The New York Times today has a story about father-daughter purity balls, parties at which fathers vow to protect their daughters' virginity and/or their daughters vow to stay pure until marriage. They are formal affairs, with dress clothes and dancing and ceremonies like the laying of white flowers at the foot of a cross or the forming of swords into a V.

Such events have been around for at least a decade, and they continue to inspire celebration within the evangelical world as well as cries of revulsion from those outside it. Opponents mistrust the concept of a father "owning" his daughter's sexuality and they wonder why boys' virginity isn't so prized. (They are also icked out by some of the ceremonies' clunky, graphic key-and-lock metaphors.)

But a nuanced critique from within the evangelical community appeared last year in the Chicago Sun-Times. (It doesn't seem to be available on the Sun-Times site, but is available, ironically, in full on Opie and Anthony's blog.) In the measured piece, Betsy Hart writes:

Look, I'm an evangelical Christian who firmly believes that sex should be reserved for marriage. But I just can't imagine going about it this way with any of my four kids, son or daughters.