19/05/08

Balls to purity, this is therapy for Dads

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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?

This post was published on 19/05/08 in Ideology and HIV.

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  1. Comment by Amanda, 19/05/08, 06:41:

    Yes, I read about this in Glamour magazine a year or so ago. It was repulsive in the extreme.

    Parents should educate their children about the world (including sex). But taking control of their child’s sexuality to the point of “owning” it?

    The Glamour article made it clear the fathers were owning their daughters in a way I found more sexually problematic than a little groping between teens.

    Oh, and their fathers? They visit escorts.

    XX

  2. Comment by Anonymous, 10/04/11, 09:59:

    Since most of you are void of the Holy Spirit in your comments, it’s no wander that your envy is rearing it’s ugly head. Regret is a wasted emotion on the fact that you gave your selves away with out purity. You hypocrits-chasing down a beam in their dad’s eye while you have a saw mill in your own..,signed, a reformed sex addict.

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