MXMFW 4: Purity Culture Part 1

What is Purity Culture? How did it emerge and evolve in the United States? How is it related to American Christianity's history of racism and misogyny? How did it become politically terrifying? How is it related to the Lavender Scare and the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey? 
Join us for this episode of My Ex and My Future Wife as we discuss the history of Evangelical Purity Culture in the United States.

**Episode Correction: Nat Turner—not Nat Taylor—lead the 1831 slave revolt mentioned in this episode.

CW/TW: This episode contains discussions of racism, abusive theology, misogyny, sexual abuse, rape, rape culture, and child abuse 

Sources:
“I Have the Power in My Body to Make People Sin” by Katie Cross, found in the book Feminist Trauma Theologies
“Daddy’s Little Girls: on the perils of chastity clubs, purity balls, and ritualized abstinence” by Breanne Fahs
“Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement” by Elizabeth Gish
“Suffer the Children: National Crisis, Affective Collectivity, and the Sexualized Child” by Susan Knabe
“It’s like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb” by Sara Moslener
Developing a measure of Purity culture: Sexual messages in evangelical Christian culture by Amanda Ortiz
The Impact of Patriarchal Religions on the Creation of Oppressive Cultures of Female Purity and the Contribution to Rape Culture by Haley Stepp
“‘Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies” by Jennifer Morgan from Women’s America Refocusing the Past Ninth Edition
Beyond Loving: Intimate Racework in Lesbian, Gay, and Straight Interracial Relationships by Amy C. Steinbugler
Maggie’s True Crime Obsession

Transcript

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Theo (singing): In the beginning God made three lesbians who liked to talk, and they loved each other, and they loved God, but they have a few questions, and they think you might have a few questions too about religion, gay stuff, and life, so come join me, my ex, and my future wife.

Maggie: Hello and welcome to my ex and my future wife, I’m Maggie

Bridget: I’m Bridget and I’m the ex.

Theo: And I’m Theo and I’m the future wife.

M: And today we’re going to be talking about everybody’s favorite topic—my favorite topic—evangelical purity culture in the United States.

B: Woo-hoo

M: Get excited, it’s—

B: Just kidding

M: It’s worse than you thought

B: Yeah, gonna be really upsetting

M: General Content Warning/Trigger Warning before we get into it. Just, Purity Culture and all the bullshit that comes with Purity Culture, abusive theology, misogyny, racism, sexual abuse, rape, rape culture, and child abuse, all will probably be touched on at some point in this podcast. I should also clarify that today we are specifically talking about the history of purity culture and how it got formed into the monster that it is today. 

B: This episode is going to be a lot of Maggie teaching me and Theo about Purity Culture and explaining it to us because she has simply had, well she’s done a lot more research and it seems to me interacted with this world a lot more than Theo and I ever had.

T: Cause it’s mostly Christian we’re thinking.

B: Yeah.

M: It is Christian, yeah.

B: So, you’re gonna be learning along with me and Theo as we 

T: You’re always learning along with me

B: As we discover…

T: We’re just here to be disgusted

B: Yeah

T: Let’s fucking get into it

M: Let’s get into it. I have done a lot of research on this topic, I’ve written extensively on it, I’ve presented extensively about it. I will try to cite my sources as I go along, but I want people to know that all the information I got is from reliable sources, lots of academic studies, lots of books. Let’s get started by defining Purity Culture. And to start defining it, we can’t really define it, it’s really hard to define.

T: Oh perfect (laughs)

M: Because as we will learn, it is such a big part of Christianity’s history in the United States, so it really changes across time and across place. But a researcher named Katie Cross says that there are several central tenants of purity culture that allow you to recognize it and they include—but are not limited to—restriction of all sexual activity to heterosexual marriage, so it is not affirming of the LGBTQ community and it’s very “save yourself for marriage.” There is a huge emphasis on Modesty and Sexual Purity, disproportionately for women. And there is abstinence only sex education. So those are the key aspects of purity culture, and all of it is very religious. It is deeply part of the religious community in most fundamental Christian spaces, especially in the Bible Belt. Yeah, so that’s a general overview. 

So, where did this beast come from? I’m so glad you asked Maggie (all laugh). It came from partially inspired—inspired is a bad word. People who promote Purity Culture claim that they are drawing from Levitical Laws concerned about purity and like ritual purity and like religious concepts of purity

B: Really interesting.

M: Really interesting, yeah, also various Bible verses that claim that sex is supposed to be in marriage. I went through a lot of these verses and reading them in context, they were just really concerned with women’s virginity

B: Who isn’t, really?

M: Who isn’t really concerned about women’s virginity because if women were not virgins, how does a man know his property is good? (All laugh)

T: So true.

M: So, the concept of virginity as a way to mark the worth of women, and most of the verses about keeping the marriage bed pure are about adultery, so a lot of the verses that people are like “oh this means no sex outside of marriage” are just like “don’t cheat on your spouse, that’s bad”. And a lot of people are like, “they made Adam and Eve to go together, so”

B: Did they?

M: That’s where sex goes. Well Adam and Eve weren’t married, first of all.

