Born-again virgins claim to rewrite the past

[Tropicana]

Born-again virgins claim to rewrite the past

Victoria Watts, a 23-year-old single mother of two small children who lives in Canton, Ohio, lost her virginity at 16 with her high school boyfriend.

She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostalist pastor and the daughter of an assistant pastor, and she believed sex outside marriage was wrong. “I felt really bad from a religious standpoint,” she recalls of the experience. “My thoughts were really clouded because I was so emotionally bonded with my boyfriend. That overshadowed my religious world.”
Though the relationship lasted for seven years and produced two beautiful children, a part of Watts always felt guilty. She wished she could step back in time and recapture her lost virginity. Thinking of how “I could have ruined one of greatest fulfillments of my life,” the first time having sex with a husband, she wanted to “have that opportunity again. I know my [future] husband deserves a whole person.”
So Watts engaged in a lot of prayer and thought, and now declares herself a virgin once again. “The most important thing was to realize what my values were and what I want in the future and the bigger goals in my life," she says. "That’s why I can call myself a renewed virgin.”
Across the country, "revirginization" appears to be gaining steam. Spiritual efforts to reclaim virginity emerged back in the early 1990s and now, prompted by abstinence-only school courses taught to thousands of girls nationwide, and by religious teachers, there are reports of more and more young women like Watts attempting a sexual do-over.

Re-wrapping the gift But is it really possible to reclaim your virginity? If it is, what does it mean to be a virgin in the first place? And what does it mean to “lose” one’s virginity?
Religiously motivated women like Watts believe it's very possible to become a born-again virgin — if you believe it is so and pledge abstinence until marriage.
"Have you already unwrapped the priceless gift of virginity and given it away?" asks the Web site for the Pregnancy Resource Center of Northeast Ohio, where Watts began working part-time after she reclaimed her virginity. "Do you now feel like 'second-hand goods' and no longer worthy to be cherished? Do you ever wish you could re-wrap it and give it only to your future husband or wife? Guess what...? You can decide today to commit to abstinence, wrapping a brand-new gift of virginity to present to your husband or wife on your wedding night."
The fact that some women believe they are able to recapture a kind of sexually virginal state underlines the idea that virginity is not nearly the black-and-white issue most of us think, that it has come to be as much a concept as a fact.
Laura M. Carpenter, author of the 2005 book "Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences," and an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., says the meaning of virginity has been a muddle for a long time.
“The first time we are aware of that muddling, the first explicit mention or discussion of what people called ‘technical virginity’ that I have found is in 1920s,” she says. “It referred to people who were doing ‘everything but sex,’ and what was defined as losing your virginity for most people was having vaginal intercourse.”

Today, according to the Louisiana Governor's Program on Abstinence, an abstinence-only school sex education program, renewed virginity is easy: “DECIDE TO CHANGE.”"Next, you’ve got to stop doing things that turn each other on. Set limits on physical contact. Talk to your date about situations that make it difficult to resist sex…”
If the idea of virginity as a state of mind sounds like the language of actors coming out rehab, it’s no coincidence, says Carpenter.
“In America there is the idea of the remade person,” she explains. “We are all in an endless state of becoming. You can remake yourself. That has been deeply ingrained in the culture for a long time. So why not virginity? Why not sexuality?”
Of course, there is also a double edge to that sword. “To some people, remakability is precisely what cheapens the thing in first place," Carpenter says. "Virginity is not special if you can be a virgin again.”

[Tropicana]

It sounds ridiculous. Become a virgin again? Why not ask to relive last week? Yet if you've had sex, you may be saying, "I've asked for forgiveness. Now please tell me how to answer people who want to know whether or not I'm a virgin."
Maybe the best answer to the question, "Are you a virgin?" is "None of your business." But what do you tell yourself? If you want to start over, is it possible? Can you be a virgin again?
A man once posed a similar question to Jesus: "How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?" (John 3:4) Jesus answered by talking about a second, spiritual birth. "Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven" (John 3:6).
You can lose your physical virginity just once. If you did it, you did it. You can't get that first time back again. And the past carries with it physical and emotional consequences. If memories have been etched on your brain, you can't pretend they're gone. But spiritually, it is quite possible to start all over again.
Spiritual rebirth doesn't destroy the past. It transforms it. A second chance, spiritually, means there are no limitations to what you can become. The God who made the universe out of nothing can take your past and make from it something beautiful.
The apostle Paul talked about this transformation when he wrote to a group of Christians in Greece. They had plenty in their past to regret. But because they trusted Jesus to redeem them, the past had been transformed:

