f Spring - Chaminade High School

A Humorous, Candid Look at the T.R.U.T.H.
MTV Star, Abstinence Speaker Share Stories, Advice
Tarmac • July 2005
by Dennis Kavlakoglu ‘06
No ringy, no dingy!” These words summarize Hope and
Chris’s message of abstinence: no sex until marriage. The
two sex-education speakers have toured the country
with their presentation “T.R.U.T.H. Sex, Love, and Choices,” and
on Tuesday, April 19, they brought their
message to the all-male student body of
Chaminade High School. “I’m sure that
speaking about sexuality in front of a
group of teenage boys is no easy task,”
said Kyle Keinath ’06, “but Hope and
Chris won over their audience with their
quick wit, upbeat attitude, and remarkable
personal candor. As a result, I think
that almost all of us could relate to what
they were saying.”
Hope Lopez, spokeswoman for the
T.R.U.T.H organization, began the program
with an allegory about a gentleman named
“Truth” and his counterpart, a man named
“Lie.” In her story, both men went swimming.
When they came out of the water,
Lie stole Truth’s clothes and tried to fool the
townspeople into believing that they had
always been his. At the conclusion of the
story, Hope offered the students a question:
“Whom will you believe, the naked truth
or a lie in truth’s clothes?” Contemporary
society, Hope explained, tells young people
many lies about sexuality and its consequences,
all masquerading as the truth.
In the next part of her program, Hope called upon five Flyers to
help her demonstrate a clever metaphor for sexual promiscuity.
Juniors Kyle Gentile, Steve Dalton, Alex Diorio, and Tom Cassano
were called up to the stage to walk, stamp, and even dance on a
piece of duct tape that Hope had slapped down on the stage floor.
Continuing the metaphor, she then offered the sullied piece of tape
– a symbol, of course, for lost sexual purity – to her pretended fiancé,
a role taken by audience volunteer Jim O’Shea. Jim, disgusted by
the filthy piece of tape, refused it, exclaiming, “That’s nasty!”
Hope concluded her portion of the program by telling the students
that, based on their sexual activity, they could be classified
into one of three groups. The first group, or the “A group,”
as Hope called it, consists of virgins and “secondary virgins,”
people who had had sex but had since vowed to abstain from
further sexual activity until marriage. The “B group” – perhaps
the largest – includes all those who are undecided about the nature
and extent of their sexual activity before marriage. And
Clockwise from left: 1. Emil
Manuel ‘06 receives a “No ringy,
no dingy” T-shirt for being the
first in the audience to stand up
for abstinence. 2. MTV star Chris
Grabbe discusses his conversion
from a party animal to an
abstinence advocate. 3. In a
humorous but pointed skit, Hope
Lopez presents would-be fiancé
Jim O’Shea ‘06 with a trampledupon
piece of tape symbolizing
squandered virginity.
then, Hope joked, there is the “C group,” those who had decided,
“Sister Girl, speak to the hand. I’m a man, I have a plan, I’m
gonna get all I can.”
Hope then turned the stage over to Chris Grabbe, star of MTV’s
Road Rules: South Pacific and Battle of the Sexes, who spoke
candidly about the time he spent in all
three of the groups that Hope had just
outlined. Chris’s celebrity status, combined
with his forthright approach, made
his presentation “especially riveting,” according
to junior Mike Milone.
For example, Chris recounted an experience
that he had on his sixteenth birthday
when, still “a confused teenager,” he was
pressured into giving up his virginity. The
experience left him emotionally scarred,
and “later in life, though physically an
adult,” Chris noted, “I still carried with me
the stigma of my first sexual encounter.”
After his traumatic experience in high
school, Chris vowed to abstain from sex
until marriage. “Unfortunately,” admitted
Chris, “college proved to be a challenge
I could not overcome. I found myself
getting drunk almost every night and
waking up with a different girl every
morning.” After hitting rock bottom with
a drug overdose, however, Chris underwent
a profound conversion; left college;
and began the slow, difficult, but ultimately rewarding journey
from worshiping sex to worshiping Christ, from drunken debauchery
to a sober and committed married life.
In the most heartfelt part of his presentation, Chris spoke of the
hurt he felt having to tell his fiancée, “I didn’t care enough about
you to practice abstinence. I didn’t respect the relationship that we
would one day have.” Towards the end of his speech, Chris urged
the audience to make a decision. Referring back to Hope’s message,
he stressed, “You have to decide which group you want to be
in. Will you cherish or betray your future wife?”
Junior Scott Melamed recalled, “I really liked Hope’s humorous
speech, and its humor certainly helped to drive the message
home. Chris’s candid and compelling story of trial and error made
his message especially powerful and convincing. More than just
preach to us about what we should or shouldn’t do, Chris came
out and said, ‘Here are the mistakes I made. Maybe if I share
them with you, you can learn from them too.’”
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