Antonio Cromartie has been a standout NFL cornerback for more than a decade. Recently cut by the Indianapolis Colts, the four-time Pro-Bowler could, at 32, still be picked-up by another team looking for a seasoned defense man.

Cromartie is also the father of at least 12 children by eight different women. It is estimated that “Cromartie pays child support of $336,000 per year — $3,500 each month per child — for eight children with seven women. In addition, Cromartie has two more children with his wife, Terricka,” who recently gave birth to twins, as well. 

We can hope that Cromartie has enough wealth to sustain these payments. But one thing is certain: Cromartie cannot be the father his children need. 

However Andre Cromartie tries, he cannot be in the homes in which his children are being raised more than incidentally. Inevitably he will be a distant, at best shimmering presence in the lives of his children, idealized and hated, disappointing and inadequate as a dad. The love, nurture, guidance, role-modeling and discipline only a dad can offer will be intermittent and, therefore, next to useless.

Healthy Fatherhood Requires Sexual Morality

Fathers need to be present in their children’s lives. The data supporting this proposition are copious. Yet even as our culture claims to honor fatherhood (we have a day of national recognition for dads, right?), popular culture celebrates promiscuity — spend an evening watching network television if you doubt it. This is little more than intentional intellectual incoherence. We cannot celebrate responsible fatherhood on one hand while we accede to the demands of radical sexual autonomy, on the other. 

Wait, you say: You’re demanding celibacy until marriage and chastity thereafter? That’s a standard no one can sustain! 

To the first of these propositions, I say yes. As to the second, I say no. 

The God of the Bible calls on men and women to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification (i.e., ongoing purity): that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,” Paul wrote the early Christians (I Thessalonians 4:3-4). This is hard, especially at a time when the tendency to minimize the dangers, moral, emotional, and physical, of premarital sex has become common. Yet because something is difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile, even vital, or that it is impossible to achieve.

Abstinence Helps Teens — Promiscuity Hurts Them 

“Teens today are having less sex than their parents were at the same age, according to a (2013) report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” U.S. News and World Report journalist Kimberly Leonard reports. The CDC study showed “dramatic decreases in teen sexual activity since 1988, when the rate was 22 percent higher among males and 14 percent higher among females.”

Why the welcome drop? Surely one reason is the effectiveness of abstinence education. “Abstinence education today is a public health intervention, based on science and evidence, using sound pedagogy and methodology, to deliver a sound health message to young men and women, primarily in school settings,” observe Valerie Huber and Greg Pfundstein in The Public Discourse.        

The benefits of abstinence are clear. In a significant summary of research data published in 2008, University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox concluded that “sexual abstinence before marriage is typically associated with better physical and psychological health among American adolescents and adults (and) fosters a healthy and happy family life for children, adolescents, adults, and society as a whole.”

We cannot celebrate responsible fatherhood on one hand while we accede to the demands of radical sexual autonomy, on the other. 

Additionally, the reality of potentially devastating health consequences might well be playing a role. In a report issued just two months ago, the Centers for Disease Control said that the “total combined cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis reported in 2015 reached the highest number ever.” 

The picture is grim. The CDC “estimates that nearly 20 million new sexually transmitted infections occur every year in this country, half among young people aged 15–24, and account for almost $16 billion in health care costs. Each of these infections is a potential threat to an individual’s immediate and long-term health and well-being. In addition to increasing a person’s risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV infection, STDs can lead to chronic pain and severe reproductive health complications, such as infertility and ectopic pregnancy.”

Objectification Isn’t Love

Finally, there might well be another reason.  Young men can be quite sexually predatory; young women, raised in homes broken by divorce or vacated by absentee fathers, can be susceptible to the allurement of affection and interest shown by a 15 to 25-year-old guy whose real interest is not loving commitment but transient pleasure.

My guess is that many young women are sick of being objectified and dehumanized by mere intercourse. Persons and objects are as distinct as water and rock. The intuitive understanding that they are one and not the other enables, at least in some cases, a growing number of young women to assert their dignity as image-bearers of God — even if this understanding is theologically uninformed — and wait for truly loving intimacy within marriage.

Andre Cromartie’s trail of pained young lives is only beginning. For many others, it’s not too late to take a very different, life-affirming path. The path of waiting and self-respect, of marriage and family. The path of love.