Sex :)

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There is a post right now on the main page of L1 decrying the sexual revolution. Sigh. This is a topic where I actually disagree with most social conservatives. I don’t totally disagree with them, just kind of: I disagree with the way they often frame the subject.

For a little bit of context: both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, two of, if not The Two greatest Catholic intellectuals there have ever been, both taught that prostitution should be tolerated. Both Augustine and Aquinas warned that societies that attempted to abolish prostitution would find that the cure would be worse than the disease. I am Catholic. I find it tiresome when other Catholics take to their fainting couches over prostitution. That attitude isn’t in line with the great thinkers of the Catholic Church.

And another thing: while remaining a virgin until marriage has always been and will always be the Christian ideal, there have always been a large number of people who fall short of that ideal. According to historical accounts, 1/3 of brides in colonial America were pregnant. It seems safe to assume that there were others who were not pregnant, but who were not virgins either. According to historical accounts, between 1/5 and 2/5 of brides in medieval England were pregnant. Again, it would be wrong to assume that all of the brides who weren’t pregnant were virgins: at least some of them weren’t. And, in both America and England, many if not most of these brides were teenagers. Teenage sex is nothing new. There is nothing new under the sun. Is it a coincidence that premarital sex became the norm at exactly the same time parents started encouraging their kids to wait until they were older to get married? No. That wasn’t a coincidence. That was a development that anyone with two brain cells could have seen coming from a million miles away.

If we really want to reduce out of wedlock sex, then we should have a more positive attitude towards marrying at a young age. Some social conservatives understand this, but some don’t. Laura Schlesinger, God Bless Her, seriously believes that in an ideal society, everyone will just focus on their career and remain a virgin until the age of 30. She doesn’t want anyone to get married or have sex until age 30. Seriously. She believes that is possible. The fact that no society in the history of the world has ever done it does not deter her.

I agree with Laura Schlesinger about many things, and I am in awe of the bravery she has displayed in standing up for what she believes, so I hate to say this, but it has to be said: when it comes to sex, Dr Laura and those like her are utopian and fanatical. They have an idealized view of what sex was like in the past that bears very little resemblance to what sex was actually like in the past. They are trying to do something that has never been done before, and that goes against all understanding of human nature. They have been trying to do this for at least 50 years now, and they just continue to fail more and more all the time. They are engaged in a grand experiment that has failed monumentally, but instead of recognizing that their experiment has failed, they believe that young people are failing the experiment. The view of sex that is taken by people like Dr Laura is inhumane and cruel. If we really want to win the culture war, we need to stand up for Judeo Christian ideals in a way that is humane and compassionate. Now is not the time to launch some kind of Orwellian anti-sex league. There will never be a right time to do that.

I am pro-life. I also dislike chemical forms of contraception, for a lot of reasons. It isn’t natural, it can’t be good for you, and while I would never support making the pill illegal, I would never advise any woman to take it either. Where the modern Catholic Church loses me is when they won’t even support the use of condoms-even in areas of the world where AIDS runs rampant. Some will point out, and it’s true, that condoms are not even close to 100% effective at preventing pregnancy, but when you combine them with things like a diaphragm or a sponge, you’re pretty close to 100% effective-as close as you are going to get, anyway. The pill isn’t 100% effective either.

The message we should be sending young people is, it’s ok to get married young. Nobody has to get married young-I didn’t, it isn’t required, but if you want to, that’s great, and we totally support you. Also, while you shouldn’t be having sex outside of marriage, if you must, please use birth control responsibly. And if you end up pregnant, please do not have an abortion. Will this message create a perfect society? No, it won’t, but at this point, what do we have to lose? We have been doing things Laura Schlesinger’s way for a long time now. It isn’t working. I think we should try a message that is more in line with what Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas believed.

I believe in the Christian ideal, but as Christians, we must recognize that large numbers of people have always and will always fall short of all Christian ideals. We know this about every other sin, why is it so difficult to accept about sex?

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Published by Judy Campbell

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67 thoughts on “Sex :)”

  1. I read somewhere, I cannot remember where, that one of the reasons the early Church fathers tolerated prostitution was because they believed that masturbation was a far worse sin than fornication. That belief is at odds with what most modern Christians have believed, at least until recently. Until fairly recently, most modern Christians thought masturbation was no big deal: Dr James Dobson wrote about this years ago, and to his way of thinking at the time, masturbation was harmless and no big deal. I wonder what he would say about it now.

