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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 2007 Gary Hardaway
695 words

CLASSY DADS SHOW DAUGHTERS THEIR WORTH AS WOMEN

By: Gary Hardaway

Let’s call her Charlotte (not her real name). Some years ago a classmate invited Charlotte to go to theircollege senior ball. She didn’t know the guy very well, but felt sorry for him because other girls had already turned him down. Out of sympathy, she accepted.

After the dining and dancing most of the night, they drove to a secluded lane, and Charlotte, as an act of sympathy and compassion, allowed the guy to have sex with her. They never had another date. A few weeks later she found out she was pregnant.

As prom season nears, many families dread to think what their sons and daughters will be doing after the ball is over. The culture tacitly encourages the kids to down copious amounts of alcohol and prove their sexual prowess by doing what comes naturally. Those who morally object are dismissed as hopeless prudes. Parents are expected to smile tolerantly and say, “They’re going to do it anyway.”

Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker notes with approval that evangelical Christians have come up with a more wholesome alternative: “Purity Balls.” These are, she says, “dress-up affairs during which fathers and daughters profess their allegiance to sexual purity.” Dads seek to "set a standard of dignity and honor for the way the girls should be treated by the men in their lives."

Some decades ago honorable men treated their dates with respect and near-reverence. Though presumably as sexually wired as today’s semi-predators, these good guys refused to unleash their impulses. They practiced self-discipline; they controlled their behavior. They acknowledged a duty to the girl and her parents to bring her home safe and still virtuous.

That species of gentleman is almost extinct today. A new species of barbarian has taken his place. Young women who resist are subjected to derision and ostracism by these males and their compliant groupies, and by a culture that glorifies promiscuity as liberation and essential self-expression.

Novelist Tom Wolfe graphically and poignantly captures this barbarism in “I am Charlotte Simmons,” a gut-wrenching tale of a bright, virgin college freshman who eventually yields to the animals who surround her.   She abandons her spirituality, her morals, and her intellectual aspirations. She is treated like a spittoon or a commode: a receptacle for bodily fluids. By sinking into dark depravity, she no longer recognizes the person that was once able to say to her mother, her church, and old classmates, “I am Charlotte Simmons.”

Yet, certain feminists still stubbornly prefer this degradation to the days of respect and chivalry. Ms. Parker quotes “a women's studies professor writing for USA Today” who worried that girls who are treasured by their

dads pay “the price of … ‘sexual self-agency.’" “She also asserted that the underlying premise of the balls is ‘the age-old assumption that sex is dirty: hence the infantilizing conflation of 'purity,' or sexual innocence, and ignorance.’" Translation: a pure girl is still an infant. She can’t become a real woman until she’s learned how to romp and moan like a pro. Such is the ideological blindness of the sexual revolutionary.

“Sexual self-agency” means risking getting one or more of 40 sexually transmitted diseases. It means being treated like a barf bag. It means losing a sacred part of body and soul. Promiscuous sex erodes a person’s

ability to bond in marriage. It’s a corrupting habit that especially reasserts its pernicious power when adversity tests the marriage.

It’s going to take more than “Purity Balls” to salvage our myriads of fallen youth. Abstinence education is helpful but not sufficient. Dads who provide consistent moral nurture and guidance fortify their daughters with hardy self-esteem that strongly resists cheapening.

As our culture disintegrates, we also require a spiritual prescription. Among such prescriptions, one from the Bible stands out for these perilous times: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Our only comprehensive hope lies in a widespread turning back to biblical faith and morals.

Gary Hardaway has taught in universities in the USA, Lithuania and Canada. He holds a Ph. D. in foundations of education. "Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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