I’m all for abstinence outside of monogamous, long-term relationships and promoting responsible sex lives among children...but these events are just about the creepiest things I’ve ever heard of.

No sex please, we’re daddy’s little girls

WASHINGTON (AFP) - It has all the ingredients of a wedding. The proud tuxedo-clad father, the frosted white cake, the limousines and an exchange of vows.

But there is no groom and the girl in the long gown is no bride. She’s daddy’s little girl, there to take a vow of chastity.

In what is becoming a trend among conservative Christians in the United States, girls as young as nine are pledging to their fathers to remain virgins until they wed, in elaborate ceremonies dubbed “Purity Balls.”

The gala affairs are intended to celebrate the father-daughter relationship.

The highlight is when the fathers and daughters exchange vows, with dad signing a covenant to protect his daughter’s chastity by living an unblemished life and the daughter promising not to have sex until marriage.

Many fathers at the ceremonies also slip “purity rings” around the finger of their misty-eyed daughters or offer them “chastity bracelets” and other jewelry that the girls can entrust to their husbands on their wedding night.

“The father makes a pledge that he is going to keep his mind pure and be faithful to her mother and there is also a time when there is a conversation about putting the right kinds of things in your mind, such as the father not using pornography,” Leslee Unruh, founder of Abstinence Clearinghouse, a leader in the so-called purity movement, told AFP in describing the balls.

A few things.

First, the reporter responsible for this article is having a little too much fun with the word “balls.”

Second, I plan on talking to my daughter about her sex life and what sort of decisions she’s going to be making.  But it’s probably not going to be when she’s nine, and it sure as hell won’t be in some weird semi-wedding type spectacle held in public.

I’m all for what’s intended with these ceremonies, I’m just a little creeped out about the whole ceremony thing.