Posted on 02/15/2006 6:18:36 AM PST by klossg
Teens fight for a chaste Valentine's
ABSTINENCE: Some high school students suggest honoring Feb. 14 as a "Day of Purity. BY STEPHANIE SIMON
LOS ANGELES TIMES High school sophomore Ally Hall plans to exchange valentine cards with her friends today. But her true tribute to the romance of the season was Monday, in the principal's office at Lebanon High School in the small town of Lebanon, Ohio.
Hall wrote a brief script to be read over the public-address system. Her message: The most romantic way to celebrate Feb. 14 is to honor it as a "Day of Purity," by pledging to remain chaste until marriage. "People say, 'Don't you get made fun of? Don't your friends think you're weird?' " said Ally, 15. "But if I can stand up for saving sex for marriage, it gives them a choice. They think, 'If she can do it, I can do it, too.' "
Hundreds of teenagers across the country will join Ally in wearing white today to signal a commitment to abstinence. The Day of Purity was started three years ago by the Liberty Counsel, a Christian law firm in Orlando, Fla.
Teens from about 200 schools and about 800 youth groups plan to participate, said Rena Lindevaldsen, an attorney who put aside her customary work litigating against gay marriage to coordinate the day's activities. She's encouraging teens to download and sign chastity pledges -- and to spread the word with posters in school cafeterias, letters to local papers, and free handouts of white bracelets and T-shirts.
In Miami, a nonprofit group called Abstinence Between Strong Teens will hold rallies at two public schools. In Cedarville, Ohio, teen girls who attended a church-sponsored Purity Conference over the weekend will distribute literature at school.
In Ewing, Ky., 13-year-old Kirsten Bryant plans to wear a Day of PurityT-shirt to her annual Valentine's Day Bible study with friends. "I'm a big purity fan," she said. "I really like standing up for God's way."
Launched in the early 1990s, the teen abstinence movement has grown sharply in recent years, in part because abstinence education has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
Groups such as the Silver Ring Thing in Moon Township, Pa., draw hundreds each week to rock-concert-style events that combine preaching, stand-up comedy, music videos and student testimony to promote the virtues of purity. For a March 1 event in Corona, Calif., the group has booked the sanctuary at Crossroads Church; it seats 3,200.
Groups promoting abstinence usually interpret that to mean no sexual touching. Studies suggest, however, that many teenagers don't have such stringent standards. Research published last spring in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that teens who pledged abstinence waited longer to have sex for the first time and had fewer partners. But they were much more likely than their peers to engage in oral and anal sex -- and much less likely to use contraception. So their rates of sexually transmitted diseases were nearly equal to their non-pledging peers.
Ally, the sophomore who will be making a Day of Purity announcement at Lebanon High, has no illusions that it will suddenly make it cool to be a virgin. But she takes comfort in knowing she won't be alone in trying to promote that message this Valentine's Day.
"It's really hard to live up to the expectations that God has for you," she said. "I want to have the same popularity that other girls have, but it's not worth the cost."
Perhaps you mean "chased".
;->
There is still hope for this generation. When my daughter was in high school a few years ago, they had the informal "V Club", for virgin. They would ask each other if they were still a member of the V Club.
**Hundreds of teenagers across the country will join Ally in wearing white today to signal a commitment to abstinence.**
Some teenagers are ahead of their parents in this category. God bless them.
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Wow. Looks like the backlash is coming against the 60's generation of sexual liberationist homo-promoting flower child losers is finally here.
Perhaps it's easier to honor chastity by calling the day by it's proper name:
SAINT Valentine's Day
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm
At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury's time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.
Saint Valentine's Day
The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:
For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers' tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:
And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine's Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.
Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it "Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire". The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.
Right on. The US is looking sharp, as is the men's, although I don't get a hell of alot of pleasure having playing you guys in the final, because I like both teams. If Canada's out then I automatically root for the US. If we beat you guys, it's not nearly as much fun as beating the Russians.
How wonderful! Gives me hope for today's teens.
Ping for the Moral Absolutes list.
Klossg - what's your ping list about? Sound similar to the Moral Absolutes list.
Thanks. Sounds as though the Moral Absolutes ping list and yours have some overlap. Maybe wagglebee and MillerCreek might want on your list, or you on theirs (was mine but I'm lending it out right now.)
The concept that teens are like farm animals and cannot resist having sex is one of the great lies of our society. I find it ironic that society treats kids like unfettered beasts who cannot control themselves but expects them to instantly become creatures of reason just before sex and deploy a condom.
DISCUSSION ABOUT:
"Teens fight for a chaste Valentine's"
The leftists don't seem to understand that abstinence is actually a virtue and not a stigma.
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The real solution is abstinence.
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