The media has long since abandoned any pretense of objectivity, but when they attack traditional values that many Americans still believe in, they need to be called out. On Tuesday, Newsbusters posted an article about a letter that MRC founder and president L. Brent Bozell III sent to ABC News after they did a hit piece on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson after he took his daughter to a purity ball, which celebrates the idea of delaying sex until marriage.
This is the content of the letter:
We write to object to an article attacking House Speaker Mike Johnson and his daughter Hannah for engaging in “notoriety” when he took her to a “controversial” event when she was 13.
At issue was a “Purity Ball,” a common celebration within the evangelical community to honor the ideal of chastity. The father aims to model how a Christian husband and father should behave. The daughter often signs a pledge to remain chaste until marriage. The daughter wears white to symbolize purity.
ABC could have, and should have, praised Speaker Johnson for his strong Christian faith. But you chose to go in the opposite direction. “This looks like a wedding,” your reporter Will Steakin wrote, quoting a news reporter from a German news segment in 2015. “But they are not bride and groom — but rather father and … daughter,” implying they are engaged in something dark. In that same dark tone, ABC projects as extremist Johnson’s wife Kelly stating “We don’t talk to her about contraception. Sex before marriage is simply out of the question.”
ABC could have, and should have, found Christian leaders to explain why many Christians believe in the importance of chastity and the beauty of the Purity Ball. But you chose the opposite. ABC selected as its expert someone who wrote a book touting how she “broke free” of “purity culture,” and argued Christian parents who teach their children to pursue abstinence are pushing “eternal girlhood” within a patriarchy.
Continuing the attack, ABC found another ex-Christian author who “sparked” the purity movement, but then “pulled his once-popular book from circulation and has apologized for any role it may have played in causing harm.” This article is pure religious bigotry.
We call on ABC News to retract this story and apologize to Speaker Johnson, his wife Kelly, and their children.
Only a society that rejects virtue views the pursuit of chastity and holiness as controversial. Perhaps that is why no society on Earth endorses ABC’s world view.
Somehow I believe that we would have a much more stable society if more people endorsed the view celebrated at the purity ball.
