Sin City Vegas now says Viva Las Virgins!

He was a hockey player. It was only a year ago, when she was 16, but Angela Van Berkel talks about the loss of her innocence to a boyfriend ...

He was a hockey player. It was only a year ago, when she was 16, but Angela Van Berkel talks about the loss of her innocence to a boyfriend like some faraway thing.

Then the Abstinence Movement came to her school, with the right words, the perceived mythologies of latex protection, the logic of celibacy and emotional assurance that yes, she could be a virgin again, if she wanted to.

‘‘I want people to learn from what happened to me. It’s like, sex, I’ve done that, and it sucked,’’ Van Berkel says, minutes after a shuttle bus has delivered her and about 75 Abstinence activists unto the Vegas Strip.

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She is among 700 people who attended a convention here for Abstinence Clearinghouse, an organisation that mobilises leaders of the pro-abstinence movement. She also wanted to take to the streets, to tell people it’s never too late to say no to premarital sex.

Deltano served in the army, then taught in a school. When a sixth-grader showed up in his class pregnant, he says, he flipped. ‘‘I couldn’t get them to bring a pencil to social studies. How’s a condom going to help them?’’ Now he’s here, a refugee from what he sees as a world of easy sex and lies of ‘‘comprehensive’’ sex education that hands out condoms and contributes to a social ruin of casual sex, Christina Aguilera and teen moms on welfare.

Abstinence has found its own sense of vogue. The Marriott Convention Centre is decked out with slick, pro-virgin advertising and a hip-hop beat. Big-screen TVs play pro-abstinence commercials on a continuous loop. ‘‘We love sex!’’ screams Leslee Unruh, president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse.

‘‘And the best sex is in marriage! Abstinence comes to Sin City! Abstinence meets Temptation Island!’’ Unruh says Vegas makes people think of sex, so that’s where she needed to be. (LAT-WP)