Anglican Mainstream

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.

Read here

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.

Read here

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.

Read here

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.

Read here

By Maura Kelly, Guardian

A paradox: women enjoy higher social status but are unhappier than ever – thanks in part to the pressure to have casual sex

The fight for civilized values

In 2008 California’s voters reversed the right to gay marriage. The right had been granted just a few months earlier but to the fury of the Gay Rights Movement (GRiM) it was overturned in a referendum held during the presidential election. Now more and more people, who used to be tolerant towards the homosexual fraternity, are becoming increasingly alarmed by their level of aggression towards the traditional family and to question the radical advances in legal rights they have made in the last twenty years. This has been reinforced by a recent widely reported survey of 450,000 people in the UK by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which put the gay/bisexual population at 1.5%. This is far lower than previous estimates which put the level as high as seven percent. It also contradicts the commonly held belief originally asserted by Professor Alfred Kinsey that about one in ten men in the USA was homosexual.[1] Since the 1950s more reliable reports in the USA have also put the exclusively homosexual population at about one percent.[2] To have laws giving extra rights to such a small minority is inordinate, especially when those laws are then used against law abiding individuals for believing homosexuality to be wrong and expressing that belief. This is allowing a very small troubled tail to wag a very large dog indeed!

While some countries like Norway and Sweden have recently granted rights to gay marriage, other countries like Honduras and Latvia have imposed a specific ban on it.  This is in addition to those many countries and indeed states in the USA, with legislation against homosexual acts. These factors as well as moral and religious concerns recently voiced by the Pope have brought into more serious question the legitimacy of sexual orientation to be a proper minority category like race or religion. Read the rest of this entry »

By Patrick B Craine, LifeSite News

Couples who reserve sex for marriage enjoy greater stability and communication in their relationships, say researchers at Brigham Young University.

A new study from the Mormon college found that those couples who waited until marriage rated their relationship stability 22 percent higher than those who started having sex in the early part of their relationship. The relationship satisfaction was 20 percent higher for those who waited, the sexual quality of the relationship was 5 percent better, and communication was 12 percent better.

The study, published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Family Psychology, involved 2,035 married individuals who participated in a popular online marital assessment called “RELATE.” From the assessment’s database, researchers selected a sample designed to match the demographics of the married American population. The extensive questionnaire included the question “When did you become sexual in this relationship?”

Couples that became sexually involved later in their relationship – but prior to marriage – reported benefits that were about half as strong as those who waited for marriage.

Read here

(To comment to the author, please go here, rather than posting on the Guardian site.)

Christian Sexuality is a Jacob's Ladder

[...] Human sexuality needs to be seen, therefore, in both its sacramental aspects if it is to be understood Christianly.

"Outwardly and physically", it is part of the marvellous, but commonplace, process by which living things make variant versions of themselves. Thinking of it this way should keep us grounded in all our thinking about the topic, including both its personal expression and its social dimension.

But considered "inwardly and spiritually", human sexuality has an iconic significance, being a point where the divine finds earthly expression – where something that is true about the creator-redeemer God in his relationship with his created-redeemed people is imaged and embodied in human relationship and experience.

This is why the subject of our sexuality is so inescapable, despite various efforts over time to neutralise, demonise or trivialise the subject. It is a veritable Jacob's ladder – a place where heaven and earth combine. But until the two become one, it will continue to trouble us, as well as to enthral us. Read the whole article

Read previous contributions by Stephen Tomkins (contributing editor of shipoffools.com and deputy editor of Third Way magazine) and Roz Kaveney (writer and activist).

From an excellent resource:  Faithful and True   Hat-tip:  Keith Tiller

Patrick Carnes defines addiction as having a pathological relationship with a mood altering chemical or behavior. Simply stated, sexual addiction is the lack of control of some sexual behavior or relationship. Perhaps the most helpful definition is a practical one: sexual behavior that has a negative effect on one’s life.

