I think you're quite right that the idea of "parse don't validate" is (or can be) quite closely tied to OO-style programming.

Essentially the article says that each data type should have a single location in code where it is constructed, which is a very class-based way of thinking. If your Java class only has a constructor and getters, then you're already home free.

Also for the method to be efficient you need to be able to know where an object was constructed. Fortunately class instances already track this information.