T: Yeah, they literally weren’t married, so hmm let’s think about that. Also isn’t adultery, like yeah, of course there is laws about adultery, it’s in the commandments.

M: It’s in the commandments, yeah.

B: It’s also just, adultery is not a super cool thing to do.

T: No, it’s not! 

B: It’s not like a really, it’s kind of like a rude, unkind thing to do.

M: Really bad thing

B: So, I can understand, “hey don’t do this kind of sentiment” 

T: Well murder is also bad.

B: Yeah, that’s not a really cool thing to do to someone.

T: That’s why God doesn’t like those and told us not to.

M: Yeah, so that’s why there’s so many verses about that, which is interesting.

T: But turns out, it’s not about sex before marriage.

M: Oh yeah, if someone would like to show us a verse where it is like no sex before marriage that is not vaguely applying that and/or is not clearly about adultery, please let us know.

B: If you’re argument for it’s not good to have sex before marriage rests on women being viewed as property, I’m just gonna say right now, I think that maybe you need to consider sort of the foundation you’ve built that argument on.

M: Maybe women aren’t property.

T: I think you need to consider that you’re a little bitch.

B: I think that we’ve kind of done a lot of work as a civilization to try to move in the direction of “hey, it’s actually not okay to view other human beings as property”.

T: In several contexts even.

B: In like pretty much no context is that acceptable in any way, and so if that’s what you’re argument is built upon I’m going to question the foundation of your argument.

M: I agree, that’s a good point. Looping back—circling back—to some of the Levitical Purity laws, sex in those laws is something that could alter being ritually pure. Like, Leviticus 15:18 “when a man lies with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both much bathe with water and they will be unclean until evening”. So, there is some concept that like, sex and your ritual purity, there’s a disconnect there. And also, there are unequal purity expectations for men and women, like women are ritually unclean twice as long after they birth a daughter, and menstruation is something that makes women ritualistically unclean. So, you can kinda see

B: Are there any things that make men ritually unclean that don’t involve women.

M: That’s a good question, like do you mean men specific ones?

T: Yeah

B: Yes 

M: I’m not sure, there might be a verse about, like, masturbation vaguely. I don’t know.

T: Yeah, well because they didn’t think that women masturbated, so.

M: Well, they don’t.

B: Women don’t masturbate, Theo.

T: Right, my mistake.

All laugh)

M: So, yeah, that’s kinda what they’re drawing from—that’s what purity culture is drawing from. And they are also drawing from a Traditional Christian Sexual Ethic, which is this idea that sex is good and holy, but can easily be perverted, so you have to keep it in marriage to keep it sacred, keep it safe, keep it holy. That kind of like, when you get married you become one flesh, sex now happens within a covenant bond. And there are some disagreements about that, but this is very different from even Evangelical Purity Culture.

B: Okay, where did Evangelical Purity Culture start?

M: Ohh, that’s a good question. Evangelical Purity Culture in the United States started with slavery.

T: Oh my God, what a surprise.

M: So, when European colonizers first went to Africa and saw African women for the first time, they wrote some of the most racist writing I’ve ever read, and it was absolutely terrible. Within European societies, men did the farming, but in African societies and also a lot of Native American societies—interestingly enough—women did the farming, and so European colonizer men went to Africa and were like “oh my gosh, look at all these masculine women doing the farming, they must be really fit for hard labor”. Really, terrible, bad. And also, because in African societies, they viewed pain differently and viewed childbirth differently than European societies did. 

B: What kind of differently?

M: There were not as many outward expressions of pain, especially in childbirth. So, in European societies, childbirth was a big communal activity, all of the women in the town came around, and helped this person with childbirth, but in African societies—and of course, obviously this is a generalization—was more solidarity and it was more like you and maybe your sister or your friend or your mom.

B: So, this is giving us origins of where the Black people experience pain differently myth comes from.

T: Yeah! I was about to say, like the medical belief that Black people experience, like have a higher threshold of pain.

B: Which as we know is not true.

T: It’s not true, and it’s horrible to think about and causes so many problems.

M: It’s really terrible, and really it was just, they expressed pain differently. There it goes. So, what the Europeans saw, is that they saw African women working in the field and also giving birth and they didn’t perceive them experiencing any pain, so they assumed that African women did not descend from Eve and therefore were not human. So, they were assumed to be more related to animals than human beings, and this is the basis for race-based chattel slavery in the United States.

T: What the fuck!!!

B: I like, know it, but…

M: It’s terrible, every time you think about it, it’s so bad.

T: I didn’t know it until right now.

M: It’s so terrible, it gets worse.

B: I didn’t know the not descended from Eve thing

M: I know.

B: That is some wack ass bullshit.

M: It is some wack ass bullshit, cause you know, the verse in Genesis, you will have pain in childbearing, they were like “these African women don’t feel pain, they are animals”.

T: What the fuck.

B: What an insane conclusion to draw. 

T: Also, animals clearly feel pain in childbirth.

B: That’s also true, also did they literally like ask anyone 

T: Of course, they didn’t

B: Like, “hey, did you feel pain during childbirth” and people could just be like “hey, yes”. I feel like maybe they should have considered that.

