Christian Leftist

If you were watching ABC news on March 6th this year (I know, who can remember the news from yesterday, let alone two months ago?), then you caught wind of the new emerging phenomenon of ‘chastity balls.’ I realize the prominence of these balls isn’t hot news, but they irked me so much that I just had to share some thoughts about them. *shudder*

So, “chastity balls.” From Victorian times to the present, we’ve changed a couple of the letters in the last word and gone from metal belt-like devices that look like the sanitary napkin belts from hell to a figurative lock around the female groins of our progeny. Across the nation, faith-based groups (and in the Bush era, that means conservative ‘Christian’ groups) help these pseudo-Prom events sprout like daisies from local communities. The daughter takes a date to a high-school social event, all right – Dad. They share a first dance, sit around for a moral lecture or two and chow down on white wedding cakes, all in formal gown and tuxes. Then the couples exchanges vows – well, actually, only the daughter has to exchange a real vow – to stay a virgin until she marries. Does Dad make sure his daughter doesn’t eat more than one piece so that she can keep her size 4 figure, too?

Never mind that the idea of girls slow dancing with their fathers on any date other than their weddings is really, really creepy. Never mind that the sons aren’t expected to make similar vows to their mothers or attend chastity balls at all. The patently false idea hidden within the whole concept is much more chilling. As one father put it, if his daughter has premarital sex, giving away the bride is meaningless, “Because I wouldn’t have anything to give away.”

Hence the whole objectification of virginity as property that can be taken, stolen, sold, the act of which makes the girl ‘worth less’ than she was when she was a virgin. Or simply worthless.

I don’t need to go into the studies of how more than 50 percent of teens who take these chastity pledges end up having unprotected sex within three years, or how those teens end up practicing unsafe sex because they are taught that contraceptives mean they ‘planned in advance to sin,’ so it’s better to just let sex happen accidentally (and unsafely). These people buy into the concept that fathers own the sexual rights of their daughters: their bodies, their hearts, their souls.

Chattel, anyone?

 I bet the sponsors of chastity balls think that mothers promising to guard their sons’ bodies until marriage would reek of an Oedipal complex. But hey, the other way around is fine. Guess they didn’t read the story about Agamemnon’s kids.

Oh, will the trail of underqualified, overly righteous, neo-conservative appointees from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell’s colleges who commit political suicide never end?

As for Randall Tobias, the Boston Globe article that describes his past controversial positions on AIDS treatment programs really says it all in the first sentence:

“Randall L. Tobias , the Bush administration official responsible for foreign assistance who resigned late Friday because of his use of an escort service allegedly involved in prostitution, was ridiculed as a hypocrite yesterday because he supported US policies that forced overseas organizations not to help prostitutes.”

This is what happens when people try to play the moral police. Whatever happened to loving the least of one’s brethren? People are going to have sex whether you think it’s right for them to do so or not. Why did the Bush administration assume that they themselves were infallible pillars of morality?

I really couldn’t care less if Tobias received ‘massages’ in a house not his own from the fingers of a woman not his wife, or what specific types of therapy those massages entailed. That’s his problem and God’s. It probably throws his personal character into doubt, but the fact is that as long as he didn’t use government property to do it, it’s solicitation at worst, because morals aren’t the same as ethics.

At least, they’re not supposed to be. Now, because Tobias has injected his personal religious beliefs (and those of the Bush administration) into policy, he has made himself look like a dogmatic imbecile and a fraud. Deservedly so, in my opinion, but the point remains that no one can or should judge another’s private sex life. Abstinence education is an oxymoron because it presumes that using unfounded conclusions from biased think tanks to tell people to control their biological urges is more sensible than teachingthem how to use condoms.