On a Date With . . . the Founders of True Love Revolution, Harvard’s Abstinence Society
LAST Valentine’s Day, Justin Murray and Sarah Kinsella sent out more than 800 pink greeting cards, one to every female freshman at Harvard. The two seniors stayed up nearly all night, taping candy hearts to the notes, which read: “Celebrate love, celebrate life, celebrate you: Why wait? Because you’re worth it.”
Founders of Harvard’s new abstinence society, True Love Revolution, Ms. Kinsella and Mr. Murray have been going out for a year and a half.
On a recent date at Border Café, a Mexican restaurant in Harvard Square, they sit on the same side of the booth, linking fingers and stroking each other’s hair.
This is about the extent of their physical connection. “We don’t push it,” says Ms. Kinsella, sipping a lemon-lime Margarita. “We pretty much stick to kissing and cuddling. At night, Justin will walk me back to my room, and we’ll hang out for a little while. I’ll give him a back rub or something, but, yeah, then he heads back to his dorm.”
The couple have been the target of some mockery — Mr. Murray recalls snickers of “there goes that virgin” as he passed a table in the cafeteria, and some students objected to the Valentine’s Day cards as antifeminist. But their society has attracted 50 members since they started it a year ago, and it will continue next year without them, after their graduation.
Campus abstinence clubs, which first sprang up in the South in the early 1990s, are a new concept at elite (and liberal) institutions in the Northeast.
Ms. Kinsella and Mr. Murray got the idea from similar, recently formed groups at Princeton and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Another is in the planning stages at Yale.) The clubs have parties and study sessions and sponsor lectures and discussion panels that encourage abstinence. M.I.T.’s group even has a pledge, and about half of its 40 members have signed it: “I commit myself to make an effort to live a chaste lifestyle. A chaste lifestyle involves using the gift of my body honorably and respectfully.”
Not coincidentally, both the M.I.T. and Princeton clubs call themselves the Anscombe Society, after the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, a staunch Roman Catholic who condemned contraception.
The new clubs declare no political or religious association, and True Love Revolution takes no stance on birth control. Personally, Mr. Murray and Ms. Kinsella oppose contraception, and say their religious views “enrich” their ethical and moral opinions. They met at a retreat sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Student Association.
To make their argument more palatable, they never mention God when describing their reasons for waiting; instead, they rely on words like “dignity,” “self-respect” and “empowerment.” Mr. Murray, who likes to quote Freud and Nietzsche, says the decision to abstain is about self-discipline: resisting titillating feelings.
Ms. Kinsella interrupts, giggling, “You always use that word!”
“What? ‘Titillating’ is an O.K. word.”
“I can tease you,” she says, leaning her nose into his shoulder.
“Every time I say that word — and I don’t say it all that often — you laugh. Um, anyway.” He redirects his attention toward his fajitas.
Mr. Murray and Ms. Kinsella say they are uncomfortable with a campus culture that equates abstinence with being ugly or inept. Both are slim, preppy and attractive. They are articulate about their feelings, with few of the awkward pauses and dangling, half-formed sentences that litter conversations about love.
“Justin always takes the time to make sure we’re doing the most we can for each other,” Ms. Kinsella says. “We have little relationship status check-ins: how are you feeling? Is there anything on your mind?”
“Am I doing everything I can for you?” Mr. Murray adds. “Should we go on more dates?”
The two are a “hair’s breadth” from getting engaged. In the fall, Ms. Kinsella, an anthropology major, will go to Georgetown Medical School, and Mr. Murray, a government major, to Georgetown Law.
They bat away worries from friends that maybe they should try sex first, just in case. The answer is no. Ms. Kinsella says abstaining is a matter of emotional health.
Taking small bites of her salad, she quotes from a course she took on female behavioral biology and describes the “awesome effects” of the hormone oxytocin, released during orgasm. “When people have that bonding experience with someone and it ends,” she says, “they tend to feel heartache.”
A few months ago, the club was host of a forum called “Living in a Hook-Up Culture,” which they hoped might help students warm to the idea of commitment. Nearly 60 people attended. Someone in the audience posed the question: “Can anyone here honestly say they’ve had sex and not felt emotionally connected in any small way?” No one raised their hand, Ms. Kinsella says.
Mr. Murray (who refers obliquely to a time when he had “different values” about sex) says his friends automatically assume the club was Ms. Kinsella’s idea. In fact, he first proposed it. Laughing, he quotes a reader’s comment in The Harvard Crimson: “Of all the tests girls have ever given, making your boyfriend publicly co-found this club has to be the toughest. I hope she’s at least really hot.” Mr. Murray quickly affirms that she is.
On a campus known for its lackluster dating life, Ms. Kinsella and Mr. Murray make a point of planning out their evenings. After dinner, the two wander, holding hands, down J.F.K. Street toward the Charles River for a walk along the water’s edge. It’s one of their favorite spots. This night, Ms. Kinsella has to get home to work on her musicclass project, a choral piece she set to the rosary prayer “Hail, Holy Queen.”
There was a time when Mr. Murray’s friends gave him a hard time for coming home alone — the couple avoid sleepovers. Now friends don’t bother.
“They know it’s not because I ‘can’t get any,’ like they say, but because I’m making a deliberate choice to respect the woman I love,” Mr. Murray says. The evening ends as it has nearly every night of their senior year: he gives Ms. Kinsella a kiss, says “I love you” and walks 20 minutes back to his dorm room.
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