"This is reality-check research," said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.

Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for extensive periods.

The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent had done so by age 44.

"The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said.

Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

"It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active — which nearly everyone eventually will."

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers.

"One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity," he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease."

He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.

"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

Horn said he found the high percentages of premarital sex cited in the study to be plausible, and expressed hope that society would not look askance at the small minority that chooses to remain abstinent before marriage.

However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only education, said she was skeptical of the findings.

"Any time I see numbers that high, I’m a little suspicious," she said. "The numbers are too pat."

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TALKING HEAD: First of all I should say that I don’t doubt the numbers. It seems that it is becoming weirder and weirder to be a Christian in our culture today – not that I am suggesting that the Canadian numbers are similar but I don’t see any significant cultural reasons why they shouldn’t be.

As a youth pastor and a parent who believes in celibacy before marriage it seems pretty incredible that by and large the culture has fully embraced sex outside marriage. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not naive enough to think that it isn’t happening in high numbers but 95%?!?!

People can almost literally defend themselves by saying "hey – EVERYONE else is doing it". To me it does not call into question the age old practices of the Christian faith so much as point out the fall of Christendom in the West and the reality that Christianity is becoming incredibly counter-cultural.

According to The Barna Group 47% of Americans are church goers. Based on the abstinance study the vast majory of those are having pre-marital sex. No surprise. Even if you look at the Evanglical numbers 9% of the American population is evangelical – if the entire 5% of the population that the study says is remaining abstinent were evangelical (which I doubt) that still leaves almost 40% of evangelicals in the category of those who are having sex before or outside of marriage.

It makes it difficult for the church to claim to be the Body of Christ, to tell the population to look to Christ as the example when the church itself is not following Christ. There is very little attractive about a group that has no integrity. Obviously this leads one to ask whether the demands of Christ are unreasonable.

"Be perfect therefore as your Father in Heaven is perfect" Matthew 5:48 is clearly an unreasonable demand and I am thankful for the grace of God in life because we obviously need it…but still…

"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace." Romans 6:12-14

Ultimately I cannot say better what the Apostle Paul himself has already said on this:

"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:14-25