It has become fashionable in some quarters on the Christian Right to host so-called "purity balls" in which young girls, some as young as 9 YO, pledge to their fathers to remain virgins until they are married. By newspaper reports it is a white dress & tux affair, with all the ambience of a wedding.
No sane person thinks it is a good idea for young girls to start sleeping around ASAP, but I can't help but thinking the whole idea of "purity balls" is rather nasty. To me it seems to carry a sort of pedophiliac shadow behind it.
The newspapers go on to report a study in which it was found that 88% of such young pledgers fail to keep their pledge, and because of their attendant shame engage in more unprotected sex and take other kinds of risk with their sexual behavior.
The practical consequences are important & but I continue to feel poleaxed by the ugly esthetics of such dirty puritanism.
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