Way back in 1956 Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin wrote an important volume called The American Sex Revolution. In it the noted academic warned of the direction the US was taking as it cast off all moral restraint, and elevated all things sexual to an idolatrous level. In the book he said:
“This sex revolution is as important as the most dramatic political or economic upheaval. It is changing the lives of men and women more radically than any other revolution of our time. . . . Any considerable change in marriage behavior, any increase in sexual promiscuity and sexual relations, is pregnant with momentous consequences. A sex revolution drastically affects the lives of millions, deeply disturbs the community, and decisively influences the future of society.”
Quite so. His predictions were spot on, and had he lived to see today (he died in 1968), he would likely say his original warnings were too tame and too cautious. The truth is, sexuality has gone berserk in the West, and a great gift has been seriously perverted and distorted.
Consider three recent news items highlighting the sexual suicide taking place all around us. We all suffer because of this, but especially our children. Indeed, when almost all of society is conducting a sexual war against our kids, it makes the job of any parent very difficult indeed.
The first article speaks to the sexualisation of our children, and how the new technologies are making it very difficult to curtail this. One story begins this way: “They are Generation XXX. Schoolchildren as young as 11 are spending up to 10 hours a day watching explicit adult material as new technology sneaks pornography into their pockets. Experts have warned of an increase in porn addiction in children as a new generation wired to smartphones and laptops have 24-hour access to hardcore material.
“Australian addiction specialist Robert Mittiga said the explosion in mobile technology had led to a surge in numbers of children dealing with porn addiction. Preliminary findings of new Australian research indicates that 43 per cent of regular pornography users were first introduced to explicit images between the age of 11 and 13.
“Mr Mittiga said some porn merchants were targeting kids by making pornography featuring cartoon and children’s book characters. Mr Mittiga said he had personally treated children as young as 14 for porn addiction and some young addicts spent up to 10 hours a day viewing explicit material. ‘It’s so accessible, that’s the problem, and we don’t have enough security or barriers,’ he said.
“Mr Mittiga said children were now watching pornography at school and sharing files with other students. He said children were 10 times more likely to get hooked on explicit material than adults, and their addiction could escalate into criminal acts. Mr Mittiga said some of his young patients had stolen credit cards to fuel their addiction and racked up bills of up to $9000 on pornography sites and phone sex lines.”
Yes, every parent’s nightmare. And if the porn merchants do not get our children while young, as soon as they head off to college they will be easy pickings. Consider how our universities are targeting students, throwing them into a sexual cesspool as soon as they arrive on campus.
Plenty of examples of this can be mentioned. Consider this recent one: “The state’s most prestigious university is at the centre of a controversy over a live and extreme sex show performed on campus for ‘sex education’ purposes. The University of Melbourne Student Union – which last month refused to fund an Anzac wreath on behalf of students – has hosted explicit sex sessions as part of a week-long program.
“Four witnesses said one forum during last week’s Rad Sex and Consent Week involved a professional dominatrix escort performing live for an audience an extreme sex act too graphic to be detailed in the Sunday Herald Sun. Another session witnessed by the Sunday Herald Sun at UMSU headquarters included instructions on how to manage having sex while on drugs.
“Student councillor Charley Daniel of the Melbourne University Liberal Club, who witnessed the live demonstration, said most students would be horrified to know compulsory yearly union dues of up to $263 went towards the activities.
“‘I attended to see how the union was managing a discussion on sex education and I was amazed to find it was an actual demonstration,’ Ms Daniel said. ‘It was very disturbing and something that the vast majority of students would not be interested in.’ Ms Daniel said at least one attendee was under the age of 18 and no student ID was checked.”
Great, just what our young people need. Our universities may not always turn out well-educated students, but they seem intent on turning out sexual sleazeballs. The moral freefall in our unis really must be challenged, but it is not likely to happen any time soon, unfortunately.
And then we have all these folks who should know better, and who should be acting as role models to our young people, but are instead doing the opposite. Plenty of sports figures for example who should be helping kids are instead harming them by their lousy actions. Consider Hawthorn superstar Buddy Franklin.
