Slog

Having sex before marriage should be mandatory. And I mean with your partner, not with Jesus.

Gwen also says:

Kisses are precious and valuable. As people of worth, we should not cheapen kisses by giving them away for free.

You know what's also precious and valuable? Puppies. Those labradoodles are particularly valuable, I've heard.

We should not cheapen our puppies by letting others pet them. Particularly not before said potential puppy molesters have committed to a lifelong relationship with our puppies. A holy bond between man and puppy, blessed in the eyes of Jesus.

I grew up going to church all my life. Until now I totally forgot all about that book. My parents bought it for me, but I never got past the cover.

Christians are fucked up.

You'll save those sweet lips for Daddy, young lady, if you know what's good for you. Now get on over here; I want to show you my Purity Balls.

it's all born of fear, fear fear. they eat it for breakfast.

People who believe that "physical activity such as kissing and intercourse does not sustain relationships" clearly haven't been in one.

I've known people like this over the years, and I wonder if this is about the sex or is it about the rules? The loony end of Christianity seems to attract people who want bedrock certainty in their lives--they don't do well with gray areas. To kiss or not to kiss? Jesus has the answer.

next stop, arranged marriages and purdah....all aboard!

Damn. That doesn't even make sense...of course, its just saying no kissing, and no sex, so that means anal and oral are still fine, right?

I can't *fathom* not kissing before marriage. Heck, most people have their first kiss before they're even old enough to be *thinking* about marriage...damn.

OMG. I'm rethinking the value of genuine, all-inclusive sex education and coming (heh) to the conclusion that mandatory Psych 101 might be even better preparation for life as we know it.

God damn, why does the library not have this book! I wanted to read it after I finished the Left Behind series.

I wonder if butterfly kisses or rubbing noses together is OK...
They could have snot orgies and still be Godly!

@7 Nails it. These people want to return to arranged marriages.

Having recently had experience with the Worst Kisser on the Face of the Earth I just want to say to the young people contemplating saving the first kiss until marriage, DON'T DO IT. Find out how they kiss first or you may spend the rest of your life dodging slobbery tongue stabber, dry fish mouth, or the human hoover vacuum.

Are you sure this is real? Her name is "Gwen Daniels" and his is "Jeff Pudelek" which to me is awfully close to "Goin' Down...yells" and "Jeff Pud-lick".

I'm just sayin'.

M-hm. And Kirk Cameron will only kiss his wife. Even when it's in a movie. Which he is acting in. Acting. Yes, acting. You know, where you're portraying a character? Somebody else? Somebody else kissing somebody else?

Fuck that, sluts. God frowns on that shit. All of it. Heavily. So what did they do? Take it away IMDb:

Kirk Cameron, a Christian evangelist, refuses to kiss any woman other than his wife under any circumstance, so to film a scene in which his character in this movie kisses his wife, the filmmakers had to dress Cameron's real-life wife, Chelsea Noble, as the wife character (played throughout the rest of the movie by Erin Bethea) and shoot the kissing scene in shadow so the difference between Noble and Bethea would not be as evident onscreen.

And for this he'll receive extra presents under the Christmas tree. Wait, that's Santa. Wait, but Christmas is...never mind.

I think Margaret Atwood must be a witch...everyday we seem to be getting closer and closer to the dystopia in "The Handmaid's Tale".

As a Methodist (church secretary no less) this is an example of why Catholics have more common sense. These kids should become nuns and priest (no little boy jokes). They are taking the whole, marrying Jesus thing to a stupid extreem. Non-Catholic pastors have a 50% divorce rate and swapping not spit isn't going to make things any better. They should be feeling people up, being fingered and giving hand jobs. Dumb-asses.

If he wants to fill himself with the fullness of jesus I suggest he invest in the crucifix shaped dildo dubbed "Jackhammer Jesus" or if that's just too S&M there's always the "Baby Jesus Buttplug".

I call BS, Dan -- you were at the U. of Missouri in 2006 (and since then, too, I think)? That or I don't get the joke. And it could be because I edited The Maneater and its ragamuffin-hoosier "columnists" back in The Day. Eh.

i remember being told stuff like this. it's not that kissing is wrong but it can lead to other things (like a gateway drug) including impure thoughts. if you are driving by physical lust, you aren't basing your relationship what will hold the two of you together in the long run.

what is sad is that when you are young and don't know better yet, striving for these insane ideals can really mess with you.

