Chastity speaker and author Jason Evert will be speaking to Irish students in seminars about purity and relationships on January 15 and 16.

Evert originally founded Totus Tuus, an organisation promoting chastity primarily to high school and college students. He has made appearances on EWTN, Fox News and at World Youth Day. After working for Catholic Answers, he moved to Denver where he set up a new ministry, Chastity Project, with his wife Crystalina Evert.

Since then, the couple have spoken at numerous seminars on the subject of relationships and chastity. Jason Evert will be speaking to students in Dublin and Waterford as part of the ‘It Starts With The Heart’ tour. There is a Go Fund Me page for Evert’s visit to Ireland, which states, “This mission is being organised solely by university students.”

During the announcement video for the tour, the chasity speaker states, “When people hear the word chastity, you think you are just going to hear a boring guilt ridden talk about scare tactics and STD rates and pregnancies. We are not going to go there, I think you people today have already been told everything that they are not supposed to about relationships. When in reality, they just want straight answers.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnHIn15EzXI&feature=youtu.be

Evert’s visit to Roman Catholic schools across the Lancashire region, England, raised alarms with the TUC’s general secretary, Brendan Barber. During the tour, a booklet titled Pure Manhood: How to become the man God wants you to be had been distributed among students. 

Barber voiced his concerns that the booklet contained “homophobic material” to the education secretary Michael Gove. Evert published the text to promote sexual purity among boys and young men. One section deals with homosexuality, claiming it is “disordered, much like contraceptive sex between heterosexuals. Both acts are directed against God’s natural purpose for sex — babies and bonding.”

The text further states, “A guy who has these attractions may not want them, or even know where they’re coming from. Perhaps they stem from an unhealthy relationship with his father, an inability to relate to other guys, or even sexual abuse. Whatever the case may be, purity will help him understand the origin of his feelings.”

Previously, there was a petition on Change.org against the labelling of Evert as homophobic. It states, “Catholic Social Teaching shows that same sex marriages go against Catholic beliefs, however, in the process to spread this word, members of the LGBT Community should be given respect.”

In 2017, Evert discussed marriage equality as part of Ascension’s program YOU: Life, Love, and the Theology of the Body. He states in the video, “The question is can their bodies totally give themselves to the other, can their sexual union by nature be fruitful? And the answer is no.”

Evert will be speaking in Dublin on the 15th and then travelling to Waterford for the 16th.