Fine, I’ll indulge McCain’s desire for comments and controversy:

‘I was a virgin,’ said Courtney. ‘I knew that if I kept that, I would
really be blessed with a beautiful gift. And God did. He blessed me with
my soulmate. So I’m really thankful for that.’

Miz Courtney, you are SIXTEEN.  First, please stop acting like being a 16-year-old virgin is any sort of accomplishment.  You were born that way and didn’t change that in the two years you’ve been in high school.  Whoop-de-freakin-do.

Now let’s get to the real issue: you were blessed with a soul mate because you waited?  Courtney, sweetie, babycakes, there are a lot of nice, Christian, virgin women who are TWICE YOUR AGE and still waiting for that soul mate, still living good Catholic and Christian lives.

Freakin Protestants.  Catholics understand that being a “good girl” doesn’t mean that you get rewarded with lifelong love in your teens.  Sometimes, you’re even called to be Single and celibate.  Sometimes, you aren’t called to marriage until your old age, and it’s not because you didn’t save yourself.

Sorry, Stace, but I want to slap her upside the head.

I think it is fine.  While, perhaps, not ideal.  I certainly do not begrudge them.  Though, I think she may be… a little hasty in pronouncing she has a soul mate.  Do that on your 50th (okay, I’ll handicap them 20th) anniversary, if still married.  I am completely surprised anyone is raising a huff, at all.  If she was 51, and he 16?  Yeah, issues, because there is no chance for children.  Anyway, I do hope she is right.  Hmm, does she… have a sister?  :p

According to the best statistical data I can find, the median age of
first sexual intercourse for U.S. females nowadays is 17, or maybe a
little short of that.

No disagreements there.  In typical over-achiever fashion, however, I will point out that we can set the bar a bit higher than “Didn’t do worse than half the population!”, especially as conservatives, Republicans, and Christians. 

While I don’t disagree with Courtney’s decision to wait for marriage (yay, Courtney!), I do think that she unwittingly reinforces bad ideas.  People see that and say, “Yeah, well, waiting for marriage made sense ‘back in the day’ when you married at 16, but if you don’t meet anyone until 25 or 30, you can’t be expected to wait.”  It’s the difference between running a mile and running a marathon – a marathon that you never really signed up for nor asked to run.  So how do we get from Courtney Stoddard to chastity until marriage when marriage comes after college, after 25, even later?

My very gritted-teeth comment to a pastor a few weeks ago (“It gets easier… but this is not natural“) sums up my take on long-term chastity, from, in the words of one of your commenters, ‘the wrong side of 30′. Certainly, there’s some peace that comes with looking back on years (decade and then some…? small voice there) and knowing that you did the right thing, but so much of the consolation is in the negative (e.g. “I’ve never worried about being pregnant, I don’t have STDs,” etc.), and the good part in the hypothetical (“If I find someone, it’ll be worth it; if I have children, I’ll be proud to tell them”).  So pardon me for really wanting to smack Courtney when I hear, ‘I knew that if I kept that, I would really be blessed with a beautiful
gift. And God did. He blessed me with my soulmate. So I’m really
thankful for that.’

OK, at risk of your redheaded wrath, Roxeanne I’ll just say this: It’s not about you.

Go ahead, hate me for saying that, but it’s true. Rather than thinking about your own feelings or opinions, try to look at it from her point of view. She does not intend to insult anyone else by this (rather silly) celebration of herself for having “waited” until she was 16. But I bet that she knows lots of girls in her hometown who’ve been “sexually active” since middle school. And don’t you just know that the refusal of Courtney — almost certainly the prettiest girl in her school — to indulge in such activity enraged those other girls?

So now she’s in Hollywood, married to a movie star, appearing on “Good Morning America” and those other girls back in her hometown? Oh, they hate her. They really, really hate her now.

Courtney describes herself as a Christian and a Republican. She’s on our side, whether we like it or not.

Courtney says she is both a Christian and a Republican, which is pretty
doggone rare in Hollywood, so I reckon it behooves us not to slam her
like she was an Obama-loving liberal.

Your double standards and partisan bias cannot be more transparent.

And hypocrisy.

Who said RS McCain has no standards? He has exactly two — on for him, one for everyone else.

And if even a fraction of other beautiful christian American teens wish to emulate her “success”, all the Hollywood stars won’t be in enough number to marry them and deflower their virgin pussies, right?

Most of the Hollywood stars I see are too busy screwing up the country….

BruceC,

FFS!  The “Freakin Protestants” was meant with humour.  Stacy understood that, which is why he did not get up in arms.  He takes his shots at the Papists, we take ours at him, and those shots are all with water guns (to continue the metaphor).

