These people are NUTS!!!$ (work in progress)

"They gave her a charm for her bracelet--a lock in the shape of a heart. Her father has the key. On my wedding day, he'll give it to my husband," she explains. "It's a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since it means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I'm supposed to be loved."

augh.


it gets worse...

Kylie talks with an unblinking confidence about a promise that she says is spiritual, mental and physical. "It's something I'm very proud of. I plan to keep pure until marriage. It's a promise I made to myself--not pressure from my parents," she says. She speaks plainly about what she wants in her life, what she thinks she has the power to control and what she doesn't. "I'm very much at peace about this," she says, and looks out across the twirling room. "I don't feel like I need to seek a man. I will be found."

and worse...

"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.""

I'm sorry, people, you are crazy. Just totally insane. What do you think all this religiosity and "covering" and "authority" are going to do? You've done such a lousy job of teaching your kids your values, teaching them to be honorable and thoughtful, that you have to have these sham ceremonials? Your kids should be able to discern right and wrong without having keys and hearts and other cutesy-poo doodads to remind them that Big Daddy is watching you.

Not Big Brother, Big Daddy. Not just your fleshly father but that big Dude up there in the sky who will, you are sure, reward you in some manner for being so righteous and pure.

You have a small god that reflects your small minds. You have a tiny, little restricted world-view that shields you from anything you would rather not know about. You associate only with those that agree with your limited outlook. You make your decisions based on the supposed infallibility of a book put together by fallable human beings. You sit in your sanctuaries and suck up every supposed inspired word that human being up there on the podium speaks.

How do you know that person isn't a closet homosexual? A pedophile? A wife-beater?* How do you know that person didn't spend the night before giving forth the inspired word of god doing something physically and morally frightful?

You don't know that.

How do you explain this little ceremonial?

"After dinner comes the ballet performance, when seven tiny ballerinas in white tulle float in; then seven older dancers carry in a large, heavy wooden cross, which they drape in white, with a crown of thorns. Four of the five Wilson daughters are among the dancers, and they offer a special dance to their father, to the music of Natalie Grant: Your faith, your love And all that you believe Have come to be the strongest part of me And I will always be your baby$ ...Then Randy and his friend Kevin Moore stand in front of the cross, holding up two large swords, points crossed. Fathers and daughters process beneath the swords to kneel; the girls place a white rose at the base of the cross while the fathers offer a quiet blessing."

Patriarchical? Definitely.
Frightening? Absolutely.

To think that a good sized segment of our population engages in this display of medieval behavior speaks volumes about the fundamentalist mindset and intellectual freedom.** To my mind, this is a psychological version of an iron chastity belt. To illustrate? "She used to wear a purity ring, he says, until a boy she knew assaulted her; she took it off--felt too dirty. Her parents gave her a new one, a bigger one; it took many months and much therapy, her father goes on, before she was able to put a ring on again. "That was part of a healing process," he says, "with the message that you're valuable no matter what someone did to you."" How many girls who didn't have this type of indoctrination would have had months of therapy because they felt "dirty?"*** Did that poor child get the idea that the assault was her doing? That, too is unclear. What is clear to me, as an observer, is that her parents planted the seeds of that "dirty" feeling in their daughter.

I have some pretty extensive experience with fundamentalists. I tried for some years to shut my problematic mind off and follow along with the party line. I never managed to really do it. Something always kept me from jumping completely in. Some very clear images still remain, permanently locked in memory. One is cleaning the church every week to pay for tuition to school so I could learn Koine Greek, then having the pastor tell me I couldn't graduate because I missed some classes because of family responsibilities (sick kids.) Another memory is pastors and their families driving expensive cars bought with their pay, owning boats, wearing fancy clothes and taking expensive vacations, funding for all of which was coming directly out of the pockets of those who usually couldn't afford that 10% tithe. This not just at one church, but a lot of them.

The people in the story remind me strongly of many of the religious I knew in the past.

I can say, for good or bad, I don't buy it any more.

I can also say that people like this aren't likely to ever step back and objectively look at what they believe.

There are so many things wrong with the whole concept of "purity balls" that it boggles my mind trying to think of them all.





$ Purity Balls
* To be sure, your world view might be able to justify spousal abuse for certain infractions.
$ Does this remind anyone else of a serious case of emotional retardation? What female in her right mind wants to be Daddy's Baby for the rest of her life? Gawd.
** Abstinence Clearinghouse estimates there were more than 4,000 purity events across the country last year, with programs aimed at boys now growing even faster.
*** It is unclear from the context of the article whether this assault is a rape or what.