The Price of “Pure”: How Purity Culture Became Policy in Alabama

According to Verywell Mind, purity culture is an ideology that turns sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage into moral currency at the cost of bodily autonomy, honest consent, and queer lives. Once relying on sermons, abstinence pledges, and moral panic, purity culture  now operates through legislation that regulates bodies under the guise of public safety. In other words, purity culture never disappeared; it simply changed strategy. Alabama’s proposed SB 3, an abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education bill exemplifies this shift by transforming abstinence until marriage from a religious expectation into a state requirement. By examining SB 3’s core provisions, particularly its insistence on abstinence until marriage, its erasure of consent and pleasure-based education, and its framing of sexuality as a moral risk rather than an embodied reality, this piece argues that purity culture is not just a religious ideology, but a political tactic with material consequences.

Purity culture doesn’t protect children; it conditions them for compliance. It teaches young people that desire is dangerous, pleasure is shameful, and boundaries are negotiable. SB 3 would make that ideology the official curriculum, and in a state with one of the highest teen birth rates in the country, the stakes could not be higher. Silence has never kept anyone safe. What it has done is erode consent literacy, erase queer and non-monogamous realities, and normalize predatory power dynamics under the guise of “protecting innocence.”

To understand how purity narratives shape policy and how communities are organizing to stop SB 3, I spoke with Courtney Roark (they/them), URGE’s Alabama Policy and Movement Building Director. Their insights make one thing clear: purity culture is not merely a belief system. It is a governing strategy. And its purpose is control.

Purity Culture as State Power

SB 3 mandates abstinence until marriage as the only acceptable sexual behavior to be taught in Alabama classrooms. It defines “healthy sexuality” as heterosexual, marital, and monogamous – a framework that erases queer youth, ignores polyamorous families, and rejects the realities of how people actually form relationships and build intimacy.

Framing sexuality this way is not incidental—it is a governing strategy. By defining “healthy sexuality” as heterosexual, monogamous, and marital, the state is not merely teaching values; it is shaping a population that is compliant, legible, and easier to regulate. Young people who are taught that desire is dangerous and boundaries are negotiable are less likely to challenge authority—whether in intimate relationships, the workplace, or the voting booth.

Courtney explained that abstinence-only education doesn’t just leave out facts; it leaves out whole communities. “We don’t live in a world of consent,” they said. “When students aren’t taught how to talk about sex, it leaves room for violence. Abstinence-only isn’t neutral, it’s harmful.”

Purity culture frames ignorance as innocence, but the truth is the opposite. Ignorance is vulnerability. And vulnerability, when structured by the state, becomes a form of violence.

The Erotics of Control

Purity culture romanticizes obedience. It tells young people that “goodness” means staying quiet, staying small, and staying ignorant, especially if you’re a girl or a queer child or a trans kid who was never meant to exist in the first place.

SB 3 is built on that same fantasy.

It bans medically accurate education, bans LGBTQ-affirming content, and bans any conversation about sex that isn’t framed as something to be resisted. By refusing to teach consent, communication, pleasure, or bodily autonomy, the bill effectively grooms young people for situations where they don’t know how to speak up or seek help.

Courtney put it plainly: “If you aren’t taught that you can say no, then you don’t necessarily believe you’re allowed to say no. Abstinence-only keeps young people from knowing what safety looks like.”

Ignorance doesn’t prevent sexual behavior. It prevents safety.

Shame, Silence, and Disconnection

Purity culture conditions young people to disconnect from their bodies. Instead of learning to trust sensation, name boundaries, or recognize discomfort, students learn deep, embodied shame.

SB 3 replicates this harm on a structural level. It denies youth information about:

• healthy relationships
• reproductive freedom
• queer identities
• STI prevention
• sexual assault resources
• contraception
• bodily autonomy

Courtney called this “the violence of withholding knowledge.” And they made it clear it isn’t just symbolic violence, it’s measurable.

“When young people are denied comprehensive education, rates of sexual violence go up. Rates of unintended pregnancy go up. STI rates go up,” they said. “Abstinence-only doesn’t prevent anything except safety.”

Purity politics aren’t about protecting youth; they’re about protecting the state’s preferred version of morality. And that morality excludes many of us.

Why Polyamorous, Queer, and Kink-Affirming Education Matters

SB 3 reinforces a narrow definition of sexuality: heterosexual, monogamous, and marital. Everything outside of that is marked as deviant or irrelevant. In practice, this erasure denies young people:

• language for their own identity
• skills to negotiate boundaries
• models of relationships rooted in consent
• visibility for non-traditional families
• information about power, pleasure, and safety

Comprehensive sex education, by contrast, teaches that intimacy can be ethical, negotiated, and self-directed a framework deeply aligned with queer, poly, and kink community values.

When we center those most impacted by purity culture, our sex education expands. It becomes trauma-informed, consent-based, and pleasure-literate. It becomes an education that protects everyone.

The Fight Ahead: What We Can Do

One of the most dangerous aspects of SB 3 is that most people in Alabama don’t even know it’s coming.

Courtney explained, “Most parents want comprehensive sex ed. They want their kids to be safe. They just don’t know this bill exists or what it would do.”

URGE’s team is already organizing statewide resistance:

• postcard-writing parties
• State House lobbying days
• community education sessions
• letter-writing campaigns
• local testimonies
• youth organizing trainings

And they believe this campaign can win, but only if people know what’s at stake.

“This bill is about state control,” they said. “It takes autonomy and choice out of people’s hands so they have to conform to what the state wants. But when communities understand that, they don’t support it. We just have to reach them.”

A Future Beyond Purity

Purity culture and SB 3 share a single goal: to make young people obedient, uninformed, and easy to control. But young people deserve more than silence. They deserve language, knowledge, and the skills to navigate intimacy with agency and safety.

Comprehensive sex education is not radical. It is not dangerous. It is not immoral.

It is protective.
It is liberatory.
It is necessary.

As Courtney told me, “We have to talk about the future we want and  the sex education our young people deserve.”

And the future we deserve is one where safety is not the price of purity.

Manny M.

Manny M. (they/he) is a trans, nonbinary, Black sex educator, coach, and creative storyteller. Their work centers on sexual empowerment, consent, and pleasure as tools of …

More By This Author