“We have got our work cut out for us. we are not daunted by it – we are encouraged by the response that we get and we do believe that we are making a difference,” Carter said.
Carter acknowledged that common law relationships are common in Barbados and said the centre did not go into schools and quoteThe Bible or push religion, but used the dictionary to define sexual terms.
“I cannot convince anybody to get married if they do not want to but it comes back down to looking at it from the moral point of view,” she said.
“People look at sex as dowdy between Christians because we do not promote oral or anal sex but the centre tries to allow young people to see how exciting marriage is and can be and that research has proven that married people have more sex and the best sex more so than people who are not married.”
As far as gay or polygamous relationships are concerned, Carter said because of an agenda people are beginning to be more accepting of alternative lifestyles. But she conceded that the Pure Sex Centre also has its own agenda.
“They will do what they have to do and in the same breath the Pure Sex Centre will do what we have to do and we will continue to push our message, without apology,” she said.
Carter said that as a Christian she has knowledge and “truth” and it would be remiss of her not to put it out there and help children to make informed choices. (LK)
