ONTARIO, Canada (CWNews.com/LSN.ca) - French young people are abandoning sexual promiscuity and opting for abstinence until marriage, a trend seen negatively by sex educators and AIDS groups, according to a report in a Canadian newspaper.

    Canada's National Post newspaper reported on Monday that the new commitment to chastity and marriage is expected to result in an "amazing 70%" increase in marriages in 2000. Commentator Susan Martinuk noted that sex educators and AIDS groups are labeling the trend as evidence of gross ignorance about the "virtues" of safe sex -- in other words, children are refraining from sexual relations because of unjustified fears over the ramifications of promiscuous behavior. These organizations have convinced the government to launch a new nationwide sex education program to fix this "problem." Martinuk added that, like the French, Planned Parenthood of Canada is committed to promoting "sex positivity" -- teaching about sex within a context of "sexual pleasure" rather than married love and conception of children.

    Among the strategies being devised by the "sex positivists" are a plan to replace the term STD (sexually transmitted disease) with the softer term, STI (sexually transmitted infection). "Apparently the term 'disease' caused too much worry," wrote Martinuk. "Given this milieu, it isn't surprising that teen pregnancies in Canada increased 15.3 percent between 1987 and 1995 -- even as sex programs and condom machines flooded the schools."