We Need Sexual Taboos

Advocates of homosexuality had assured the public that accepting homosexuality would not provide a slippery slope into wholesale sexual deviance. On the other side of the debate, it was argued that this rationale could be used to justify almost anything, and it has – pedophilia, polyamory, and sex-change surgery.

Unsurprisingly, the rationale for the homosexual agenda, as a hard-wired, unchangeable sexual orientation, has quickly expanded into “choice.” Anyone has the right to “love” whomever they want. Consequently, one motherexplains:

• “Vertasha and I knew we were attracted to each other when she was sixteen,” Mary Carter said. “But we decided to wait to have sex until she was eighteen, legally of age. We are now going public with our relationship to help others who might be in gay mother/daughter relationship feel confident and okay about coming out. We want the world to know we love each other as mother and daughter and romantically… we’re not hurting anyone. We’re a new minority and just want acceptance.”

Carter pleads that they “just want acceptance,” and why not? Who wants to be regarded as “haters” or “familio-phobic?” And don’t they have a right to enjoy sexual “love” wherever it might take us by surprise?

There are costs, significant ones. Homosexuals bear tremendous physical, spiritual, and psychological costs. The intra-family costs are even more ghastly. Can a daughter or a son sit on a parents lap without wondering whether or not they are being groomed as a sexual object? Can they wrestle, play, and remain affectionate with their parents (or even siblings) once the taboo is removed, and their school informs them that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with sexual relations with their parents?

The trust arising from our unconditional, “taboo-ridden” parent child relationships is the foundation of family and the minimal condition that children require for a stable and secure childhood. What will happen when the wife can no longer trust the husband to keep his hands off the children? Will not sexual jealousies tear apart the family!

Our progressive society blindly jumps into sexual experimentation because it yields pleasurable but very temporary benefits. It then becomes politically correct and beyond the pale of any serious discussion.

Sex-change surgery is now financed by tax dollars despite the lack of evidential support. In a “review of more than 100 studies,” the University of Birmingham found that “no robust scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective.” (Salvo, Fall 2014, 33)

Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital reports on two studies which tracked children claiming to have transgender feelings.

• Among children who received no medical or surgical treatment, 70 to 80 percent spontaneously lost those feelings. (32)

Clearly, the scalpel should not be used to address mental disorders. However, the “right to choose” has become a conversation stopper. If parents want to sex their children, well isn’t it their right, even if they have to wait until their child becomes “legal?”

And why shouldn’t we take seriously the little girl who says she wants to marry “daddy?” We don’t, at least for now. But why shouldn’t we if that’s her orientation! Shouldn’t we honor it?

Vertasha is no less naïve and myopic:

• “My mom is still my mom. She does normal mom stuff: buys me clothes, pays for food, tells me to make our bed. We just happen to enjoy sex with each other too.”

Vertasha assumes that mom will always be mom. However, if other lesbian relationships are any indication of their future, the inevitable challenges presented by jealousy, bitterness, guilt, and the many other forms of disappointment will bred alienation, and mom will be history along with dad.

They want acceptance for their sexual experimentation, but should they receive anything other than censure? Should they be allowed to open a door to the inevitable demise of society? Acceptance would be the death-knell of an already imperiled but necessary institution of the family.

Pedophiles have now become “Minor-Attracted People”

 

Everyone has a sexual orientation. Why then should one sexual orientation be favored over others? Doesn’t this constitute a violation of our unalienable human rights as Hilary Clinton had argued? B4U-ACT.Org also argues that pedophiles, “minor-attracted people,” have been given a bad rap and that their orientation also has to be respected as are other orientations:

• Stigmatizing and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals…

But perhaps it might be best to leave the stigma in place in view of the horrific damage done to minors by pedophiles. However, this stigma is gradually dissolving through the acid of political correctness. The Diagnostic Manuel (V) of the American Psychological Association has gone a long way to soften the stigma.

• The American Psychological Association (APA) drew a very distinct line between pedophilia and pedophilic disorder. Pedophilia refers to a sexual orientation or profession of sexual preference devoid of consummation, whereas pedophilic disorder is defined as a compulsion and is used in reference to individuals who act on their sexuality.

