Response to "Marrying a Virgin is No Big Deal?"

     Today Lori once again reminds us that she "can't imagine" why her most viral blog stirred up so much protest: 

“You would think from the reaction (even from Christians) from my viral post, Men Prefer Debt Free Virgins Without Tattoos, that marrying a virgin or not is no big deal. After all, there are few virgins, anyway, so what does it matter? Once one is forgiven, it’s all washed clean, right?”

I addressed this at length in my response to the original blog. The primary objection made to the blog had nothing to do with whether it’s better to be a virgin until marriage. It is likely that most of those who had a problem with the blog did not disagree with this point. But the blog said much more than this, and Lori is simply pretending not to know that. It’s as if I wrote a blog saying only white, Christian, hard-working men should be allowed to vote, and when people criticized my blog, accusing them of having a problem with hard-working men! 

We need to begin teaching the young people to wait for marriage. Their virginity belongs to their future spouse alone. It’s not something to give away freely. 

     This statement is troubling to me. The implication is that you belong to another human being (a problematic idea on its own), but beyond this, that you belong to them even before you marry them or even know them! No, your virginity does not belong to someone else. When you get married, in a way you are offering all of yourself to someone else; but it's a gift, and not given because you owe it to them somehow; and they are, at the same time, offering all of themselves to you. If you are not a virgin when you get married, then this is not something you are offering them. And if they've chosen to marry you, they've accepted that. They don't have it because it never belonged to them, and you never gave it to them. 

“Most who give it away freely, struggle in marriage with sex.” 

Once again, Lori presents one of her unfounded opinions as fact. There are also many people who were virgins until their wedding night and still struggle with sex too, but obviously Lori would not accept this as an argument in favor of having sex before marriage. This is nothing but a scare tactic to coerce people into following her every word.

The remainder of the blog contains a comment from one of her male readers: 

“I forgave my wife for her pattern of fornication that she claimed was prior to her salvation. She cried and begged for my forgiveness. I forgave her and, thanks to nonsense I had heard preached in church, I foolishly assumed that was all behind us.

“On our honeymoon, her intimacy issues reared their ugly head. One week in, I felt tricked and trapped by my faith. Her ‘intimacy anorexia’ has made my life excruciating. She apparently was not repentant in the least; she just knew that she needed to appear that way to get me to marry her. She is currently bankrupting me in divorce court and has kept me from my sons for most of two and a half years of their lives so far.

“I made my sons swear to me that they will only marry a virgin, and that they themselves should keep themselves virgins to deserve one. Of all the stupid things I’ve done in my life, marrying a non-virgin has cost me ten times more than all the other mistakes combined. Learn from the ruin of my home.”

Lori’s persuasion method of choice seems to be presenting a single weird anecdote that literally proves nothing but has a profound emotional impact on the fearful. It is meant to produce not thought but panic. If I argued in the same way, I could just as easily find a happily married couple, both of whom were not virgins when they got married, and then declare confidently that everyone should sleep around before getting married because "clearly" that results in a stronger and better marriage!

     Further, the man seems to believe the entire reason things went wrong in his marriage was the fact that she wasn’t a virgin. How does he know this? It’s easy to find cases in which the opposite occurred (someone who was a virgin prior to marriage is unfaithful, or someone who was not IS faithful). Unfaithfulness in marriage could just as easily be attributed to numerous other factors. It certainly is not true that those who have only ever been with their own spouse are guaranteed to remain faithful. (To be clear, in no way am I suggesting "sleeping around" is a good thing. My point simply is that a person cannot and should not ever be judged entirely on the basis of their past in that regard. There are plenty of good people with such a past, and plenty of people with a "pure" past who nevertheless would make terrible spouses). 

  I would never suggest that someone for whom lack of virginity is an issue marry someone who is not a virgin, any more than I would suggest someone who insists on having a blonde spouse marry a brunette. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences, legitimate or not. However, those who feel this way cannot accuse who do choose to marry a non-virgin of doing something wrong (or predict that their marriage will fall apart on that basis alone). And they also cannot pretend they are not applying ignorant labels to people; if you characterize all non-virgins as automatically not spouse material, this has no impact on who they are or what they have to offer; it does, however, say something about you. 




Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/strong-single-women-advice/