Sex
This should be fun.
It’s remarkable to me how, in my own lifetime, sexual mores have changed so drastically. Go back about fifteen years or so before I was born, and you’ll find a society that was so prudish that I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show asked us to believe that married couples slept in separate beds. The word “pregnant” was verboten on television, too – “expecting” was acceptable, but it was pushing the line. Compare that to what’s acceptable today, and you’ll realize just how drastically things have changed. The change isn’t all bad; I’m not really interested in pretending that sex doesn’t happen, but I think a world that errs on the side of caution rather than reckless abandon is probably better than the world we have now.
C.S. Lewis once described the sexual appetite as “morbidly inflamed,” and to illustrate this, he described a burlesque house where women weren’t pulling down their stockings. Instead, people would come out with plates of food and offer you teasing glimpses of chocolate chip cookies or a side of ham. It’s a ludicrous image, but it demonstrates how we’ve elevated the sexual instinct to a place in our personal and public lives that is equally ludicrous.
Growing up as a practicing Latter-day Saint, nothing set me apart further from the mainstream than my supposed “sexual repression.” Particularly as I got older, more and more people were aghast that I was antiquated enough to think that sex should wait until marriage. And, indeed, many of them assumed that I was simply hypocritical and not telling the full story. A good number of them doubted that abstinence was even possible. Unlike any other appetite, we’re now led to assume that the sexual appetite is unique, in that it is the only bodily appetite over which we fundamentally have no control.
This is the primary reason why the gap between the LDS Church and the world at large continues to grow, and as the chasm widens, it’s going to get harder and harder to straddle it. Chastity was once a quaint notion in the world’s eyes; nowadays it’s considered a destructive one. It may well reach the point where the state will intervene to protect children without ample freedom to express themselves sexually, stepping between a child and his sexually repressive parents or church. If that sounds ludicrous to you, then try to imagine what the concept of gay marriage sounded like when Lucy and Ricky were on the air.
We’re going down a very, very dangerous road.
There are those who will read this and scoff at my supposed Puritanism and wonder why on earth I should care. Someone else’s sexual behavior, we’re told, is only of interest to busybodies and zealots, and we ought not regulate in any way what happens in the bedroom. I agree with that to a point, in that I don’t think governmental regulation on this score is necessary or helpful. But in the days of separate beds on television, it wasn’t the government dictating sexual restraint. It was the prevailing societal standards of the day, the same forces that now are making great strides at marginalizing as a “hater” anyone opposed to labeling a gay couple as married. Defining the role of sex in society is not the role of government; it’s the role of the people who make up the government. And it’s a role at which we’re miserably failing. Because sexual behavior matters, and it impacts far more than just the people in the bedroom.
Those who consider sex to be uncontrollable end up breaking up marriages, destroying families, and creating generations of children with no sense of continuity or community. We’re going down a road where the nuclear family becomes an archaic construction, where “mommy and daddy” are a cute idea in theory, where the world is about nothing but a series of multiple partners and nothing lasts, nothing counts, nothing matters. There’s a lot more sex in that world, so that’s something to look forward to. (Believe it or not, I like sex, actually. Big fan.) But think of everything that’s lost along the way. Is that really a world you’re looking forward to seeing?
Control of sexual appetites isn’t about prudishness or shame any more than a healthy diet is about hatred of food. If I ate everything I wanted to eat regardless of the consequences, I’d have three meals of McDonald’s breakfasts. I’d never exercise; I’d eat donuts twelve times a day, and I’d drink a lot of Strawberry Quik. I don’t think the government should step in and tell me not to do that, but I doubt anyone around me would applaud my lack of restraint. And, sadly, those McDonalds b*stards stop serving breakfast after 10:30.
Similarly, if I pursued my sexual appetites to their natural conclusions, my wife would be gone, my children would hate me, and I’d have no deep, fundamental connection to anything. But many would see that as just the price I paid for being “who I really am.”
No, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. There’s still enough shame left in the world that people who abandon their families and children are considered turds. But not necessarily so if they abandon their families because they’re gay. After all, how can you expect a man who’s attracted to other men to stay married to a woman? It’s who they are! Why should they deny that? Why do you hate them?
