<p>As parents and members of a conservative denomination we have spoken to our daughters about abstinence. My daughter’s reaction to the article was also “eeeww”. It’s not the goal that the people on this board object to it is the means.</p>
<p>I couldn’t read past page one. It reminds me of that Promisekeeper movement, where men fill football stadiums and get lectured to about the imortance of keeping marital vows. I always thought their marriages would have a much better chance of staying healthy if the guys were at home with the family! </p>
<p>DIfferent strokes, I guess. H & D would rather eat glass shards than attend an event like this. It’s a private family matter in our view. No need to share our discussions with the world.</p>
<p>Okay…my d had a father/daughter dance when she was in Girl Scouts…but it had nothing to do with VIRGINITY. It was more about using the right fork and practicing ballroom dancing technique. (My husband would totally freak about the purity pledge thing…literally… fingers in ears singing ‘lalalalala’.)</p>
<p>I’ll join the ‘creeped out’ crowd.</p>
<h2>“God has been throwing some curveballs lately, though; a week before the ball, Mike and Christy Parcha’s pastor, Ted Haggard, a man who has openly railed against gay marriage, made headlines nationwide when he admitted to receiving a massage from a man (one who claimed Haggard had paid him for sex), showing how at odds what is preached and what is practiced can be.”</h2>
<p>Maybe if we could get the clergy to work on honoring their marriage vows, they wouldn’t have the time to create ways to set back the rights of their daughters a few hundred years.</p>
<p>There is nothing about this that is relevant to my life. Thank God.</p>
<p>I’m really concerned about the motives of someone who would take a 4 year old child to an event and like this and have her sign a pledge about her sexuality. Getting a child too young to understand, desensitized to an adult taking an interest in/having control over her non existent sexuality? To me it seems like grooming.</p>
<p>Just by the comments on here, you can see how close to incestuous this feels to people.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think this kind of stuff can too often mask (or validate) sexual abuse.</p>
<p>Tarhunt–what does BCE mean? besides Before the Christian Era?</p>
<p>You can stop hyperventilating: I don’t think your girls will get the wrong idea from Glamour that virginity is desirable or anything based on this article, obviously. But just in case, there’s always the rest of the magazine to make certain the correct values are instilled in them:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/feature/articles/2006/07/31/Jake[/url]”>http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/feature/articles/2006/07/31/Jake</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/sextips/articles/2006/10/30/hutcherson06dec[/url]”>http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/sextips/articles/2006/10/30/hutcherson06dec</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/slideshows/2006/10/02/secretsexlives[/url]”>http://www.glamour.com/sexmen/slideshows/2006/10/02/secretsexlives</a></p>
<p>The fact that Glamour magazine and similar mags seem to sell using sleazy sex articles doesn’t change the ewwwwwww for me about the story (or the magazine).
Tying a daughter’s sexual feelings together with what Daddy wants is asking for some deep issues forever. assuming casual dating and a kiss or two is somehow ruining you for your Fantasy Husband is a romance novel concept and imho can doom the girl from any normal marriage. Let’s face this-it is very close to an arranged marriage but without the cultural context.
Once again, they are taking bits and pieces of the Bible and making up their own rules.
I hope all the other ewwwwwwww will join me in remembering that the message of faith is not the same as some of the so-called messengers.</p>
<p>Yes, I feel for these girls and the whole concept is sick, imo. However, it’s interesting the OP and others here seem to have no problem with the articles above in Glamour and other magazines which are mainstream fare for our young teen girls, although this is the second or third time I’ve seen a thread started here on virginity pledges. There is a reason why articles on virginity are usually tied to extremist religious fanatics: the same reason that the OP chose this article to highlight.</p>
<p>The “marriage” to the father, complete with ring, is beyond creepy. There are plenty of ways to encourage your kids to wait till marriage without, well, making them a second spouse, sharing the mother’s duty to be sexually faithful to the father. I wonder how moms feel about their husbands dressing up and taking their daughters out for a romantic “date” evening at a dinner-dance to which they are not invited.</p>
<p>“seem to have no problem with the articles above in Glamour and other magazines”</p>
<p>Well, they don’t seem to be about incest. That’s a pretty big difference.</p>
<p>Ah, yes. Glamour deserves a big pat on the back for their cutting edge investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Huh? I think you’re confusing Glamour with Newsweek. Glamour writes lifestyle features intended to interest young women. I’d say they’re doing their job.</p>
<p>Nevermind, Hanna. I think we have a generation gap here. 
I remember Glamour magazine when I was in eighth grade and there was no sex in it at all. Imagine that. (No, I bet you can’t.) Sex is great, oh yeah, but I’m not a huge fan of it for 12 year old girls. Prude am I.</p>
<p>It seems like some of the families in the article are going the courtship/betrothal route rather than dating. Although usually those followers wear more conservative clothing (no bare shoulders).</p>
<p>I am all for people waiting until they are married until they are intimate. However, my D’s purity AND my S’s purity is between them and God. We have raised them in our faith. They know what our church says about premarital activity and H&I have reinforced those beliefs at home. Yet, the article still makes me squirm.</p>
<p>Since when was Glamour directed at a teenage audience? I thought that was what Seventeen was for…</p>
<p>The Puritans pretty much REQUIRED their daughters to have sex before marriage, and as many as two-thirds were pregnant before marriage, the idea being that only by knowing that a marriage would be fruitful would one know that God’s grace would shine down upon it.</p>
<p>In ancient Judaism, sex followed betrothal, not marriage (Mary would have been expected to have had sex or been pregnant before marrying Joseph.) This “purity” thing is not )at least originally) a Christian idea, but a product of Victoriana, as bizarre a covering the legs on the piano (because all they could think of when looking at a piano was sex.)</p>
<p>Glamour has never been aimed at 12 year-old girls. I think its target readership is probably older teens and twenty-somethings. Of course, no one can stop 8th graders (most of whom are now 14, not 12) from reading it, but I don’t think the editorial board has to keep the preferences of 8th graders’ parents in mind when deciding what to publish.</p>
<p>Hereshoping, I think that we’re about the same age. When I was in 8th grade (and, at 13, one of the youngest in my class) at an all-boys school, we used to bring in “dirty” books and read the “good parts” to each other during free periods. The really popular ones I remember were Portnoy’s Complaint, Fanny Hill, Barbarella, and Last Exit To Brooklyn. Needless to say, we were fond of Playboy as well – the opportunity to “read” it almost reconciled us to going to the barber for a haircut.</p>
<p>Obviously, sex was not news to us. Now, when I look at the differences between 8th grade boys and girls, I recognize that the girls are light-years ahead of the boys in physical and emotional maturity at that age. So I have to assume that sex wasn’t news to 8th grade girls back then, either.</p>
<p>“Imagine that. (No, I bet you can’t.)”</p>
<p>Could we please focus on the topic at hand, rather than on insulting me? Thanks.</p>
<p>There may be a lot of good reasons for young girls to refrain from sex, but being Daddy’s property isn’t one of them.</p>