A commitment to purity

A twirling mass of white lace surrounded a rough wooden cross as a troupe of young women danced in a circle looking like porcelain dolls come to life.

Then Randy Wilson and Kevin Moore hoisted swords in the air and a ballroom full of 149 fathers and daughters walked beneath them toward the cross and laid white roses at its base. The swords symbolized the fathers' commitment to battle for their daughters and the roses symbolized the daughters' commitment to God to remain pure.

Then Wilson announced, "Let the ball begin."

This is the 10th anniversary of the Father-Daughter Purity Ball, one of the most successful - and controversial - ideas to come out of Colorado Springs' conservative Christian community. Fathers at the purity ball, held at The Broadmoor on Friday night, pledge not only to live purely, but to be the authority and protector of their daughters' purity.

The idea for the ball started with the Wilsons, a self-described "little homeschool family in Briargate." When the oldest of Randy Wilson's five daughters turned 13, he went in search of a watershed event to celebrate her transition into womanhood, as well as his commitment as a father to stand by her. He couldn't find one.

"We didn't see a place to honor the father-daughter relationship in our culture, so we created a place," said his wife, Lisa Wilson.

Their idea has turned into a nationwide movement, with 4,400 purity balls taking place in the U.S. in 2007, said the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Washington.

As the Purity Balls have spread, the Wilsons have garnered major media attention. Dr. Phil, Tyra Banks and Glamour magazine have come knocking. Bill Maher and Jay Leno have taken time to mock them. Their neighbors once asked if everything was OK after a satellite truck from "Good Morning America" appeared in the family's driveway.

On Friday night, the New York Times, Time magazine and a British documentary film crew were in attendance, along with fathers and daughters from across the country - including former Denver Broncos guard Dean Miraldi, who traveled from California with his three daughters - 18, 16 and 13.

The Colorado Springs Father-Daughter Purity Ball is still considered the gold standard by abstinence advocates, despite the proliferation of imitators.

"They have it down, and everybody else is just practicing," said Leslee Unruh, president and founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, who attended the event several years ago and helped export it to other cities. "Others do hamburger, but they do lobster."

That adulation is a mixed blessing for the Wilsons, because most other events have added a virginity pledge to the purity ball - an idea endorsed by the thousands of "howto-throw-a-purity-ball" packets Unruh's group sends out.

It's an idea the Wilsons don't like.

"We don't do virginity pledges," Lisa Wilson said. "That would be a great consequence, but that's not the point. It's a fatherhood issue of men living in integrity."

Randy Wilson goes so far as to say virginity pledges could be harmful to girls: "It heaps guilt upon them. If they fail, you've made it worse for them," he said. "Who is perfect in this world? One mistake doesn't mean it's all over."

The heavy media coverage has been another mixed blessing for the Wilsons. They welcome the opportunity to share their beliefs - "God totally put wind to this thing and the culture came to us," said their 20-year-old daughter Khrystian Wilson.

But they say most in the mainstream media see their family as a fundamentalist freak show.

The Father-Daughter Purity Ball has been criticized as a patriarchal ploy to subjugate young women, as an event that treats girls as their fathers' property until they become their husbands' property, or as something vaguely creepy because it's a fatherdaughter date.

A hierarchical view of gender roles is even written into the purity ball pledge, and some fathers (Wilson included) indulge in the symbolism of giving their daughters jewelry with a key that the father keeps until he hands it over to the husband on their wedding day.

"I understand the fear a parent has about their child in this hypersexualized world," said Tonja Olive, who teaches in the feminist and gender studies program at Colorado College. "And I don't think these fathers are screwing their kids up for life.

"I just think this kind of policing of a child's sexuality reinforces this argument that a girl's sexuality is owned by her father or by her husband. And if that's not what it's about, why would they call it a purity ball? Why don't they just call it a daddy-daughter ball? . . . It's a little Orwellian."

Randy Wilson contends that many people get the story wrong.

Yes, he believes the father is "the high priest" of the household, who ultimately calls the shots, but he thinks - done with love - that it gives young women more freedom.

"Fathers model for the daughter how a man should treat them," said Wilson, a former employee of Focus on the Family who now works for a similarlyminded group, the Family Research Council. "It gives them more control in their own lives.

"This is more about the father, and who he is, and how he lives. And that has an ancillary affect on the daughter."

Jordyn Wilson, his 19-year-old daughter who has committed to save even her first kiss for her wedding day, dismisses those who believe she's being treated as property.

"I'm not oppressed; this is my choice," she said. "And I'm too valuable to be disposable."

Kevin Moore brought three of his daughters to Friday night's ball, his fourth time attending, and did his best to keep up with them on the dance floor. He thinks that claiming this event is controversial is silly.

"My daughters love it and it's a special night for them, getting their gowns and shoes and the girl stuff," he said. "The purpose is for fathers to be there, to love their wives, and to love their kids. It's not complicated at all."