Friday, June 24, 2005
Idle hands
I just stumbled across this Rolling Stone piece about the ultra-hip appeal of abstinence among twentysomething men. Delayed gratification is fine by me. Wearing a funny plastic bracelet to signify your purity--yes, it's called a masturband--is fine by me. I wasn't even thrown by the fact that all the young, proud virgins in the photo were taking hits off a hookah. But I threw up my non-masturbanded hands when I got to the paragraph about their reading habits, especially that last, surreal sentence, which made me wonder whether these guys shouldn't ease up a little on the hubble-bubble:
Wild at Heart and Eldredge's other best sellers, The Journey of Desire and The Sacred Romance (as well as "field manual" workbooks that can be purchased separately), address sexual "purity" as part of the fabric of Christian manliness. The most important of these books is Every Man's Battle, which, in the past five years, has become a powerful brand name unto itself, with dozens of Every Man spinoff titles: Every Young Man's Battle, Every Woman's Battle, Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle and on and on. There's also an Every Young Man's Battle movie filmed on actual battlefields from history and featuring an interview with former NFL player William White and a discussion between Christian-right leader Dr. James Dobson and serial killer Ted Bundy.
