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Some of the Meanest Chastity Emails I’ve Ever Gotten

After I wrote each of my essays about saving sex for marriage in the Tampa Bay Times, I got a lot of emails that I still haven’t deleted. I wanted to use the worst of them to film a Mean Tweets-style promo video for my book, but I never did. Can you imagine?

There’s the one from Miki: “Are the readers of Florida’s largest newspaper and Tampa Bay’s leading news website now better informed, resting comfortably in the knowledge that you are a virgin? Or is this the first onslaught of writers [sic] block and you had nothing else to say? Try again please but in the future choose the subject of your articles with a bit more intelligence.”

Or the one from John: “No offense, but talk about the voice of inexperience. How can you contribute on the very subject you have never participated in?”

But the finale email for the video I never filmed absolutely would have been Eric’s:

Continue reading “Some of the Meanest Chastity Emails I’ve Ever Gotten”
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Why it’s still worth saving sex during engagement.

[callout]This is a guest post by Stephanie Calis, the author of Invited: The Ultimate Catholic Wedding Planner (Pauline, 2016) and the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Spoken Bride, a ministry and lifestyle blog for Catholic brides and newlyweds.[/callout]

Something is up with me. Whenever I consciously make a choice in my work, my relationships, or my parenting that’s out of the mainstream, I want to hide it. I avoid talking about it.

Yet a part of me also wants others to find out, so I can talk about it. What is it that makes me a living, breathing contradiction?

To stand for something, to let your voice be heard and in doing so, to reveal who you are, satisfies the part of us that longs to be known, seen, and understood. Name a political or social matter, and you’ll most likely find a contingent speaking out against it.

And rightly so. Freedom is a gift; our voices are a gift, and the desire to make our opinions known is rooted in a good desire that speaks to how we’re created. Yet going against general opinion means something different than it did a generation ago. What was once considered progressive is now perceived as normal, and what was once considered traditional is now perceived as uptight and reactionary, particularly with regard to sexuality. Continue reading “Why it’s still worth saving sex during engagement.”

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How chastity can lead to good sex.

As a colleague and I crossed the parking lot at the Port Richey bureau of the Tampa Bay Times, he pointed at the bumper sticker on my car’s rear windshield.

He read it aloud: “Chastity is for lovers.” He furrowed his brow and tilted his head, perplexed by what he had read. “How can chastity be for lovers if it means you can’t have sex?” he asked. What I said surprised him:

It doesn’t.

I explained why, what chastity is, and how it differs from abstinence in a column I wrote for the Tampa Bay Times. Click here to read it.

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New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click the links and purchase the products I recommend, I earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. And when you do, I am sincerely grateful.

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When sexual abstinence is “unrealistic.”

Caught a zika virus segment on the Today Show this morning in which a doctor discussed that the virus can be sexually transmitted. And she had advice for couples who are at risk.

Abstain from sex for a little while, she said, or, and I quote, “maybe more realistically, use condoms.”

To which I say STOP IT.

To call condom use more realistic than abstinence is accurate, in the sense that people are in fact more likely to use contraception than to abstain from sex (for many reasons, not solely to prevent the transmission of the zika virus).

But to call condom use more realistic than abstinence is also to actively discourage abstinence (and, subtly, to shame the people who practice it). It implies that nobody chooses abstinence, or that nobody can — that humans won’t govern their urges because they can’t.

It is to say “YOU SHOULD DO THIS, BUT YOU WON’T.” What if that’s how our parents raised us? Continue reading “When sexual abstinence is “unrealistic.””