T: Of course, they did not because they think they know exactly what happened in the Bible so good, and also exactly what happens everywhere, and what is happening.

B: And as we know, people can only be experiencing pain if they’re screaming and crying actively, that’s why people with chronic illnesses are just in hysterics all the time.

M: It gets worse, are you guys ready?

B: No.

M: So, also in a lot of African societies, it was really warm, and also African women didn’t wear tops because Europeans loved to sexualize breasts, like a ridiculous amount.

B: Europeans love to sexualize the craziest parts of the body.

M: The ankle, the shoulder, I think are two of the hottest things.

B: I understand the nape of the neck, but I’m also like, are we for real guys?

M: Are we for real. They would not wear tops, and they started to write these journal entries where they described African women as female devils with dragging breasts, so..

B: Uhhhh

M: Right off the bat

B: What the fuck, who’s saying these things, what are their names?

M: European colonizers! I forgot their names because I didn’t care to remember them.

B: Yeah, cause let their names be forgotten and erased.

M: Deeply racist and terrible descriptions of African women. They assumed African women were ignorant, unable to control their lust, and slept with apes. And also, in all these writings that they are being horribly racist, they are also incredibly titillated by what they’re seeing. They’re like “oh these women aren’t wearing tops”

T: My dick hard.

B: What the fuck is wrong with these guys?

T: That’s so weird.

B: Oh God

M: Overall just terrible, and essentially saw African women as capable of having children without pain and working hard without pain. They were monstrous masculine women, and that really allowed them to justify enslavement. And by comparison, they asserted that white Europeans were able to control their lust, descended from Adam and Eve, and were more human and more “pure” than African people. This is also where we start to get the ideas of associating whiteness with purity and blackness with impurity. 

B: I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I think it’s a little bit funny that these awful, horrifying white European Colonizers were like “hmm, well we have this idea that maybe human beings came from animals, but no way that includes white people”. When, like, okay, you’re getting close to what evolution might be.

M: Your racism got in the way

B: You’re applying it in a way that is so, so far off the mark

M: Like I don’t even know what to say, it is just so terrible and so racist.

B: This is just a very, very hard, horrifying thing to hear about

M: A very horrifying thing

B: I guess it makes sense, but it’s interesting to me that the idea of purity was created in response to this manufactured impurity of something else, and not just like oh Purity Culture emerged form there were some people in the town who were fucking around with each other, so then we had to create purity culture to convince our daughters to be more chaste, whatever. It was literally like, we need to be so racist. 

M: And it only gets worse as the institution of slavery develops in the United States. More specifically, enslavers, I think most people understand, would repeatedly rape enslaved women, it was a huge problem with the institution of slavery. So, there became a lot of mixed-race children. So, to mitigate the threat to white supremacy that this rape proposed, children would inherit their status—either slave or free—from their mother. So, white women were responsible for maintaining the purity of white supremacy and the purity of their family line.

B: This is again interesting because we have another situation where white men primarily are creating a system in which their racism and bad behavior and sexual immorality is excused, and the onus of responsibility for whatever they decide is important, is placed on women in the community, so you know, the misogyny shines through. There’s a really great deal of racism going on here, and the misogyny has not been left behind. 

M: Nope

B: Along for the ride.

M: In my History of Women in the United States class, we talked, like yes slavery is a racist institution at its core, but it was also a deeply gendered institution as well, so we get a lot of gendered stereotypes as well. Both called “The Nat” stereotype—is what historians call it—that they were dangerous, that they just wanted to sexually assault white women, that they needed to be controlled by the institution of slavery.

B: Why is it called Nat?

M: I think it was Nat Turner slave revolt

B: So, it’s named after a person.

M: Yeah, and it’s like a historian name, like they didn’t have these names for stereotypes because they just thought they were true

T: Right, until later

M: Similarly, the Jezebel stereotype, that Black women are inherently sexually promiscuous, compared to the sexually pure white women.

B: The Jezebel stereotype, which is pulling from a piece of the Bible about a woman who was blamed for being sexually promiscuous—because if I recall correctly in the Jezebel story—her other choice was to like, literally die.

M: Yeah

B: Or, you know, for her kingdom to destroyed.

T: Which I mean is kind of how it also worked in the slavery application of that.

B: Well exactly, I guess it does make sense

T: To call it that, yeah.

M: And who was being sexually immoral this whole time? White men who were raping people, so are we shocked. And of course, white women dangerously upheld the institution of slavery and weaponized their femininity

B: It counts as sexual immorality to have sex with someone consensually and then accuse them of rape to save face.

T: Yeah, that is fucking absolutely reprehensible.

B: I mean, that’s absolutely immorality, I’m gonna say that falls into the category of sexual immorality because white women who were having sexual relationships with enslaved Black men knew exactly how much risk they were putting that Black man in, those Black men in, and I think—while I don’t think it’s immoral necessarily to have forbidden relationships with people, whatever—I think it is absolutely immoral to risk someone else’s life like that.

T: And also, then purposefully--

B: And lie about it

T: Then purposefully put them in danger to save your own reputation

B: And that was, like, kind of white woman bread and butter at the time of dodging accountability

T: And it still is

B: Yeah absolutely.

