Purity Balls

Focus on the Family is promoting a pretty interesting phenomenon called a Purity Ball, where fathers take their young daughters to a dance and then recite The Pledge: a commitment by the father to be manly and to guard his daughter's chastity.

“We want to help them enter marriage as pure, whole persons,” she said. “But it’s not just physical. It’s moral and emotional purity.”

So that means I'm not pure (I'll buy that), but I'm not a whole person either? I guess they're right w.r.t. the Bible. I think abstinence is a choice that deserves a lot of respect. I don't think I can ever understand what the idea of “physical and moral purity” truly means to the faithful though—I feel left out!

Googling Purity Ball returned this really great post on the subject, and I totally agree with this guy that the best way to protect kids is to inform them instead of instilling some abstract sense of guilt and dirtiness. I like his point on pre-marital sex, too, assuming it doesn't cause you to go to hell:

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, I think not having pre-marital sex is pretty idiotic. This is a separate issue from promiscuity -- I'm not a big fan of totally indiscriminate appendage insertion or acceptance -- but if you're serious enough about someone that you're contemplating marriage, you damn well better know what your own sexual playing field is, and you damn well better know if you're sexually compatible with your presumed marital partner.

I wouldn't call it 'idiotic' though.