Posted on 08/02/2014 4:45:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Back in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis saw chastity as under attack with "all the contemporary propaganda for lust that makes people "feel that the desires we are resisting are so 'natural,' so 'healthy,' and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them."
You can now safely delete the word "almost."
Today virginity isn't a virtue but a burden. Chastity is a freak show and anyone who chooses to keep it is a carnival barker. In today's entertainment world, weirdos -- especially sexual weirdos -- drive a juicy plot, so virgins are in vogue, as a target or merely as an anthropological curiosity.
MTV has a new reality show called "Virgin Territory" where four young participants explain their "very tumultuous journey" in the "tricky world of virginity." MTV sells it as pathos: "Whether they're trying to lose their V-cards or keep them safely tucked in their pockets for as long as possible, being pure is really starting to grate on them."
MTV's Executive Vice President of Series Development Lauren Dolgen tried to make this sound like a public service. Because of a partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, she claimed, "MTV will continue this tradition by elevating the discussion of responsible sexual health to include the topic of virginity in a way that our audience might find surprising."
Translation: MTV's challenge is to find "a way" to introduce the virtue of virginity without projecting its virtue.
As TV critic Willa Paskin at Slate.com explained, the show "tries to get into psychological explanations for all of this unwanted virginity, because like the participants' friends, MTV thinks it's weird." Variety TV critic Brian Lowry nailed it on the head. "Some networks will pimp kids out -- under cover of sex education -- to score ratings."
Then there's the new film "Very Good Girls" in which two college-bound Brooklyn, New York, girls resolve to lose their virginity over the summer, but both target the same boy who vends ice cream at the beach. It's not a teen sex comedy; it's meant to be more profound. "When we lose our innocence, we have to find ourselves," announced the trailer.
Susan Wloszczyna at RogerEbert.com wasn't impressed. "(They) decide to relieve themselves of the burden that is their virginity," she wrote. To celebrate their decision, they strip down and run stark naked on a crowded public beach before leaping into the water." She called the film "a very bad excuse" to see the former child actress Dakota Fanning "flash her bare fanny, fondle herself provocatively and cavort in her underwear for no dramatic purpose." Director Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal described these two characters revolting against their virginity as "serious, interesting, committed girls about how they become women." She said this movie is rare, because women "don't often see themselves with any reality on screen."
There it is again. "Reality" is defined by Hollywood's sexual-liberation ethos. Women who decide to retain their virginity are somehow not "real" women and certainly can't expect to see their "reality on screen." The "contemporary propaganda for lust" just never stops coming.
Y’all handled an obnoxiously assuming and pretentious poster quite well. Kudos.
Genesis 4 is first mention of sex.
“I would opine that the last two verses of Genesis 2 implies a sexual relationship”
If that is true then it was not fruitful and was just for pleasure.
Why? Not all sex results in conception, in fact not conceiving is the norm.
“Why? Not all sex results in conception, in fact not conceiving is the norm. “
So God’s plan is that most sex is not for conceiving?
What exactly are you getting at here? Why don't you just quit dancing around the issue and spit it out.
I mentioned that the last few verses of Genesis 2 certainly allude to sex and you seem to disagree.
I also pointed out the FACT that most instances of intercourse DO NOT result in conception. One would typically presume that this must be God's intent; but I have a feeling that your agenda is a little different, so please explain.
“I also pointed out the FACT that most instances of intercourse DO NOT result in conception. One would typically presume that this must be God’s intent;”
Sounds like you agree with me.
I haven't even figured out your angle yet. Why are you so evasive?
Do we have a tag-team here, or just two nitwits?
LOL! And I’d have to agree.
We don't know the exact timing, but it's plausible they got into this wonderful sexual discovery of each other just minutes after their creation!
“Nothing in Scripture suggests that sexual relations started only after the Fall.”
Genesis 3:16
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband
TexasGator, God's plan is that fertility is time-limited and periodic. If you conduct yourself as commanded in the Books of Moses, you'll abstain from Day 1 of the wife's menstrual cycle until 7 days after the last show of blood --- therefore about 12-13 days every month --- which sees you resuming marital relations just a day or two before ovulation, in a typical cycle. This also happens to be when the male finds the female most compellingly attractice, and female pleasure doo-dads are most receptive, woo-woo. Therefore Torah-based intercourse is optimally timed for making the Song of Songs really sing (!) and for conception.
Natural Family Planning -- observing and honoring the fertility signs, and regulating your behavior accordingly --- can be used either for avoiding or achieving conception. Thank God for this excellent design.
On the other hand, even intercourse when no conception is possible, is still related to the reproductive purpose of marriage, in that it can establish-maintain-strengthen a basic pleasure bond between husband and wife. Thus it tends to keep the pair together, which eliminates promiscuity, which eliminates the transmission of devastating sexually-transmitted diseases, which stabilizes the wider community overall, which is necessary for the durability of the family unit, which is essential to the proper raising of children.
So you've got pleasure at the service of both procreation and lasting couple satisfaction.
To which I say: Yay.
Not the beginning of sexual relations per se.
It's defensible to speculate, as I do, that both the man-woman relationship and childbirth would have been, or were intended to be, before the Fall, simply ecstatic.
“It’s defensible to speculate”
I am not going to get into speculation ...
Thank you-- that woke me right up. Now for the coffee...
Actually, those verses don’t support that sex happened after the fall.
God said that the man and woman would be one flesh, and that happens in sex.
There’s simply no reason to believe that they didn’t have it until after the fall.
All that really does is contribute to the concept that sex is wrong somehow, that it’s not pleasing to God, who created it in the first place.
And if sex is just for procreation, He could have very well had women go into heat. If He didn’t mean for husband and wife to enjoy it, He wouldn’t have given them the desire for it that far outstrips a woman’s ability to conceive, even with the increased conception that was part of the result of the fall.
Sex also emotionally bonds men and women, more so with women it seems, but it strengthens the marriage when experienced regularly.
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