Personal Lives
The Jonases are known for their wholesome, "family-friendly", image, and the brothers are committed Evangelical Christians. Their father, Kevin, Sr., is a former Assemblies of God pastor, and they were homeschooled by their mother, Denise. In addition, to signify their vow to abstain from premarital sex, on their left-hand ring finger they all wear purity rings. Joe has said that the rings symbolize "a promise to ourselves and to God that we'll stay pure till marriage", and Nick had stated that the rings are "just one of our ways of kind of like being different than everybody else out there." They reportedly started wearing the rings when their parents asked them if they wanted to. They also reportedly abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.
Russell Brand made fun of the purity rings during the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. Brand held up a silver ring, claiming to have relieved one of the brothers of his virginity, and said: "Well done the Jonas Brothers. Each wear a ring to say they are not going to have sex; I'd take them more seriously if they wore it around their genitals." Brand later faced criticism and apologized for his comments. He later confirmed his apology during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. The Jonas Brothers were satirized for their views in a South Park television episode called The Ring. They were also mentioned in the song "On to the Next One" by Jay-Z.
The Jonas Brothers are of Italian (from a maternal great-grandfather), German, Cherokee, Irish, English, and French-Canadian descent.
Read more about this topic: Jonas Brothers Tours
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or lives:
“I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.”
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“Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.”
—William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.