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:
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were anti-family. . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the womens movement that put self-esteem back into just a housewife, rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of instinct and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not childrens lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel.”
—Gertrude Stein (18741946)