In other words, pedophilia is no longer classified as a mental illness, just the criminal act. If it doesn’t lead to a crime, then it’s perfectly okay! A safe but superficial and misleading definition! To demonstrate just how problematic this definition is, take the homicidal maniac. Would the APA say that all of his murderous and sadistic ideation is okay as long as he doesn’t act it out? Certainly not! Behavior can no more be divorced from mental life than can sexual acting-out be divorced from its motivators – pornography, for example.

However, B4U-ACT insists that this is the very thing that pedophiles should do – fantasize without acting-out:

• [Paul] Christiano [its spokesman] answered that while B4U-ACT encouraged minor-attracted persons within the organization to openly acknowledge their feelings and desires, such sexual preferences must remain purely a mental exercise and therefore entirely unconsummated. In other words, pedophiles must be allowed to fantasize about minors, as long as such acts are never consummated.

Is Christiano serious or is this just a political ploy? In a grad school paper, he wrote in favor of the “sexual autonomy” of children, adding that children “should not be left in the dark about their own sexuality.”

Clearly, he is not in favor of parents depriving their children of their “sexual autonomy.”

• According to Christiano, people must be allowed to celebrate sex and sexuality, “one of the few freely-given pleasures in life.”

However, does pedophilia represent the healthy celebration of sex or a destructive perversion? Also, let’s make no mistake about “sexual autonomy!” A child is not autonomous! That’s why they have a family. However, these two little words are used as a crowbar to wrench the child away from the protection of his/her parents and cast into the permissive State cauldron.

Historically, State-raised children do not fare any better than factory-raised chickens. All of the State utopian schemes – Hitler Youth, communist-indoctrinated youth – have had an attenuated run, where the cost has been borne by both children and parents.

Our children have become the new laboratory monkeys. While the media has protested the cruelty to monkeys, our children’s sexual experimentation might prove to be an acceptable narrative.

Same-Sex Marriage, Equal Rights and the Redefinition of America

Same-sex marriage (SSM) is now before the United States Supreme Court. The State of California had, by popular vote, passed Proposition 8, limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. However, it was subsequently overturned by a California court as “unconstitutional.”

The plaintiff, Paul Katami, had been prevented from marrying his gay partner in California. His appeal is based upon the contention that laws that limit marriage to heterosexual couples represent discrimination – the denial of his rights:

• "Stigma is stigma. And discrimination is discrimination," Katami told CNN. "I think that any time there's discrimination in the country, it needs to be addressed and it needs to be taken care of. And that's why we feel that anytime in our history when there's been racial discrimination or sexual discrimination of orientation, or in particular marriage at this point, that we always bend toward the arch of equality."

Katami compares apples and oranges - marriage discrimination to “racial discrimination or sexual discrimination.” However, this equation fails to compute. While SSM is about behavior and a new institution, the other forms of discrimination pertain to the very nature of the person – their race and sex.

It is not enough to allege “discrimination.” All laws discriminate against one form of behavior or another – paying taxes, operating motor vehicles… Instead, this question must be adjudicated, not in terms of whether or not they discriminate – they do discriminate – but rather whether the laws discriminate in a just manner.

Katami claims that laws that restrict marriage to heterosexual couples are unjust:

• "This is about our equality," said Paul Katami, one of the plaintiffs in the California case. "This is about our freedom and our liberty. So we are not trying to topple marriage. We are not trying to redefine marriage. What we are trying to say is that equality is the backbone of our country."

Is SSM really a matter of equality? Homosexuals are free to marry anyone they want in their own churches. Instead, the issue is about legal and social acceptance and the promotion of a lifestyle that is highly self-destructive in terms of just about every indicator – lifespan, suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse, STDs, depression, and other mental health issues.

If Katami and other proponents of SSM are serious about “equality,” why aren’t they talking about “equality” for polygamists? Why should they be the subject of discrimination?

