Q & A WITH ... Mark Regnerus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas in Austin, recently helped lead a multiyear research project to study the lives of American teens with respect to religion.

Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teens is based on data collected during the project, the National Survey of Youth and Religion (funded by the Lilly Foundation).

Numerous others reported in the book are eye-opening - particularly about the attitudes and behaviors of American teens (and their parents) regarding sexuality.

There's been a lot of "heat" in this area, but far too little "light." That's what Forbidden Fruit has done - it's surveyed thousands of regular American teenagers and listened intently to over 250 of them, in order to understand what's going on in the realm of teen sex.

Simply being Presbyterian or Catholic or evangelical is not as important as internalizing the faith. Kids for whom Christianity is a central identity - not just another aspect of their lives - tend to make more thoughtful and mature decisions about sex. But this is rarer than most people think: Less than 10 percent of all youth do this.

Parents, educators and clergy no longer have the luxury of "hoping" teens get sexual messages they approve of. We have to talk about facts, to be open about the beauty and pleasure of sex, and its mixed emotions and consequences. Tell them the complicated truth about the beauty and frustration of marital sex. Admit there is gray area in the realm of sexuality. We all know it. No more hiding.

Evangelical teens express conservative attitudes about sex, but they are very average in their actual behavior. Why? Because evangelical kids live in two worlds. The new world tells them to value career, self-fulfillment, happiness and entertainment - and this is what adults and parents model for them. But the old world - to which evangelicals still pay deference - values keeping commitments, God, marriage and delaying pleasure.

Most American kids only live in the new world. Evangelicals still inhabit both. The result is conflict and compromise: old world values but new world actions.

If you track their effectiveness by measuring whether most kids who take them keep them flawlessly, then they're not very effective. On the other hand, teens who take them tend to delay first sex. When they do have sex, it's with someone who is less likely to cheat on them.

But the political rhetoric is so thick that all we hear about is either how great they are or how completely worthless they are. The truth is in the middle.

We try to praise and model modesty yet convey no shame about our bodies. We answer questions honestly. And we try to model romantic love for them - to let them see us hug and kiss each other. Our efforts are certainly not without blunders and bad days.

When more explicit questions come our way, we will answer them forthrightly, with the recognition that they have to move forward into the teenage and adult world; we cannot do it for them.

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