This is worth sharing with parents who have youngsters (male or female), young adults, those in relationships or anyone else in that vulnerable situation needing to be empowered, which is what my ministry Purisima Fellowship focuses on, with spiritual development and skills training in meeting the challenges of the present culture.

Virginity pledge comes with a ring
by David Bario, Columbia News Service CHICAGO TRIBUNE 

Lots of parents wish they could keep a constant eye on their teenage kids. Jack McLemore, a Mississippi jeweler, came up with an alternative for his daughter Carrie. In the platinum ring he made for Carrie when she was 13, two sapphires represent his watchful eyes, guarding her virginity until the day she marries.Carrie has been wearing the ring every day since. At 17, she is proud to say that she hasn't let her father down."I believe sex is meant for marriage," said Carrie, an actress who lives in Manhattan with her mother. I want to save myself emotionally and physically for whoever I spend the rest of my life with.… 

Often motivated by religious faith and by government-funded abstinence programs, more than one in eight American adolescents has made a virginity pledge, sociologists have found. But experts on teen sexuality say that, ring or no ring, most teens will break their pledge before they tie the knot. A ring at age 12…Paige stood before her congregation at a purity-ring ceremony at their Southern Baptistchurch in Chino, Calif., and read from the book of Timothy: "Flee also youthful lust, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Resist temptation." 

Other young people decide to wear purity rings in high school or college, when many of their peers are flaunting their sexuality and opting for belly-button rings instead. Sam Chey was a sophomore in college when he participated in a four-week course organized by True Love Waits, a national abstinence organization that distributes purity rings to students. His friends on the wrestling team were having sex. Chey saw abstinence as a way to rebel.Now a 25-year-old English teacher in northwest New Jersey, Chey prefers the name "chastity ring"; for the silver band he wears on his left hand. Because it looks like a wedding ring, it's almost like a safeguard"; said Chey, a devout Catholic. "If a woman comes up to me, her first thought isn't that I might be available for sex."

Purity rings also are popular among secondary virgins;" the abstinence movement namefor people who already have had sex but have made a pledge to give it up until marriage.When he got his purity ring through his Baptist church at 17, Robert Stewart was no virgin.Seven years later, Stewart has a girlfriend who shares his commitment to wait and is working to promote abstinence in Philadelphia, though he says it hasn't been easy. I'm a regular, healthy young guy," Stewart said. But my ring is like a promise I made to myself.

Good read in fighting the sex culture among unmarried that's fast spreading like fire. With it is also the spread of sex-related diseases.