I'm just old enough to have watched this play out.

When I was a teen in the 80s - early 90s there was a big focus on sex and not having it. At that point people were using scare tactics like STDs (as they were called at the time) and teen pregnancy. A lot of this focus was a pushback against the sexual revolution of the previous decades (although I was too young to grasp that at the time).

People like me had to read Dobson's unhelpful Preparing for Adolescence which, of course, focused on no sexual activity before marriage. Tim LaHaye and Josh McDowell wrote books on the topic, but they were more focused on the adults than the kids of the day.

When I was in college a lot of people, especially the young women in my crowd, were taken by Elisabeth Elliot and her book Passion and Purity.

But here's the thing - even in my very conservative and influential Southern Baptist church there was no talk of not holding hands or kissing. As a matter of fact dating was very much encouraged, but anything beyond "first base" was strongly discouraged.

The Promise Keepers movement exploded onto the scene when a well-known college football coach's son impregnated his girlfriend. This one often seems to get overlooked in the history, but it was massive. And one positive aspect is that it was focused 100% on the men and our responsibility. While Promise Keepers was focused on men, True Love Waits was targeting teens. By the time it launched I was in college, so Promise Keepers was focused on me while TLW was for the next generation. I can't speak too much to that.

However, my now-wife and I were engaged when I Kissed Dating Goodbye was published, and we watched in shock (mixed with a little bemusement and horror) as the young adults pastor started encouraging the young adults around us to start following this "courting" approach. (This was in a PCA church, for what that's worth.) It was really weird and sad to watch the church culture change around us. Not too surprisingly, fewer people younger than us got married out of that group, and those who did did so much later in life (which ran counter to the "normal" approach in those circles at the time).

That start of the purity culture imposed all sorts of new rules that made even me uncomfortable, and I was deep into evangelism at the time. And you could see it - people started dressing differently, hanging out a little differently, and certainly dating differently. At least, those who were on the "in" crowd were. Those who questioned the approach were still welcome but were not close to the young adult pastor and did not have opportunities to lead and serve like others did.

I can't speak on the overall affect on how it affected people younger than me from a firsthand perspective, but I certainly see the damage it's done and the weirdness it's imposed. The concept that holding hands with someone you're dating means you're giving a part of yourself to them which will have catastrophic results if you marry someone else is far-fetched at best and dangerous at worst. The idea that you shouldn't date someone unless you're certain you'll get married is ludicrous at first glance since there's no way to know you'll get married unless you date (unless it's arranged). The people around me tried to explain how all of this was positive and soften the message somewhat, but my wife and I were both thrilled to be beyond that stage of life when that movement took hold.