Lolo Jones is a pretty 29 year old Olympian and a virgin. In a recent interview on HBO’s Real Sports she spoke about her virginity in a way that made some leftist heads explode.

“I just don’t believe in it.” Jones said. “It’s just a gift I want to give my husband. But please understand this journey has been hard. There’s virgins out there and I want to let them know that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life; harder than training for the Olympics; harder than graduating from college has been to stay a virgin before marriage. I’ve been tempted, I’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

Alexandra Gekas writing at, ahem, “The Frisky” says she WOULD respect her decision (she doesn’t) except for this whole GIFT thing.

However, my respect for Jones’ decision has one big “but,” and that is because of one little sentence: “It’s just a gift I want to give my husband.”

Virginity, by definition, is simply the state of a person who has not engaged in sexual intercourse. But we all know that there are many more implications to it than that, especially for women. Most traditional societies, cultures and religions place a high value on a woman’s virginity aka her chastity. So much so that it is tightly bound to her worth and her perceived self-worth.

With this archaic notion of “value” placed on a woman’s virginity comes the belief that exclusive rights to her womb should be saved for the highest bidder; that it is a commodity to be bought (in most cases by her husband) and sold (usually by her father). And if she gives it away or, God forbid, it is taken from her, she loses value as a woman and as a human being.

Wow.

What Ms. Gekas and others like cannot understand is that purity is a gift to us, a gift that has value. When someone chooses to steward that gift so that they can gift it in love in the setting of marriage that is something truly wonderful and valuable.

But it makes some people very angry when you speak like this. Not because of some silly notion of “exclusive rights to the womb” nonsense. It makes people angry when someone ascribes such value to something they themselves gave away without any thought. They don’t want to think about what they threw away.

If you gave away a Babe Ruth signed baseball because you didn’t think it had any value, you certainly wouldn’t like it if someone kept talking about how priceless it was would’ya?

Good for Lolo Jones.