From a speech given at Pure Fashion Austin.
I wanted to thank you for supporting these girls in this project for a couple reasons. First because they’re saving humanity. That may sound like a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m serious. Let me explain.
So, I’m a guy. And I like being a guy. And as my fiancee has told me, I’m pretty good at it. 😉 But I will be honest, for the most part guys are idiots. And the vast majority of guys these days act more like Medieval Visigoths or Neanderthals instead of civilized human beings. If you ever need proof of this just take a stroll down 6th street on a Friday night (actually I don’t recommend this at all). My point is that very rarely will you find a guy that will push for a higher standard in morals or behavior.
If your daughter goes out with a bunch of friends and she wears something immodest, the guys in the group aren’t going to say, hey, you’re showing too much skin.” No they’re going to take whatever they can get and respect the girl accordingly. It’s up to the girls in social situations to set the standard of morality.
The brilliant Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that, “The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” And I wholeheartedly agree with that. He said that “When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her.” And they will aspire. So, when you females elevate—when you respect yourselves—you automatically elevate the males and make them respect you. And doing this program, you’re elevating yourselves—you’re saving humanity, so, again, thank you for that.
The second reason is on behalf of their future spouses. I dated many women before I met my fiancee and pretty much all of them were immodest in some way—whether it was the way they dressed or behaved at bars or how they spoke—and each and every one of the relationships failed. And it definitely wasn’t just their fault—I was just as much at fault as they were. But I finally met someone who truly lived modestly and never compromised herself and as a man, seeing a woman with virtue and whose confidence comes from knowing God made her and loves her is unbelievably attractive.
See, my fiancee is one of the most modest women I’ve met. She dresses modestly in church and everywhere really. One of the aforementioned Visigoths saw her running on the street and made a comment on her legs, so now she wears pants or leggings when she runs. And she’s modest in more than dress. So PDA is completely out of the question.
These high standards with regard to modesty and purity manifest materially also. I mean she’s a physically beautiful person, but we we’ll be walking down the street and a little girl will—completely out of the blue—turn to her and say, “You’re pretty.” A couple weeks ago an old man did the same thing—same line, “You’re pretty.” I think they’re seeing more than just physical beauty. They’re seeing a modesty and a purity that is as attractive as it is rare. And when I experienced that, I knew immediately that she was different. I think after the first weekend I met her I went back and wrote down that I had met my future wife and a year later I was putting a ring on her finger.
Pope John Paul II said “A woman does not cover herself because she is afraid that a man will see too much, she covers herself because she is afraid that he will see too little.” I see all of my fiancee—not just her nice legs—and love her completely because of that. As I wrote in my book, “Now and at the Hour of Our Death,” a pure heart is superlatively rare and even more attractive.
I am so grateful for her and so happy to have found a genuinely modest and pure woman and I want and pray that everyone experiences what we are experiencing. I want each and every girl backstage to make someone as happy as I am at some point down the line. But to do that it takes a concerted effort to defy the cultural norms and be modest.
Thank you for supporting these girls. Thank you for their future husbands. Thank you on behalf of all of civilization, really. But most importantly, thank you for the girls. Each and every one of them is an infinitely valuable human person made in the image of God. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing your part to reflect that.