This should be fun.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s remarkable to me how, in my own lifetime, sexual mores have changed so drastically. Go back about fifteen years or so before I was born, and you\u2019ll find a society that was so prudish that I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show asked us to believe that married couples slept in separate beds. The word \u201cpregnant\u201d was verboten on television, too \u2013 \u201cexpecting\u201d was acceptable, but it was pushing the line. Compare that to what\u2019s acceptable today, and you\u2019ll realize just how drastically things have changed. The change isn\u2019t all bad; I\u2019m not really interested in pretending that sex doesn\u2019t happen, but I think a world that errs on the side of caution rather than reckless abandon is probably better than the world we have now.<\/p>\n
C.S. Lewis once described the sexual appetite as \u201cmorbidly inflamed,\u201d and to illustrate this, he described a burlesque house where women weren\u2019t pulling down their stockings. Instead, people would come out with plates of food and offer you teasing glimpses of chocolate chip cookies or a side of ham. It\u2019s a ludicrous image, but it demonstrates how we\u2019ve elevated the sexual instinct to a place in our personal and public lives that is equally ludicrous.<\/p>\n
Growing up as a practicing Latter-day Saint, nothing set me apart further from the mainstream than my supposed \u201csexual repression.\u201d Particularly as I got older, more and more people were aghast that I was antiquated enough to think that sex should wait until marriage. And, indeed, many of them assumed that I was simply hypocritical and not telling the full story. A good number of them doubted that abstinence was even possible. Unlike any other appetite, we\u2019re now led to assume that the sexual appetite is unique, in that it is the only bodily appetite over which we fundamentally have no control.<\/p>\n
This is the primary reason why the gap between the LDS Church and the world at large continues to grow, and as the chasm widens, it\u2019s going to get harder and harder to straddle it. Chastity was once a quaint notion in the world\u2019s eyes; nowadays it\u2019s considered a destructive one. It may well reach the point where the state will intervene to protect children without ample freedom to express themselves sexually, stepping between a child and his sexually repressive parents or church. If that sounds ludicrous to you, then try to imagine what the concept of gay marriage sounded like when Lucy and Ricky were on the air.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going down a very, very dangerous road.<\/p>\n
There are those who will read this and scoff at my supposed Puritanism and wonder why on earth I should care. Someone else\u2019s sexual behavior, we\u2019re told, is only of interest to busybodies and zealots, and we ought not regulate in any way what happens in the bedroom. I agree with that to a point, in that I don\u2019t think governmental regulation on this score is necessary or helpful. But in the days of separate beds on television, it wasn\u2019t the government dictating sexual restraint. It was the prevailing societal standards of the day, the same forces that now are making great strides at marginalizing as a \u201chater\u201d anyone opposed to labeling a gay couple as married. Defining the role of sex in society is not the role of government; it\u2019s the role of the people who make up the government. And it\u2019s a role at which we\u2019re miserably failing. Because sexual behavior matters, and it impacts far more than just the people in the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Those who consider sex to be uncontrollable end up breaking up marriages, destroying families, and creating generations of children with no sense of continuity or community. We\u2019re going down a road where the nuclear family becomes an archaic construction, where \u201cmommy and daddy\u201d are a cute idea in theory, where the world is about nothing but a series of multiple partners and nothing lasts, nothing counts, nothing matters. There\u2019s a lot more sex in that world, so that\u2019s something to look forward to. (Believe it or not, I like sex, actually. Big fan.) But think of everything that\u2019s lost along the way. Is that really a world you\u2019re looking forward to seeing?<\/p>\n
Control of sexual appetites isn\u2019t about prudishness or shame any more than a healthy diet is about hatred of food. If I ate everything I wanted to eat regardless of the consequences, I\u2019d have three meals of McDonald\u2019s breakfasts. I\u2019d never exercise; I\u2019d eat donuts twelve times a day, and I\u2019d drink a lot of Strawberry Quik. I don\u2019t think the government should step in and tell me not to do that, but I doubt anyone around me would applaud my lack of restraint. And, sadly, those McDonalds b*stards stop serving breakfast after 10:30.<\/p>\n
Similarly, if I pursued my sexual appetites to their natural conclusions, my wife would be gone, my children would hate me, and I\u2019d have no deep, fundamental connection to anything. But many would see that as just the price I paid for being \u201cwho I really am.\u201d<\/p>\n
No, I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s entirely true. There\u2019s still enough shame left in the world that people who abandon their families and children are considered turds. But not necessarily so if they abandon their families because they\u2019re gay. After all, how can you expect a man who\u2019s attracted to other men to stay married to a woman? It\u2019s who they are! Why should they deny that? Why do you hate them?<\/p>\n
Suddenly, a bizarre double standard becomes evident. A married man attracted to other women is expected to keep his pants zipped. A married man attracted to other men, however, can\u2019t help themselves, and they shouldn\u2019t be expected to \u201clive a lie.\u201d I wonder if they\u2019d be encouraged to eat a Sausage McMuffin with egg three times a day, too.<\/p>\n
I remember a conversation I heard between radio talk show host Dennis Prager and a gay man who had just left his wife and children because he didn\u2019t want to live a lie, and he was furious about what \u201csociety had done\u201d to him. Prager and he then had the following exchange.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you hate your wife, then, for marrying you?\u201d Prager asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, of course not. I loved my wife. I still love her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re just not sexually attracted to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about your children, then? Do you hate them?\u201d<\/p>\n
The man was indignant. \u201cOf course not! I love my children. I\u2019d die for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you wouldn\u2019t have any of them if you hadn\u2019t married your wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t get it,\u201d the man said. \u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m saying,\u201d Prager replied, \u201cthat society didn\u2019t do all that bad by you, did they?\u201d<\/p>\n
And then there was silence on the radio for a very long time.<\/p>\n
People who would define us by our appetites, as if our appetites are as immutable as the color of our hair or skin, make a fundamental mistake, and it redounds negatively to society at large. Whether you\u2019re attracted to men, women, horses, or anything else is beside the fundamental point, which is that the nuclear family is the source of life\u2019s primary joys, and to enjoy the kind of happiness that only comes from a deep connection to your ancestors and your descendants, you have to exercise sexual discipline.<\/p>\n
A society that refuses to recognize that is one that is in the kind of very deep trouble in which we currently find ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thisshould be fun. It\u2019s remarkable to me how, in my own lifetime, sexual mores have changed so drastically. Go back about fifteen years or so before I was born, and you\u2019ll find a society that was so prudish that I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show asked us to believe that married couples ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}