Worth The Wait Blog

No 'Glee' About Virginity

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:50:16 -0600

By Brent Bozell
In Hollywood, the only truly serious sexual disease is virginity. It's a dire and embarrassing condition, desperately in need of elimination. Teenagers that still have "it" are woefully immature. They might as well consider themselves to be walking the school hallways in diapers.
Along comes Fox Entertainment to enlighten us. Get ready. It's sick.
Fox's "Glee" devoted an entire episode on Nov. 8 to setting up and celebrating the shedding of virginity by two teenage couples on the show. One was heterosexual, and one -- yippee! -- was homosexual. TV critics were raving in advance. Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack all but demanded everyone watch: "It's without a doubt one of Glee's best installments ever and features two popular couples on the show having sex for the first time."
This is a show with an enraptured following of teenagers, especially teenage girls. Children love the musical numbers and stay for the propaganda. Stack was especially thrilled that the gay teens Kurt and Blaine would "finally decide to take the next step in their relationship." When you're 17, it's time for "finally" getting over the dreaded V-word. Stack oozed, "It's all handled very delicately and is incredibly moving. I can't think of another network series that's taken a teenage gay relationship so far or been so progressive."
Entertainment Weekly put the "Glee" gay-teen couple on the cover of their magazine back in January to pay tribute to "How a bold new class of young gay characters on shows like 'Glee' is changing hearts, minds and Hollywood." Boundaries must be pushed and traditional values smashed. Network executives only insist this be scheduled to air during November sweeps.
Kristin Dos Santos, a blogger for the E entertainment channel was too desperate for the show to start. One blog post began, "Enough with the foreplay already!" In another, she crowed: "Tonight is the night, Glee fans! Candles lit? Sheets silky? Music playing? Check, check, check."
This very special episode of Glee romanticized the "first time" from beginning to end. The musical teens at McKinley High performed "West Side Story," but for some odd reason, the director was a teenager.
As the episode begins, the director finds that his two romantic leads are still virgins, which will allegedly ruin everything. They will be exposed as drama frauds since the musical is about "sexual awakening."
"As a friend, I support your strange aversion to fun. As your director, I'm concerned." Virginity is thus shameful, slightly psychotic and a "strange aversion." The lecture continues: "How do you expect to convey the human experience to an audience when you haven't ever opened up yourself to one of humanity's most basic and primal ones?"
Two teachers in the room who are supervising the musical quickly vacate the room once virginity came up between the teens -- because, as perfectly written for Fox, they're both adults still burdened with the shame of virginity. They're sympathetic characters, but they're romantically disabled. In short, they're lovable losers.
Since he's been intimidated that it's time to "lose it," Blaine insists to Kurt that it's time for adventure. "Don't you think now is the time to be adventurous, while we're still young?" In their hunt for "adventure," the high school senior and junior go to a gay bar called Scandals, where their fake ID cards are approved and they can experience Drag Queen Night. This is how "progressive" Fox can be at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central time. Sixth-graders can now talk about "gay bars" and "drag queens." Who said TV can't be educational?
As for Finn the quarterback and Rachel the aspiring Broadway star, their first attempt at "love" when parents are missing is ruined when Rachel confesses she's mostly eager to improve her acting. Then she turns to her fellow females in the glee club for advice. On the side of retaining virginity is only fear and disgust: fear of pregnancy (from one who gave a baby up) and disgust that the quarterback is terrible in bed. There was no debate.
There is only advertising. The "progressive" side has only beauty and romance. One girl goes into a reverie about her first time the previous summer, complete with snippets of a love song from "West Side Story." It was "just right, not rushed. It was amazing." As the song ends in a crescendo, she declares, "He's my first love, and I'll always look back at that moment as absolutely perfect."
Fox used the same tactic for the final scene, where the fireside consummation of the two "first times" among teenagers is celebrated as Blaine and Rachel sing the love song "One Hand, One Heart." It's implied that both performers have now mastered the authenticity of their love scene...by overcoming their terrible, odious virginity

How Far is Too Far?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:50:41 -0500

