Troutsky made a comment to my post about swingers:
Interracial sex was consdidered degenerate not that long ago. Who gets to decide and based on what? In the past(and still), chastity and purity were more valued in the female sex so one aspect of the sexual revolution has been egalitarian in nature. This emancipation comes with risks for social structure and control.
Due to the incredible lack of volunteers, I get to decide. Actually, I will merely yield to the authority of the Church on this one. The Judeo-Christian ethic is clear when it comes to marriage. It is to be between one man and one woman. Thus, homosexual acts are disordered, as is pre-marital intercourse. Now, one could claim that this is too strict, but it is wholly consistent. The main end of marriage is children, though it also draws a man and woman closer together fullfilling a unitive purpose.
Thus, interracial marriage is perfectly acceptable. Opposition to it was founded in our country's racist past, which has thankfully begun to fade.
The problem with the sexual revolution is that it has no real vision. It wishes to throw off the old standards of Puritan love and replace them with something new. Of course, it is not so much something new, as something which only gives the appearance of being new. Having come to the right conclusion that sex was not a bad thing, they have come to the incorrect conclusion that sex is always good. Chesterton wisely calls progress "a comparitive of which we have not settled the superlative."
It is pretty sad that swinging is deemed even remotely socially acceptable. At first, the revolution pretended that it was about love. Pre-marital sex was okay because sex was an expression of love. It helped that birth control allowed those nasty side-effects to go by the wayside and Roe v. Wade allowed the momentum to continue. Next came gay rights, since gays too, just loved each other.
Well, swingers have done away with that nonsense about love. Yet there is no condemnation from anyone save a few from the old school of Christian chastity. This is actually not surprising. Having dismanteled the old guard of Puritanism, the new wave is supposed to be a panacea. Do not question the revolution.
The sexual explosion is everywhere. Eventually there will be a backlash. Tired of sex being profaned, it will again be made more sacred until the pendulum swings full the other way and sex is again thought to be bad. Then it will be time for another revolution.
I could be wrong, but the left has yet to provide a standard when it comes to sex. Anyone can point out that something is wrong, it takes a great deal more to say when something is right. Until then, we will go from extreme to extreme; it is the habit of human history: doing things incorrectly. We need to remember that life is a balancing act. Sex is no exception.
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6 comments:
You are right that one aspect of the revolution was love (all you need is love etc..) but another important aspect for the more politically minded among us was freedom.Exploring the roots of oppression many thinkers came to the conclusion that sexuality was imbedded in other structures of power (patriarchy, the Church, government etc)and linked with race and class in the struggle for emancipation.Think of the suffrage movement.Maybe your Church sees itself as the guardian of civilization but I do not recognize its right to that role and the power it implies."marriage is to produce children" is not some timeless dictum with universal authority but a human construct powerless without a state apparatus to enforce it.Marxists have quite a bit to say about the role of marriage and the family (and the church-state alliance enforcing these roles)in terms of capitalist exploitation.
It makes sense that you would say this, but you failed to offer an alternative standard from which we are to judge the legitimacy--moral or otherwise--when it comes to a sex act.
You would agree that swinging is not something society should encourage, no?
Sorry, while swinging has no particular attraction to me, unless the state can show some compelling need to interfere to protect the general welfare,what goes on between consenting adults is none of my or ITs business.Sexually liberal countries show no higher incidence of depraved behavior than repressed ones.The "general welfare" needs a rational definition, not a supernatural one.No, you can't have sex with animals because they in fact have rights and cannot consent.
I happen to agree with you, albeit it tepidly. Libertarianism is often a bitter pill to swallow.
I suppose I could hail back to the falling birth rates and overall degredation of society, but the former may not be in jeopardy in this case and the latter is rather a subjective matter. We cannot simply tell people how to behave; liberty is too sacred for that.
The whole of this matter must be settled, not at the legal level, but rather culturally. With kids having kids, and adults behaving also like children, a backlash is needed. It is coming. We can only hope that we do not again make sex an evil so that we have need for another revolution based only on a partial truth.
Why are you, jackson, talking about sex???? --Harry
Haha, good point Harry. I'll talk about something I know a lot about instead: wrestling.
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