I Was One of the Evangelical Born Again Virgins of the ‘90s and Early ‘00s
Because “True Love Waits” and abstinence was the pinnacle of godliness
In the 90’s the True Love Waits campaign ran rife through fundamentalist and evangelical youth groups in Australia, and I was unfortunate enough to have my adolescence coincide with the last half of the 90’s and the first half of the early naughts.
This was the year that I would turn sixteen, and so dating and relationships were very important.
In the A5 sized, spiral bound teddy bear notebook with the brown paper that was my first journal of the year 2001, I wrote a most important entry. I went to youth group on January 6th of 2001, where people from the True Love Waits were there to speak to us about how sexual and emotional abstinence was the only path to God.
I was given a bright yellow sticker that I stuck in my journal. In huge letters, the sticker said TRUE LOVE WAITS, YOU’RE WORTH IT. It had an obnoxious black background with a little yellow lily in the bottom right-hand corner.
I thought my handwriting that year was rad, and maybe it wasn’t, but at least it was tidy and readable. I carefully printed several Bible verses under the sticker that had been considered relevant to the topic.
