‘Valentine’s Day’ or ‘Sin Day’?

Magh Krushna Dvitiya

H. Asaramji Bapu’s message: Ill Effects of Celebrating Valentine’s Day

The celebrations of such days as that of ‘Valentine’s’ have been the main reason behind degeneration of moral values of the nations that have discarded the traditional sexual values, and are encouraging people to lead an immoral life. This has caused the degradation of such nations. Seven percent of American children now have sex even before they have become teenagers. 85 percent of American males and 77 percent of American females have had sex by the age of 19. Even after spending crores of dollars on ‘abstinence only’ campaigns in schools, the governments of these nations are unable to solve the consequence problems. Therefore, countries like India should preserve their traditional sexual values by imposing a ban on ‘Valentine’s Day’, and the government must encourage institutions, which promote ethical values so that such problems may never arise in this country.

If they imitate our glorious Indian culture, they would be blessed with happiness. But if we go to emulate their degrading culture, we will be left with an increasing number of AIDS cases, and emotional turmoil of teenagers and mental disorders.

Instead of this, celebrate ‘Love Day’ and worship your parents. Let children behold the Divinity in their parents while parents should visualize the same in their children.

The youth will celebrate ‘Valentine’s Day’, look at each other with lust and dissipate their sexual energy even during the day. This will weaken their intellect, their eyesight and also the future generation. You may verily call this a ‘Sin Day’ for breaking our nation’s backbone. It is not a day of love, but a day of harassment to the youth, a veritable ‘Youths’ Dooms day.’ Those ignorant ones may be unaware of this, but doctors and wise people can well realize whether the sexual energy of the youth will be dissipated or sublimated by exchanging flowers and touching one another.

By worshipping one’s parents, one’s lust will be sublimated to divine love, egotism will be transformed into pure love, while parents’ blessings will ensure well being of the children.

Nowadays, even bachelors are trained to be immoral in the name of giving sex-education through some magazines. The government plans to impart sex-education even in schools. It should learn from the experience of western nations where until recently, society provided teenagers with classroom instruction in "safe sex" and "comprehensive sex education". In general, these curricula fail to provide a strong message to delay sexual activity, fail to deal adequately with the long-term emotional and moral aspects of sexuality, and fail to provide students with the skills needed to develop intimate loving marital relationships as adults.

Over the past five years, there has been a growth in abstinence education programmes that stand in sharp contrast to "safe sex" curricula. The best abstinence education programmes teach: 

• The primary importance of delaying sexual activity
• That human sexual relationships are predominantly emotional and moral, rather that physical in character, and
• That teen abstinence is important to lead a loving marital relationship as an adult. 

The Youth of Developed Nations Are Languishing 

As per the Innocenti Report card no.3, at least 1.25 million teenagers become pregnant each year in the 28 OECD nations. Of those, approximately half a million seek abortion and approximately three quarters of a million become teenage mothers. 4,94,000 teen births are accounted for by the United States. Every year some 3 million American teenagers contract a sexually transmitted infection (about 1 in every 4 sexually experienced teenagers). 

Overall, roughly one-quarters of the nation’s sexually active teens have been infected by a sexually transmitted disease (STD). In one act of unprotected sex with an infected partner, a teenage woman has a 1 in 100 chance of contracting HIV, a 1 in 3 chance of contracting genital herpes and 1 in 2 chance of correcting gonorrhea. Approximately a quarter of all new cases of HIV/AIDS are diagnosed in young people under the age of 22. More than US $ 400 million from federal and state funds has been spent on ‘abstinence only’ campaigns in American schools. Today, one in three US high schools has an abstinence only policy on sex education. 

As per a report of ‘The Heritage Center for Data Analysis,’ sexually active girls are more than three times more likely to be depressed all, most, or a lot of the time than are girls who are not sexually active. Boys who are sexually active are more than twice as likely to be depressed all, most, or a lot of times as are those who are not sexually active. Sexually active teenager boys are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than are boys who are not sexually active.

Among girls, 14.3 percent of those who are sexually active have attempted suicide, and among boys 6.0 percent of those who are sexually active have attempted suicide.

The link between teen sexual activity and depression is supported by clinical experience. Doctor of adolescent medicine, Meg Meekar on page 64 of his book, ‘Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing  our Kids’, writes, "Teenage sexual activity routinely leads to emotional turmoil and psychological distress… (sexual permissiveness leads) to empty relationships, to feelings of self-contempt and worthlessness. All, of course, precursors to depression."

Dear Indian brethren! Now think for yourself, are we to import their degradation into our country? Would the parents of Indian girls like them to be swept away with the blind imitation of the western culture and fall victims to lust, undergo abortion or become teenage mothers by getting entangled in the vicious celebrations like Valentine’s Day?

(Excerpts from the Satsang of Param Pujya Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu)