First, I hope my pastor does not read this report. Second, Ghanaian women, and perhaps most women in the Christian faith, have a pretentiously ‘uninformed’ understanding of the role of sex in relationships. Third, there is a prostitute, or at least a very flirtatious kinky person in all of us. Fourth, we would all do well to read Ann Hooper’s Sexopaedia.

Now, sex in detail: Ms Abigail Ashley recently employed this very useful medium to tease us with an old problem: “When is it desirable for a woman to have sex: Is it before or after marriage?” She had questioned why “most guys would want to sleep with a lady on countless occasions before marriage”, and had warned that if the craze for premarital sex continues, “a time will come when the word virgin would be erased.”

Abigail typifies the ‘sexually uninformed’ Ghanaian woman. She proceeds on the subject of sex with the same disturbing underlying suspicion that sex is a gift a woman trades away to a sex-consumed man, dismissing the possibility that the woman may have enjoyed anything from a naturally mutually beneficial enterprise. And she makes it clear in the wording of her question: “When is it right for a woman to have sex?” What about the man? Does he have anything to lose during sex? If a woman is a virgin before her first sex, what name do we give to a man who hasn’t has sex before? A bunny or a frog?

Abigail fears that the word virgin may suddenly evaporate from this earth if we express our sexuality in the natural way. If virginity is the greatest virtue that a woman should possess, then, perhaps Abigail should have simplified the discussion by emphasising that only virgins are good enough to marry. She may have forgotten that it is not that difficult to be a virgin these days, because it is possible to stitch the hymen back on after a second divorce. Until the divorce, however, whatever happens during dating or friendship is merely an expression of our sexuality, sex being the nervous system of modern humanity.

Still, we have to confront the question seriously: Is it wrong for the pastor Abigail wrote about to have had sex with his chorister girlfriend before marriage? It is wrong only to the extent that sex itself is wrong unless it is refereed by a moral umpire who gives the signal when it is appropriate for copulation to take pace. And if we are comfortable to elect society or religion as that moral umpire, supported by virginity ratios and other deserving moral qualifications, then we should be prepared to have our elected moral umpire prescribe the number of times we can have sex when we marry. That way, we should also have degrees of wedding, where those who stayed pure and clean before marriage would have better weddings than couples who may have experimented with sex.

Test Drive? When would women learn to appreciate that expressing their love in the form of sex is not the same as making themselves available for a test drive? And if they care to know, testing before driving or driving before testing is also in their interest. Sex results from the confidence that our emotional impulses produces in one another. If it happens in the course of time, before or after marriage, it must be appreciated as a significant part that counts towards the dating process, just as the movie date did. However, if a dating couple feel it is proper to wait till marriage before having sex, then it makes two of us.

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin, Ottawa, Canada

quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk

bigfrontiers@ymail.com