My church says we should be fruitful and multiply

Dear Pastor,

I have enjoyed reading your column over the years and now I would like to ask you some questions as I am contemplating getting married.

I am 22 and attending a theological college. It is my dream to become a pastor. I am very active in my church. I work with the youth ministry. I am trying to walk circumspectly.

My girlfriend is 19 and one of the things that we promised each other is that we will not fool around. Sometimes when I slip up, she reminds me that we have to be examples to the young people who we lead at our church. Our pastor depends on me for many things. I take the young people to camp and, although I am not the director of camp, I am a counsellor. The director comes from another church.

I would like to hear your views on AIDS. I know that one can get it through vaginal sex, but is it true that one may not get AIDS by doing oral sex? And, how can young people safeguard themselves from getting AIDS?

I read some time ago that it is unsafe for a man to masturbate and put his finger into a woman's vagina if he ejaculated and some of his semen was on his finger. Is it true that AIDS can be passed on that way?

You may wonder why I am asking these questions. You see, Pastor, I come from a religious organisation and we are taught that godly people should not engage in any sort of protection. We are told that we should have as many children as possible. My fiancee and I would want to believe that, but to practise it is something else.

My parents have 13 children. We grew up on a farm and we did not have any problems; my father had no problem in supporting us. My fiancee's parents are also farmers but they had only six children.

In addition to becoming a pastor, I am planning to teach, while my future wife will do nursing. We will have to give guidance to modern-day young people and we know that they will throw questions to us, as they have started to do, and we are not yet married. Would it not be wrong to tell young people that they can have as many children as they please and God will take care of the children?

Camp is coming up very soon and I expect to have smart young people there and the matter of sex will have to be discussed. So, please give me some guidance. My fiancee wants us to get married before I graduate. I don't want to discuss the issue with my pastor, so I am looking to you for some help.

T.

Dear T.,

Any type of unprotected sex exposes one to STIs. A wise man should not take what a woman says about not having sex, neither should a woman take what a man says.

Both men and women should make sure that they are protected. This dreadful disease called AIDS has not died, and the only safe protection is to abstain from unprotected sex. You have been reading my column for a long time. I have mentioned many stories about people who were infected with AIDS. I am thinking now about a young woman who was a young lawyer and a Christian. She engaged in sexual intercourse and she contracted AIDS, but she did not do vaginal sex. Sexual partners should be clean, very clean.

Young man, what your church is teaching does not make any sense in today's world. You must learn to protect yourself. Your father had 13 children with your mother and your fiancee's parents had six. But I am not going to encourage you to have so many children because I rather doubt that you would be able to support many of them on a preacher's stipend. So, before you get officially engaged, the young woman and you need to go and discuss these matters with a family counsellor.

A good guideline that I have used over the years is to tell couples that the number of children they should have is based on what they can afford.

Pastor