    We are now seeing what happens when we tell kids that premarital sex is the worst thing they can do, but masturbation is no big deal. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t an improvement on anything. The early Church fathers were right: masturbation is a far worse sin than having sex with another person, and when people take a zero tolerance policy towards premarital sex, the cure ends up being worse than the disease. A lot worse.

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  2. One reason I bring up the uncomfortable topic of masturbation: a female member of L1 who is also a very conservative Catholic was lamenting recently that she knew so many “chaste, faithful” young Catholic women who were finding it impossible to meet a young Catholic man who wasn’t addicted to internet porn. These young women would start dating men they met at Church, only to find out a few weeks or a few months later that the nice Catholic guy they met at Church was addicted to internet porn. Apparently, this happens a lot: according to the woman who wrote about it, it happens more often than it doesn’t.

    Some will blame this on the internet: I don’t blame the internet. Pornography has always existed. When I was young, we didn’t have the internet, but there were plenty of girly magazines, and I don’t think anyone my age ever encountered a young man who preferred a magazine over a real live woman. I would bet any amount of money that most young men today do not actually prefer internet porn to real sex with real women. In some cases, some men are very turned off by feminist women, other men are shy and socially behind the curve, but in other cases, such as the nice Catholic guys who go to Church every day and are addicted to internet porn? They have somehow been given the impression that masturbating to internet porn is not as bad as having real sex with a real woman. It isn’t fair and it is not helpful to tell these young men that they can’t have sex and they can’t masturbate either. That may be a standard that lots of young women can meet, but most young men won’t be able to live up to it.

    Another male member of L1 who is also a conservative Catholic, and as far as I know, single, stated a long time ago that he was afraid to be alone with any woman, because he did not trust himself to remain chaste, and he couldn’t be sure that the woman would require him to remain chaste. I wonder how many of those Catholic guys who are addicted to internet porn feel the same way. This is ridiculous. How much more ridiculous does it have to get before we will say that premarital sex is not the worst thing you can do, and if it happens, it isn’t the end of the world?

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  3. Whew! I have so much to say on this:
    (First of all 1/3 of brides in colonial America were pregnant? I believe you, but I’d love to know your source for this.)
    “Teenage sex is nothing new”. This has to be the understatement of the …of the forever. Yuh. Men, for sure, are never hotter than when poleaxed by puberty.
    But 2 comments on this: TEENAGE sex is ordained by nature, and yes, we shouldn’t be judgmental about it—BUT—and this is a bête noire of mine—PRE-teen sex (I mean with penetration, sucking, etc, as opposed to satisfying a kid’s visual curiosity) is NOT natural and it should not be pushed on the kids like it was about 15 years ago. 9, 10–they’re all doing it, you parents can’t stop it, just get your boy the condoms and give your girl the Gardasil shot. Be cool!
    And—and Liz will take issue, I know: hell yes we should encourage people to marry young, and to reproduce right away! “Wait till 30?” Way to decimate the birth rate. Plus nothing is more “natural” than a girl having a baby at 15 or 16. I had a pro Bono client ,pregnant at 16, who hardly even knew she was in labor and a few hours later:: rock a bye baby!
    People act like marriage, or rather, participating in a wedding—is some irrevocable step which the parties can’t reverse no matter how much they may regret it. That is laughable: all state have no-fault divorce now,I’m think, which means it is a matter of (in my state) filing a complaint, then 3 months later an affidavit, and you’re free. It’s only later in life when the parties have accumulated $$$$ and property that a divorce is long, expensive and messy.

    Masturbation: does the Bible really say that’s a sin, or is it just a sin in Oman’s case, cuz he had a duty to raise up children with his dead brother’s widow?

    FINALLY: oh my God, this bozo on R>! Spent his youthful vigor at Asian massage parlors and now, in later life, he wants to cleanse his soul of the taint, by literally publishing his indiscretion? And HE is opining about the “sexual revolution “? It is too, too funny . Hey Bud: prostitution. ( as you point out, Judy) wasn’t the revolutionary vanguard: it was the ancien régime…get a clue, mister!

    Judy dear, thank you for this Lenten meditation 😜!

