Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Why Sex Is Private
Toogood Reports ^ | February 6, 2002 | Henry Makow Ph.D.

Posted on 02/06/2002 4:41:59 PM PST by Starmaker

Do the crude sexual references and nudity in the mass media offend you?

Do you ever wonder if you are just prudish?

Don't.

Conservatives are accused of being old fashioned but this isn´t true. We cringe at public sex and nudity because sex is sacred and private.

I´m not referring to sex as physical release. That´s masturbation. I´m talking about making love.

The act of love expresses our fundamental spiritual need to overcome our ego-isolation.

Sex manifests the union in Love of two people.

G-d is Love. The union is marriage.

By definition, the act of love is about relationship, exclusivity and privacy.

This is the intimacy we all seek.

We are looking for release from the cage of the ego. We need to be accepted and cherished by another human being, and to give love. This environment where we can be “ourselves,” is essential to our emotional and spiritual growth. It is marriage.

Powerful political and economic forces are opposed to love, marriage and family. They prefer that people remain weak, isolated and dysfunctional, amenable to sexual cues. Thus, they are imposing their immorality on us.

Although scientific studies say married people are happier and get more sex, marriage is rarely portrayed in positive terms. Instead, the cultural message is that relationships are based on sexual attraction. Bombarded with soft- core pornography, we are conditioned to be always “on the lookout”, in a state of perpetual courtship.

The prime time TV program “Temptation Island” is an example: Six hard-body single couples arrive on a tropical island to “test” their feelings. They are paired off with six other hard-bodies in skimpy bathing suits. The game is to see who can resist. Most cannot. The couples cavort in bed with the TV audience as voyeur.

My friend Ron Lieberman sums it up best: “the producers of this show wish to prove that all loving committed relationships can be destroyed. Why? Because they hate the expression of heterosexual love, blessed by G-d, within a moral context. As agnostics, they view marriage as an artificial construct which is morally equivalent to any sexual contract, even a one-night stand.”

Karl Marx once remarked that under socialism women would also be publicly owned. Isn´t this what has happened?

Feminism promised to “empower” women. In fact women have become public property.

Economically, they are cogs in the machine. Young women are taught to eschew marriage, remain “independent” and to seek satisfaction in careers.

Sexually, they are a commodity on auction to the highest bidder. At a young age, in sex education classes, their dignity, privacy and natural modesty is stripped away. They are given role models like Britney Spears whose act is pure strip tease. When contraceptives fail, they and their babies become wards of the public services.

In contrast, look at the religious view of woman. Her sexuality is private and reserved for marriage. So is her mystery, her deepest self. She is covered. Her nakedness is an expression of her love. Her spiritual, emotional and physical selves are in sync.

Women spend billions trying to look beautiful. But men will attest that, regardless of this effort, women become very beautiful when they are loved.

In the love act, they transcend their individuality and know themselves to be divine. The Bible thus refers to a man “knowing” his wife.

More than anything, a woman wants to be “known”: considered, cherished and utilized by her husband for a cause she believes in. She wants to surrender an aspect of her power in return for his love. This is how loving union takes place.

In this process, the man also transcends himself. He sees his wife as part of himself. His desire is not to stifle or control. He nurtures and wants her to flourish in her own right. She is part of him.

This mystical union is what makes people whole. This is the source of the intimacy we seek.

If singles looked at potential partners in these terms, they would not be distracted by all and sundry.

But sex is promoted as a substitute for love, marriage and family.

As inevitably we become frustrated, the sexual drumbeat becomes louder, more perverted, and more public.

Gay activists are leading this trend.

Gareth Kirby, the editor of the Vancouver gay newspaper Xtra West recently wrote that gays don´t need marriage: “We know that a 30-year relationship is no better than a nine-week or nine-minute fling; it´s different but no better. Both have value. We know that the instant intimacy involved in that perfect 20-minute [tryst] in Stanley Park can be profoundly beautiful thing…” (Quoted in “Reality” Jan./Feb. 2002.)

As Kirby says, sex for many gays literally takes place in public, in washrooms and parks. It is flaunted in parades and on TV programs like “Will and Grace” or in Dan Savage´s column “Savage Love.” There is nothing “private” or intimate about multiple and/or anonymous partners.

This behavior strikes me as an act of defiance for having been deprived of a father´s love, and love in general.

Unable to find true intimacy, they “up the ante”: engaging in sadomasochism or wallowing in filth. Based on sexual attraction, their relationships are short-lived and not exclusive. Surveys show that only 2% are long-term.

Heterosexuals are being encouraged to emulate the gay model. The “trend-setting” TV program “Sex and the City” is an example. The women are looking for love but the scope of their quest makes them unfit for it. The character Samantha has slept with hundreds of men. The other three women are not as ambitious. The program chronicles their relationships, and abounds in nudity and scatological references.

In conclusion, the attempt to achieve ersatz intimacy by sex is sick and doomed. Its promotion in popular culture is a deliberate attack on our psyche.

All human beings are looking for self-transcendence and wholeness. The only way this can be found is though love: union with another human being. Sex expresses this sacred marriage. That´s why sex is private.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: henrymakow; skinheadsonfr
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-25 next last

1 posted on 02/06/2002 4:41:59 PM PST by Starmaker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
God is love.
Love is blind.
Ray Charles is blind.

Ray Charles is God!

Oh uh,er,I remember sex,somewhat.

