What a bunch of crap and wishful thinking.

While it is true that parents want to see their daughters marry well and be well taken care of, and that one of the currently accepted ways of accomplishing this is for their daughters to remain virgins until they marry, they want their sons to be successful including in their sexual conquests. This double standard creates more problems than it solves.

One of the problems in current society is the non-recognition of sexuality. Females are expected to remain sexually inactive through their college years - until they are 22 years old? While Males are encouraged to be sexually active? No wonder there is so much psychological damage wrought during teenage years due to sexual repression.

A healthy society recognizes that even teenagers have sexual desires and provides an outlet for those desires.

I'm sorry: I can't think of a less-relevant topic to right now than "America's obsession with virginity".

In 2009? Say whaaat??? This "virginity movement" seems a minor manifestation within evangelical Christianity; it should be given exactly the regard it deserves, which is to say, very little. Instead, on these pages at least, it's an excuse to dust off some really tired, '70s-era feminist cliches and beat very dead horse.

Can anyone, anywhere afford to give a damn about any of this?

Teenage pregnancy was, despite its lack of visibility, at an all-time high in the 50s. It was invisible because the girls who "count"---white, middle class---were either married off when they got pregnant or sent away to homes where their babies were taken from them whether they consented or not. No husband, no baby.

"The idealized virgin of the virginity movement is the most valuable woman in our culture in terms of her attributes. White, young, affluent, pretty, educated, sexually desirable, and available, she represents a set of characteristics that are, frankly, aspirational by normative standards. "Upscale" has many faces, and one of them is hers."

So this whole conversation is mostly just sour grapes in a competition between alpha girls?

Now it makes sense...sort of.

This entire issue can be summed up by the focus of "better then". It is dependent on a comparison of how one is "better then" another. The "best" characterization of a woman is the one who has never experienced sex. She is superior to other females. This is how the Christian Fascists, and other elitist religious sub-cultures justify their condescending attitude towards others, by creating this myth of "better then". When we agree to this description, we are co-conspirators in the denigration of women as a sex object, unable to express herself freely, independent of others. She has to ask what others would think if she was to have sex with someone, even herself, in some circles.

These Christian Fascists insist they have a right to voice an opinion about another's sexual activity. This practice is still pervasive and, IMHO, it is unfortunate. What was revealed when Bristol's pregnancy was announced, was that the Christians were all to willing to throw these useless principles away because they did not serve them and their political cause. This is the reality in America today and why we need to take make sure people notice this. The abandonment of their Christian priciples is hypocritical, if they insist that they have them. The leadership is all to willing to put politics ahead of principles which means they have no principles at all.

This is where the Left gets caught. We need to ensure the debate is not about Bristol becoming pregant, but about the lack of honesty and lack of any grip on reality that the Christian Fascists maintain. One day they are against teen pregnancy, the next day they worship Bristol and Sarah for accepting the child, and the next day, it's all about virginity again.

Let's stop the social stigmatization and get out of other people's bedrooms, or back seats, as the case may be. I was not irritated that Bristol became pregnant, I was insulted by the supposition I was stupid and could bear to listen to Sarah's preaching against sex education when she had clearly failed, in her own life, and in the life of her daughter. I was particularly irritated when Sarah felt compelled to interrupt an interview of Bristol to tell us what Bristol meant to say. I felt Bristol had already said what she meant. She's a mother now and whether she is 18 or not, she can speak for herself.

I don't know what your data and your research show, but I find it stunning that "True Love Waits" and the virginity movement in general are described as a primarily middle class phenomenon. Perhaps the ideal that is held up by the movement is an image of a middle class young woman -- but many poor and working class young women that I grew up with (in the 1990s) were sincerely committed to the Christian morality of "waiting until marriage." If anything, the more affluent middle class kids had parents who fostered a more liberal attitude toward sexuality, emphasizing safe sex and such.

Why is it that you assume that everyone involved in the True Love Waits culture is subscribing to some sort of delusional middle class ideal? You write that the idealized virgin "represents a set of characteristics that are, frankly, aspirational by normative standards." What is aspirational, in class terms, about believing that God wants you to remain chaste until marriage, or that "waiting" will make the act of sex more meaningful? I'm the first person to say that abstinence-only education is nonsense and that the majority of young people (not just women, by the way) who aspire to chastity will end up breaking their vows, sexual desire being what it is. But I just feel like you're not giving the people involved in this culture enough credit for making their own choices and having their own beliefs. Is it impossible that poor young women might embrace the idea of postponing intercourse as a matter of personal conviction, regardless of race or class? Deriding people for for conforming to bourgeois notions of sexuality seems to disregard the fact that religious feeling itself is at least as strong a determinant as class status, and that people (male and female) might actually make their own choices.

Well, I'm glad that I'm not in a position to obsess whether I'll be accepted based on whether I kiss up to this virginity model any more. (As if I ever was!) Not that balancing acceptance by society and myself is trivial.

So while it seems awfully sterile a concept (at best), I have a terribly hard time understanding why I should get in the middle of a parent's raising a child, especially if the child really *wants* to be conformist to be accepted. This latter seems especially likely, given that her parents have given acceptance conditional on her rejecting her own emotions out of hand. I think that the conditional love is a necessary precondition for this becoming a mess, actually the root cause, and quite independent harm regardless of whether the parents promote this particular path to goodness.

So the virginity track seems more of a symptom than a cause. What can I, as a concerned Liberal, do to re-focus people on the root problem?