Off to the ball

One of the most disturbing things I have stumbled across in recent times is the purity ball.  This is an event where fathers and their teenage daughters dress up and make vows guaranteeing the daughter's virginity until marriage amid much pomp and ceremony.  The money quote is "At this point you are married to the Lord and your father is your boyfriend."  I feel like I am watching the Olympics and my goal is to award a gold medal for the most outrageous and creepy thing about purity balls.  Oh the choices!

-The teenage girls are married to the Lord, but will presumably eventually marry men.  I guess this means they need a divorce from the Lord, but isn't that frowned upon?  I mean seriously, divorcing God?  Who is going to be an upgrade from that?

-The fathers are their boyfriends.  So I guess they should go on dates with their fathers, but that is going to get confusing.  "I hate you Daddy!  You and I are going to be together forever and you can't stop you and I from doing that!  I will run away with you to get married no matter whether you want us to or not!"  Maybe they need some extra pronouns for Daddy as boyfriend to differentiate the roles for clarity's sake?

-One of the father says "What I hear from these young ladies is that there's this need for that physical touch, and from a male being.  I believe that's what the father's role is."  This guy needed to *ask* young women to find out that they have sexual desire and after doing so he concluded that he was the best person to supply that for his daughters.  You cannot make this shit up!

The gold medal for 'ignoring important things' is going to be hotly contested.  I mean, these folks are managing to pretend female sexual desire, same sex attraction, female personhood, female autonomy, and teenage foolhardiness don't exist.  I certainly missed some other things, but even just that list is a hell of a thing to pick from.  The best part is that all this misogyny, homophobia, and cluelessness doesn't even generate the sort of outcome the overbearing fathers in question want.  The girls are going to end up having sex anyway, they just won't have a condom on hand when they do.

I don't think that religions are correct, but honestly a lack of correctness isn't worth all the frothy rants I put out.  These people and the awful sexist crap they get away with in the name of religion are the reason, and though this particular case is so absurd as to be laughable it is anything but humorous for the young women caught up in it.