M: So, in summary, ideas of maintaining ritual purity originated as ways to enforce white supremacy cause one way that we subjugate other groups of people is by saying their men are not masculine and that their women are not feminine. So, white men and women within this context were seen as inherently sexually pure and modest, while Black people were thought to be inherently sexually impure and immodest, which just justifies racism. So, Evangelical Purity culture is deeply racist and still is. Any other thoughts before we move into the more recent history of how Evangelical Purity Culture kind of formed as the movement that we recognize today/became politically terrifying.

B: A question that I have, which is that it’s very clear that there was this sense of having to create white purity as a way to—you know—continue to justify the horrors of slavery, and to kind of exceptionalize whiteness and make white people seem better. But my question is, was purity culture within white Christian communities being enacted in any way. Because I know now, we have things like Purity Balls and Promise Purity rings, and all of that stuff, that I’m sure you’re gonna talk about. Were those kinds of things happening and how was Purity Culture enacted and preached during that era where it was emerging

M: Yeah, for sure. I think it was just kind of the general historic sense that you don’t have sex outside of marriage, you aren’t an unwed mother. And women as property, I think at this time was a big part of it, like concerns that a new wife will be a virgin or else she would shame her family, kind of in general what we associate with the Victorian Era ideas of purity and keeping sex within marriage, and that was definitely preached at the time, and it also developed these racist undertones at the same time of like white people do this, and Black people don’t and they are worse than us, so that’s kind of how Purity Culture is preached at this time. Do we wanna talk about the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity.

B: Yeah, okay, so let’s talk about the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity in relation to Purity Culture.

M: So fundamentalist Christian groups, a lot of this history I’m taking from Sara Moslener’s article “It’s like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb” in Theology and Sexuality, and then Susan Knabe’s—I’m not sure how she pronounces her name— “Suffer the Children” just to cite my sources. Fundamentalist Christian groups in the early 1900s began to respond to many counter cultural movements that happened in the WWI/Roaring 20s era, and a lot of these movements promised individualism and self-fulfillment, so the fundamentalist church was like “we need to appeal to the cook kids, so we are going to create a religion that—we are going to brand Christianity to be full of individualism and self-fulfillment”. So those same things, but like religious.

B: What were some of the counter cultural movements

M: Like the poetry movements, the Harlem Renaissance, that was happening, rise of new wave feminism

B: I was going to say that some of these were very largely Black movements, and then you said New Wave Feminism

M: I didn’t even make that connection

B: The racism persists

M: The racism persists, so those sayings like “God is everything you need”, “it’s a relationship not a religion” all of those things come from Christianity trying to rebrand itself to appeal to the masses, and as Bridget said, racism.

T: That’s so interesting that the goal of Christianity was to appear not as a religion because I think that’s a huge red flag in terms of a religious institution.

M: I know that’s like a cult red flag, 100%

T: No, it is, and also like capitalism is brought into it at that point

M: Purity Culture is very capitalistic

T: Of course, well, all of modern Christianity, the whole institution is incredibly tied into capitalism because they profit off of people being Christian and believing the institution, so

M: Is that a sign of a cult?

B: Theo, churches are non-profits, so consider that one.

M: They don’t pay taxes, actually, so.

B: How could they be capitalist if they don’t pay taxes, Theo? 

T: Yeah, that’s a great question

(All laugh)

T: One we could answer I bet, not me though

B: Yeah.

M: That’s a good question. Oh, and most of these movements, like the New Christianity, were really aimed at youth because they thought that kids were vulnerable to the corrupting influence of the world. Evangelical Christians who think their theology is perfect, it is like 100 years old, maybe.

T: Also die.

M: Also, die, and after WWII they were like “holy shit, kids are no longer innocent, they have seen the horrors of the world.” Were they thinking of Jewish children? Absolutely not, they were thinking of white children.

T: White Christian children, in America.

M: White Christian children, were no longer innocent after the war, don’t care about Jewish children, just care about white Christian children after the war.

B: White Christian children weren’t innocent after the war because they watched some of it on television and read about it in Superman Comics

M: Yep, and saw it in the newspaper.

B: Okay so not because they actually experienced any of it

M: Yes

T: Unlike many other children did experience it firsthand

B: I don’t know what children you could possibly be talking about. 

T: Yeah, me neither

B: There were literally no children in Europe who were

T: There was actually no children in Europe at all

B: It was actually just white American children, they were the only ones having a hard time during WWII, as far as I can remember

M: Yeah, I’m pretty sure

B: I’ve seen absolutely no documentary providing me evidence to indicate otherwise

T: My grandpa was not 11 in the holocaust

B: In Europe?

(All laugh)

B: So, when was the first Red Scare?

M: Oh my gosh I was just about to talk about communism and the Cold War

B: Wow!

M: Let’s get into it. So, how did Evangelical Christianity become politically terrifying? The answer is the Cold War Era. Politians, religious leaders, and academics were like “we’re losing the war because people are having sex outside of marriage”

B: What, they thought that?

M: Yes!

T: That’s hilarious that’s like so funny!

B: I did not know that!

M: Guys I heard a sermon about this yesterday!

B: The sermon was about WWII that you heard yesterday?

