Nothing wrong with that. If you want your child to lead a particular kind of life, you have to be the role model for it. Goodness knows any teen will call you on your own hypocrisy to your face so you may as well walk the walk, so to speak.

Yeah, the dads should probably be giving their daughters condoms and keeping their fingers crossed that they lose their virginity no later than age 13. That way they can gain the experience they'll need for their many, many future partners.

Since when did parents wanting their daughters to remain chaste until marriage become a BAD thing?

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/05/19/us/19purityCA02ready.html

This just about says it all as far as the creepiness is concerned. Also this:

“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said Jordyn Wilson, 19, another daughter of Randy and Lisa. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”

about other people's viriginity, or their age of first sexual experience, is beyond me.

I've tried to figure it out, and I just don't get it.

I think this is all very perverse. The whole virginity thing is retro anyway, but marrying you dad. Ick! Seems like a presciption for possible abuse. Quesiton is: would yo let these men near your children?

Because everyone knows men are weak, cheating, lying beasts who must constantly be reminded to keep from sin, these balls are designed to shame them into staying straight by reminding them to keep their daughters on an unrealistic pedestal. Thus, said daughters can later marry and tell their sons that they are beasts who can't keep it in their pants--and that their daughters must always be inhuman beacons of purity and goodness. Wow--maybe Brightstar has a point about society hating men--though he's not honing in on the right segment of society...g!

Latest statistics released just a few weeks ago report that kids taught abstinence have sky-high STD rates when they do start having sex, because they've never been taught a damn thing about safe sex. Will the morons ever learn? -- education works best, in all cases, and for everything.

Besides that, virgin brides are a totally male-ego-centric concept. I can't believe women go along with such idiocy.

Even creepier than the supercreepy quote noted by achilleselbow above was the mention in the story that some of the attendees included the father of a teenage boy one of the teenage girls was "promised to."

... I don't see any problem with the idea that something which is good for children is good for their parents, and vice versa.

Preach birth control and financial responsibility.

It supposes that a young woman’s sexual identity belongs to her father and then to her husband. What you’re going to get is a woman who thinks of Daddy as a sexual figure or who thinks of her husband as a father figure. No matter how you look at it it’s messed up.

I mean – forget about this in terms of your daughter. Would anyone here want to date/marry a young girl who’s only ever dated her Daddy? You think that’s going to be the recipe for a healthy sex life?

The first relationship that a girl ever has with a man is generally with her dad. Good or bad, this relationship ends up being the model for every other relationship she has with men for the rest of her life. This is not, in itself, a creepy thing unless you make it out to be so.

If a girl has a father who treats her like dirt, she usually ends up in relationships with men who treat her like dirt because that's what she's been taught to expect.

I can understand the whole "going to a prom with Dad" idea being gross, but otherwise I don't think too much of the spirit behind these events being too off-base.

My dad is a very right-wing Evangelical type who did Promise Keepers and that whole bit. While he still believes in the husband being "the head of the house", my mom is no submissive shrinking violet and none of my sisters or myself turned out that way, either. Actually, me and all my sisters have done pretty well, relationship-wise, and I think a great deal of that is because our dad has treated us all with so much respect.

You're miss-characterizing the actual event and motives behind it.

For instance, I am not at all religious and feel no religious compunction to keep my kids "virgins" until they marry - on the other hand, I certainly do consider it my business due to the fact that unless I totally abandon my own children, the age and position they are in when they have their own kids definitely effects me.

In any case, the article here serves no purpose other than to make fun of and call "creepy" certain religious people. Which pretty much typifies "feminist editorials" or blogging and their propensity to harangue and mock people (especially women) who don't think exactly like the author.

As much as you may find it stupid, or silly, these religious functions are part of these people's culture and the idea that us, from the outside, can somehow change that by ridiculing them is incredibly arrogant. If you really think that this is beneficial, then I suppose you're in famous company with fellows like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and every other moron that thought we could run into the middle east and make them like us.

Haven't any of you ever heard of the old adage, "Change comes from within?" Mocking crap like this never serves any purpose other than to reinforce how cool, smart and progressive you think you are and how backwards you think everyone else is.

You would be better served by patting yourself on the back and eating a cookie.

Hell, I am an atheist and I think that religion is a stupid waste of time, yet I also think that this "article" was a stupid waste of time - probably because I don't find the word "creepy" as an insightful indictment of religion in general.