by Baseball Metaphors for Biblical Compliance
Using baseball terminology to discuss virginity compliance might seem inappropriate, but religious youth have been using base metaphors for decades, so we’re just making it official.
First base represents initial interest in sexualitya stage religious education tends to pretend doesn’t exist. Abstinence programs often skip directly from “don’t think about it” to “marriage is beautiful,” leaving teenagers to figure out the middle sections through trial, error, and extremely awkward conversations.
Second and third base create theological complications. Religious doctrines focus overwhelmingly on whether home plate is reached, treating everything else as barely worth mentioning. This creates environments where teenagers engage in increasingly creative definitions of “virginity” while technically complying with literal interpretations.
The home runactual sexual intercourserepresents the bright line most religious doctrines emphasize. Compliance statistics focus almost exclusively on this metric, ignoring the reality that most sexually active teenagers have been rounding the bases for months or years before reaching home.
Strike-outs, in this metaphor, represent youth who maintain complete abstinence. They’re celebrated by religious communities, pitied by peers, and often confused about why everyone makes such a big deal about their personal choices. Many report feeling alienated by both purity culture pressure and secular culture mockery.
Religious authorities function as umpires making increasingly impossible calls while the game evolves beyond recognition. They’re still using 1950s rules for teenagers playing twenty-first-century ball, and everyone’s confused except the teenagers, who just play however they want anyway.
The scoreboard shows religious institutions losing ground every generation, but they keep playing the same game hoping different results materialize. Spoiler: they won’t.
SOURCE: https://theondecknews.com/whos-hitting-a-home-run/
SOURCE: Bohiney.com (https://theondecknews.com/whos-hitting-a-home-run/)