(From Chastity.com)Often we get so involved in intense relationships that it is hard to sit back and look into our hearts. One young man said, “I heard somebody say that you can judge your own character by the things you do in private. I’d take that a step further and say you can judge your own character by the things you do with your girlfriend.”[1] Some people assume, “As long as I’m being a virgin, I’m being good.” They compare themselves with others who are sleeping around, and as long as they see the world from that perspective, they feel that they are right on track. Meanwhile, they give away bits of themselves in passing relationships, all under the pretense that their classmates or coworkers are worse.Do yourself a favor: do not get technical about drawing a line at virginity and saying that all else goes. If you cannot decide if a particular action is “too far,” imagine your future bride or groom sharing that act with another person. If the thought of this makes you hesitate, listen to your conscience. Make decisions now that would bless the heart of your future spouse, not wound it. (And do not be quick to discuss the specifics of your prior experience with potential spouses; a lot of that information could do far more harm than good.)So where does the line go? For starters, know that the line begins in your mind. As soon as you begin to lust after a girl, stop. In regard to physical lines, an easy guideline to remember is, “Don’t touch what you don’t got.” Also, I recommend no passionate kissing, kissing below the chin, or lying down together. That may seem extreme to some, but the more you become sensual and physical in a relationship, the more the relationship begins to revolve around that.I will admit that this sounds a lot like no, no, no, and no, but think of it like this. There is a highway in California that runs up the coast. It is a gorgeous ride that takes you along the side of a sheer cliff that drops hundreds of feet to the ocean. Imagine that you were cruising along in your priceless sports car, and the passenger with you remarked, “Man, there is another one of those stupid guardrails. And look, another sign saying there is a sharp turn ahead. I hate how the California highway system inhibits your freedom and tells you what to do.” Odds are, you would not let the guy drive your car.When we hear different moral laws about our sexuality, they are there for the same reason that guardrails and signposts mark a person’s drive along the Pacific Coast Highway. If you want to express your freedom as you drive off the cliff, you are free to do so. But the purity of your soul is worth much more than a car. The Church’s moral laws are there for our sake, so that we do not fall for counterfeit versions of love.If you have tried everything else for years, try purity. You will not regret it. Each year I speak to over one hundred thousand teens about dating, sex, and relationships, and I have never met one who regretted what he or she did not do with a date. I have never had a girl come up to me in tears after a chastity talk because she did not sleep with her boyfriend. I have never had a guy confide in me that he was scared to death that his girlfriend was not pregnant. They regret what they have done, not what they have saved.Imagine you were dating a beautiful young woman you hoped to marry, and she had never kissed anyone because she wanted only her husband to experience her kiss. What man would not be flattered by her integrity and purity? What man would send her away to go a little further with the other guys? If we would be so honored by her, why would we not want to make a woman feel honored in the same way?

The Cohabitation Revolution

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:30:23 -0500

Rich Lowry: The cohabitation revolution BY RICH LOWRY Published: August 30, 2011The great divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s has faded. The great cohabitation revolution has begun.The divorce rate for married couples with children is almost back to the levels of the early 1960s, before the run-up that crested in the early 1980s. Considering the decades of social turbulence buffeting the institution of marriage between then and now, this is a notable restoration.But it only means marriage is unraveling in a different way. According to a new study by the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, cohabitation has increased 14-fold since 1970. Twenty-four percent of children are born to cohabiting couples, more than are born to single mothers, while another 20 percent experience a cohabiting household at some time in their childhood.On the face of it, this doesn't seem alarming. At least there are two adults there for the kids. Except the research says it isn't enough. Children in cohabiting households tend to lag children in intact married families on key social indicators and are not much better off than children in single-parent families.We want to believe that all relationships, so long as they are loving and well-intentioned, are equal. It feels like an offense against 21st-century mores to say otherwise. Who are we to make invidious distinctions among loving adults? But there is simply no substitute for marriage, for the relative stability and commitment it provides, and for the environment it creates for children.As a general matter, compared with married couples, people across the gamut of cohabiting relationships report “more conflict, more violence, and lower levels of satisfaction and commitment,” in the words of the National Marriage Project study. This basically holds true of unmarried biological parents who are living together. Cohabiting couples with a child are more than twice as likely to break up as married parents. Only 24 percent of children of married parents experience a change in the relationship status of their mothers by age 12. The figure for the children of cohabiting couples is 65 percent.This is especially consequential for the affected children. The study notes “an emerging scholarly consensus that family stability in and of itself is linked to positive child outcomes.” Children who experience a divorce or some other — to use the jargon — “maternal partnership transition” are more likely “to experience behavioral problems, drug use, problems in school, early sex, and loneliness.”Advantages run deepOur pop culture tends to celebrate what one sociologist calls “the carousel of intimate relationships” that adults are constantly hopping on and off. Although “Modern Family” has replaced “Leave It to Beaver” as the TV sitcom paradigm of American family life, children have more trouble in complex households formed by people unrelated by birth or marriage. “Children in stepfamilies,” according to the study, “are more likely to experience school failure, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration than children growing up in intact, married families.”Children turn out to benefit from the structure, rituals and identity that come with a lasting marriage between their parents. And the very act of committing to the norms of marriage makes adults better marital partners and parents. One of the more affecting pieces of data in this study is that fathers committed to marriage are more likely to hug their children than fathers who aren't. One of the more disturbing is that children in cohabiting households are more likely to be abused than children both in intact, married families and single-parent families.The advantages of marriage run much deeper than merely having two adults in the house. It is an irreplaceable source of social capital. As we move away from it and social scientists study the consequences, we learn more about why it was such a timeless institution — once upon a time.