Suddenly, a bizarre double standard becomes evident. A married man attracted to other women is expected to keep his pants zipped. A married man attracted to other men, however, can’t help themselves, and they shouldn’t be expected to “live a lie.” I wonder if they’d be encouraged to eat a Sausage McMuffin with egg three times a day, too.
I remember a conversation I heard between radio talk show host Dennis Prager and a gay man who had just left his wife and children because he didn’t want to live a lie, and he was furious about what “society had done” to him. Prager and he then had the following exchange.
“Do you hate your wife, then, for marrying you?” Prager asked.
“No, of course not. I loved my wife. I still love her.”
“You’re just not sexually attracted to her.”
“Right.”
“How about your children, then? Do you hate them?”
The man was indignant. “Of course not! I love my children. I’d die for them.”
“But you wouldn’t have any of them if you hadn’t married your wife.”
“I don’t get it,” the man said. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Prager replied, “that society didn’t do all that bad by you, did they?”
And then there was silence on the radio for a very long time.
People who would define us by our appetites, as if our appetites are as immutable as the color of our hair or skin, make a fundamental mistake, and it redounds negatively to society at large. Whether you’re attracted to men, women, horses, or anything else is beside the fundamental point, which is that the nuclear family is the source of life’s primary joys, and to enjoy the kind of happiness that only comes from a deep connection to your ancestors and your descendants, you have to exercise sexual discipline.
A society that refuses to recognize that is one that is in the kind of very deep trouble in which we currently find ourselves.
It’s remarkable to me how, in my own lifetime, sexual mores have changed so drastically. Go back about fifteen years or so before I was born, and you’ll find a society that was so prudish that I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show asked us to believe that married couples slept in separate beds. The word “pregnant” was verboten on television, too – “expecting” was acceptable, but it was pushing the line. Compare that to what’s acceptable today, and you’ll realize just how drastically things have changed. The change isn’t all bad; I’m not really interested in pretending that sex doesn’t happen, but I think a world that errs on the side of caution rather than reckless abandon is probably better than the world we have now.
C.S. Lewis once described the sexual appetite as “morbidly inflamed,” and to illustrate this, he described a burlesque house where women weren’t pulling down their stockings. Instead, people would come out with plates of food and offer you teasing glimpses of chocolate chip cookies or a side of ham. It’s a ludicrous image, but it demonstrates how we’ve elevated the sexual instinct to a place in our personal and public lives that is equally ludicrous.
Growing up as a practicing Latter-day Saint, nothing set me apart further from the mainstream than my supposed “sexual repression.” Particularly as I got older, more and more people were aghast that I was antiquated enough to think that sex should wait until marriage. And, indeed, many of them assumed that I was simply hypocritical and not telling the full story. A good number of them doubted that abstinence was even possible. Unlike any other appetite, we’re now led to assume that the sexual appetite is unique, in that it is the only bodily appetite over which we fundamentally have no control.
This is the primary reason why the gap between the LDS Church and the world at large continues to grow, and as the chasm widens, it’s going to get harder and harder to straddle it. Chastity was once a quaint notion in the world’s eyes; nowadays it’s considered a destructive one. It may well reach the point where the state will intervene to protect children without ample freedom to express themselves sexually, stepping between a child and his sexually repressive parents or church. If that sounds ludicrous to you, then try to imagine what the concept of gay marriage sounded like when Lucy and Ricky were on the air.
We’re going down a very, very dangerous road.
There are those who will read this and scoff at my supposed Puritanism and wonder why on earth I should care. Someone else’s sexual behavior, we’re told, is only of interest to busybodies and zealots, and we ought not regulate in any way what happens in the bedroom. I agree with that to a point, in that I don’t think governmental regulation on this score is necessary or helpful. But in the days of separate beds on television, it wasn’t the government dictating sexual restraint. It was the prevailing societal standards of the day, the same forces that now are making great strides at marginalizing as a “hater” anyone opposed to labeling a gay couple as married. Defining the role of sex in society is not the role of government; it’s the role of the people who make up the government. And it’s a role at which we’re miserably failing. Because sexual behavior matters, and it impacts far more than just the people in the bedroom.
