Anglican Mainstream

By Peter Saunders, CMF

The costs of sexual freedom and relationship breakdown to the taxpayer and wider economy total some £100 billion annually; about twice as much as alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity combined.

This is the astounding conclusion of the latest ‘Cambridge Paper’, ‘Free sex: Who pays? Moral hazard and sexual ethics’, by Jubilee Centre researcher Guy Brandon.

Rather than addressing fundamental moral issues around sexual freedom, Brandon employs a utilitarian approach and attempts to quantify its financial impact. He argues that sexual freedom ‘represents an enormous moral hazard and, as a result, unsustainable and unjust public expenditure’. Furthermore, these costs are imposed on society as a whole, rather than borne solely by the individuals most directly responsible.

He first surveys the ‘changing landscape of sexual freedom’. The average age of first intercourse has fallen from 21 in the 1950s to 16 now. The divorce rate has risen from 4.4 per 1,000 in 1970 to 11.1 people per 1,000 in 2010. Forty years ago 85 per cent of first unions were marriage but now 85 per cent are cohabitations. Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) in England rose 74 per cent between 1998 and 2009 and abortions increased from 54,819 in 1969 to 189,574 in 2010. 
  
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By Carolyn Moynihan, MercatorNet

Pressure and lack of self control lead teens in developing countries to regret sex, a new study shows  

Next week a British television channel begins the second series of a show called “The Joy of Teen Sex”. The programme promises “A bold, informative look at the love lives and sex lives of teenagers that tells it like it really is, and is definitely not just for teens.” Not just for teens? Is a show with such a misleading title useful for teens at all?

By Marcia Segelstein, OneNewsNow

Writing in the Sunday bulletin, my priest recently decried the secularization of society, and specifically the relegation of sex to a mere biological function. "The conjugal act is sacred in that it has the potential to bring an immortal soul into existence," he wrote. Those words struck me as so clear and concise and profound. It was something I already knew, but had never thought of precisely in those terms. How is it that as a culture we've come to treat sex so lightly, to remove it so far from the realm of the sacred?

The answers are complex, but to a large degree can be traced back to one man: Alfred Kinsey. I've written previously about the work of Dr. Judith Reisman in exposing the lies Kinsey spread in his two seminal books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Based on false data, Kinsey convinced Americans that they weren't who they thought they were, writes Reisman. With the help of a fawning media to spread the word, Kinsey undermined the Judeo-Christian foundations of marriage and family which had been firmly in place during those post-World War II years. Phony statistics "proved" that premarital sex and adultery were commonplace. If fidelity and chastity weren't really being practiced by others, why cling to what must be old-fashioned and outmoded ideas? A Pandora's box was opened, and the seeds of the sexual revolution were sown.

Undoubtedly many of us can attest either through personal experience or that of friends and family to the damage done to the baby boomers who bought into that revolution. "Free love" wasn't about love, it was about sex. It was about sex without commitment or consequences or even caring. Sex sacred? That idea got lost in the purple haze of a self-absorbed generation.

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From The American Psychological Association

Equality leads to more sex.

That's the gist of a new study about the sexual marketplace that used global data and found there's more sex in countries with higher gender equality than in those with less.

The study is part of a big-picture look at sexual behaviors worldwide using "sexual economics," in which supply and demand are key elements.

It's a "notoriously unromantic theory," said Roy Baumeister of Florida State University in Tallahassee Sunday at the American Psychological Association meeting here.

In his presentation, "Sexual Economics: A Research-Based Theory of Sexual Interactions, or Why the Man Buys Dinner," Baumeister, a psychologist, explained how applying economic principles helps understand people's sexual decision-making, especially when they're just beginning a relationship.

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From National Review Online: Interview with Robert P George

Marriage was already in bad shape when New York’s governor rewrote its meaning in the state on Friday night with his signature on the “Marriage Equality Act.”

[...]  The vote in New York to redefine marriage advances the cause of loosening norms of sexual ethics, and promoting as innocent — and even “liberating” — forms of sexual conduct that were traditionally regarded in the West and many other places as beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures. Early advocates of this cause, such as Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, and Hugh Hefner, proposed to “liberate” people from “repressive” moral standards that pointlessly deprived individuals of what they insisted were harmless pleasures, and impeded the free development of their personalities. They attacked and ridiculed traditional norms of sexual conduct as mere “hangups” that it was long past time for sophisticated people to get over. By the early 1970s, their basic outlook had become the mainstream view among cultural elites in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West. Although Sanger was a racist and a eugenicist, though Kinsey was a liar and a fraud, though Hefner was a buffoon, the liberationist view they had championed eventually hardened into something very close to a matter of orthodoxy in elite circles, and liberalism as a political movement went for it hook, line, and sinker. Devotion to “sexual freedom” had been no part of the liberalism of FDR, George Meaney, Cesar Chavez, Hubert Humphrey, or the leaders and rank-and-file members of the civil-rights movement. Today, however, allegiance to the cause of sexual freedom is the nonnegotiable price of admission to the liberal (or “progressive”) club. It is worth noting that more than a few conservatives have bought into a (more limited) version of it as well, as we see in the debate over redefining marriage.