Girl's Pay High Price For Premarital Sex

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:24:30 -0500

A recent study in the Journal of Marriage and Family, coming from a University of Iowa researcher, should be flashing caution lights across the American landscape. The study shows that girls who had premarital sex before 18 were more likely, than those who had refrained from sex, to obtain a divorce within the first 5 years of marriage. In an unrelated study, Family Research Council's Dr. Pat Fagan charted the fact that the more sexual partners women have before marriage the more likely they are to divorce once married. The promotion of promiscuity is affecting not only the institution of marriage but it also is a major health issue. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data released last year showed an alarming 40 percent of teen girls who are sexually active are infected with an STD.When liberals took over Congress and the White House, they zeroed out abstinence education and increased the already massive funding for questionable "comprehensive" sex education that in part tells teens that "showering together" is a "green light" activity, and often provides inaccurate information about condom effectiveness rates. In 2010 the government funded sex-ed programs to the tune of $874.1 million compared to the $50 million Title V state abstinence program. As if this isn't enough, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebellius is proposing to use a "preventive care" slush fund in Obamacare for yet another $110 million for "teen pregnancy prevention" in 2012. And in a bow to both pro-abortion and pro-same-sex "marriage" activists, Secretary Sebellius just announced a rule forbidding grantees under the "Healthy Marriage Initiative" welfare reform program from teaching abstinence until marriage education.Congress must fix this by restoring abstinence education and eliminating "comprehensive" programs on next year's spending bills which they are drafting right now. It's time for Congress to restore abstinence education and not continue to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on programs that do little to fix these rising problems.

Purity Rings

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:32:08 -0500

I first became aware of the concept of purity rings in the early 1990’s when I read the book, Raising Them Chaste: A Practical Strategy for Helping Your Teen Wait Till Marriage, by authors Richard and Renee Durfield. The book presented a strategy for helping students live a pure life in an impure world. After over 10 years of youth ministry at that point, it was revolutionary to my thoughts of healthy relationships. In the book, parents are called to be being proactive in their children’s relational life instead of forfeiting to the secular culture their children’s future. Instead of wishing and hoping that their kids would wind up OK, they could do something about it. What was revolutionary for me was the thought that parents had the right to be involved in their children’s relationships and that there are common-sense ways to do it that could help reach the desired outcome.

In the book the Durfields talked about how they had taken each of their children out on a special night to dinner and presented them with what we now call a purity ring. The purity ring was to be a reminder of their commitment to wait until marriage to enter into sexual intercourse. The purity ring was also to be an outward symbol to friends of their commitment to purity. Thus the purity ring became another layer of protection for the child. Finally the purity ring was to be worn until marriage, at which time the purity ring was to be presented to the wearer’s spouse. Hopefully there will be two purity rings to present at the wedding: one by both the bride and the groom.