He is quite happy to be part of a clothing line which is nothing other than pornographic. But because he is promoting this, zillions of kids will think it is cool. Anti-porn campaigner Melinda Tankard Reist takes up the story: “Hawthorn star footballer Lance “Buddy” Franklin has released a special footy for kids called the Buddyball.
“Using his award-winning profile, Franklin markets the ‘ultimate training buddy’ to young lads who turn up at Auskick events. But is he the kind of friend — or role model — boys need? Franklin is co-director, owner and model of Nena and Pasadena, a clothing brand specialising in porn-inspired T-shirts. It’s a company he is proud of.
“In Franklin’s ‘fun and vibrant’ brand, women are depicted naked or semi-naked. Some are headless or unclothed on all fours. His latest campaign video shows a fully naked woman. An image on Nena and Pasadena’s Facebook page bears the slogan ‘F— bitches, get money’. Is that Franklin’s idea of fun?
“On the same page, the street-wear brand encourages fans to send their tips for getting sex, offering prizes for the best strategies. There are jokes about drugging and assaulting women. A few examples: ‘I like to call it the “fight and struggle”,’ ‘the skull drag to the bushes and then duct tape the mouth move’, ‘I hope to God they can’t run faster than me down that alleyway’.
“Another fan tweeted about a Nena and Pasadena T-shirt of two women kissing, that he would ‘like to smash there (sic) backdoors in’. That’s a reference to violent anal sex, if you didn’t know. The company heartily encourages them: ‘Keep ’em coming guys — this is very entertaining!’ Sharing your desires to brutalise and degrade women is ‘entertaining’, apparently. This kind of everyday sexism is so normal and mainstream that objecting to it attracts a torrent of abuse.”
Way to go Buddy. Great stuff there. You are an inspiration. But he may have had a change of heart after all the reaction. Melinda continues, “Franklin has now said he had asked his company to ‘remove all offensive imagery and comments that do not reflect my views, which they’ve done’. But he is still selling his offensive T-shirts, including from his Chapel St store. You’d think the AFL would act more quickly, given its code and past efforts to rein in bad behaviour.”
She concludes, “In the minds of too many sport stars, women are up for grabs, a conquest of the game. In Channel 9’s player revue, before last year’s Grand Final, footballers from various teams ‘performed’. The show featured scantily dressed women with legs spread, a pole dancing scene and players with their hands down their pants simulating masturbation. All for the mad-keen boys watching the show before the big game.
“It is time to address the culture of collusion in which sporting clubs offer little more than faint damnation for sexist behaviour. The chief executives of sporting organisations should develop a code of conduct that would treat offences against women even more strictly than taking performance-enhancing drugs.
“Franklin is a football ambassador. Boys look up to him. His personal code of conduct should be beyond disrepute. By profiting from the degradation of women and hosting content intimating violence against them, he fails himself and the sport he represents and all the young men who see him as a hero.”
So everywhere we turn we see this avalanche of sexuality, and our children especially are the big losers. Everything changes when we unleash all restraints and boundaries on sexuality. Will and Ariel Durant, in their The Lessons of History, put it this way: “The sex drive in the young is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group.”
Quite right. Yet modern Western culture has said that in the name of freedom and liberation, all restraints must go. All boundaries must be shattered, all rules rejected, and all modesty and decency must be stamped out. It is a grand social experiment which has destroyed our societies, ruined our marriages, fragmented our families, and polluted our children.
Yet the “progressives” scream: “More, more”. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “All healthy men, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, know that there is a certain fury in sex that we cannot afford to inflame and that a certain mystery and awe must forever surround it if we are to remain sane.”
Given our current sexual insanity, such healthy men seem to be in very short supply.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/sunday-mail/primary-children-viewing-sexfilms/story-e6frep2f-1226347675313
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/university-of-melbournes-live-sex-act-furore/story-fn7x8me2-1226347682735
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/women-are-not-up-for-grabs/story-fn6bn88w-1226347663598
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