Like with alcohol or drugs, sex addiction fits the classic, four-component model of what comprises an addiction:

1. Compulsivity – The loss of control over a behavior. An addict continues in the behavior or relationship despite repeated attempts to stop.
2. Continuation despite negative consequences.
3. Preoccupation or obsession.
4. Tolerance – More of the same behavior or an escalation of progressive behaviors is required to get the same “high”.  Read here 

    

   See also here, an interview with Dr. Mark Laaser [who] knows both sides of sexual addiction. For 25 years, beginning as a college student and continuing through his career as a pastor and counselor, he lived a secret life that included pornography, affairs, and encounters with prostitutes. Today, 12 years into recovery and a healed marriage, Laaser heads the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery, lecturing and conducting workshops around the world. He has worked with hundreds of addicts and their families and has consulted with many church congregations and pastors after their clerics' sexual sins were exposed.

by Marcia Segelstein for WorldMag.com

A friend recently explained that his reason for reading The New York Times is to know the enemy. I relate. It provides an eye-opening, if frightening, window on modern culture.

Perhaps because I do my best to skim through the Times as quickly as possible on weekends, last week I realized I’d been missing out on an apparently regular column in the Sunday edition called “Modern Love.” Having noticed the two most recent ones, I can only say that they almost left me speechless.

“Modern Love” consists of personal essays, vetted by an editor, which tell tales of what passes for love in the big city.

The first one I read was titled “Sex on the Run? No, We Parked.” The author, a divorced mother of a 7-year-old daughter with whom she shares a bedroom, meets a man who lives with his sister. You can imagine their problem. Where to have sex?!

Read more

By Melanie Phillips

Something strange is happening to the oldest profession. It’s switching off its red light and becoming respectable.

To put it another way, girls from comfortable backgrounds are now treating it as a profession.

Almost every week, it seems, we read of middle-class girls openly working as prostitutes.

[.....]  Yet behaviour that once led to certain disgrace is becoming openly accepted, even flaunted. Prostitution even has a respectable new title — the ’sex industry’ — as though it has equal status with, say, electronics, publishing or the motor trade.

Given the great change that has taken place in our society, this isn’t really so surprising. For our sexual free-for-all has turned the female body into little more than a commodity.

With sexuality having been remorselessly stripped of any higher meaning than physical pleasure, the line between the predatory one-night stand and paying for sex has inevitably become very blurred.

Prostitution, accordingly, looks like joining the list of behaviour once viewed with disapproval — sex outside marriage, children born out of wedlock, homosexuality — but which has now become a ‘ lifestyle choice’.

Read here

by Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert   Hat-tip:  Rabbi Arthur Goldberg/JONAH 

A small but growing number of people are rejecting being labeled male or female.

By Patrick B Craine, LifeSite News

Venerable Pope John Paul II’s catecheses on the theology of the body form “the curriculum of the Culture of Life” and represent “a step-by-step, Spirit-laden presentation that resonates with the hunger so many people feel every day,” said Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, in a homily at the first National Theology of the Body Congress.

Cardinal Rigali told the Congress that, in his theology of the body, the Pope was “laying out … God’s plan for humanity,” Pope John Paul, he said, “told us that there is only one way to form a true communion of persons": through “a love which always takes the form of a gift of self.”

Everywhere the Pope went, said the Cardinal, “he insisted that love, authentic love, always and everywhere takes the form of a gift of self, modeled on Christ's gift of Himself to His Father.”

The Cardinal juxtaposed the plan expounded by Pope John Paul with that of today’s “secularistic culture,” which Rigali said has been developing “what may prove to be the most threatening ideology in all of history.”

The two primary goals of this secular plan, he says, are “to attack the inviolable dignity of human life,” primarily the vulnerable in the womb and at the end of life; and “to deconstruct marriage as the permanent, faithful and fruitful union of one man and one woman.”

The secular ideology embraces the evils of “consumerism, materialism, individualism, entitlement autonomy, relativism, and hedonism,” he said, but its adherents nevertheless find that “something is missing.”

“The one thing that transforms the pain of an abject secularism into the promise of life is … the gift of self in love,” he said. “Only the luminous radiance of Jesus Christ unveils the plan that fulfills man.”

In the theology of the body, he said, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Christ’s teaching that “we must go back to ‘the beginning’ (Mt 19:4, 8) to learn the true identity of the human person and the true nature of marriage.”

Read here