True Love Waits, launched by Richard Ross in the United States in 1993, when 59 Tennessee teenagers signed the pledge to keep their virginity until marriage; since then it has spread like wildfire through 76 countries. Today the association, which has 2.5 million adherents in the United States, has just been launched in Belgium where it is proud of its first 500 signatures. The success that the initiative found in the world is due to several factors: the highly publicized positive message and the simple and unequivocal commitment: abstinence until marriage. But, more profoundly, the message responds to an expectation of many young people who believe they are alone in wanting to keep their virginity and feel ridiculous in society because of this.
However, many young people react. The mentality of the 60s and 70s where you had to try everything and everything was allowed, is over. It must be said that sexually transmitted diseases (in the United States one adolescent in seven suffers from a disease of this type: Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes, etc.) are there for a reason, while suicide and depression whose growth among young people is simultaneous to sexual liberation, indicate that happiness must be sought in another way. It is in this context of devaluation of love that many young people rediscover the desire for a true and faithful love. That is why there are more and more people who assume, in writing and in two copies (one is sent to the TLW headquarters, the other kept by the signatory), the following commitment: “Convinced that True Love Waits I take from today the commitment before God, myself, my family and my future spouse, to remain sexually pure until the day of my marriage. I will stay that way, with God’s help.”