Let's talk about balls!

Purity balls, that is.  The creepy, creepy, creepy 'swear your virginity over to your daddy' things.  Time apparently thinks that they're swell and in no way creepy.

It was an elbow in the ribs from his wife that drove Ken Lane to his first purity ball with their daughter Hannah, now 11. Tonight is their fourth, and they are sitting in the gold-and-white Broadmoor ballroom, picking at the chicken Florentine and trying to explain what they're doing here. "My kids are on loan to me for a season; it's important how I use that time," Ken is saying as a string quartet plays softly. "There's a lot for us to talk through--the decisions she'll have to make are more complex. I want to be close enough to her that she can come talk to me. That's what my wife understood. I didn't understand the role dads can play to set her up for success.

"Okay, so far it's pretty benign.  I'm not a tremendous fan of this approach but, hey, fine.  Let's continue to the next paragraph...

In the face of the hook-up culture of casual sexual experimentation, he explains, with its potential physical and emotional risks, he wants to model an alternative. Even with older teenagers, many of these families don't believe in random dating but rather intentional dating, which typically begins with a young man's asking a father for permission to get to know his daughter. Lane was so stymied by how exactly that conversation would go that he even asked Randy Wilson if he could sit at a nearby table and listen in one day when Wilson met one of Khrystian's potential suitors at a local Starbucks. "We're trying to be realistic," Lane says. "I'm not ready to be like India--have arranged marriages. But there is some wisdom there, in that at least the parents are involved."

...And take a screeching hard right straight into Loony Land.  "Random" dating?  Asking for dad's permission to "get to know" a teenage girl?  What the hell?  Amongst the many, many issues with this is the fact that, unless Little Princess is cloistered in an all-girls boarding school, she's going to get to know guys even without Daddy's permission.  Seriously, that's just ridiculous.  You want a 15-year-old boy to sit down with a potential girlfriend's father to ask permission to take her to the movies?  What universe do these people live in?*

So they're a lot of crazy.  Let's move on to Time's take:

Maybe mixed messages aren't just inevitable; they're valuable. On the one hand, for all the conservative outcry, there is no evidence that giving kids complete and accurate information about sex and contraception encourages promiscuity. On the other, a purity pledge basically says sex is serious. That it's not to be entered into recklessly. To deny kids information, whether about contraception or chastity, is irresponsible; to mock or dismiss as unrealistic the goal of personal responsibility in all its forms may suit the culture, but it gives kids too little power, too little control over their decisions, as though they're incapable of making good ones. The research suggests they may be more capable of high standards than parents are. "It's always tempting as a parent to say, Do as I say, not as I do," says a father who's here for the first time. "But it's more valuable to make the commitment yourself. Children can spot hypocrisy very quickly."

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.  For one, you know what else is generally regarded as serious and not to be entered into lightly?  Pledges and oaths, you asswits.  An eight-year-old has no idea what they're committing to in this case, for the love of god.  If you're four years away from really entering puberty, swearing to daddy to stay his virginal princess is rather meaningless.  

Secondly, I do agree absolutely that withholding any information regarding sex when kids are being taught about it is grossly negligent and setting them up for failure.  It wasn't really great but compared to a lot of programs, the sex-ed component of my high school health class was pretty solid.  Here are the diseases you can get if you have sex, and some of them can't be treated.  Here are various ways to prevent disease and/or pregnancy.  None of them work perfectly, but some - such as condoms used together with the Pill - are nearly perfect if used properly.  Abstinence is the only truly perfect way of avoiding sex-related unpleasantries**.  Sex can be a big deal both physically and emotionally.

There.  That's what kids need to be taught about sex.  It's supported by scientific fact, not religious woo-woo bullshit.  Teaching about contraception does not take away from the message that sex is serious; in fact, if it's done right, it strengthens that message: Here's what condoms prevent, fun things like gonorrhea and syphilis and babies.  Father-daughter dances do nothing to really support that message, but rather, they treat sex and virginity as some sort of ethereal...thing that has more to do with being Daddy's Little Girl*** than making rational choices about your physical and emotional health.  

Argh.

*Okay, I can't possibly resist saying this, but I will bet you anything that these are people who do not hesitate to scream obscene condemnations at Islam for their rules regarding male/female interactions.  I bet you anything.  

**So one day in either 11th or 12th grade health class, we're given these newsletter-pamphlet things published by the Wasting Department Money branch of the education or public health department of a local university.  One of the stories - and I remember this so vividly - is "Think Abstinence is 100% Effective?  Think Again!"

...yeah.

So I read it, and it's some girl's boo-hoo story about how she swore she was going to be abstinent until marriage.  Then she had sex with a guy and got pregnant.  So the moral of the story was that humans have sex drives, and abstinence doesn't work if you don't, you know, abstain.  *sigh*

***But hey, if we want to just support father-daughter bonding, I'm all for that.  Dads are great.  The world needs more active, involved dads.  My dad is and always was fantastic: there when I needed him, we did fun stuff together, taught me how to ride a bike and throw a ball and all that.  Father-daughter bonding is absolutely great and something we as a society probably need more of, but intertwining it with virginity turns it into a creepy, possession-themed thing.