Janet Smith opened her presentation Monday with an apology from her generation.

From drug use to sexual irresponsibility, past generations set deplorable norms in today’s society, she said.

“You shouldn’t want to be like us,” she said.

Smith spoke to about 150 people in Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium.

Turning away from premarital sex is one way to remedy past mistakes, she said.

Smith said sex is not a necessity; she said if satisfying sexual desires were necessary, people would need to have sex starting at the beginning of puberty, and adultery easily would be justified by prolonged absence of one’s spouse.

People do not die from denying sexual urges, she said, unlike true needs, such as water, food, air and shelter.

“(Sex) is a pleasure that can get out of control,” Smith said.

Smith compared the pleasure derived from sex to pleasure derived from smoking, drinking or taking drugs. An act is not right solely because it is pleasurable, she said.

“Many things are pleasurable, but that’s not the reason for doing it,” she said. “There are a lot of things our appetites draw us toward.”

Dating has become more of an audition than a courtship, Smith said, and people try to conceal flaws that could discourage partners. She said these topics re-emerge after marriage, typically in debilitating ways.

She said a lot of courtship is phony.

“What you see is what you get, so you better see it,” she said.

Smith said abstinence can be as much a sign of love as sex. Abstinence demonstrates respect and concern for one’s partner, she said.

Using a Heritage Foundation chart that graphs impoverished children in 2000, Smith said 66 percent of children born to unmarried parents were in poverty.

“The major cause of poverty in the United States is single parenthood,” she said.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chart, 80 percent of women who had sex with only their husbands reported to have stable marriages. She said the more sexual partners the studied women had, the more the chance at a steady marriage decreases.

Rochester Hills freshman Andrew Yasso said Smith had a sound argument that wisely used statistical, not religious, justifications.

“Too common (the argument) is ill-received by the way it is presented to people,” Yasso said.

Grand Haven freshman Joe Scharphorn said the presentation’s psychological and sociological angle was fascinating.

“It supported my decision (against pre-marital sex),” he said. “It made it easier to feel that way.”

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