The last thing it takes is a family

In what certainly has to be in the running for most embarassing op-ed of the year, Judy Warner says that the difference between a father-daughter ball promoting abstinence and a man who kept his daughter locked in the basment and raped her is "only a matter of degree." For Warner, the idea that fathers may have an interest in helping their daughters avoid the perils of the hook-up culture is a "horror" and an "emotional violence" not unlike incest.

Yeah, right.

It's ironic that those on the left who see the family as a model for the state often have great antipathy for actual families. If I had a daughter, I doubt I'd ever attend an event like that and I am uncomfortable with some of the language that is used. I don't think that someone who has sex before marriage is "unpure" although I also realize that social conventions often require a powerful narrative to be inculcated and its more compelling to call for young women to be "pure" than it is to ask them to be "prudent" which in my view is the value underlying abstinence or, at at least, for young girls, the avoidance of casual sex.

But it takes a powerful bigotry to equate it with rape.
.