Big study came out about today about abstinence and virginity pledges. The headline is that teens who take virginity pledges (sometimes as part of an abstinence-only education program) are no less likely to have sex -- but they are much less likely to use protection when they do.

This nation has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on abstinence-only education, with barely a condom's width of proof that any of it is helping. So what makes this study different from all the others that have also questioned the efficacy of such pledges? For starters, this time they looked at teens who were quite similar to one another in numerous ways (attitudes about sex, religion, birth control, etc. -- also their parents' attitudes), and found that the big difference between those who promised to stay virgins until marriage and those who did not wasn't in the having sex department, it was in the having safe sex department.