In past generations a white dress was symbolic of purity at the time of marriage. Today…..not so much. In fact, one advice columnist downgraded the value of the symbolism behind the white dress, declaring, “a white dress merely means that it’s the bride’s first wedding.” The purity ring now reestablishes the pride one can take in the fact that they cared enough about the one they are marrying to deny themselves and wait until marriage to experience Biblical sexuality. Nothing is more romantic.

One of the most moving things I have witnessed in over 30 years of ministry is conducting wedding ceremonies where the couple exchanged purity rings. Those witnessing the exchange are without exception deeply moved when the purity rings are exchanged. As I conduct such ceremonies, I tastefully explain what the meaning of the exchange of purity rings is about. Afterward I am inundated by people telling me that they have never seen a purity ring ceremony conducted and how good it made them feel. I am also moved by teens and young adults who tell me that they hope to someday have a purity ring ceremony as part of their wedding ceremony.

We started selling purity rings in 1995, almost as soon as we established Worth the Wait as a full-time endeavor. Since then we have sold many thousands of purity rings to students across America. Each purity ring symbolizes someone who believes that they don’t have to fall victim to the seduction of our culture and someone who trusts God enough to wait for His very best.

One of our original goals of Worth The Wait was to make the youth leader’s/organizer’s job easy. We now bring several varieties of purity rings with us to each church/event we are involved in so there is no need to pre-order, thus making it more convenient for youth leaders and organizers. We also sell purity rings to churches who are interested in doing their own programs. For the most part, you can get purity ring orders in two-three days no matter how many purity rings you order. We have provided as many at 250+ purity rings for large churches and as few as one purity ring for a small church. In our travels we have learned to quickly size those wanting a purity ring, so we can take care of high volumes of purity ring purchasers very quickly. Upon finishing sizing of the purity ring, the purity ring is then given to the parents of the student or a caring adult. At the conclusion of the service we normally have a ceremony where the parent/caring adult puts the purity ring on the finger of the student. Thus, the purity ring becomes a symbol of a spiritual contract to help the student maintain his/her commitment to purity.

Finally, we encourage students to wear their purity ring until marriage, and once they have taken it off, to save their purity ring. Then, someday, should God bless them with children of their own and when it is time to address the topic of healthy, Biblical sexuality, they are encouraged to have a family event where parents (who were once presented the purity ring by their parents) pass along their purity ring to their own children. Thus the purity ring becomes a family legacy, a heritage, and a great love story to pass along from generation to generation.

A Generation of Divorce Testifies to the Importance of Marriage

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:57:24 -0400

By Collette Caprara

In a snapshot summary of her just released memoir, In Spite of Everything, Susan Gregory Thomas gives a firsthand account of what remains of children and parents after the devastation of divorce. Thomas presents a vivid portrait of the children of divorce in her neighborhood who, with her, wandered as “sad-eyed, bruised nomads.”

Decades of research underscore the truth of Thomas’ anecdotal account and the plight and trajectories of those lonely children. Adolescents who do not live in intact families are more likely to engage in substance abuse, exhibit behavioral problems, have poor academic performance, and engage in risky behavior, including becoming sexually active at an early age. In addition, children who do not live with both parents are more likely to experience psychological and emotional problems, ranging from low levels of social competence and self-esteem to anxiety and depression.

Like others who grew up at the peak of the divorce culture, Thomas vowed she would never inflict the same pain on her own children. Yet, regardless of intentions and resolutions, statistics show that children tend to follow the marital trajectory of their parents. Children who have experienced parental divorce tend to experience more problematic and less rewarding marriages and are more likely to divorce. In fact, even the divorce of grandparents has been linked to a greater likelihood of third-generation divorce.

As Thomas notes, adult children who have experienced the “torture of a split family” often attempt to ensure the stability of their future marriages by testing the waters with a period of cohabitation. She cites that nearly 60 percent of couples who entered a first marriage in the early 2000s had previously cohabited, as she had done. However, statistics reveal that this intended failsafe is in fact a failure: Couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to separate and less likely to reconcile after a separation, more likely to experience infidelity, and more likely to subsequently divorce, as Thomas did.