Thank you. More of us need to remember that God never promised us a great guy to reward us for all our abstinence -- and more of us need to be as bold as you and SAY so. You've challenged me to be a more outspoken single woman in my church. I think I'm the only one there between youth group and 30, but lessons in purity in ALL aspects of life are useful to everyone, no matter age or marital status. Again, thanks.

I don't see what Thelma Geer's book has to do with the price of beans. I've read it, and it's all sensationalistic, anti-Mormon propaganda. That's it, bring out all the wild and wacky beliefs you can about the LDS, and thus discredit any good ideas they may have. I tell you, when the going got tough in my single life, it was God, and the ideals and outlook of the LDS tradition that got me through, not anything the Evangelicals ever taught me. Ev's beliefs about singleness, marriage, and family formation were nothing but a stumbling block, no matter how true and right Ev beliefs about salvation are. I've read several of Mark Regnerus's articles, and I think he's pretty much on the money with regards to the situation in the Ev world. May all the older Ev singles who are struggling with unwanted singleness find peace.

I do think clarifying Mormon beliefs would help here, since the cited woman is (or was) Mormon. Mormons teach "celestial marriage", which basically means that faithful Mormon men will become gods when they die and will inherit planets; this was a major justification of polygamy, i.e., so they could populate their planets. BTW, they believe that God was a man just as we are at one time. These things are just the tiniest tip of the iceberg; there's much, much more. Mormonism, Mama and Me, a book by Thelma Geer, explains much of this and how far their beliefs are from the Bible -- there's not much comparision between Mormon and Biblical Christian beliefs, mostly contrast. Amazon's webpage on this book allows you to read the first chapter, which is an education in itself.

So the answer is "lose the princess/knight" theology silliness, but keep the "sex outside of marriage will always ruin your life/marriage/etc." negativity? We've got to have a compelling vision of God first. Not just double down on "do what you're told" because the stats show our valorization of marriage hasn't paid off. We've also got to do the hard work dealing with the simple fact that we've helped push marriage later and later by adopting Victorian ideals about what constitutes childhood and the silliness of "adolescence". Your body is designed to be having sex earlier than we socially encourage and then we problematize the way our bodies were designed. Instead we should be problematizing the way we've bought into delaying adulthood and privileging the idea of the nuclear family apart from deeply connected intergenerational extended family structures that doesn't make space for young well supported marriage and child rearing.

Abstience is not easy and having personally walked away from God and became a single parent as a result, I can say that God cares about us deeply and I think Abstinece is God way of taking care of us. I think He asks us to remain abstinent because He know how painful single parenting is and how painful it is to give yourself to person who doens't want to marry you. It has been a long journey in healing and I saw Jesus was my Savior when I was wallowing in the consequences of my sin a single parent. I now have been chaste for over 7 years now and pray daily for God strength that I can live my life in obedience while trusting him with the knowledge that I may never "walk down the aisle". God has proven to be a great father to me and my son although I did disobey him early in life. It's not easy, but I do know God is faithful and as Jeremiah 29:11 says, He has good plans for all of us that are not meant to harm us.