What teenage girl would want to be “covered” by her father in areas of purity? Plenty, it seems, if the ongoing success of the Purity Balls is anything to go by. At these balls, fathers pay over US$100 to crow over their daughters’ virginity, pledging publicly to maintain it until they hand them over to another man in marriage.

According to the New York times:

The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing, was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.
Yet the graying men in the shadow of their glittering daughters were the true focus of the night. To ensure their daughters’ purity, they were asked to set an example and to hew to evangelical ideals in a society they say tempts them as much as it does their daughters.
“It’s also good for me,” said Terry Lee, 54, who attended the ball for a second year, this time with his youngest daughter, Rachel, 16. “It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.”

Three out of four of the two million American teens who pledge abstinence each year wind up having sex before marriage. I wonder what the odds are that their fathers maintain their own moral standards?

Well, perhaps not everything. I couldn’t check out the clips — that would cost me US$99.99. But a look at the subject menu shows no mention of sexually transmitted infections, no mention of HIV, no mention of condoms or other contraceptives. STIs do feature prominently in a press release about the site, so these things may well be featured in the (apparently rather clinical but perfectly sensible) information available. But if I were a parent, I’d want to know that I would get information on these critically important issues before parting with my 100 bucks. In the meantime, I think I’ll just stick with the zany but informative (and above all free) Midwest Teen Sex Show.

When I first came across this story I checked the date on it, just in case it was an April Fool. But no, abstinence-only sex education really has left some teenagers that ignorant, according to Planned Parenthood’s Jenna Cawley. This has shocked some Florida politicians into proposing something really radical: sex education that actually includes information about sex. The bill got through it’s first committee session by just one vote. It would have to clear another three committees and be approved on the floor of the state senate before kids in Florida could hear about condoms. Local reporters judge the chances of that “slim”.

In response to this taxpayer-funded pap, Josh Covitt & Whit Hertford at The Attack made a more useful video, which asks the questions your pookie bear really wants answered (such as “How do I put a condom on with my mouth?”). It’s one of the better ads I’ve seen. Straight up. My only question is: how come it is categorised as “parody”?

Thanks to Jeff Ballinger.

Here’s one example, about that oh-so-taboo topic, anal sex:

I do have one question for the MidWest Teen Sex crowd: do they, like me, find themselves dumped in people’s spam filters (and zoned out completely from their Chinese audience) because the electronic guardians of our collective morality assume they are purveyors of porn?