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    1. I read the figure of 1/3 of colonial brides being pregnant a very long time ago in an article in National Review by Ramesh Ponuru. I will try to get further verification when I get home tonight 🙂

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  4. Thank you so much, Hypatia 🙂 I totally agree with you that sex should never be pushed on children. The ideas being pushed by some leftists are just pure evil, and that idea-that sex should be pushed on children, is the most evil.

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    1. well, y’see, if they push the idea that all kids are desperate to have sex with their peers well below puberty, then what can possibly be so bad about adults screwing with toddlers? They love it! Whatever else you think about Q , he, (or it or whatever), had an incontestable point about an international cabal to promote pederasty.

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  5. “Masturbation: does the Bible really say that’s a sin, or is it just a sin in Oman’s case, cuz he had a duty to raise up children with his dead brother’s widow?”

    As far as I know, the Bible does not say that masturbation is a sin, but a friend once dared me to find the word “fornication” in the Bible, and I couldn’t. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there-both of us could be missing it somewhere 🙂 “Sexual immorality” is mentioned, but it could be debatable what is meant by that. But for Catholics especially, the fact that something isn’t mentioned in the Bible doesn’t really matter all that much.

    Most people masturbate. I know that, and as long as it doesn’t become an addiction, it is harmless. But when we tell young men that sex is bad bad bad, and masturbation is no problem whatsoever, we are setting them up for an addiction to internet porn. and the result on society, as we can see all around us now, are tragic.

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  6. Let’s tie all these themes together with a l’il scripture lesson:
    A woman named Tamara was wed to Judah’s oldest son. He dies. Having married into the family, Tamara had an obligation of honour to bear children unto a man of a Judah’s line. She was remarried to her dead husband’s brother. HE died. They the youngest, Onan, went in unto her, but he didn’t stay in unto her, he withdrew and “spilled his seed upon the ground”(the “sin of Onan”,which in Christian circles is a circumlocution for masturbation.) (I like to say: he pulled outa there like there was no Tamara 😂😂😂😂😂😂!)
    So she, as a childless widow, is a total non-person. But Judah has no more sons available with whom she can redeem herself.
    Sooo, she finds out Judah’s itinerary and disguised as a veiled “harlot” she lures him into a shadowy building for some quick sex. OMG, he sez when it’s over, I forgot my wallet, I can’t pay you! She sez, that’s ok, let me hold your rings till you come this way again.
    Back home, it becomes apparent that Tamara is pregnant! Judah is pissed that she screwed with a man not related to his line. He calls her in and demands she tell him who’s the father.
    Smiling sweetly, she murmurs, “Why, the father is he whose rings these are!” holding out Judah’s own distinctive signets!
    I love that story! And, as with Lot’s daughters, the author of the scripture doesn’t indicate any censure of a Tamara. She did the only thing she could do to fulfill her duty, by getting the patriarch himself to impregnate her!

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  7. For just a bit more context, JaC, both Augustine and Aquinas viewed prostitution – of females to males – as a ‘lesser evil’ (like the slavery/serfdom system in place at the time) to be *tolerated/regulated* in civil law, but still regarded as sinful. (Maybe relying on St. Paul’s: “it is better to marry than to burn.” quite loosely?

    I’m not sure they’d condone the human trafficking that often facilitates prostitution, or the desperation that leads women – and men/girls and boys – to feel the need to engage in the ‘profession’. Making something legal doesn’t always make it right.

    I’m sure Ms. Harris is endeavoring to convince Mr. Biden that nationwide legalization – and the accompanying tax revenue – is a great idea. How they’ll get this to work with physical/social-distancing mandates in place, I have no idea.

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      1. “How they’ll get this to work with physical/social-distancing mandates in place, I have no idea.”

        ‘omvg’ ”

        …I honestly don’t, nor do I want to; I was hoping the incongruity would “give you funny”, ST – as it did me….

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    2. “For just a bit more context, JaC, both Augustine and Aquinas viewed prostitution – of females to males – as a ‘lesser evil’ (like the slavery/serfdom system in place at the time) to be *tolerated/regulated* in civil law, but still regarded as sinful. (Maybe relying on St. Paul’s: “it is better to marry than to burn.” quite loosely?”