I raise this issue because in order to assess the coherence and viability of a principle – “discrimination,” “rights,” “fairness” – we need to examine how it plays out in related areas. Why should “equality” just pertain to SSM? And if this principle of “equality” is to govern our understanding of marriage, on what basis can “equality” be denied to minors? So far, I haven’t heard any proponents of SSM bring minors into the equation. If they did bring minors and pedophiles into the equation – and they should if we are to rationally weigh whether or not “equality” is a morally coherent concept – the public might awaken to its frightening implications.

Such “equality” would mean that there could no longer be a basis to deny anyone their “rights.” Fifteen people could thereby demand their “right” to marry one another. To deny such an appeal would then be no less discriminatory than denying SSM!

And how then could society deny the “right” of a father to marry his daughter or a mother her son? Wouldn’t this be a denial of their “equal rights?”

However, such “rights” would undermine traditional marriage and family. What then is to prevent a daughter from being groomed as a sexual or “marriage” object for her father? Why shouldn’t he groom her from an early age to satisfy his sexual appetite? Isn’t this his “right?”

And what is to protect the wife in this sexualized world? What is to prevent the husband from taking on additional younger wives? Isn’t this his “right!” And opposition to this would also constitute “discrimination!”

What is to prevent teachers from grooming their students as sexual objects? Can we “discriminate” against this behavior? Can we deny them their “equal rights?” And how could the parents protect their children against this when they are enticed by their attractive teachers? Wouldn’t the parents be violating the “rights” and “choice” of their children?

If our marriage laws and sexual codes are unjustly discriminatory, then we need to comprehensively examine the claims of the SSM proponents regarding such concepts as “discrimination,” “fairness,” and “equality.” However, this kind of dispassionate examination is precisely what is being obstructed. Instead, shouts of “homophobe” resound from our institutions of “higher learning.”

Meanwhile, Katami claims that, “We are not trying to redefine marriage.” However, the promotion of such “rights” and “equality” destroy marriage’s protective walls. They also prevent the parent from protecting their children against sexual predators, who now are claiming their own “rights.” When any limitation, taboo, or boundary becomes “discriminatory,” traditional marriage and family become indefensible.

As the tide of public sentiment begins to turn in their favor, the SSM proponents now claim that SSM is the will of the people. However, is it truly the will of the people or the result of systematic indoctrination and manipulations by the power-elites – the media, the court and the university?

Marsha Segelstein, a former senior producer for CBS News, paints a sinister portrait of the pro-gay program:

• They thus are able to insinuate that opposition to gay marriage equals discrimination or hate speech. Tactics that…label opponents as bigots and homophobes and…characterize homosexuals seeking “marriage” as victims have been largely successful. In many cases, those who have publicly voiced opposition to gay marriage have suffered serious consequences. (Salvo, Spring 2013, 20)

The consequences can be brutal. For instance,

• In October 2012, the Chief Diversity Officer for Gallaudet University, Angela McCaskill, was placed on administrative leave for signing a petition supporting the placement of a referendum on the ballot in Maryland. The referendum was to give voters the opportunity to approve or disapprove of Maryland’s “marriage equality” law, which had instituted gay marriage in the state. Through a sign-language interpreter, McCaskill told reporters that she had been asked by a faculty member whether or not she had signed the petition. “In this very moment, she [the faculty member] determined that this signature meant I was anti-gay.” (21) 

In this hostile and repressive atmosphere, it is no wonder that many who oppose SSM are running for cover, and their voice is not heard. Threats of violence and even death are not uncommon. A 14-year-old who testified before the Maryland State Senate was threatened”

• “If I ever see this girl, I will kill her. That’s a promise”… Another attacked her family… “her parents should be exterminated”… “And now everyone knows her name, so hopefully she will feel what it’s like to be harassed and bullied.” (21-22)

The bullying has also taken on tangible forms. Gay activists had been able to obtain a list of Proposition 8 supporters. As a result, they vandalized churches and even stalked supporters at their places of work. Terrified supporters were coerced into making tearful apologies. Others were forced to resign:

