Posted on 10/16/2014 7:54:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Over at The Weekly Standard, Heather Mac Donald has penned an outstanding cover story chronicling the ongoing collapse of sexual-revolution values on college campuses. It turns out that sexual “liberation” has not led to sexual fulfillment, but instead to a landscape littered with broken hearts, long-lasting psychic pain, and a consequent desperate effort to create and enforce a bizarre “neo-Victorian” sexual ethic grounded not in any real morality, but instead in an effort to use institutional power to shift the emotional, psychological, and legal consequences of sexual regret and ambiguity to men and — as much as possible — men alone.
It won’t work. Sure, there will be a chill that settles across some campuses (depending on enforcement), and there will be cases where the burden-shifting “works” (at least in the way that feminists want it to work) by ruining a man’s life in highly ambiguous circumstances. But the end result won’t be a net increase in healthy relationships but instead an increase in fear, confusion, and recriminations as neo-Victorianism butts up against the crazed ”sex week” culture that still infects campuses from the top to the bottom of the academic food chain. It’s decadence versus contractual morality that utterly defies human nature, and neither model is viable.
This is exactly the time when Christians should step forward with a different ideal, the holistic, healthy, and proven model of sobriety always, chastity before marriage, and fidelity afterwards — all because marriage is sacred, our bodies are a temple to God, and we love our spouses more than we love our own lives.
Yet, sadly, many Christians have treated Christian sexual morality as something to be embarrassed about — to be shoved at the end of the conversation or minimized by reference to “other” good works. As if the formation of lifelong, loving relationships is somehow secondary to good deeds in soup kitchens or medical mission trips.
I mention sobriety in this context (note, I’m not arguing for teetotaling; I enjoy a good Bourbon — preferably Woodford Reserve) because it is the loss of control connected with binge-drinking and drunkenness that launches many millions of kids into sexual encounters they deeply regret and that haunt them for life. Drunkenness is not a prerequisite for friendships or fun. I somehow made it through all of high school, college, and law school without a single drunken night, and I look back on those years with fondness. They were among the best years of my life.
As for chastity before marriage, I recall my father (he was a math professor at a Baptist College) giving a chapel talk where he told the students, “The person you’re dating right now is somebody’s future wife or husband. Maybe yours, but probably not. How would you like someone to be treating your future spouse right now?” Students shifted visibly in their seats.
I can’t help but think — as marriage rates plunge once again to all-time lows – that part of the problem is that the total disconnect between sex and marriage causes each relationship to be more baggage-laden than the next. Because there’s been someone before, there’s the conscious realization that there’s always someone next, and as relationships form and break and form again, kids leave a part of themselves behind each time. Yes, some people sow their wild oats and grow up, but it’s self-evident that many millions do not. They just break — and as they break, so do their children and their families.
I’m in my mid-40s, blessed with a loving marriage and three kids who have faith in Jesus. Yet even in my mid-40s, I’m constantly encountering peers who still struggle with the decisions they made in their “carefree” teens and twenties, decisions that turned out not to be carefree at all.
As the sexual revolution implodes, Heather Mac Donald makes a great point regarding the conservative response: As stupid and destructive as new “affirmative consent” laws are, as unfair and immoral as it is to strip the accused of due-process rights, and as much as feminists now ironically treat women as the weaker sex, attacking the flailing sexual revolutionaries shouldn’t constitute the core of the conservative critique. In the culture as in foreign policy, “Don’t do stupid stuff” isn’t exactly a strategy. We must propose to replace the current mess with something – not just point our fingers and shake our heads at other people’s desperate foolishness.
And that something isn’t a new law, nor is it exactly a new culture. It’s an old culture, an old morality, one that we can never live perfectly but will be better for trying. And it’s one that has the benefit of pointing us to the oldest story, the story of our Creator and Redeemer.
So, Christians on campus — to the extent you’re still allowed to meet and speak – now is your time to step into the breach with a sexual ethics that is actually viable, sustainable, and life-affirming, a sexual ethics that is grounded in eternal values. It will likely be the best message you will ever share.
AWESOME article.
“...an effort to use institutional power to shift the emotional, psychological, and legal consequences of sexual regret and ambiguity to men and — as much as possible — men alone.”
What liberals didn’t account for in their fantasies was that men are not inanimate objects who would just let themselves be subjected to that. Many men are starting to simply avoid relationships with women, especially during college, because they realize the pitfalls that have been laid before them.
But does that mean they're avoiding drunken hookups?
Seriously, it would be interesting to see if adding to the potential bad outcomes of fornication affected behavior in any measureable way.
Bookmark
That abandonment was proudly displayed on a recent thread.
God's plan for the sexual impulse is marriage and monogamous fidelity.
Lust is discussed a lot in scripture, and the advice from God is always to “flee” and never to stay where you are and confront the desire with your inadequate willpower. There are no exceptions to this.
If one wants ones progeny to go to college after they are sexually mature then there are three biblical choices.
1. Segregated student body with no potential objects of luster in either the students or faculty.
2. Married student chaste to their respective spouse.
3. Student flees if they experience lust, causing them to have to start over at an institution where the object of lust is not there.
Or, your kid can go to an institution teaming with potential temptation, you can block the only two scriptural remedies (leaving or marriage) and then complained that everything keeps turning out in a terrible way. (Maybe your kid won't talk about what happened until after you die so you can pretend like only other people's kids were screwing like bunnies.)
So turning the country into a whore house wasn’t such a good idea. Who coulda guessed.
We have a winner!
+1
Well, that is going to depend on the individual, but a lot of men are not eager to be crucified simply for being men, and the only way to surely avoid that is to avoid women. I doubt that was the intention of the radical feminists and college liberals, but they didn’t really think through the logical consequences of their actions.
Kids need common sense information like this about sex. They do not need perverted, Planned Parenthood, soul-demeaning, comprehensive sex ed K-12.
Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College).
With the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, which began accepting women on a case-by-case basis in 1876, and Cornell, which admitted its first female student in 1870 (also offering admission under special circumstances), women couldn’t attend Ivy League schools until 1969 at the earliest.
Brown (which merged with women’s college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively.
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Oh, you never know.
I think sex outside marriage is both wrong and hawg-stupid. If this regulation (which I also think is stupid) reduces the incidence, it's a win for everyone who chooses to avoid the behavior.
Couldn’t agree more with that statement.
Thanks for the ping.
Much of the discussion about the California regulation has seemed to start from the premise that consequence-free fornication is both a societal good and a personal right and benefit. It’s bizarre to hear this from adults ... completely immune to facts, as if they were trying to defend raising the minimum wage.
It’s the new normal. A little satanism never hurt anybody.
/sarc
You think it’s sarcasm, but that’s because you’re (don’t take this wrong) older. If you were 25, you’d be completely serious, and it IS the new normal.
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