      Thank you, Nanda 🙂 I think I get what they were saying, and it seems like they would also think that a society where premarital sex happens a lot is sinful, but less sinful than a society filled with men who are addicted to internet porn? It is always a bad idea to try to guess what those who lived hundreds of years ago would have thought, but we know that they believed that masturbation was far worse than premarital sex, so that would seem to give us the answer?

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      1. Still, some things are true because they’re true: and exploitation of another, usually more vulnerable human being, to satisfy appetite -whether by actual or virtual means – is sin toward oneself and another person who’re both temples of the Holy Spirit. It was true for Augustine (who learned it the hard way) and for Aquinas (who fought daily to keep it that way). Speculative theological discussion that never made it into the Church’s teaching is merely “What if?…” among friends (even if they’re saints, and centuries separate them.) Besides, prostitution has links to pagan worship that militated against its acceptance in Judeo-Christian thought, and in civil law, drawn from it.

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  8. “And—and Liz will take issue, I know: hell yes we should encourage people to marry young, and to reproduce right away! ”

    All I was trying to accomplish with my point de vue was to protect the institution of marriage and avoid the ever rising rate of divorce. I speak for myself but if you look at stats, I’d bet people in their late twenties to early thirties last longer in marriage than those in their late teens/early twenties. (You and BMD are very notable exceptions.) I met my husband at 28 and might have ignored him at 22. He definitely would have ignored me! The human being never stops growing and maturing but so much of this occurs in the decade after college.

    As for bearing children in their thirties… my mother had me at 34 and my sibling at 36. Since two is all most couples can afford anyway these days, I think my formula works out perfectly! 🙂

    Interesting post JaC. You never cease to surprise me with some of the topics you choose. Again, glad you didn’t desert us for Easter!

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    2. “Protect the institution of marriage”. But to what end? You, like most people of our social class, focus on the idea of marriage as a long-lived economic and emotional partnership. Which is GOOD, I’m not arguing!
      But OTOH what if we look at it as primarily an aid to perpetuation of one’s society? Then, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a lifelong thing; its main purpose is to generate babies and encourage two young adults to provide a home for them during their infantile dependence. And, the later in life people marry, the less fertile the woman will be and the fewer children she will have. That isntt good IMHO.

      But the question “why do we marry?” Is tied in with “why do we reproduce?” That used to be obvious: children were an important part of the economic and social unit: their labor, their potential for increasing the family’s power through their own marriages, their rôles as caretakers as the parents age. Now none of that necessarily holds true. A child is going to be an economic drain on the parents for 21 yrs minimum. Whether or not to spawn is now kinda like deciding whether to get a dog: will the pleasure be worth the cost? Plus it’s always a risk, whether you’re bearing or adopting…again, is it worth what havoc it may wreak on the prosperous and peaceful marriage the two adults have crafted?
      (Of course, if the reproductive drive kicks in like a jet engine, even rather late as it did in my case, you will not ask these questions!)

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      1. “(Of course, if the reproductive drive kicks in like a jet engine, even rather late as it did in my case, you will not ask these questions!)”

        There’s the rub.

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  9. Actually, if you look at the OT and the gospels, there is only one category of sex the Bible castigates: adultery by a married woman. That is the one and only circumstance under which Jesus says man may put asunder whatGod hath joined together . But He doesn’t give the same exception to women whose husbands commit adultery.

    The huuuge change we’ve seen in our lifetimes has been birth control. Teenagers have always had premarital sex, but, just like in Biblical times, it was the girl who took the risk. If she got pregnant, it used to be she, and her family, would be ashamed. She’d probably take a trip for 4 months or so, and come back with her figure and without her baby, who would’ve been adopted. But once we had the pill, there was really no reason not to screw around, at least until the new STDs got up ‘n’ running.

    As for prostitutes, they always had their douches and other remedies to prevent conception or deal with it if it occurred.

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  10. “The huuuge change we’ve seen in our lifetimes has been birth control. Teenagers have always had premarital sex, but, just like in Biblical times, it was the girl who took the risk. If she got pregnant, it used to be she, and her family, would be ashamed. She’d probably take a trip for 4 months or so, and come back with her figure and without her baby, who would’ve been adopted. But once we had the pill, there was really no reason not to screw around, at least until the new STDs got up ‘n’ running.”