M: No, the sermon was about when traditional families fall apart, society falls apart. That was the sermon.

B: So, the genuine thinking of sort of the nation Evangelical Christian church in the 1940s was that we were losing WWII—

M: Not WWII, the Cold War.

B: What era are we in right now?

M: The Cold War and Communism

B: Okay, does anyone want to give us some dates about right around when the Cold war was happening

M: 50s, 60s.

B: 47-91 is the broader era that I’m being handed, but yeah that’s basically, 50s, 60s, 70s

M: 50s, 60s is when it was the strongest, that they were like Russia’s gonna nuke us, we need to stop having sex.

T: That’s so funny, imagine thinking your dick had that much power

M: Basically, in Russia, there was like this assumption that Americans that like Russia was pro-gay and pro-women, which is like not 100% true, Russia was still a pretty sexist and homophobic place. But, to some degree less so than the United States, but it was mostly just propaganda. So, America had to prove to the world that Traditional Family Values are better than communism and feminism and all of that, and one important thing was that communist countries were really anti-religion, and so one way to prove how morally good and better America was than Russia was for them to prove they were a Christian Country. So, to be a good American who was fighting against Russia, it meant you kept your dick in your pants and you went to church, and that’s how we were gonna beat the Russians, like deadass

B: Because the Russians were gonna care how much sex we were having?

M: Well, because Bridget if we have too much sex, the country will fall about and we won’t be able to win our dick measuring contest with Russia.

T: Oh my God, that’s what happened

M: That’s what the cold war was, I’ll be honest.

B: You have to keep your dick in your pants, so it says long

(All laugh)

T: You know about the dick measurement stuff about the cold War

M: Yes! They dropped Extra Large Condom in Russia and labeled them, like, small or medium so the Russians would think that Americans had bigger dicks.

(Laugh)

B: I do know about this, I forgot about that

T: So funny

B: They literally out of like military line, “oops I dropped my monster condoms for my massive dong”

M: That was it, and then the Christian Church—to gain political standing because power hungry fuckers like Billy Graham wanted political power—they framed the Cold War as a fight between Christianity and Communism, so “they were like are you gonna fight for God,” like “are you gonna stand up when the Russians come and start killing Christians”, like “are you gonna fight for Jesus”

B: What?!

M: Like that kind of attitude, kind of started to emerge during the Cold War

B: Wait, why would you be killing Christians?

T: Just to make sure that people hated communism

B: No, no, no. I’m genuinely confused, what is the point of killing Christians?

M: Well because Russian Communism is anti-religion, and so there’s a lot of propaganda within fundamentalist Christian communities, it’s like they love to be persecuted, they have like a persecution kink.

T: Um yeah, we know that

M: Which is so terrible, so that kind of started to emerge in the Cold War, and they were like if Russia wins the Cold War, they’re gonna start killing Christians. That kind of Propaganda started during the Cold War.

B: So, they were worried that Russia was gonna start killing Christians?

M: Yes.

B: They weren’t calling on Americans to kill Christians in like a weird suicide pact type way.

M: No, they were like, if communism gets here, who’s gonna stand up for Jesus, kind of vibes, which continue today

B: So right now, what’s going on is, Christianity has decided that it’s under threat from the evil forces of communism that the way to stand up to Russian Communism is to stay morally pure, so the country doesn’t collapse, and one of the ways that they’re enforcing this moral purity is through the tandem, but actually significantly larger, Lavender Scare because we can’t talk about the Red Scare without talking about the Lavender Scare.

M: Bridget, you and I are on the same wavelength, that is the next bullet point in my notes. Part of the Red Scare of McCarthyism like, we have to root out all the commies in the government, part of that was gay people are also communists and also really vulnerable to being, like, spies for the Russian Government.

T: That’s funny

B: This was a really big belief at the time, which was like homosexuality demonstrated that you were of “weak moral fiber” and if you were of weak moral fiber, then you were going to be more vulnerable to the Russian government preying on you and to, you know, participating in communist beliefs and behaviors, and also that you were going to be more vulnerable people asking you to be a spy because you probably had something to hide, so it’s also easier to blackmail you

T: That’s so funny

M: They also had a line of sermons about how Rome went to shit, like collapsed, because people in Rome had too much gay sex, I wish I was making this up, I wish I was, this is like borderline what I heard in the sermon yesterday

T: So, I’m hearing about a possible plan for how to collapse America

M: Collapse America, have a bunch of gay sex

T: I’m on it, this podcast is single handedly gonna sink America

B: So, okay, I would like to take a moment to speak on the lavender scare because this is actually a topic that I know a fair amount about, but basically, we talk a lot about the red scare and I’m not sure we clarified so far. The Red Scare was this giant moral panic in the United States, that, you know, communism was taking over, and communism was coming and that basically anyone could be a communist and that everyone had to be on the lookout for communists and report anyone you suspected to communism. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that comes from this time. Basically, a bunch of people were persecuted because they were suspected of being communists, and that gets a lot of press. But kind of a larger thing going on is that in tandem with a red scare, there was the lavender scare, which was this moral panic about homosexuality in a way that was very tied to this fear of communism, so there were a lot of people who were persecuted and suspected of being communists, but the sheer volume and number of people who were fired from their jobs, ousted from their communities and persecuted for being suspected homosexuals was actually a much, much greater number, but it is talked about a lot less. We can get into the freaking purple pamphlet and the orange juice lady some other time, but I just think it’s important to note, that in addition to the red scare going on, there was also this moral panic about homosexuality that kind of stemmed from and operated in conjunction with this moral panic about communism and I’m imagining that there was a very significant Purity Culture response to this fear of homosexuality because homosexuality was perceived as very impure

M: 100% yeah, so Purity Culture evolved too not only be racist, but also incredibly homophobic. So also, being gay was un-American, it was also un-Christian, and it was not sexually pure. I love being an un-American not Christian gay person.