Sounds like Pudelek is ready for the Seminary.

What I want to know is, can the sane Christians vote these weirdos out of the pool?

anything that gets fundies to breed less is A-OK with this misanthrope.

Wow. This really blows the 'if I only use the backdoor, I am still technically a virgin' concept. I wonder what you could sub for kissing and still be considered a lip virgin. Heavy sniffing?

That's why they think sex should only be for procreation - because they all have sexually incompatible marriages and think that sex is a burden not a pleasure.

My first high school boyfriend made me read I kissed dating goodbye... He suggested we stop kissing until marriage because "a relationship shouldn't be two people facing each other, it should be two people facing together toward God."

After that we didn't stop kissing, we just felt extreme guilt everytime we did...

After we broke up, it took a long time to get over those relationship issues:

Thanks religious fundamentalism!!

Whoa, is Jeffy ever gay! He really would be a much happier person if he were Catholic. He'd have a wider range of lust objects, like St Sebastian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:SaraceniSebastian.jpg

p.s. Doesn't this remind you of Ecce Homo, I mean by the artist Andrea Mantegna, not the Slog commenter.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Ecce-homo_Mantegna.jpg

Yeah, I spent a semester at that school.

That sounds like exactly the kind of bullshit coming out of Missouri.

But they're still allowed to kiss their Dads on Prom Night, right?

i think you were too hard on them, Dan. I think as long as two people dating, or one person, makes this decision to not kiss until marriage then that is their choice. When it gets forced on others, that's something completely different. But if this is something that someone feels strongly about and really wants to adhere to it... why not just let them without making fun of them?

I met a girl who decided to not date through high school because every time she tried to a boy was always trying to coerce her to go farther, so she decided to just take a long break from it and focus on her connection with God instead. I think that's pretty admirable, wait for every one else to kind of catch up in maturity level.

I dunno. I just think the judgment level is a little too harsh. I think of it more as a cultural difference.

@30-
The issue isn't so much the choice to kiss or not to kiss before marriage- it's the consequences that follow a choice like that. For the majority of kids who do decide to forego kissing, it will be a temporary phase quickly left behind. For those who do manage to hold out, imagine how frustrating intimacy and sex will be for them. Should they make it through the shame of not admitting that sex isn't working for them, or that they really aren't turned on by their spouse, or find out that they've married someone who is not affectionate and they really need and want that in a partner, they are up shit creek. Divorce will certainly be frowned on in such a fundie marriage, and if they are enterprising enough to go beyond the church for counseling, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

@30: Shaming kids about sex may be a "cultural difference," but so is stoning witches.

If something is a bad idea it's a bad idea regardless of its cultural origins. As a child from a religious upbringing, I can vouch for how much this kind of stuff messes with your head. Before you get busy defending the rights of parents to fill their kids' heads with a bunch of destructive crap, consider the rights of kids to not have their heads filled with destructive crap.

Nice South Park reference. Is it just me or does Palin sound like Stan Marsh's mother?

Are you sure this isn't an Onion-style parody? I grew up in a pretty backwards part of Tennessee and I've never heard of this kiss-saving thing. I did know lots of girls into the whole purity thing (this was before purity balls thank god!) But saving the first kiss? I think Dan's either having us on, or he's been had!

Josh Harris's book was the mandatory book for our "sex-education" class in the private Christian school my parents made me attend. As a feminist and outspoken advocate I threw the book down and refused to read it - I think the words I used to my religion teacher were "bullshit", "he is crazy", and "why is it all about men and men making the rules". I promptly go thrown out of the class and then told I was going to hell and then my parents were called. I was also "prayed over" for being troubled.

- Fundies...you just cannot win.

I know so many churches that advocate this type of arrangement - courtship, no kissing, etc... is a huge deal in many youth groups. So is the "God is number one, girls/boys are number two"....

now I know how I got so fucked up...

I was raised fundamentalist, stayed that way until adulthood and actually never had sex until I was married (but did manage to make-out/kiss my wife beforehand).

