Courting the Past
If a young man wants to date 26-year-old Heather Ryun, it’s not as simple as calling her on the phone.
First, he must talk to her father. The two men pray and decide if the suitor is ready for marriage. If the answer is yes, then--and only then--can the couple begin dating.
Normally, this would be nobody else’s business. But Heather Ryun’s father is Jim Ryun, the former Olympic runner and world record holder in the mile and now a Republican candidate for Congress.
An article Jim and Anne Ryun wrote about courtship for a conservative magazine--encouraging parents to consider the idea and pray for guidance--is being circulated by Democrats.
It does not seem to have become an issue in the campaign. But people ranging from the state’s Catholic bishops to psychologist Ruth Westheimer are talking. Some say such courtship merely harks back to an earlier time, when families seemed closer. Others liken it to arranged marriages.
The Ryuns’ essay, “Courtship Makes a Comeback,” was published in Focus on the Family, a monthly magazine distributed by the group of the same name.
“Courtship enables a young couple to look beyond physical attraction to focusing on things that are truly important,” they wrote. They said the process ensures premarital sexual abstinence, protects children from the pain of bad relationships and prepares them for a lasting marriage.
The Ryuns’ four children are willing participants. Heather, 26, and twins Ned and Drew, 23, are students at the University of Kansas. Catharine, 21, an emergency medical technician, is quoted as saying courtship helps guide her toward “becoming like Christ.”
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In the courtship they describe, the suitor and parents of the girl first must agree that the suitor is ready emotionally and financially for marriage. The young man then spends a great deal of time with the young woman’s family.
“Courtship activities may include a family missions trip, prison ministry or similar service-oriented endeavors. . . . Other activities--from family games to neighborhood walks--can shape and reveal a person’s character, responsibility and thoughtfulness,” the Ryuns said.
When he announced his candidacy in June, Ryun said he would run “with the American family in mind,” and press for “a renaissance of traditional morality.” But mostly, his campaign has stressed economic issues: cutting taxes, decreasing the size of government and balancing the federal budget.
His Democratic opponent, John Frieden, has not made any public comment on Ryun’s ideas about courtship, but says generally that the famous athlete’s views are “out of the mainstream.”
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Others have been more critical. Dennis Dailey, a University of Kansas professor of social welfare who lectures on sexuality and relationships, called such courtship “extremely controlling” and “very patriarchal,” with an implicit assumption that “men are more valuable than women.”
Westheimer, the popular “Dr. Ruth,” said such a system could work if a family raised its children in a strict religious group, one in which the believers are isolated from the modern world--for example, the Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jews or strict Mormons.
“I actually think it’s cruel to send a young person to a regular college with these kinds of interdictions,” she said.
The state’s Roman Catholic bishops reviewed the article and found it perhaps too idealistic but still “something they wish could be true,” said Robert Runnels, spokesman for the Kansas Catholic Conference.
“It takes them back a great number of years, the way things used to be,” he said.
State Sen. Mike Harris, a conservative Wichita Republican, acknowledged that some voters may see Ryun as living an “ ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ lifestyle,” but said Ryun is a special case. “Jim Ryun has never led a normal life,” he said, “and that’s what makes him an American hero.”