• Scott Eckern, director of the California Musical Theater…eventually resigned after news of his $1000 donation spread… The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Richard Raddon, was forced to resign when his donation of $1500 was revealed…A 67-year old restaurant employee who had donated $100 had to take a leave of absence from work after opponents launched protests against the restaurant. Businesses large and small – from hotels to insurance companies to private dental practices – were targeted with boycotts and protests. (22-23)

Even an elderly woman was targeted as she carried a large cross:

• Several men surrounded her and yelled in her face, and one of them knocked the cross out of her hands and stomped on it. (23)

Intimidation is a powerful change-agent. Along with massive doses of propaganda, it can influence the vote and even deprive many of their livelihood:

• A marriage commissioner in Saskatchewan…explained to a gay couple wanting to be married that he had religious objections to performing the ceremony. He offered to find someone else, and the couple was married. (23)

However, that wasn’t good enough. Now he and many others are facing suspension. Many college students are also facing suspension for the unpardonable sin of expressing their beliefs, and many college Christian groups are being disenfranchised from college campuses. Christian businesses are being threatened with closure because of their stance against SSM.

Not only does the gay agenda threaten to redefine marriage, it threatens to redefine the entire nature of our free society along with our freedoms of speech and religion. If we want to see what this redefinition looks like, Segelstein suggests that we look no further than Canada:

• Their experience shows that much is at risk: tolerance for religious beliefs, loss of parental rights over their children and moral upbringing, the very concept of heterosexuality as normative…and the basic freedom to practice religion without government interference. (24)

With the backing of mental health professionals, the pedophile community is also claiming discrimination and their entitlement to equal rights. Now, in many school districts, parents cannot exempt their children from pro-gay “sensitivity training.” If this trajectory continues, parents will soon have to subject their children to pro-pedophile “sensitivity training.” And why not! Pedophiles are likewise “born this way and have no alternative.” How then can a freedom-loving society discriminate against them, while not discriminating against gays! It cannot! If the door is opened to SSM, then it must be opened to everyone else who claims such a “right.” Soon, parents warning their children against the advances of pedophiles will also be guilty of “hate speech” and “pedophobia.”

Besides, if gay sex can be construed as something beautiful, so too will pedophile sex! (According to some, pedophile sex offers a valuable service to children!) They both depend upon the same logic - freedom of choice, an immutable sexual orientation, non-discrimination and equal rights.

Pedophilia as a Birthright

It is argued that because many homosexuals are born with same-sex attraction, the homosexual lifestyle is therefore acceptable. This argumentation is now being applied to other orientations, namely pedophilia.

An article written by Gawker West Coast editor Cord Jefferson argues that we need to regard pedophiles in a more compassionate way if they are born that way:

• But there is a growing number of researchers, many of them out of Canada, whose work suggests that pedophilia is an illness deserving of the public's sympathy the way any brain disorder is. Some of the scientists say pedophilia is a sexual orientation, meaning that it's unchangeable, regardless of how much jail time or beatings or therapy someone is dealt. Others have reason to believe that pedophiles are born that way, and that some of them will suffer through entire lives without hurting a single child. If this research proves to be correct, it should help shape both our public policy and our public attitude,

There is no plausible evidence that homosexuals or pedophiles are born as such. However, even if they are, “should [this] help shape both our public policy and our public attitude?” Should what is genetically innate determine what is morally acceptable? I’m sure that the wife-batterer or any assaulter can just as easily make the claim that he is born that way. Closer to home, the adulterer can also claim the same and that one woman can’t satisfy him. Should this make adultery right?

Well, if pedophilia should no longer be a crime, what should remain a crime? Besides, are we now to be considered “hate-mongers” if we don’t agree with wife-beating or child-abusing? Jefferson seems to want pedophilia decriminalized:

• Currently, there is no significant longitudinal evidence that pedophiles can be made to not be attracted to children, and thus it can be defined as their orientation. And if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that also means it's futile to send pedophiles to prison in an effort to alter their attractions.

Jefferson confuses orientation with behavior. Pedophiles aren’t sent to jail because of the orientation but because of their behavior. We all have criminal “orientations” – whether it’s an orientation towards lying, stealing, or seeking revenge.  However, our orientations shouldn’t excuse our crimes.