T: Me too, actually. It’s my hobby.

M: If everybody is okay

B: Yes

M: We’re going to switch gears to the 80s and 90s, where the Cold War conflict is coming to a close, so Evangelical Christianity had to change their tactics a little bit, because no more were they like you need to not have sex outside of marriage, you need to not be gay to save your country. The Cold War was over, so they had to change.

B: It wasn’t working for them anymore; people were like the country’s not in danger

M: The country’s not in danger, right? Wrong. 

B: No peace

(laugh)

M: They went back to their tactics of individualism and self-fulfillment that they developed in response to the Harlem Renaissance and New Wave Feminism. And were like sexual immorality will harm you personally, and purity will give you self-fulfillment, if you save yourself for marriage, you will be so happy and so One with God, it will be like the sexiest thing ever, you’ll be so cool, and they used the same war language, and were like “there’s a war between pure Christians and everybody else”. So, they took the Cold War conflict that was happening in Russia, and were like “actually it’s happening in the United States”.

B: And it’s happening in your mind.

T: and in your pants

M: So, there was a lot of fear tactics of the sexual immoral outside world, this is where you get people like the Duggar’s who start home schooling their children, people who don’t talk to others outside of the church, any fear of the immoral and impure.

B: So, we’re getting this weird isolationism going on

M: Really weird isolationism.

T: Which makes you at risk for joining a cult

B: At risk for being afraid to leave a cult

T: Yeah, cause one thing that separates cults from religions is being unable to leave

M: Yep, so if you left the cult—I mean Evangelical Christianity—to go to the outside world, you would die in the fires of hell. 

Hey, how does Evangelical Purity culture relate to the Unsolved Murder of JonBenet Ramsey, are you ready for this? 

B: Um, okay, dive in Maggie

M: So, when JonBenet Ramsey was killed by her brother—I will be taking no comments

(All Laugh)

B: Wow, damn.

M: It was an unsolved murder, and police assumed, “JonBenet Ramsey, she was a pageant girl in a good, white, middle class family, there must be an evil pedophile abuser who came into her house and wrote and re-wrote the note in her house, and like killed her in her own home, obviously”

B: Can I be honest with you about something?

M: Yes

B: I don’t know anything about the JonBenet Ramsey case.

T: Yeah, can we get some background?

M: You don’t know about the JonBenet Ramsey case???

T: I know vaguely about it, but like can we get some background for the listeners

M: For the listeners, so true, I’m so passionate

B: Also, for me personally because I’m not a True Crime person so I don’t know about these things.

T: I like fake crime better than true crime.

M: Fair enough

B: I don’t believe in crime

M: JonBenet Ramsey was a 6-year-old pageant girl, who’s living—I don’t know where—suburbia USA, and one day she was found dead in her home and there was evidence that she had been sexually assaulted, and all the evidence is really weird. I think you can find whole true crime episodes—and I think Buzzfeed Unsolved did a bit on JonBenet Ramsey.

T: It’s like the most famous cold case ever.

M: It’s one of the most famous cold cases ever. And they never found the murderer, and me and a lot of other people think that what happened was, JonBenet Ramsey’s brother had psychopathic tendencies and killed his sister in a moment of rage and the parents decided to cover it up. So, they wrote a fake ransom note and there were like drafts of the note in the house, they put JonBenet in the basement. Before they called the police, they called all their neighbors, and like 20 people were milling about the house covering up all the evidence

B: Yeah, to fuck with all the DNA and whatever

M: Yeah, exactly, so they thought it could be a child predator living in the neighborhood, but it was probably JonBenet’s brother who killed her. But the mainstream media at the time, they thought, like an anonymous boogeyman child predator had snuck into the house and sexually assaulted JonBenet Ramsey and killed her.

B: Okay so this is another moral panic situation.

M: Yes, and so there became this crisis of innocence that white, middle class, female children are really vulnerable to abuse that’s like outside the home that there are evil, evil people—and there are evil people, Joshua Duggar for example.

B: Yeah, but its again the brothers inside the home I guess

T: It turns out to not be people outside the home, most of the time it’s people inside the home.

B: Because you know what, a lot of evil people—I would say the majority of evil people—they have homes you know—they’re in there and there’s usually someone in there with them.

M: So, how did Purity Culture respond to the JonBenet Ramsey Case.

B: I’d love to know.

M: The patriarchal father, the leader and protector of the family is supposed to protect his young daughters from abuse outside the home. Guess who is usually abusing children. 