    We had the pill in my youth and I dated a lot but I didn’t even consider hook-ups. Women have to be taught (and I recommend fathers here as teachers) that young women aren’t ready for sex until a certain age because it has far more emotional ramifications for them than it does on young men. That’s simple biology. The fact that the medical miracle of increasing lifespans hasn’t affected male behavior is part of this destructive trend of illegitimacy.

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  11. “And, the later in life people marry, the less fertile the woman will be and the fewer children she will have.”

    Disagree! You marry in late 20s and early 30s and have two kids. That equates population replacement. What is destructive is 1) Teenagers having children who are not equipped financially or psychologically to raise children who end up in jail and create enormously destructive burdens on society and 2) young people who are rarely mature enough to set standards for themselves yet alone their kids.

    One of the reasons I chose not to procreate is because I have enormous respect for and yes, am intimidated by the commitment this involves. I wholeheartedly believe the married or non-married take the responsibility of proper child-bearing far less seriously than they should because they no longer have the critical back-up of societal norms.

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  12. Final comment on a post that has greatly interested me:

    Bearing children should be something one does with caution when one is financially and psychologically ready for it. Take it seriously folks or don’t do it at all. Odds are that an extra ten years will provide the following: financial stability, maturity, a willing to commit.

    My dad used to say “There is never a good time to have children- just go for it.” We always disagreed about this until I realized the generational differences (my mother gave birth in the 60s) when parents just worked harder to provide and fathers took their responsibilities seriously.

    The Boomers were the luckiest generation in modern history. 🙂

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    1. “Bearing children should be something one does with caution when one is financially and psychologically ready for it. Take it seriously folks or don’t do it at all.”

      I hear what you are saying, Liz, but 🙂 Nowadays, in America, practically the only people who become parents as teenagers are kids who come from very dysfunctional backgrounds. I think this distorts our view of young parenthood. Large numbers of people-in many societies, most people-have been having children as teenagers since the beginning of time. I know at least several women who had their first child when they were in their teens: they were totally responsible, very happy, and never regretted it. Most of them were married before they became pregnant, and are still married to the same man today. There are lots of young women who will do fine as teenage mothers: they aren’t the ones who are becoming teenage mothers right now. And many of the young women who are becoming teenage mothers right now are going to be dysfunctional one way or another, whether they have kids or not, whether they have kids young or wait until they are older.

      I understand your concerns about the high divorce rate, but pressuring everyone to wait until they are older to get married is, I think, a cure that is worse than the disease, and it ends up stunting the growth of people in their 20’s. Also, fertility in women starts to decline after age 30 and it goes off a cliff after the age of 35. Yes, there are lots of women-my mother was one of them-who conceive at an older age, but there are also lots who can’t. One of my cousins married at age 26, and had 2 kids by the time she was 30. She was all set to have more kids, but none ever came. And there are so many women like her, many of whom did not have 2 children by the time they were 30.

      Also, child rearing is far too expensive, and that is 100% attributable to inflated education costs. We should institute school choice, promote homeschooling, and stop propping up colleges and universities that print degrees that become more worthless all the time. Americans are paying the educational establishment astronomical amounts of money to indoctrinate our children. This has to stop. Most people don’t need to go to college, and there are other ways to determine if someone is qualified for most jobs. People shouldn’t feel that they can’t have a child unless they have half a million to send the kid to Yale Law, and all the schools that will come before that. The people who created our current education system want to destroy us: decimating our birth rate is their number one goal, and they are succeeding. We must stop buying into their premises. Even in today’s society, there are so many people who do fine without college, and so many people who manage to go to college even though their parents can’t pay for it.

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    2. I do not believe, at all, that everyone should get married in their twenties, or that people have to be married in their twenties in order to be adults. I didn’t get married until I was 36, and that was the right decision for me. However, parents should not be telling their adult children that they can’t or shouldn’t get married. That kind of behavior from parents is overbearing, and it does stunt the growth of people in their 20’s.

      A few of my cousins married as teenagers, and more of them were in their early twenties when they got married. When I was 17, in my senior year of high school, I was dating a very nice young man whom my parents absolutely loved: they would have had no problem with me getting married to him, and I am pretty sure that I could have married him if I had wanted to, but I felt that I just wasn’t in love with him, so I broke it off. But it was totally my decision, and that is as it should be. Parents should not be sticking their noses into the love lives of their adult children. As one my uncles, who has five very successful children, always says: “What my kids are doing is none of my business.” 🙂

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  13. “Nowadays, in America, practically the only people who become parents as teenagers are kids who come from very dysfunctional backgrounds.”