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by Matthew J. Franck, Witherspoon Institute

AM Comment:  Every single cell of the human body carries either an XX (female) or an XY (male) chromosome; chromosones  direct anatomical, physiological and psychological development,  including that of the brain.  The brains of the two sexes are different in both structure and function, so much so that, according to Miriam Grossman, it is believed that we will soon treat depression and schizophrenia differently in men and women (You're Teaching My Child What?  p45).  No gender 'reassignment' can alter these fundamental biological realities. See Miriam Grossman's books and site for more. 

from Lifesite News

Relying on a previous ruling that sex is determined at birth and not changed by later surgical procedures, a Texas court declared Thursday that the “marriage” of a man who led another man to believe he is a woman is null and void.

The summary judgment order came in the estate proceedings of Capt. Thomas Araguz, a Wharton volunteer firefighter who tragically died battling a fire two months after separating from the person he married when he discovered that person was actually a male posing as a female. Justin Purdue, who legally changed his name to “Nikki” in 1996, went to highly convincing lengths, including surgery, to make himself appear to be a female.

“A person’s sex is a biological fact, not a state of mind, and altering one’s outer appearance doesn’t change that,” said Austin R. Nimocks, Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, who provided funding for the case. “The court was right to uphold marriage by affirming the reality that a person’s sex cannot be changed.”

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By Polly Curtis, Guardian

By Peter Hitchens, Mailonline

You can’t change the weather by fiddling with the barometer, and you can’t fight the sexualisation of children with symbolic, futile gestures and bans.

Once we dumped lifelong marriage, and decided that sex was just a game played for fun, like tennis, we licensed every form of sexual activity that didn’t happen to disgust us at the time.

The problem with disgust is that there’s no absolute standard for it. What people thought was disgusting 30 years ago is normal now, and what we think is disgusting now may easily be normal 30 years hence.

Our society has worked hard to destroy innocence, with explicit sex education, the abolition of taboos and the marketing of adult clothes and cosmetics to little girls. Modesty is derided as repression. When I attacked a range of sexually knowing dolls for little girls, Slutz, I think they were called, I received angry letters from mothers saying there was nothing wrong with them. God help us. Nobody else will.

As Phyllis Schlafly points out in her book "Feminist Fantasies" … for centuries, famous left-wing men have treated "their wives and mistresses like unpaid servants."

Their credo might well have been, "From each, according to my needs …"

Schlafly bases her review of liberal woman-haters on the book "Intellectuals" by historian Paul Johnson. Among the left-wing heroes highlighted by Schlafly from Johnson's book are Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ernest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Karl Marx.

Johnson writes that the pint-sized — 5 foot 2 1/2 inch — communist-sympathizing Sartre "was notorious for never taking a bath and being disgustingly dirty." He said admiringly of the Nazis, "We have never been as free as we were under the German occupation."  …   In "the annals of literature," Johnson writes, "there are few worse cases of a man exploiting a woman"…

As Schlafly says, no wonder liberal women think men are pigs: Their men are pigs.  To Liberals, Every Woman Looks Like a Hotel Maid by  Ann Coulter Read the rest of this entry »

By Mary Rice Hasson, MercatorNet

A 12-year-old may now consent to hormone blocking therapy. But why would parents allow it?

I am not making this up.

By 'The Ugley Vicar' in the Church of England Newspaper

[...]  Thus it is ‘Christ and the Church’ which is the paradigm for Adam and Eve, and for all married couples to follow. And the fact that the love between Adam and Eve was imperfect is no more a barrier to the Apostle than the fact that the husbands he addresses are imperfect. It is the paradigm, not its outworking, which counts.

By P. Sufenas Virius Lupus,  Patheos (Hat Tip: Grant LeMarquand)

[...]  But, perhaps more to the point in the present context, I am "queer" in a variety of ways. As I recognize that there are more than two genders to be encountered among humans, and I find that I can be potentially attracted to and have emotional relationships with any of them, I identify as pansexual, though my primary attractions and experience has been bisexual, and my strongest aesthetic sensibilities resonate with what would be considered "gay" much of the time.

I am metagendered, meaning that I do not identify as a man or a woman, nor as male or female, nor as transgendered of any sort, nor as androgynous or "neutral"; I consider metagender to be one of the many "other," non-binary possibilities for gender that are available to humans. My gender identifications are not dependent upon any single or grouped characteristics (physical, genetic, or mental), performances, mannerisms, or anything else. I have no problem with anyone who identifies with any possible gender, including conventional cisgender identities; in fact, I find a number of "conventional" expressions of both masculinity and femininity quite attractive and appealing, in other people.