2 posted on 02/06/2002 4:45:08 PM PST by tet68
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
The real reason is this: when you are busy making love, you are not paying attention, making it possible for predators to attack and eat you. Those with the instinct to seek out a hidden place had an evolutionary advantage. After the brain evolved, various rationalizations for this behavior were developed.
3 posted on 02/06/2002 4:49:08 PM PST by proxy_user
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Comment #4 Removed by Moderator

To: Starmaker
Sex should be private -- one partner at a time -- perhaps two.
5 posted on 02/06/2002 4:53:34 PM PST by jerrymdss
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Good article. I hate sex scenes.....it cheapens it and makes me feel like a voyeur.
6 posted on 02/06/2002 5:01:43 PM PST by Sungirl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Nice article
7 posted on 02/06/2002 5:15:42 PM PST by Centurion2000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Well put!
8 posted on 02/06/2002 5:27:07 PM PST by ctdonath2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Good article.
9 posted on 02/06/2002 5:32:27 PM PST by lsee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: innocentbystander
Sorry, but Sex is just sex for some; and no one individual has the right to define it for everyone else; religious or not.

But what if this traditional view of sex is the most rationally defensible? If so, then it is no mere individual definition, but a truth theoretically knowable by everybody of sound mind. We can't "define" truth for somebody else, we can only discover it and share this discovery.

Now here is the pivotal question: ought we to base our laws and/or our social practices on discovered truth, or on mere private will? Are we to govern ourselves by the rule of reason, as republican government holds, or are we to give ourselves over to irrational passion, and become a nation full of petty tyrants who will not listen to reason?

10 posted on 02/06/2002 5:54:28 PM PST by Dumb_Ox
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

Comment #11 Removed by Moderator

To: innocentbystander
Doesnt the "rule of reason" suggest that those best able to reason will hold sex in a positive context

I'd say "proper" rather than "positive." The lecher certainly thinks sex is a positive thing(even a stopped clock is right twice a day).

No one has come up with a realistic way of legislating the effects of human hormones

Last I checked, I rule my hormones; they don't rule me. They somewhat usurped their proper place in my teen years, but I have since restored justice to my bodily kingdom. From personal experience, I can attest that hormonal control is possible, and far better than the alternative.

so what is the point, accept to teach truth and responsibility?

Teaching truth and responsibility is certainly a mighty strong point, and sometimes the law is indeed a good teacher. Discouraging vice is a good way to indirectly encourage virtue, because it helps develop the habit of self-control.

But I think governmental law is besides the point of this article, since modest societies can combat immodesty through non-legal avenues. The author is noting how we often do not respect the goodness of sex. A society that respected and cherished human sexuality would neither tolerate such widespread meat markets and guilt-free pornophilic "entertainments," nor would it eulogize fellatio on our Free Republic threads. This mutilation of human sexuality cannot help but influence our idea of what it is to be human. And if we change this idea too much, we could very well reject the principles of humanity upon which our nation is founded: That all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. Would you like to see what happens when these principles are rejected? I don't think I would.

12 posted on 02/06/2002 6:27:21 PM PST by Dumb_Ox
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

Comment #13 Removed by Moderator

To: innocentbystander
Actually, from a fully scientific perspective; your hormones rule everything you do, voluntary or involuntary. It would take too much time and too many words to explain this in an epistemological sense, but it is provable nonetheless.

Oh, nonsense on stilts. This isn't science, let alone a "fully scientific perspective." It's materialistic determinism, which more often than not destroys both liberty and reason. Just look at Marx's own materialistic determinism.

I think sometimes were are a bit too high-minded in our assumtions that we are so much in charge of our biology, as though it wasnt hormones behind the firing of every impulse in our brains.

So we aren't responsible for following or not following our hormonal impulses?

I think any look at society would suggest that laws are practically irrelavent when it comes to sex; some people will follow laws and some (most in my opinion) will not.

Can you name any of these societies? Even the liberal US doesn't allow kids to buy porn, and prosecutes those who distribute it to minors. That's certainly controlling sex. Why are you making a special provision for sex? Though it is a wonderful thing, there's no proof that it is in its own special category.

'Proper' is such a loaded word, because it is subjective, while positive is a bit more flexible and personal. i.e: you can pick my 'proper' from your perspective, but you would be hard pressed to pick my 'positive' which is a personal evaluation of the event.

Yeah, I'm speaking from a "subjective" perspective, and you're speaking from a "personal" perspective, and there's nothing we can do to change our minds at all, since reason is a myth. Why are you arguing, if you believe so?

May I suggest you read Professor George's essay The Clash of Orthodoxies? He takes apart what I perceive to be your underlying philosophy.

14 posted on 02/06/2002 7:05:37 PM PST by Dumb_Ox
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: proxy_user
Dude, you rock. Stick around.
15 posted on 02/06/2002 7:10:40 PM PST by ConsistentLibertarian
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

Comment #16 Removed by Moderator

To: proxy_user
People are also vulnerable to predators while they are sleeping, yet as far as I know (I'm no anthropologist) there are no people who still lead a Stone Age existence who all disperse to hidden, private places in the forest when they go to sleep every night. It's much safer for them to sleep huddled up in a group. So then why would human beings not have evolved to seek out the protection of our fellows while we are having sex?

Again, as far as I know, there are no animals who won't have sex in front of other members of their species so long as they don't feel threatened. But according to your argument, shouldn't they also have evolved to seek out privacy during sex?

To sum up: if private sex is such a great strategy for avoiding predators, why haven't more other species discovered it?

17 posted on 02/07/2002 1:10:08 AM PST by Ultima Thule
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Dumb_Ox
Are we kin?

LOL!

18 posted on 02/07/2002 1:40:01 AM PST by Caipirabob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Somebody sent me an EMail joke yesterday. It said "Did you know there's something women can eat to completely shut down their sex drive?" [the answer is "wedding cake"] - [rimshot]
19 posted on 02/07/2002 1:45:54 AM PST by The Raven
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Starmaker
Thanks for posting this. I think you found the truth in this article. Such a rare find.
20 posted on 02/07/2002 1:39:34 PM PST by Aquamarine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-25 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson