My Issue with Purity Series

*** Disclaimer*** These are my opinions based on my experiences.


Alright, here goes:

I used to be a Christian. Long story, but I'm not anymore. I'm on hiatus from religion in general and plan to go back to my Jewish roots in a few years after I have taken some time off. HOWEVER, I was a Christian (born again, Evangelical believer and all) for 6 or so years. I have been going to church since birth, unless you count being a fetus in embryonic fluid while mom was at church, in which I guess you could make that claim.

My opinion now: If you want to save sex until marriage? Great. If not? Great. It's up to you. It's your body. However, I grew up in the church, and, as such, there was a lot of pressure to remain 'sexually pure' meaning no sex until marriage. If you have a religious reason to do so, or just want to for you, that's perfect. What I have a problem with is any institution that makes teenagers feel that their sexuality is wrong and that waiting until marriage is the only correct course of action.

In my own case, when I was twelve (7th grade) I did a purity series with my church middle school youth group. I wasn't a Christian at this point anyways, but I did the series for a few reasons:
1. All of my church friends were.
2. I wanted to feel involved.
3. At the age of 12, I had no idea what pledging 'purity' meant.
4. There was a ceremony at the end in which people got to dress up. I wanted to wear a pretty dress and homecoming dances weren't for a few more years.
5. At the end of the series, kids who completed it got a ring or something to symbolize there promise. Like the dress, I wanted a ring. Hey, free ring!

Once again, I was twelve. How could I have known what I was signing up for?

If people want to go through a purity series, great for them. But, as I said, I take issue with institutions making boys and girls feel bad for deciding to be 'impure'. Honestly, I don't think that sex and purity have anything to do with each other, but many people do.

And, in retrospect, the pact that I made when I was twelve was broken not too many years later. I guess that's what I get for making my promise so specific!

Here is a picture of me and my parents at the purity ceremony. I love my face- it clearly portrays the "this is unnecessary" mentality that I adopted a while later. I think I was about to say my vow at this point. I got the ring, and, as you can see, the blue-green dress. I still have the ring sitting in my room at my parents' house. I take it out every once in a while just to laugh.

Gay Marriage. Or, as I call it, Marriage.

I think it might be just a little bit obvious that I am a liberal, politically. Very liberal for a USA citizen. Off the charts liberal. Abortion? Should be a woman´s choice. Birth control? Sooooo necessary. Sex education? The USA sucks at it, let´s fix that.

But something particularly important recently in American society, a "hot button" issue: gay marriagge. Or, as I like to call it: marriage.


Ellen Degeneres posted a picture of her and her wife, Portia, smiling in Sydney, Australia after 4 happy years of marriage. Knowing what I would find, I decided to look at the comments made by regular facebook users. Here are my thoughts:

1. Why can´t bigots spell? Seriously, I am awful at spelling, but at least I know the word is "sick" not "sik".

2. Many people are apposed to gay marriage because it is "gross". That word represents how truly feeling-based such opinions are and highlights the riddiculousness of someone who argues that others need to change their ways of life because someone finds it "gross". I find smoking gross. That doesn´t mean I boycot your ability to  buy cigarettes.

3. In particular, some Catholic and Evangelical Christians use the argument that the Bible is against gay marriage. While the interpretation of such Bible versus is up for debate (I´m not getting into that now), the Constitution is clear. The USA allows freedom of religion, which means that no religion can mandate laws or rules for the country at large. Separation of church and state was a founding principle, and is still followed today in most cases. To me, that means that a church should get to decide whether or not gay couples can get married within the church, but that religious views should have no affect on USA law. In other words, the churh should get no say in whether or not gay marriage is legalized.

Confronted with this opinion on Ellen´s facebook, these particularly fierce Christians (not all Christians are like this. In fact, few are) argued that the USA should honor the Christian god. While they have the right to think that, it is hard to dispute that the USA was created with separation of church and state in mind, for a reason. In fact, initial settlers came to the New World in the hopes of escaping religious views being imposed upon them.

4. The aforementioned people who said gay marriage was "gross" also compared it to murder and incest. There is no connetion there; and any connection made was intended to get a rise out of people who are pro gay marriage.

5. Final thought: I think we should just call it marriage. That´s what it is, after all.