I have my own preferences and definitions and ideas in each of these categories of queerness, but I do not expect others to either accept them or approve of them; however, I do not appreciate nor tolerate anyone attempting to argue with me over my own definitions or being told that I am "wrong" in my self-perceptions. I am likewise also not at all responsible for anyone else's perceptions of me, or for conforming to whatever categories or characteristic they may believe I should meet or exhibit. Those are your own thoughts and perceptions, not mine, and I am not responsible for creating them nor policing them. Queer I stand—by the gods, I can do no other.

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By Mark Regnerus, Slate

We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships.

When attractive women will still bed you, life for young men, even those who are floundering, just isn't so bad. This isn't to say that all men direct the course of their relationships. Plenty don't. But what many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we'd be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on. Instead, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (which collects data well into adulthood), none of these things is occurring. Not one. The terms of contemporary sexual relationships favor men and what they want in relationships, not just despite the fact that what they have to offer has diminished, but in part because of it. And it's all thanks to supply and demand.

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From The Ruth Institute

Dr Robert Gagnon @ ITAF – Jesus & Sex

Christianity Today Editorial

In December, Congress and President Obama ended the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) in the United States military. Today, American political culture is far more open to gay members of the armed forces than it was in 1993, when President Clinton created his famous compromise.

In civilian life, Don't Ask, Don't Tell attitudes are also fading. Once, this quiet accommodation to the presence of gays in our midst afforded the luxury of ambiguity, allowing heterosexuals to be friendly and supportive of gay coworkers, friends, and family without having to deal head-on with their sexuality. In order to be good neighbors, evangelical Christians have often chosen not to deal with the subject, making mental dis-tinctions between their personal beliefs and their family and community relationships.

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Coming Home to our True Sexuality

Jesus sees our bodies as our temples, houses where He wants to live. No matter what we've done sexually or what's been done to us,  Jesus can reclaim us and make us His own. Whole. Restored. Pure.
                                                                                                                           

Naked Surrender helps you see how deeply Jesus loves you and how He brings clarity, healing and restoration to  your sexual identity.

Naked Surrender answers  questions such as:

-How do I embrace my sexuality as a gift from God? Read the rest of this entry »

This latest series is problematic for various reasons but I focus here on three. And though there is a bit of good material, much is both insidious and alarming.    

Given its trendy but respectable image, it will attract many adolescents.  That it is Channel 4 and not simply a raunchy porn site is cause for worry.  Kids who would steer clear of the latter (because they know it is 'bad') will be damaged by the former.  Its breezy, non-judgemental style is particularly effective in communicating with adolescents.  It claims it gives ‘frank and honest advice’, and lets kids make up their own minds.   

Unfortunately, these kids will not realise what 4 has failed to include in its tips for successful anal and oral sex, piercing genitalia, using sex toys, whipping partners and so forth. They will not realise that sex comes at a price, and that there are various, some serious and permanent, psychological, physical and pathological risks attached to the above.  

Indeed, simply watching this material is heading into the pornographical realm.  How does viewing straight and gay couples copulating in various sexual positions impact kids? For many, ‘Show and tell’ will obviously translate into ‘Go and do’, with the only caveat being to do so when they are ‘safe’ and ready (and hopefully 16).  Read the rest of this entry »

By Virginia Ironside, Mailonline

The sexual revolution of the swinging 60s – kick-started by the arrival of the pill – seems glamorous, exciting and seductive when depicted in hit TV shows such as Mad Men. But, argues Virginia Ironside, there was a bleaker side to such freedom

[...]  To be honest, I mainly remember the 60s as an endless round of miserable promiscuity, a time when often it seemed easier and, believe it or not, more polite, to sleep with a man than to chuck him out of your flat. I recall a complete stranger once slipping into bed beside me when I was staying in an all-male household in Oxford, and feeling so baffled about what the right thing was to do that I let him have sex with me; I remember being got drunk by a grossly fat tabloid newspaper journalist and taken back to a flat belonging to a friend of his to which he had a key, being subjected to what would now be described as rape, and still thinking it was my fault for accepting so much wine. I remember going out to dinner with a young lawyer who inveigled me back to his flat saying he’d got to pick something up before he could take me home, and then suggested we have sex. ‘Oh no,’ I said feebly. ‘I’m too tired.’ ‘Oh, go on,’ he replied. ‘It’ll only take a couple of minutes.’ So I did.

In my teens, I lived with my father – my mother had left home by then. He did his best to be a good dad, but he, like most parents, had no experience of bringing up a young girl emerging into a social revolution. A woman friend of his had advised him to suggest that I go to a doctor to get ‘fixed up’ and to always let him know by phone if I wasn’t going to be home for breakfast. I took his advice. But there were no limits set, no mention of sex and love being remotely connected.

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