If Jefferson simply wants us to be more compassionate towards the pedophile, his goal is commendable. However, this compassion should extend to all law-breakers, not just pedophiles. Also, it should take the form of tough love and not an indulgent “love” that encourages the law-breaker to continue in criminality, causing his own self-destruction and the ruin of others.

Sadly, Jefferson doesn’t distinguish between love as indulgence and enablement and a love that seeks the ultimate good for the other. He therefore assumes that Jesus would simply indulge the pedophile:

• One imagines that if Jesus ever came to Earth, he'd embrace the poor, the blind, the lepers, and, yes, the pedophiles.

For one thing, Jefferson is committing category confusion. He wrongly associates “the poor, the blind, the lepers” with another category of people who are committing immoral acts – pedophiles! Secondly, he is distorting Jesus’ life and message.

Indeed, Jesus had compassion on all sorts of people, even an adulterous woman. However, He warned her, "Go and sin no more" (John 8:11), precisely the thing that Jefferson is unwilling to tell the pedophile.

Jesus received sinners, but He warned them all against their sinful, unrepentant behavior.

• Unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:3-5)

Jesus never gave anyone license to continue in sin. Such license wouldn’t be compassionate but a glossy invitation to death and destruction.

This is the invitation that Jefferson and others are circulating, saying, in essence, “Since your desires are innate, well, have at it!”

The Joys of Free-Sex

At least it should be joyous, according to many segments of our intelligentsia. However, it seems that another free-sex experiment has bitten the dust.

The Children of God – recently renamed The Family International (TFI) - had emerged in 1968 from the Jesus People Movement:

• Founder David Berg adopted evangelical views on many doctrines, but over time his teachings supplanted the Bible. Cult watchers criticized Berg’s teaching that female disciples should use sexual favors…to convert men to Jesus. More notoriously, the group once had an open attitude about sexual contact between adults and minors. Both practices ceased by 1987… (Christianity Today, April 2012, 14).

Happily, TFI has continued to move back into Biblical conformity. One scholar stated,

• “I don’t know of any comparable group that has changed so quickly or so fundamentally altered such a large number of its beliefs and practices.” (14)

This reversal raises an important question. Why have the many experiments in sexual libertarianism failed?  Why does a practice, which can be so pleasurable, so readily find itself in hospice care? Of the many U.S. communes that had been based on sexual permissiveness, none remain, as far as I know. What was it that these various groups encountered that had closed the door so decisively on this experiment?

Perhaps we humans weren’t endowed with a “blank slate” that can be programmed according to will, as sexual libertarianism assumes. Perhaps we have a human nature that is only amenable to a limited degree of reprogramming – a nature pre-programmed with jealousy, oxytocin, the need for commitment, dignity, honor, and sexual fidelity, and all of those other things that provide for a stable environment for children. And perhaps when this nature is violated, there are painful health, relational and psychological consequences, like when you violate the nature of a car by putting oil in the gas tank.

When we buy a car, we get an owner’s manual telling us how to care for the car. This assume that we cannot treat the car in any manner we’d like. It too has a nature - characteristics that require certain care.

We know enough about cars to know that we can’t experiment by depriving it of an oil change. We also know enough about alternative sexual lifestyles to know that experimentation comes only with a high price tag. Despite the claims of the Man-Boy-Love-Association, we know enough about the consequences of pedophilia to know that it is nothing more than child abuse. I have yet to hear a glowing testimony of someone sexualized as a five-year-old!

We also know of the ills of adultery. One psychologist sung the praises of his adulterous open-marriage to our therapy group. However, he later admitted that when he saw his wife enter their home with her sex-partner, he had to be hospitalized for two weeks. His nature could not handle his chosen lifestyle.

Why is Western society so myopic? Perhaps it wants to be. Perhaps it’s addicted to immediate gratification. Sounds juvenile? In any event, our God mercifully allows us to reap the consequences of the “pleasures” we demand:

• Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. (Proverbs 1:29-32) 

The consequences are there. We merely have to be willing to open our eyes to them.