Chastity campaigner Jason Evert hits out at cancellations

Jason Evert, a US presenter promoting the virtues of chastity to students in religious schools, has hit back at critics after three of his talks on the NSW Central Coast were cancelled.

Jason Evert speaking in Sydney on Monday. Picture: Giovanni Portelli / Sydney Catholic Schools

A US-based chastity campaigner has hit back at those seeking to cancel him for promoting no sex before marriage to teenagers in Catholic schools, after three of his presentations on the NSW Central Coast were dropped following complaints.

Jason Evert, who has spent 26 years promoting the virtues of chastity as a preparation for marriage, said he believed the controversy over his presentations was a sign that Catholic teachings were becoming increasingly marginalised in a society being reshaped by social media.

Mr Evert, who founded the Chastity Project with his wife Crystalina to help teenagers and young adults, on Tuesday defended the ability of religious schools to promote abstinence and healthy relationships to students. He said it was especially important given the easy access to online pornography for teenagers and the negative consequences for the next generation being wrought by social media.

“The focus of the presentation is the virtues of chastity and how to distinguish love from lust,” he said.

“We do talk about pornography – the harms that presents to both boys as well as girls. It’s very much a message of hope, how to break free from that – how to start over if you have made mistakes.”

“Girls are going to bed at night after spending two hours scrolling on social media looking at everybody’s perfect body, hair and perfect relationship. So this is not good for self-esteem.”

Mr Evert, who arrived in Australia on Monday morning, said he could not attend St Joseph’s Catholic College in East Gosford, MacKillop College at Warnervale and St Peter’s College at Tuggerah to deliver presentations after the schools received complaints from some of the parents.

“Why send your child to be educated at a Catholic institution if you don’t want them to receive Catholic values?” he said. “This is my seventh trip. This is the first one in which we’ve had any kind of backlash.”

Instead of attending the schools in person, Mr Evert live-streamed his presentation at St Leo’s Wahroonga which was able to be viewed by eight different schools on an “opt-in” basis.

Director of public affairs and engagement for the Archdiocese of Sydney, Monica Doumit, defended Mr Evert’s trip and noted that he addressed more than 1000 kids from Sydney Catholic schools on Monday at the Good Samaritan Catholic College in southwest Sydney on Monday.

“One would think that a speaker who affirms young women in their God-given dignity and challenges the narrative that they need to make themselves more sexually attractive to be worthy of love is exactly what is needed at a time when we are seeing the devastating mental health impacts of girls placing their value in the number of ‘likes’ they receive,” she said in the Catholic Weekly.

“One would think that sexual violence might be reduced if young men listened to someone who told them they shouldn’t ask a girl out until they had quit watching porn.”

Ms Doumit said the backlash to the tour was “amplified by left-leaning media outlets and many professional protesters with no connection to Catholic schools.”