Those who consider sex to be uncontrollable end up breaking up marriages, destroying families, and creating generations of children with no sense of continuity or community. We’re going down a road where the nuclear family becomes an archaic construction, where “mommy and daddy” are a cute idea in theory, where the world is about nothing but a series of multiple partners and nothing lasts, nothing counts, nothing matters. There’s a lot more sex in that world, so that’s something to look forward to. (Believe it or not, I like sex, actually. Big fan.) But think of everything that’s lost along the way. Is that really a world you’re looking forward to seeing?
Control of sexual appetites isn’t about prudishness or shame any more than a healthy diet is about hatred of food. If I ate everything I wanted to eat regardless of the consequences, I’d have three meals of McDonald’s breakfasts. I’d never exercise; I’d eat donuts twelve times a day, and I’d drink a lot of Strawberry Quik. I don’t think the government should step in and tell me not to do that, but I doubt anyone around me would applaud my lack of restraint. And, sadly, those McDonalds b*stards stop serving breakfast after 10:30.
Similarly, if I pursued my sexual appetites to their natural conclusions, my wife would be gone, my children would hate me, and I’d have no deep, fundamental connection to anything. But many would see that as just the price I paid for being “who I really am.”
No, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. There’s still enough shame left in the world that people who abandon their families and children are considered turds. But not necessarily so if they abandon their families because they’re gay. After all, how can you expect a man who’s attracted to other men to stay married to a woman? It’s who they are! Why should they deny that? Why do you hate them?
Suddenly, a bizarre double standard becomes evident. A married man attracted to other women is expected to keep his pants zipped. A married man attracted to other men, however, can’t help themselves, and they shouldn’t be expected to “live a lie.” I wonder if they’d be encouraged to eat a Sausage McMuffin with egg three times a day, too.
I remember a conversation I heard between radio talk show host Dennis Prager and a gay man who had just left his wife and children because he didn’t want to live a lie, and he was furious about what “society had done” to him. Prager and he then had the following exchange.
“Do you hate your wife, then, for marrying you?” Prager asked.
“No, of course not. I loved my wife. I still love her.”
“You’re just not sexually attracted to her.”
“Right.”
“How about your children, then? Do you hate them?”
The man was indignant. “Of course not! I love my children. I’d die for them.”
“But you wouldn’t have any of them if you hadn’t married your wife.”
“I don’t get it,” the man said. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” Prager replied, “that society didn’t do all that bad by you, did they?”
And then there was silence on the radio for a very long time.
People who would define us by our appetites, as if our appetites are as immutable as the color of our hair or skin, make a fundamental mistake, and it redounds negatively to society at large. Whether you’re attracted to men, women, horses, or anything else is beside the fundamental point, which is that the nuclear family is the source of life’s primary joys, and to enjoy the kind of happiness that only comes from a deep connection to your ancestors and your descendants, you have to exercise sexual discipline.
A society that refuses to recognize that is one that is in the kind of very deep trouble in which we currently find ourselves.
posted by Elder Samuel Bennett | 10:37 AM
10 Comments:
I was just thinking about this yesterday when Hubby and I were watching the super bowl and an ad for a movie came on and I caught a split second flash of a scene where 2 women were kissing. I immediately blurted out to Hubby, did you see that? He look at me with equal horror and said yes. I just thought that's how it starts, a quick flash. Next thing you know, it will be an entire trailer on lezzie lovers. It is sick. (And this -stars/hollywood - is who we let us tell us who to vote for)
A classic post, Stallion. Classic. If you could just explain it like that to a room of 14-18 year old boys... and that's the sad part. By the time most people are mature enough to understand and appreciate the case you've lay out, it's too late. Our society of encouragement has already pushed them off of the cliff.
