#purity pledges

If you want to learn more about purity culture, the damage it can do, and how to undo some of that damage, these pieces are also worth a read.

Welcome to Impurity Culture: Emily Joy and Hannah Boning on Sex and Relationships Education for Evangelicals and Exvangelicals

According to the latest statistics, the average American loses their virginity at around 17. But between 1994 and 2004, as many as 2.5 million American youth signed abstinence pledges, promising to abstain from sex before marriage. The movement swept through conservative circles, with church youth groups passing out purity rings, meant to serve as placeholders for future wedding rings—symbols of chastity to be given to the wearer’s spouse on their wedding day. Girls as young as seven started attending father/daughter purity balls to pledge their abstinence until marriage, their fathers vowing to be the keepers of their daughters’ virginity. At the height of the abstinence pledge craze, over a million copies of the 1997 book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, were snapped up by families who wanted to keep their teens chaste. In it, 21-year-old author Joshua Harris—who’d gotten his start editing a Christian homeschooling magazine—urged young people to opt out of dating and try courtship instead, spending time with each other only in the midst of family or in groups, and saving all physical contact for marriage.

“Looking back on my teenage years, the main focus of youth group and girls’ Bible study was always centered on sexual purity,” says Annie P., who, as a Presbyterian pastor’s daughter, grew up in the church. “As a teenager, I saw a certain appeal to Harris’ model of courtship, because it seemed to be a formula to prevent all risk and guarantee a happy ending: Don’t date, plus have strict physical boundaries, equals find true love forever. So I signed my ‘True Love Waits’ pledge card, and fully intended to save sex for marriage—which, incidentally, I assumed would happen around 22 or 23.”

Purity pledges are legitimately one of the scariest practices that exists in modern American society. For one, they are formed on the notion of strengthening the father daughter relationship. This practice turns women into sexual objects whose value is placed only in their purity (code name: virginity), of which it is their fathers' duty to protect. They do this in the name of "god." Seriously, one young teenager was taught that one of the 10 commandments was about staying a virgin until marriage. It's one thing to practice your religion, but it is another matter entirely to completely, and arguable intentionally, misinterpret those teachings in order to completely brainwash your otherwise sheltered children. Personally, I don't think you should ever impose your religion on anyone, especially your young children who are not mature or educated enough to make decisions about what they believe at such a young age without being brainwashed, although that is another discussion entirely. On another note, it makes me so angry that abstinence only sex education exists, and that it is the only "sex" education that most teenagers have access to. I've learned more from Laci Green and the Midwest Teen Sex Show than I ever learned in health class. 

For reference:

The Virgin Daughters

Purity: Promise or Myth?

Laci Green