    Point taken but I do believe that American kids have been encouraged to defer parenthood as my parents did with their own and it all worked out for the best. My younger sibling has 3 kids who all graduated from excellent universities, started great careers and do not live in the basement. 🙂 But none of the three (ages 22 -27) is married yet because they’re particular. Who can blame them? As a bride at 34, not I!!

    As I said to my beautiful and intelligent niece, take some time to grow up and develop your priorities and “You, Miss America, will find the right man soon enough.” 🙂

    Also, and I speak for myself, there is nothing wrong with “cutting the buck” (as my mother would say) for a decade before settling down. There are few opportunities in life to do as you please on your own dime so I encouraged my niece and nephews to do just that. There is nothing wrong with starting a family in your early thirties! Who says you have to be 25 to be a first time mom?

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    1. “There is nothing wrong with starting a family in your early thirties! Who says you have to be 25 to be a first time mom?”

      I totally agree 🙂 People should get married when they want to, not when someone else wants them to 🙂

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      1. I cannot remember how many times I lectured single friends to stop sweating the marriage thing because it only happens “organically” meaning when two people come to agreement naturally. If it becomes a “discussion,” it’s a problem.

        True story: I proposed to my long time boyfriend of 6 years one night sitting on the back deck of our house over a glass of wine by casually remarking, “I think it’s time.” He looked at me, got up to go to the kitchen and returned with a ring hooting “You think you beat me to the punch but I’ve already asked your father for your hand in marriage.”

        My jaw dropped. How weird is this story? Typical of the two of us, however.

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  14. A not insignificant reason Christian conservatives have lost the Millenials because of our holier than thou attitude about human sexuality. It seems few so-called Christians are having sex and they want to enforce celibacy on the hormone-fueled youth.

    On the other hand, one needn’t go full Bible thumper to guide the young into a less self-destructive game of love.

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    1. “A not insignificant reason Christian conservatives have lost the Millenials because of our holier than thou attitude about human sexuality.”

      Thank you for this, Simon! You are right.

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    1. Yes, and it should still BE that way, is MY point! Incredibly it’s now often the young parents’ OWN parents who are horrified at the thought of the kids getting married, even when they want to.

      HEAR ME: among the young and propertyless, divorce is a simple, speedy matter of filing paperwork. It is NOT like getting a tattoo or undergoing sex change surgery. Getting married is totally reversible!

      Hell yes, get married, give the baby a chance at a 2 parent family! Why not? If it doesn’t work out, BFD! get divorced, you’ll be no worse off, and the kid might be better off!

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  16. Speaking of pregnancy as the final step before holy matrimony: My advice to the high schooler of today as well as
    the yesteryear – only date cheerleaders and girls with rich dads.

    With love,
    ST

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  17. I also take issue with the idea that kids are being told premarital sex is sinful , bad. (I’ve never heard or seen Dr. Laura, but I doubt her ideas are very widespread) On the contrary, it’s not sex that’s “bad” it’s just pregnancy. Oh and STD’s. AndI think “kids”that is young teenagers, now practice mainly oral sex. That’s what flavored condoms are for. Yuck, must be like chewin’ on a water balloon . Except for the flavor, I don’t see what’s in that for the girls. Oh and they also seem to believe STDs can’t be transmitted via oral sex.

    Once sex is untethered from reproduction and reproduction is untethered from marriage, we’re completely at sea without rudder or compass.

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    1. “I also take issue with the idea that kids are being told premarital sex is sinful , bad. (I’ve never heard or seen Dr. Laura, but I doubt her ideas are very widespread)”

      Dr Laura’s ideas are pretty widespread among religious conservatives-the older ones, anyway, and as Simon so aptly points out, those ideas about sex are probably a major reason why religious conservatives often can’t even get their own kids to embrace their beliefs, never mind anybody else’s. In the cases where the kids do embrace their parent’s beliefs, we seem to be ending up with the scenario I described earlier: lots of young men addicted to internet porn and afraid to be alone with a real woman. But lots of the kids are just rejecting their parents’ beliefs outright. It’s a disaster.

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  18. “I also take issue with the idea that kids are being told premarital sex is sinful , bad.”