Very well put SC. Unless we pull hard on the reins, the descent continues, mostly uninterrupted. Even a small win such as Prop 8 is probably short-lived, and we know it. The consequences of these decisions sometimes take a generation to shake out, but they are evident and they are real. The only lasting happiness is in the family, and it is the one institution worth protecting as a society.
I ahppen to be wuite fond of lesbians.
I you only put the same effort in yout GINO reviews...
Nice post.
Stallion, you have some questionable underlying assumptions.
First, one basic is that secular society has given itself to “reckless abandon”. “Chastity is a destructive notion” is not something most educated and liberal people would consider. You have put words in other people lips and as such I call you on it! Ok you need to be able to generalise to write a blog but come on!
Second, your equation of sexual fulfilment with uncontrolled behaviour is wrong. What you described is a compulsive behaviour disorder. There are multiple expressions of the inability to control craving for food, alcohol, drugs or sex. So your example is flawed as most people recognise compulsive behaviour to be destructive and no Evangelical or LDS can claim this one as theirs.
The examples used are perplexing: Children/Parents and Gay/married men
You talk about the government coming between a “child and its sexually repressive parent”. This is very emotive and probably done intentionally whether you realise it or not. Children are children and are protected by the law from abuse – which includes sexual. The countries with the highest age for 1st sexual encounter are not in the US. The countries with the lowest abortion rates are not in the US. And lower levels of HIV? If you want to find that then come to Northern Europe where sex is taught early and comprehensively within its appropriate social and health context. The US does abysmally on all counts – go figure!
Many gay men have been married. They bear a burden alone which you cannot understand and neither can their community leaders or even their wife. I know a few who have killed themselves rather than give into “temptation”. I bet their children and their wife would have rather they addressed the issue honestly – however painful it may be than to see them driven to such deep despair that they take their life. You oversimplify this issue to your discredit.
If marriage is such a wonderful control mechanism that delivers so much to you personally and to society, then you are a selfish b*stard to want to keep it to yourself.
Oh, BTW the nuclear family cannot be “seen as archaic” as that would imply it is ancient. The nuclear family has no such lineage and is very much a recent and modern invention. You do genealogy; check your own multiple marriages, polygamy and deaths!
Stallion – you need to talk with some liberals every so often as verbalising your opinion with someone else can actually deliver a lot – both ways.
Abbot of Arbroath
Stallion,
I believe a good deal of the problem regarding declining morals is the disparity between what is portrayed in the media versus what is taught in the home.
Modern media, as you alluded to, generally does not portray values of high morals, fidelity, abstinence, etc. In fact, the very oppositve is often conveyed.
Unless parents themselves have an understanding of God's intentions for sexuality AND unless the parents make a conscious effort to counteract the message from the media, the media influence will win.
In general, I believe that too many of us don't do either thing above. We often do not have a good understanding of sexuality ourselves, and even more often we fail to convey this to our children.
We are often poorly equipped to discuss such things openly, but by avoiding those discussions, we contribute to confusion and misunderstandings. It becomes a misfortune that is passed from one generation to the next. It really is a problem and likely will not improve until parents make a greater effort to understand and to then teach their children....
“Chastity is a destructive notion” is not something most educated and liberal people would consider.
Most do. They don't say it as directly as Stallion phrased it, but they do. Practically every television show features men and women hopping into bed with unmarried partners. When you see characters who don't, they're often portrayed as being repressed, hypocritical or both or (gasp!)...UNCOOL.
Your commented that on saying Chastitsy is uncool "Most do. They don't say it as directly as Stallion phrased it, but they do. Practically every television show features men and women hopping into bed with unmarried partners."
That is correct. However, I ask you to follow the storyline in any mainstream TV series...that is those who behave dishonourably tend to have their come-uppance quite rapidly. Sex, if commonly, portrayed does tend to be framed even now within a strangley moralistic manner - you American even when hedonistic tend to know how the public wants to story to end.
Those who take their morals actively or inactively from TV need their head seen to. This may be a cause one day for the "Government intervening with your kids" which I would support.
For example, during TV programmes for children no advertising or marketing towards children allowed.This is governmment intervention of which I approve.
Abbot of Arbroath
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