But the origin of the purity-ball movement was not so much about their five daughters; it was about the fathers Randy saw who, he says, didn't know what their place was in the lives of their daughters. "The idea was to model what the relationship can be as a daughter grows from a child to an adult," Randy says. "You come in closer, become available to answer whatever questions she has."

So he and Lisa came up with a ceremony; they wrote a vow for fathers to recite, a promise "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity," to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a "culture of chaos" and by so doing guide their daughters as well. That was in 1998, the year the President was charged with lying about his sex life, Viagra became the fastest-selling new drug in history, and movies, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reflected "a surge in the worldwide relaxation of sexual taboos."

Word of the event spread fast: soon the camera crews came, and so did Tyra Banks and Dr. Phil. The Abstinence Clearinghouse estimates there were more than 4,000 purity events across the country last year, with programs aimed at boys now growing even faster. And inevitably the criticism arrived as well, dressed up in social science and scholarly glee at the semiotics of girls kneeling beneath raised swords to affirm their purity. The events have been called odd, creepy, oppressive of a girl's "sexual self-agency," as one USA Today columnist put it. Father-daughter bonding is great, the critics agree--but wouldn't a cooking class or a soccer game be emotionally healthier than a ceremony freighted with rings and roses and vows? Some academic skeptics make a practical objection: The majority of kids who make a virginity pledge, they argue, will still have sex before marriage but are less likely than other kids to use contraception, since that would involve planning ahead for something they have promised not to do. This puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. To which defenders say: Teen pledgers typically do postpone having sex, have fewer partners, get pregnant less often and if they make it through high school as virgins, are twice as likely to graduate from college--so where's the downside?

The purity balls have thus become a proxy in the wider war over means and ends. It is being fought in Congress, where lawmakers debate whether to keep funding abstinence-only education in the face of studies showing it doesn't work; in the culture, as Lindsay and Britney and Miley march in single file off a cliff; at school-board meetings, where members argue over the signal sent by including condoms in the prom bag; at the dinner table, where parents try to transmit values to children, knowing full well that swarms of other messages are landing by text and Twitter. "The culture is everywhere," says Randy's daughter Khrystian, 20. "You can't get away from it." But maybe, the new Puritans suggest, there's a way to boost girls' immunity.


(Excerpt from Time magazine.)