    Agree completely. There is an age and a commitment level that is appropriate but so many of our parents married for that reason alone. Once the novelty wears off, that can lead to serious problems. Get married for all the “right” reasons; not merely to justify having sexual relations.

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    1. In the words of the great Phillip Larkin (1922-1985):

      “Sexual intercourse began/ In 1963-/ Between the end of the Chatterly ban/And the Beatles’ first LP/(which was rather late for me.)”

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    2. In contravention of every nostrum of parental advice ever, I simply cornered my kid while I was driving her to school (6th grade) one day and said, “Sex is wonderful! It is one of the greatest things in life! BUT: it is NOT for people aged 10, 11, 12. It just ISNT.”

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  19. My mother used a tactic typical of her generation; she told me “No boy, however nice, is able to keep his mouth shut and your personal business will be broadcast throughout school.”

    She was not only right but clever to avoid the “moral” issue; she knew that peer group pressure had a far more powerful effect upon teen-agers. 🙂

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    2. We’ve only had “sentimental marriage” for about 200 years. Before that it was always a matter of property and social advantage. People didn’t expect, as they do now, that the person they married would be the be-all and end-all of their emotional lives. They did expect to procreate. But beyond the bedroom, men and women of all social classes led separate lives. Once the heirs ha dbeen produced, the relationship of the spouses was largely ceremonial in the upper classes. Among peasants, it was a matter of dividing up the drudgery.

      Romance is NOT overrated, as Judy says, and it could never be….but the romantic aspect of marital unions can be and it is.

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      1. By far, most divorces are initiated by women. This is totally anecdotal, so make of it what you will, but among the women I know, the romantic ones who view their husbands as their be all and end all are virtually never the ones who end up divorced, and never the ones who initiate the divorce. Among the women I know, the ones who initiate divorce or are thinking about it are feminists, which these days means, they have a disrespectful attitude towards men in general and their husbands in particular.

        It is very easy to imagine an overly romantic woman who feels that she isn’t really in love with her husband, so files for divorce, kind of like Anna Karenina, but in reality, that just doesn’t happen very often, at least not in my world. In my world, I don’t think I have ever seen it happen at all. What does happen is, women with a chip on their shoulder who are out to prove that they don’t need men, but who for some reason decide to get married and then treat their husbands badly and often end up leaving them. Most women are not like that, but a certain subset are, and from what I can tell, they make up a lot of divorces.

        I have a couple of ex friends who were in that subset. Both of them feel strongly that they were more committed to our friendship than I was, LOL. And they are right about that, but they weren’t committed at all to their marriages. These women do not look to their husbands to be their be all and end all: they look to their female friends for that, and they take their friendships with other women far more seriously than they take their marriages. I don’t get it, at all, and I have learned through hard experience to observe how a woman treats men in general and her husband in particular before becoming friends with her. I think these women are very strange, and I want nothing to do with them.

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      3. I really think these women I describe are a big part of the divorce problem, and social conservatives should address these women. For starters, I would tell them that if they don’t need a man then they have no place marrying one. You want to be a strong, independent woman? Great, stay single. Do not marry a man and then spend the rest of your life telling him that you don’t need him. And young men should be advised to run screaming when they encounter such women.

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  21. JaC, her infamous line “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” ended my infatuation with her especially since she had one of the most enviable dating lives with the HOTTEST men in NYC. Hypocrite!

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  25. This bicycle thing reminds me of a story I read on Aeon magazine: some guy went up to a remote B&B in the British Isles for the purpose of having a romantic weekend with—his bicycle! The chambermaid walked in on him in the act. Nobody knew what to do, I mean, thats not llegal, raping a machine, if it WAS rape…..it just goes to show you, people are so effing weird about sexual fetishes—and other people get equally weird when they find out about it!

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    1. Ms. Steinem wasn’t referring to fetishes but simply slamming men with whom she was quite popular. It disappointed me because the early founders of NOW (Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Muriel Fox) practiced the fine art of Femi-Nazism and slammed her for the mini-skirts, highlighted hair and multiple boyfriends. In the meantime, I was listening to GS and her position on women’s rights but noticed she didn’t feel like “masculinizing” herself to do so. I greatly admired her in those days.

      The NOW movement has lost a huge possible base (moi) because they went too far left. And that is a shame because they did make progress that affected me particularly as I ventured into the workplace as a 22 yr-old.

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