Got divorced and have had more than a few sexual partners since then.

As one of the rare people who has experienced both I can say that waiting until marriage is NOT the best way to do it.

So why do religions demand it?

Withholding a basic human need (whether sex, food or sleep) is a basic technique for mind control.

You don't have to go to Missouri for this stuff. I went to a fundamental Christian church in high school in Wenatchee and we read this book. We were also told we weren't allowed to give back rubs because they lead to sex.

These are not jokes.

Of course me and my fundamentalist Christian best friend were still getting drunk and sleeping with our boyfriends.

One of my friends brought her co-worker whose fiance was a whack job fundy Christian adherer to this book to a dinner I was attending in the hopes that I might convince her this was lunacy and not a requirement of faith. She of course wouldn't listen to me, or more importantly, to her friends and family (some of them pretty scary fundy Christians themselves I might add - who also thought this was nuts), and married him. Of course, after the wedding kiss and consummation, he still won't kiss her or have sex with her, and drummed up some other crazy theological reason why they shouldn't, which she was, I'm sorry to tell you, buying hook line and sinker, until the day she discovered he didn't have the same qualms about kissing and having sex with his boyfriend (and is she ever sorry she went home sick from work that day!). Of course, her husband is also one of the biggest anti-gay proclaimers around, as is the fundy Christian church they attend, which I'm beginning to be convinced is surviving because it is full of closet cases like himself, selling their girlfriends turned wives the same lines from this book to marry them, then putting them off post-wedding for Jesus, all while living a double life! So - once again - be most wary of those most afraid! PS I'm sorry to tell you SHE'S NOT DIVORCING HIM and just trying to pray away his gay, advice from her fundy family, because for them, now that she's gone and married him, this is the only option keeping her from hell. PSS I heard last night that Sarah Palin made a similar statement about homosexuality being a choice and her church is all for praying away the gay and hosts retreats for this purpose. If you don't want a vp a heartbeat away from being commander in chief using this batshit "Christian" logic when running your nation, vote OBAMA/Biden!

Wow. That's...kind of intense.

I mean, ok, I'll admit to being hugely lame: my first kiss was with my current boyfriend, and (as of right now, and knock on wood) we know we're going to get married someday, but...yeah. How can you go into marriage not even knowing if your kisses are compatible?

HINT: No, online quizzes are not a good way to see if you and your spouse are compatible.

@34- this is not a joke. I knew several people in college who either still had never kissed anyone when they graduated or kissed their spouse either at engagement or on the wedding day. this was, of course, in the deep south.

I remember my old youth minister back in AR who had seven daughters. For the two that were of dating age, he held a constant, tyrannical grip on not just their sexuality, but basic interactions with men. Shit like not letting them into the same room alone. Date chaperoning into their twenties (and beyond, if it comes to that. He was definitely of this "biblical" school of though, where a woman is her father's property until he allows her to be her husband's property. There's no evidence that he abused anybody, but he very likely in a twisted personal conflict with sexuality in general. A deeply disturbed guy.

37 - I bet I know you if you went to a Christian school in Wenatchee in the last 5-10 years !

I just posted about this on my site. Mostly as a recap of Dan's points, but also to point out the fact that Joshua Harris, the book's probably totally despicable author, is also totally hot.

Children have an unusually strong need to be accepted. Growing up in a fanatical "Christian" community can make you fear for your life. Murder is excusable but gay sex isn't. Sick and twisted? Sure! But if you are brainwashed to think this is normal, well, you go along. But there's hope kids! Listen to your uncle Dan. He will lift the vail.

Pop Tart, comment # 14-

Unfortunately, it is real. I live in Columbia Missouri and that really was an article. I am very sad, as it makes the rest of us look like crazy fundamentalists. I will point out that the author grew up in Tennessee.....and I had never heard of this in MO before. Kind of makes me feel better, but not really. The further south you go here, the crazier it gets.
They will be the ones who suffer....better them living without orgasms than me! Hey...maybe they won't even figure out how to get the job done, therefore their genetic line will end! That's a hopeful thought.....more likely it will end up like the first two minutes of the movie "Idiocracy" where only the craziest, dumbest people end up propagating the species.

Sigh.