(NewsNation) — Controversy has erupted around House Speaker Mike Johnson after a 2015 TV segment showing him at a “purity ball” emerged this week.
The segment from a German news station that was unearthed by ABC News features Johnson, R-La., and his then-teenage daughter at a “purity ball,” where his daughter vowed to him to live a life of purity and signed a pledge to abstain from sex until marriage. The video has since disappeared from the German TV station’s website.
NewsNation host Dan Abrams questioned whether Johnson appearing at a “purity ball” is a big deal. Author Linda Kay Klein thinks it’s significant because it provides a better look at Johnson’s beliefs.
“What this reveals is that we are talking about not a mainstream conservative Christian, but an extremist,” Klein, who says she broke free from the Evangelical movement, told Abrams. “Really even among purity culture advocates, purity balls are extreme. A lot of folks even within the movement find them a little creepy.”
Klein said she grew up within purity culture but did not attend “purity balls.” The events were popular in the early 2000s among some conservative Christians, where dads typically wore tuxedos and their daughters dressed in white gowns.
“(At) a very traditional purity ball, you’ve got a group of young children, girls around the age of 12-13. They’re in gowns that are not just ball gowns, but white ball gowns, wedding gowns in many ways, and their fathers are in suits or tuxedos,” Klein explained. “They have a dance and they have a dinner.”
She continued: “It culminates at the end with this sort of placing of the purity ring often on the girl’s ring finger as a promise to her father and also to her father in heaven that she will not defile her sexual purity before marriage, not just not have sex, but defile her sexual purity in any way.”
Klein says at many purity balls the ring is intended to stay on a girl’s finger until it’s replaced with her wedding ring by her husband.
“Which essentially symbolizes the transfer of ownership over her sexuality from her father to her husband,” Klein said.
While some raised concerns about video of Johnson at the “purity ball,” others applauded the House speaker’s character.
The Washington Stand, which is run by the Family Research Council, wrote a piece titled: “Mike Johnson is a good father. The left hates him for it.”
“That is a beautiful commitment, though one might wonder why ABC finds it newsworthy. As they come of age, young girls should be thinking about the future effects of their decisions for themselves and others. Such guidance could spare many women the heartbreaks and despair caused by hookup culture,” the Washington Stand published.
The House voted to elect Johnson as speaker of the House in October after ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the position.