(AgapePress) - Hundreds of Mississippi teenagers have made or renewed vows of abstinence at a "True Love Waits" rally.

Youth groups from across Northeast Mississippi packed the auditorium at Harrisburg Baptist Church in Tupelo to worship Christ with fellow believers and hear an expert on sex, love, and relationships.

Pam Stenzel

Pam Stenzel speaks to half-a-million students each year on the issues of sexuality and the importance of abstinence. She told the Tupelo crowd that God created sex -- but He created it with boundaries. And according to Stenzel, when sex happens within the boundaries for which it was created, it is awesome -- but when it happens outside of those boundaries, it is horribly destructive.

"If you have sex outside of marriage -- if you have sex outside of one permanent, monogamous [relationship] -- if you have sex outside of that context, you will pay," Stenzel said. "No one has ever had sex outside of marriage and not paid -- no one."

Monogamy, she explained, does not mean "one at a time," but "one partner who has only been with you." She also informed the crowd there are now more than 30 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) -- and 30% of them are absolutely incurable.

"HPV, genital warts, syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, chlamydia, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C -- the list goes on and on and on. Serious diseases with serious consequences," she said emphatically.

With obvious emotion, she continued. "Students, AIDS is not the only disease out there -- and it's certainly not the only disease that's killing people," she said. "We still have teenagers in 2003 who actually think: 'Well, if I don't get pregnant or I don't get AIDS, then I don't have anything to worry about. I'm fine, then.' No way!"

Stenzel, who has written a new book titled Sex Has a Price Tag, told the young people that when they stand before God, they will not answer for what their parents did or did not say, but for their own choices.

'Safe Sex' a Failure
The Coalition for Adolescent Sexual Health released the results of a Zobgy poll yesterday which revealed that a vast majority of parents are not happy with the sex education programs being taught in the public schools.

The poll found that 61% of parents are not happy with the "safe sex" message being taught to children. Seventy-four percent favor an abstinence/character-centered program instead.

That is exactly what Congressman Dave Weldon of Florida, a physician, has been championing for several years. "The consequences of adolescent sexual activity are serious," he says. "As a doctor, the fact is that having sex as a teenager is inherently risky."

Weldon says schools need to teach children how to reduce their risk of pregnancy, STDs, and HIV-AIDS. But "unfortunately some are more interested in advancing an agenda that liberalizes and normalizes adolescent sex than in protecting the health and lives of our children," he says.

When the "safe sex - condom" message was first taught in schools, there were two sexually transmitted diseases. Today, there are more than 30. Weldon says "safe sex" has failed.

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