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Harm and Damage Rhetoric in the Contemporary American Sexual Purity Movement
This article describes and analyzes the harm and damage rhetoric that is an important part of the conservative Christian sexual purity movement in the United States. Despite the rhetorical focus on the danger associated with sexual interaction prior to heterosexual marriage, there is no evidence that sexual purity teachings produce meaningful public health outcomes or changes in sexual behavior. One way to make sense of the movements endurance is to understand the attention to harm and damage as a means of subject formation. Girls are rhetorically constructed as vulnerable and in need of protection and should thus orient themselves to receive guidance and protection from the church, father, and nation-state. The harm and damage rhetoric is so pervasive that feminist interventions into sexuality education in the United States can fall prey to reliance on adolescent girls as a site of injury and vulnerability. This can be countered by understanding adolescent girls themselves as not only helpful but also essential to the development of sexual ethics and theologies that are not dependent on notions of purity.
Keywords: chastity, evangelical Christianity, sexuality education, sexual purity, virginity
Sexual purity has long been a preoccupation of certain subsets of Christianity, manifesting in a wide range of novel and creative strategies to encourage adherents to more closely conform to purity expectations. In the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century United States, this has taken place in large part through the conservative Christian sexual purity movement. The movement is well-known in the United States and widely covered by US media.1 It is promoted by national organizations such as Focus on the Family and Ascend (formerly the National Abstinence Education Association), regional and local churches and organizations, and individuals. While some people and communities of color produce and consume sexual purity teachings, the movement is primarily grounded in white conservative Christian communities and organizations, where traditionally attractive white girls are upheld as the ideal embodiment of sexual purity.2 One of the most well-known organizations promoting sexual purity is True Love Waits, an initiative of the Southern Baptist Convention and Lifeway Christian Resources that encourages teenagers to sign a pledge to remain sexually pure until heterosexual marriage. Millions of US adolescents have...