My news aggregator pinged this morning with an absolutely mind-blowing story from - where else? - the United States' population of government-supported crazies, the Evangelicals. 
What are they up to now? Well, it's called a "Father-Daughter Purity Ball" and it sounds like a recipe for a really, really fucked-up love and sex life in order to please Gawd Almighty.
Here is an example of such an event (also see this news article and the LJ post that pointed me to both). Basically, the idea is that dad takes the eleven year old daughter out on a date to a fancy formal do and they both pledge to 'purity' in public - the daughter pledges to remain chaste until marriage and daddy pledges to "cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity" (and also to be "the high priest in my home").
The practical consequences of this expression of submission and authority seem pretty clear for the girl - no fucking. I'm not sure whether the 'protection' offered by the father means that if she does get 'taken' by some evildoer who wants to engage in a base, carnal desire, his duty is to then go and batter the poor sod over the head with a baseball bat. We'll presumably have to wait a few years for this experiment in evangelical psychology to pay off with randy young men ending up in the emergency ward.
Just in case you thought that these people are sexist nutcases, read this article on "Integrity Balls". It's kind of the same but with mothers and sons.
Of course, the outcome of all this insanity is that if you want to get it on with an evangelical Christian teenager, the best route is to avoid the vagina. Surveys have shown that those who take abstinence or 'purity' pledges tend to engage in more sexual experimentation - oral and anal, specifically. I'm waiting for the stories of "Trainee Lesbians for Christ".
I'd love to hear what some of my feminist readers think of daddy-daughter dates where the unspoken dinner discussion is "you better not have sex". This kind of nonsense makes my pledge to never get married even stronger. Why support an institution that is used as a bloody great big manipulation tool for crazy people to force their kids not to make their own decisions?
I'll make a prediction. Next they'll be making panties that send a text message with a GPS location to daddy if you take them off.
