Inside The Scam Of The “Purity

They Were Told They Shouldn’t Date. They Were Told They Shouldn’t Kiss, And That They Definitely Couldn’t Have Sex. Now, One Of The Most Prominent Leaders Of Extreme Abstinence Is Taking Back His Infamous Teachings. Where Does That Leave The Women Who Believed Him?

- Sarah Stankorb

Lyvonne Picou was a sophomore at Seton Hall University when a guy she liked gave her a copy of a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

The paperback had worn, dog-eared pages. On its cover, a young man tipped his fedora like Cary Grant…or like a finance guy dressed way too on-the-nose for a speakeasy bar he read about on Yelp. Never mind the book’s title (Lyvonne and the guy never did get together)—she devoured IKDG, as it became known to its devotees, between classes and in random spots around campus. She found it “romantic—like a fairy tale.”

It’s a strange choice of words to describe a manifesto on extreme sexual abstinence. Harris promoted saving yourself for marriage, which Lyvonne—then a self-described born-again virgin who had fallen in with an evangelical crowd—was already planning to do. But as the title suggests, Harris went even further than that, making the case for giving up dating entirely—no hanging out with guys one-on-one, no kissing, even no holding hands. Instead, people who wanted to get married should have a “courtship” approved by the woman’s parents. In IKDG and subsequent books, Harris said this would protect against heartbreak and sexual sin (plus store up more passion for marriage). “I started romanticizing the idea of not being physical,” Lyvonne says. “My relationship would be ‘pure’ and perfect. I totally bought into it.”