T: Yeah, the fucking patriarchal fathers, yeah yeah yeah yeah, okay. 

M: So, I think the JonBenet Ramsey case is such—first of all that it was Purity Culture largely responded to the JonBenet Ramsey case thinking that there was abusers outside the home that the father protected—but if you look at the case, abuse was probably happening inside the home, it’s like the perfect metaphor and they don’t even know it.

T: Yeah, like the patriarchal father that’s supposed to protect is the one—first of all probably abusing the child in the first place, and if not, covered up the murder that also happened from somebody inside the home.

B: So, the patriarchal father was protecting something, but that something was the institution of the patriarchy

T: And also, the murderer

B: And the image of this white Christian family. 

M: Exactly, yeah, gotta protect the white Christian Family.

T: And it ended in his daughter dying, so clearly that is not what he was protecting

B: Poor kid, man.

M: Yeah. Do you wanna hear how Purity Culture gets worse?

T: Yes.

M: At the same time of the JonBenet Ramsey case, digital pornography became a thing—pornography was a lot more accessible, and so, there was this crisis that children could be sexual. So fathers in Evangelical Purity Culture have to protect their daughters from their own budding sexuality and their own sexual desires.

T: Uh-Oh

M: I know, this is where you get Purity Balls, where girls as young as 11 and 12 pledge their purity to their father and say, “I am promising my sexual purity to my father, and he will hand me sexually pure and a virgin to my husband”. 

T: Oh, that feels so bad to me. 

M: It feels really bad

B: They’re super bad

M: Girls are encouraged to date their dads

T: What?!

M: Bring all their questions to their dad, treat their dad—like if they want their boyfriend, no you have your dad.

B: He’s your surrogate husband until you have a real husband.  It’s like the way they used to do sibling proxy marriages in Europe.

T: That is horrifying.

B: Yeah, it’s literally horrifying

M:  So, stepfather and father incest in homes is more common in families with patriarchal characteristics. 

T: Fucking of course it is.

M: So, this is probably just encouraging—

B: Is it more common in Evangelical Families

M: It is, for sure. There’s not official data on that, but I can say with confidence that there is a lot of abuse happening in Evangelical Christian Families.

B: Paint Theo a picture of what a Purity Ball looks like.

M: A Purity Ball—no women allowed.

T: No women allowed?

M: Only children, children and their fathers. 

T: Oh

M: First of all, it’s a huge money-making business, and so you go, you wear white, like you’re getting married, and you have this little ceremony where you pledge yourself to your father.

B: The kids dress up like pageant girls, kinda, you know they’re all in white, but they’re dressed up! Their hair is done, they’re really dressed up.

T: To look like adult women almost

B: It’s kind of sold to young girls as this fun father-daughter activity, and it’s a way to bond with your dad and also be a good Christian, and it’s really wrapped up in all of these things that little girls will probably enjoy, like being able to get dressed up and go to a big party with a lot of their friends and their dads, and have fancy food, you know. Then you pledge your purity to your father, and I think they sometimes get little rings?

M: You do, yeah. You get purity rings.

T: That just is so horrifying.

B: You’re Purity Ring is the symbol of the fact, that you’re kinda—

M: That you’re married to your father until you’re married to your husband.

T: That’s so fucked up.

B: And while you’re wearing your purity ring, it’s like your commitment to not being sexual at all.

T: Well that just makes me think that like, it would make it even easier for fathers to like, sexually abuse their daughters because you can’t make your daughter impure if you’re the one that they’re like married too.

B: This goes back to the idea that daughters are the property of the fathers, and so your property is yours to do what you want with, which is a disgusting idea.

M: So, Purity Culture as a way for white people to enforce white supremacy and it now enables childhood sexual abuse of young girls.

B: It seems to me that a lot of Evangelical Christian mother’s who’s like family does this, either they did it as a child, or they’re like this is such a beautiful way for the father to be connected to the child. In a patriarchal home, the mother is responsible more of the child rearing, more of the emotional side of the father, and they’re like “what a beautiful way for them to connect and spend time together”. Because also, if I remember correctly, Purity Balls aren’t a one-time thing, a lot of time you’ll go, or you have like events where these fathers and daughters will like, attend together, and continue to learn about the importance of Purity.

M: Yeah, for sure, it’s like an ongoing process. It’s in a lot of high schools too, you can like pledge your purity to your school club and be pure with all your friends.

B: I mean they literally had it on Glee, remember that?

M: Yeah, so that is the terrifying racist, American Nationalist, homophobic history of Evangelical Purity culture in the United States.

T: Oh boy.

B: And Maggie, does it work?

M: NO! NO! It enables PTSD, child abuse, STDs, pregnancy.

T: Forces you to sleep between two people who are about to get married.

M: For one example.

(laughter)

M: It enables rape and rape culture. I could do a whole other podcast on how Evangelical Purity Culture is religious violence

T: And you will

B: And we probably will

M: And we probably will, so.

B: Do you have any statistics or anecdotes or anything on how things like Purity Balls and pledging your purity to clubs makes people feel when they do it.

