Posted on 05/18/2012 1:51:23 PM PDT by NYer
.- A law professor at George Mason University believes that current threats to religious freedom are intrinsically connected to the modern understanding that “sexual freedom is about shaping yourself.”
Helen Alvaré, who has formerly worked with the U.S. bishops' pro-life office, spoke on May 10 at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. She observed that many modern threats to religious freedom “are coming by way of a newly strong government position on human sexuality.”
This view holds that sex is unrelated to procreation or the union of man and woman, but is simply about “expressing oneself” and forming one’s identity through various sexual acts, she explained.
Alvaré traced this understanding of sexuality through court decisions in the last 50 years.
In 1965, the Supreme ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the Constitution implicitly protects the “right to marital privacy” and that married couples therefore have a right to contraception. At this point, Alvaré observed, the union of the married couple was still intact in the understanding of sex.
By 1992, however, the court upheld the “right” to abortion by describing sexual decisions as a means of shaping one’s identity, she said.
In its Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, the plurality opinion affirmed “the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
At this point, Alvaré said, sex has been “completely disconnected from the other person” and is solely about expressing oneself and building identity.
This view is reflected today, she explained, pointing to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S., which distributes information to young people encouraging them to explore and express themselves in different sexual ways.
This disconnected idea of sexual expression as an individual right can also be seen in a careful reading of the court cases supporting a redefinition of marriage, Alvaré added. In these court opinions, “same-sex marriage is not about the two people in the marriage. It’s about the individual expressing themself sexually.”
It is in this context that the Obama administration’s contraception mandate comes into being, with “no hesitation in divorcing sex from everything” that it physically, emotionally and spiritually means, she continued.
The mandate has been heavily criticized as a major threat to religious freedom because it will require employers to offer health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.
Alvaré views the mandate as a “culmination” of a view of sexuality that has become more and more disconnected from marriage, procreation and the natural unity of man and woman.
She explained that this way of thinking began with the argument that taking the babies out of sex would allow couples to flourish, women to escape poverty and children to avoid being raised in bad situations.
But this has changed drastically, in a way that is evident by the “models of freedom” used to defend the contraception mandate, she said.
Rather than a woman facing poverty or a married couple overwhelmed by a dozen kids, the iconic figures in the sexual freedom debate today are unmarried, highly educated, and fairly well-off financially.
She pointed to Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who has become a leading figure in the push for free birth control.
These women are not talking about marriage, poverty or the wellbeing of children, Alvaré observed. Rather, they are simply saying that they want a regular sex life with a constant supply of contraception, and they want someone else to pay for it.
This “right to a commitment-free, child-free sexual experience” has become so elevated that no religious conscience is permitted to object to it, she said, explaining that when disconnected sexual expression becomes a basic and fundamental right, religious liberty suffers.
This can be seen today, as Catholic individuals and institutions are told that they shouldn’t “even be able to have a critical stance” on issues such as contraception, she said.
She also observed that proponents of the mandate are making claims of a “war on women” and using “language of discrimination,” as if religious individual seeking to follow their conscience were violent members of the Ku Klux Klan, who should not have a voice in the public square.
The Catholic Church’s idea of sexuality as being connected to marriage and new life is “absolutely contrary” to the modern understanding, Alvaré explained.
As Catholics step up to defend religious freedom, she noted, they also have a chance to help change the way that human sexuality is viewed.
“I really see this time as an opportunity,” she said.
Ping!
She nails it!
Their stated goal is to end all moral judgments over all sexual pairings of any kind regardless of sex, age, relation, marital status, number, or species of partner(s).
They consider orgasm a birthright to be enjoined at all ages. Jocelyn Elders wasn't lone in her stated plans to teach children to masturbate.
It isn't about letter nature take its course, it is about actively celebrating a hedonistic outlook on life and encouraging minors to do the same. Obama’s so-called “Safe schools czar” pushed a book in which young adults described their first homosexual sexual encounter (often from the seduction of an older adult figure).
The Democrats want to first molest the minds of children and then molest their bodies later.
People just don’t want to pay public welfare benefits for two lunatics sodding off all day.
Muslims would just kill homosexuals.
Taking into consideration broken clocks tell the correct time twice each day, maybe “spread the other cheek” is not a good public policy.
In your unabridged Oxford Dictionaries, the word “faggotry” denotes the bundling of steel to be hammered or rolled together.
Mammalian evolution is entirely heterosexual.
Monogamy is not required for evolution, monogamy is a tenet of religion.
To prohibit polyandry and polygyny is an ecclesiastic rule of law.
To establish an ecclesiastic standard of monogamy for homosexuals is nothing but RELIGIOUS FAGGOTRY.
Democrats live in a fantasy world where fairies wave magic wands over their anus and babies materialize out of thin air.
All men are born of a woman.
If you have to tell grown men that babies will not come out of their rectums, there is no hope for any rational discourse...
I came across your statement: "Muslims would just kill homosexuals."
You have to understand how deviant is the Muslim world. We in the West are totally in the dark about the shady world of anal sex with young boys. This practice is considered the ultimate sexual pleasure in the male dominated Muslim world, where the practice of polygamy reduces the availability of sex with women.
Owning boys is a symbol of status. For example, in Afghanistan the ancient custom called "bacha bazi" (boy for play), is practiced where rich men buy boys as young as 11 from impoverished families for sexual slavery. The boys are dressed in women's clothes and made to dance and sing at parties, before being carted away by the men for sex. Owning boys is considered a symbol of status and one former warlord boasted of having up to 3,000 boys over a 20-year period, even though he was married, with two sons. The involvement of the police and inaction of the government means this form of child prostitution is widespread.
In fact, sex with young girls is also practiced in keeping with the great prophet Mohammad, who molested his young "wife" (using the technique of "thighing") at six and penetrated her at nine. This is because, like women, children are property to do with as one wishes.
Cases of girls dying during childbirth are not unusual, and recently, one 12-year-old child bride even died from internal bleeding following sexual intercourse. In another case, a 12-year-old girl was married to an 80-year-old man in Saudi Arabia. Then there is the practice of sexual mutalation that you do not want me to get into. It is that disgusting!
Once a male reaches the age of adulthood, as soon as one exhibits any characteristic of puberty, the Muslim laws against homosexuality are in play. To allow oneself to submit to a homosexual act is a crime punishable by death. So, if you are a child--or a woman--anything goes.
This leads not only to the loss of religious freedom but to personal slavery in general. Sex is addictive: when it is redefined, like the modernity redefines it, as essentially masturbation, it consumes individuality as the addict ends up on an endless quest for the next fix.
I agree with you completely...
A broken clock is wrong 99.98% of the time.
You are the one of the few who gets it.
I wonder how she feels about people having sex with animals. Then again, perhaps I don't want to know.
I's not she (Helen Alvare) who holds the "self-expressive, nothoing is forbidden" view of sex. She is describing --- and not affirming --- the views of those whose sexuality has been "liberated" from fidelity, honor, marriage and family.
OOPS! That’s a relief! She might be a nearby neighbor. ;O)
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