I am not a devout Christian—far from it—but I kind of wish everyone else were. This is a strange desire, and one I entertain for probably the wrong reason: I think there’s too much sex in the world.

In past years, Christianity exerted some pressure on almost everyone in America to avoid extramarital sex. If this system did not produce perfect results (as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King could attest), at the very least it made people think twice about, and regret, having extramarital sex. Now, however, many of us have no such moral framework. Christianity is no longer the cornerstone of life in much of America and many parents seem to feel that it is more important that their children have a sane relationship to their sexuality (while being “safe” about it, of course) than that they remain sexually dormant until marriage. I would argue that this is a much healthier approach, as well as a more realistic one. Nevertheless, this approach has a fatal flaw: it relies on the judgment of children and young adults as to when, and how, it is appropriate and safe to have sex.

The failings of this system (and the repressive religious system it has not entirely replaced) are written all over this country. The specters of disease, unwanted pregnancy and emotional injury are ever-present for those of us who are sexually active, and the numbers of people afflicted by them are staggering. According to the CDC, 45 million Americans, or one in five Americans over age 12, have genital herpes. In 2000, there were 246 (legal) abortions per 1,000 live births in the United States, 857,000 abortions in all. Abstract though they may be to those of us who have not experienced them personally, these facts and figures are extremely painful realities for millions upon millions of Americans.

I myself recently had a scary sexual experience; and although it ultimately was without repercussions, it made me rethink my approach to sex. I won’t go into it in detail, but suffice it to say that I behaved with what any rational agent (myself included) would consider almost criminal stupidity. I am not usually given to lapses in judgment, nor am I a particularly passionate person (ladies: still interested? Blitz poudre and I can arrange a much more intimate meeting); I simply screwed up. Unfortunately, to blithely state that “Everyone makes mistakes” is not sufficient when the stakes are as high as they are in sex.

From my own behavior, I ultimately concluded, and still believe, that the discretion of a young adult in the heat of the moment is not good enough. Those of us whose sexual behavior is not determined by a particular religious approach need some system of sexual proscriptions to fill the moral vacuum that religion left behind. Young adults need something to make them hesitate to have sex, not just a half-remembered exhortation to trust their own judgment, brought to mind when their underwear is already around their knees.

Any attempt to define a general set of sexual boundaries for everyone is going to be fraught with errors. Of course, a cynic might point out that any reasonable effort is unlikely to be more unrealistic and hypocritical than the Christian paradigm (if we get married at age, say, twenty-eight, you want us to deny all our sexual urges for fifteen years? And what was King David doing with Bathsheba, anyway?); but that paradigm, at the very least, has the weight of tradition behind it. A new morality of sex, without any cultural or ontological weight behind it, is bound to be incomplete, easily ignored, and appallingly arbitrary.

For my own part, I have decided not to have sex again until I am reasonably sure I am in love. This seems (to me) to be a pretty good system. From a human point of view, it’s kind of romantic, and it implies that sex should be a consequence of love, not vice versa, which seems true. From a utilitarian standpoint, it lessens the chance of negative emotional consequences after too-hasty sex and mitigates the risk of contracting STDs from someone callous enough not to care whether he or she is infecting you with them. This system seems great to me, although I have not been living under it for very long. If you like it, you’re welcome to share.

My approach, though, will not work for everyone. For one thing, people, especially young people, have widely varied and frequently ridiculous views of what love is. For another, some people will feel that love need not be a prerequisite to sex; and who can tell them they are wrong? In general, there is no sexual framework that everyone will agree to, unless they are forced to; and to force them to agree to one is, among other things, wrong, impractical and stupid.

I think that the most important point is not which system of sexual decision-making you have, it’s simply to have a system. If you are going to accept the freedom of choosing your own sexual destiny, you must also accept the responsibility of defining healthy sexual boundaries beforehand. It doesn’t matter the specific terms and conditions you set for yourself (as long as they are not ridiculous; and anyone who has the good sense to pre-set his or her sexual limits probably has the common sense to do a decent job at it). The important thing is to have something that will make you pause in the heat of the moment, and force you to reflect on your situation and the choices facing you. Otherwise, you will have sex stupidly, whenever it is convenient. And, as millions can attest, the consequences may not be orgasm