i
Keep Love Real (iKLR) is a campaign for a deeper understanding of the meaning of
love, relationships, and sexuality.
Keep
is
respecting the nobility of affection and love.
Love
refers
to courtship, romance, and relationships between men and women with eyes
towards friendship and marriage.
Real
is
a quality of love that leads to respecting the dignity of the other person,
waiting for marriage for love’s full expression, and making it last despite
trials.
The first person pronoun i makes
keeping love real a personal decision not an imposition from the outside.
i Keep Love Real is an advocacy for character-based sex education,
which, beyond virginity or abstinence, is the effort between men and women to
preserve wholesome relationships for the well-being of the other. It is a
campaign for education of the heart (i.e., medieval term for “will” or “inner
core”). It is education in character, education in love, or education towards
the personal commitment to the true meaning of love.
What
is love?
Love,
like all important things in life, is a decision to commit oneself to further
the welfare and to help improve the life of another.
There
are various kinds of love:
Agapic
love is the eternal love of the Creator for all of mankind.
Patriotic
love is love of and loyalty to one’s country.
Filial
love is the parental, brotherly, or sisterly love.
Platonic
love is the non-romantic love between friends of the opposite sex.
Romantic love is the love that a man and a woman reserves for their
lifelong companion in marriage.
The
iKLR campaign is focused towards the better appreciation of romantic love. It
stresses love as a personal choice that entails entertaining and answering the
whole gamut of questions, and preparing for all the responsibilities that come
with it.
How
would you know if love is real?
Love (is)...
Lasts. It is not a
feeling; it is not fleeting.
Other-centered.
It is not selfish.
Values persons. It
does not use them.
Expects nothing in
return. It does not calculate costs.
Love is real when we
treat each other with respect, recognizing our each other’s uniqueness.
How do you keep love real?
For parents and teachers, KEEPING LOVE REAL means, first, living lives
of personal example and, second, finding ways to talk to their children /
students especially on real love, relationships and sexuality, on chastity.
For the media, KEEPING LOVE REAL means having a
genuine concern for the youth by showing what love really is, that it is driven
by respect and not by lust for pleasure. This can be shown by complementing the
efforts of the parents and the teachers in character education.
For the youth, KEEPING LOVE REAL means striving
to do what is right even at the height of confusing situations.
What is chastity?
Chastity is a commitment
to real love, a life-long commitment of respect for one’s self and one’s
partner, which can be shown in our lifestyle, decisions, and actions.
Sex is an act most
intimate and personal that is reserved for a man and woman, who have proven
their respect for each other, shown that their love is real, and decisively
committed themselves towards a life of love until death do them part.
Chastity is not just
virginity because even those who’ve lost it can still stand up and decide to
lead his/her life in chastity. Chastity is a matter of now and tomorrow. It is not just abstinence because chastity is
motivated solely by real love, but abstinence may be motivated by
self-interest. It is not a struggle only before marriage but even in marriage,
by remaining faithful to one’s spouse and children.
Practicing the virtue of
chastity means discipline and self-control. It is important in a relationship
as it’s the best way to test if love is
real.
What is the importance of the campaign?
We are bombarded with
conflicting messages. It is about time that we speak out about real love, to
eventually bring down the divorce rate and save families, to prevent unwanted
teenage pregnancies and let the youth their lives as they should, to decrease
the number of HIV victims and let people take this worry of their backs.
A simple love campaign may in fact serve as the key to solving pertinent
social problems.