M: Well, the most horrifying thing, is it makes them unable to report sexual abuse.

B: Okay,

M: I’ve met some people, who’ve like survived Purity Culture and have symptoms that they could be diagnosed with PTSD. They do not have a healthy relationship with their sexuality, and they think of themselves as dirty and shameful, even if they are having sex within the bounds of a heterosexual marriage.

B: Even within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, the lasting impact of Purity Culture is that you feel so guilty and bad about sex that you can’t even have the kind of sex that you’re supposed to be allowed to have, that’s supposed to be acceptable.

M: Yeah, you can’t even have that. You can even have physical symptoms, they cannot physically have penetrative sex

B: A lot of vaginismus going on.

M: Yeah, their body reacts physically, they may have panic attacks because if you grew up your whole life saying, “sex is evil and dirty and will defile your whole body and send you to hell,” that’s not going to change overnight when you get married, and it hasn’t.

B: If you perhaps are a little bit of a homosexual.

T: Perhaps.

M: Perhaps.

B: How would Purity Culture impact your relationship to your sexuality and your relationship to sex.

T: Hypothetically, how would it.

M: Hypothetically speaking, you might cry the first time you have sex.

B: Maybe the second.

M: Maybe the second, maybe you still cry a little bit, maybe you think God is punishing you, you think you’re unholy maybe.

B: How does Purity Culture frame “homosexual urges,” “homosexual tendencies,” how are those framed in the context of Purity Culture.

M: Homosexual urges, I personally do not struggle with, so God has freed me from those temptations (laughter)

T: I don’t struggle with homosexual urges, I’m actually really good at them.

M: I’m so good at them. One of the ways that Purity Culture effects—or frames—homosexual urges 1.) That is straight from the devil 2.) you are making them up for attention.

B: You’re making them up for attention??

T: That’s hilarious. 

B: Yeah, that’s kind of funny. That’s like terrible. 

M: I’m like, I do want attention, I want— “hey mom I wanna fuck this girl”

(All laugh)

M: Number one way to get attention, number one way. It’s a challenge that God gave you

T: Oh boy real, that one was real

B: I’ve heard that one before. 

M: Oh my gosh, do y’all want to hear my favorite Evangelical reason why gay people shouldn’t get married. 

T: Yes

B: Yes please

M: (laughs) Because—I can’t even say it—because women get along too well and are too similar that they just can’t get married.

T: No, okay

B: because why, what will happen??

M: Well, men and women hate each other so much, the only way they can have a relationship is through sex and marriage, the only way that we can overcome gender differences is through sex.

T: That is the funnies thing I ever heard. Genuinely when you told me that, I was like “you hear how ridiculous this sounds, right”. You were like, people of the same gender cannot have sex with each other because sex is only there so that men and women can understand each other.

B: Which is exactly what happens.

M: Yeah, 100%

T: Clearly obviously that is what happens when straight people have sex, they understand each other so well, that they both have a great time.

M: They both have a great time, and the woman comes every single time.

T: Every time.

B: Well, that’s what the evangelicals are scared what would happen if they would let women…

M: Another good example is that everybody wants to be gay married, but you have to get straight married because it’s like a challenge from God, to like, pursue marriage.

T: I feel like that might be, whoever said that is actually gay

B: I’m gonna say, whoever came up with that one, I maybe wanna have a little conversation with them.

M: Have a little chat.

T: Wow, truly people come up with things

B: People really just, they are coming up with the most fascinating, interesting reasons.

M: The other day, guess what I heard about. 

T: What.

M: An organization taking a mission trip to Africa

T: Already bad.

M: To teach people about purity.

T: Oh no.

M: And I said, like yes mission trips are modern day colonialism.

B: But this.

M But this is like, full circle baby.

B: God, full circle in like the worst possible sense of the phrase.

T: You are circling all the way back to the origin of purity culture

B: The literally like, origin of American Christian racism, pretty fucking bad one. 

M: That is a pretty fucking bad one, yeah. If anyone tries to defend Purity Culture or like Purity Culture adjacent things, they are getting decked in the face.

B: Really upsetting, but interesting episode this week you guys.

T: Yeah

M: Yeah

B: My closing notes that I would like to say are just that racism is so, so bad and Christianity built up so, so much of it. This whole construction of Purity Culture seems so racist, so homophobic, so misogynist, and patriarchal, and also anti-communist.

T: Yep. 

M: Just to add in there, yeah.

B: Thank you so much for taking us on this horrifying journey.

T: If you or a loved one has been affected by Purity Culture

M: You are entitled to therapy and financial compensation.

B: I was going to say, you may be entitled to a hug from each one of these three podcast hosts if you would like it. 

M: Anyways, closing notes, to defeat the Russians, keep your dick in your pants, so it can stay long.

T: And men and women have hate sex-only.

B: Only

M: And you can’t get gay married because it would be such a good marriage.

T: Too good.

M: It would be too good of a marriage. 

T: Well, you know, I can’t wait to get gay married and fuck the devil, so

M: Thank you for listening to my ex, and my future wife, I’m Maggie.

B: I’m Bridget

T: I’m Theo

M: And until next time, be gay and question God.

Theo (singing): My ex and my future wife.