Don't you know that those who do wrong will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, who are idol worshippers, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, abusers, and swindlers-none of these will have a share in the Kingdom of God. There was a time when some of you were just like that, but now your sins have been washed away, and you have been set apart for God. You have been made right with God because of what the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God have done for you. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

How do you begin that kind of transformation? You can't manage it on your own. You need God's power and forgiveness. And where do you find that? You ask for it. Spiritual transformation begins as simply and as mysteriously as that. You ask, admitting your need. And God goes to work in your life.
So when you've stopped having sex and asked for forgiveness, can you call yourself a virgin? Perhaps you are no longer a virgin in the physical sense. But because you have been purified by God, you are virgin in his eyes. That may not clear up your reputation or your memory. But it does clear up your future with God. You are as good as new.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/iyf/hottopics/sexabstinence/7c2041.html

[Tropicana]

Why Did ‘The Bachelor’ Hide Sean Lowe’s Born-Again Virginity

The Bachelor doesn’t have the best track record for helping its stars get hitched—not a single winning couple in 17 seasons has ever walked down the aisle—but it usually leads to something else. Even if the guy is on the fence about a girl, he’ll still go to second base with her, or further. And the producers linger on every passionate kiss. This eventually escalates into the fantasy suite date, which involves activities that can’t be televised on ABC. Mike Fleiss, the series creator, has said the averageBachelor sleeps with three women each season.

But Sean Lowe, the current Bachelor, had a different approach to reality-TV dating. He reportedly stayed celibate during his time on the show, which ended on Monday night with a teary wedding proposal to Catherine Giudici followed by a ride through Thailand on an elephant. (The runner-up, Lindsay Yenter, went home sobbing.) Lowe is a born-again virgin, a development the Bachelor cameras mostly ignored. It’s a mystery why a series built on sex wouldn’t explore its central character’s not having sex. When reached on Monday, a publicist for The Bachelor said producers weren’t available for comment.
We first met Sean last summer as a contestant on The Bachelorette with Emily Maynard. A 29-year-old former fitness model, he had viewers swooning with his sculpted biceps and abs. Although we learned (vaguely) that religion was an important part of Sean’s life, there was no tipoff that he was abstaining from sex. At the end of The Bachelorette, when Lowe and Maynard started making out, the camera cut to a testimonial from her, saying she wanted him to spend the night, but she couldn’t do that to her daughter. He was eliminated later in that episode. “I think she had a pretty good idea of what my values were,” Lowe told me in an interview last week. “I would definitely say we weren’t in the dark.”


As he began his reign on The Bachelor, Lowe followed the series script closely: each date ended with heavy kissing.

Mi noh subscribe to dis kiss every and anybody bizniz. A kiss is not a handshake.

He never brought up sex; it was the tabloids that broke the story. Us Weekly dubbed him “the Virgin Bachelor,” reporting that Lowe swore off sex after college. Even though the finale was filmed in November, the magazine said Lowe still hadn’t slept with his fiancée.


Instead of telling us what made him different than all the previous bachelors, the show edited Lowe to look like every other guy. But when he was finally allowed to speak freely on Monday’s live “After the Rose” interview, Lowe came across as more religious. He said that during his final deliberations, “I stayed in prayer constantly.” On why he finally picked Catherine, he told Lindsay: “God reveals things on His own time.” Host Chris Harrison asked simple questions—about an overhyped letter Catherine wrote to Sean. The couple announced they will get married on live TV at a later date.


Lowe told me he didn’t understand why the virginity story had gotten so much attention. “I’m shocked,” he said. “I don’t know why every tabloid feels the need to talk about it.” Of the born-again virgin label, he said, “I’ve never described myself that way,” though he later clarified, “it’s true.”


“It’s a decision that I’ve made,” he added. “But I don’t think it needs to be discussed on the show. That’s my personal opinion … for me, it’s a non-story.”


But it is an important part of the story. When Lowe approached the last three women during the fantasy-suite episode, they seemed as perplexed as the viewers at home. He told them on camera that he didn’t want to have sex; he just wanted to talk. “Those three women knew what was going on,” Lowe said. “All three of them have the same values I have.” Did the producers know that he was born-again virgin? “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal.”