That said, Catholics and Protestants have very different ideas about lifelong celibacy, the value of the non-married life, and even why people get married. Courtney’s statement is a very typical non-Catholic statement: people are rewarded for being ‘good’ with great sex and a soul mate.  Care to tell me where that is found in the Bible?

Here’s a hint: it’s not.  Sometimes, His most devout followers are rewarded with martyrdom.  Mary was ‘rewarded’ with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. St. Paul was ‘rewarded’ for his ministry with celibacy. Followers of Christ have long been ‘rewarded’ with persecution, torture, condemnation by society, and poverty, to name a few ailments.  It’s history, it’s the Bible, it’s reality.

There is a large body of data that the Catholic priesthood have more than their share of sexual troubles, including pedophilia

“More than their share” implies a higher percentage than the general population, but that is not only unfounded, it is contradicted by numerous studies.

Please also link to studies indicating that the Protestant clergy has a lower rate of paedophilia and other disorders.  I doubt you’ll be able to find any.

The Catholic church is the source of much of the repeaters. Institutionalized celibacy and morality and denial can be said to have been the very Genesis of child abuse. This can be seen in the North American First Nations people, as their history is so recent. Their cultures underwent a tremendous wrenching with the official kidnapping of their kids to “educate” them, ie break the links in the transmision of their culture by forcing them to attend White schools. Run in many cases by the priests and nuns of . . . guess who!

There they got abused in all possible ways and grew up damaged in ways that were previously not possible and worse, passed their newly acquired dysfunctionality onto THEIR kids.

More and more we are permitted to take action against organized and formerly protected pedophilia, but what they have set loose in society at large, fathers and uncles abusing children privately, will still have a long life.

Roxanne’s comments about the difficulty of remaining pure are heartfelt, I’m fairly sure.

I’m reminded of a  joke:

[Man to woman " Would you sleep with me for one million dollars?" Woman, "sure, why not?"

Man, again, to woman "would you sleep with me for $20"
 Woman, "no, what kind of a woman do you think I am?"

Man "We've already established that, now we're just negotiating".]

To explain the context of it a little, women see men as far too serious about sex, the stakes are too grave, often men miss an opportunity to date a girl because they make such a big deal of it (this is where the booze helps).

So when you say would you do this and that for a million $ it is in the realm of “would you kill your boss for a million $?” and everyone says “sure!” and no one is judged an assassin for that. But women have to be reminded constantly that men kill or harm over the ‘possession’ of a girl, there is nothing casual and friendly about the desire a man feels for a woman, it is not about comfort and harmony, it can lead to violence, power, manipulation and extreme situations.

If it was true that some women can get very intense and use terrible means to come to the end of marriage, it could be also true that some men would go to extremes to get a girl for one night, and in the first case the woman by implication of the situation will avoid the long term physical or psychological damage because she needs the husband on the long term; but a man looking for a lay does not need to worry about consequences.

So saying to girls don’t be cheap or you’ll be considered whores and lose social status, is a way to remind them that whatever happens between a man and a woman is never innocent.

So Mr. Huychison plays a creepier character in real life then in the “Green Mile” and here I thought it was acting

I’m reminded of a joke every time I see your name on a comment.

The system Roxanne suggests where we try to keep pure until
we’re thirty or forty for MOST people is crazy-making, especially in
today’s culture.  I speak from experience here.

HUH???

I suggest staying chaste as a better option than pre-marital sex, but the entire point of my comments to Stacy were that “waiting” more than a few years really, really sucks.  As I know, being over 30 and unmarried and finding the situation to be not natural.  Which is why I want to clobber Miss Married at 16, because she has  no clue what it is really like to wait. She’s trying to play-act at running a marathon after having taken a quick jog up and down the street.

Now, teen marriage isn’t the answer to this (because that leads, very shortly, to teen or twenty-something divorce).  But there is a lot of time in between the teens and one’s 30s – like an entire intervening decade.  Start advocating for marriage around 23, 24, and you’re looking at a lower chance of divorce as well as a not-unreasonable time to wait. 

You’re certainly living proof of the stupidity of liberal trolls.

Am I a troll, Wombat?

I agree with Roxanne  that waiting for marriage into your thirties is not natural.  But, I see that as the culmination of what society and the church teaches.

Society says….wait until after college, and you’re established, and had a few good years going clubbing.

Church says…..don’t have sex before marriage.

Now, in my and apparently Roxanne’s view, now that I understand her better, one or the other is viable and sensible, but not both.

I’m just more radical than she is.

I don’t think her political and religious views really matter so much in this story so much as the fact that her parents let her marry a 51 y/o man. It isn’t my life but still I can’t celebrate this. It has wrong written all over it and I wager someday Courtney will come to know this.