What is the biblical basis for valuing virginity, but dispensing with levirate marriage?

An evangelical perspective on this issue:

Q: What is the biblical basis for valuing virginity, but dispensing with levirate marriage?

A1: Applying the ruling of the council of Jerusalem upholds the former but does not enjoin the latter.

In discussing what provisions of the law gentile converts to Christianity must adhere to, the early church decided:

[they] are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality... - Acts 15:29 NIV

But released them from following any other particulars of the Mosaic law. The traditional understanding of sexual immorality is that it includes any kind of extra-marital sex, whereas levirate marriage would come under the "other particulars" that are no longer required.

A2: The same basic reasons that Jesus gives for "dispensing" with Mosaic divorce laws, but maintaining prohibitions against adultery:

³ Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

⁷ “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

⁸ Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹ I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

¹¹ Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” (Matthew 19:3-12 NIV, Emphases added)

The social security aspect of levirate marriage laws were only necessary in the context of hardened hearts that failed to see that the commandment "love your neighbor as yourself" (cf. Leviticus 19:18) has such a broad application that fulfilling it, also fulfills all other laws governing human-to-human interactions. After the Holy Spirit was poured out, the believers (with regenerated soft hearts, full of the love of God) in the early church looked after the widows amongst them as a loving community superceding the necessity of the welfare provisions of Levirate marriage (cf. Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35; 6:1-7; James 1:27).

The value of virginity is also changed in the context of the new covenant - it should no longer be seen as merely valuable in the sense of property rights, shame, societal norms etc. (as those with hardened hearts may have done), but in terms of a refocusing on the original design of God's sacred covenant for marriage which is undermined by any act of fornication or adultery. As Andy Stanley puts it, "sex is not just a physical", but it is integral to the sacred joining that occurs in the God-designed one-flesh union and should not be profaned, but reserved for that purpose (cf. Hebrews 13:4; Ephesians 5:21-33); and in the context of a new paradigm of paramount focus on the Kingdom of God that looks beyond the (still legitimate, but subsidiary and, for those "to whom it has been given", deniable) needs of human companionship and sexuality (cf. Matthew 19:12; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9; 25-40; Revelation 14:4). In these particular contexts, the value of virginity is broadened (unmistakeably including men, not just women) and sacralized.