by Teá Villamor “Chastity is the new sexual revolution,” declares Lora Garcia, on the advocacy her organization, I Keep Love Real (IKLR), espouses, adding, “After all, when engaging in premarital sex is common, it’s hardly what you’d call a revolution. It’s when you refrain from it that goes against the grain these days.” Certainly, IKLR faces an uphill battle, one that Lora herself is all too aware of. Minutes into explaining what her organization is all about, she tells me, halfseriously, “I hope you don’t fall out of your chair by what I’m saying.” Indeed, getting anyone, especially teenagers, to choose chastity as a way of life, given the bombardment they get from media, the peer pressure, added to the usual adolescent angst and hormones, getting teenagers to choose chastity seems like an impossible task. Lora though thinks it’s well worth the effort. “You’d be surprised,” she says. “We’ve done a lot of talks in high school about this and teenagers are receptive. It helps that we present an alternative to them.” IKLR started out as an offshoot to Lora’s college thesis, I AM S.T.R.O.N.G. From there, it branched out into its current form. “I AM S.T.R.O.N.G. was a leadership program started about 10 years ago geared to the public school setting. It was about leadership, values training, and decisionmaking in four areas of their lives: first year, study habits; second year, friendship; third year, career; and fourth year, love and relationships. “Over the years, we discovered that kids have such hunger for more information, and more than information, guidance—about their love lives, and more specifically about their sex lives. And as teenagers, especially coming from the public schools, they don’t have a lot of information about sex from people they feel have an authority—for example, their parents or an older, wiser person. It’s such a taboo topic. As Filipinos we don’t like to talk about sex openly, or with the family. It’s rooted in the culture.”
It’s such a taboo topic. As Filipinos we don’t like to talk about sex openly.
8
From this, IKLR was born. “I AM STRONG held a congress attended by students last November that focused on character education and chastity. That was where I Keep Love Real was launched.” IKLR is a campaign for sexual purity and chastity, two words that carry such heavy freight today. “When you first hear the word ‘chastity’ we get all sorts of reactions, none positive—it’s so middle-aged, so archaic, so we try to bring it down to a level wherein they understand that this is how love was supposed to be about. This is how
icomm 017 www.ikeeplovereal.com