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well, some people have to understand that Bush is a conservative and that he will encourage things of morality, such as abstinence. i know that it's hard for some of these narrow-minded liberals to swallow or stomach, but i have to say that i support his p.o.v. in that area. if a lot of people would just wait 'til marriage to have sex... or teach their kids to do the same thing, then this country would be in better shape if people would just wait til marriage to have sex and children. then they wonder why they've ended up with the wrong person who refuses to pay child support.

Jeff:

If sex is just natural and part of human development and has no intrinsic consequences that cannot be handled through technology, then what is the difference between Jolly's Pimp Daddy post above and having your daughter work in the family restaurant?

Are you ascribing some sort of special value to sexuality that is different from any other human endeavor, and if so what?

What would be the argument against keeping such "explorations" within the family?

Are there any real arguments for not giving your kids pornography to help them "explore"?

These are not red herring questions -- I really am interested in how you parse this!

Guoting Piano Justice

LOL. Tell me about it! Bush is a conservative!

So you might think. Bush is first, foremost, and last, a politician. Don't forget that when he pulls the wool over your eyes.

Don't get me started on his brand of morality. :rolleyes:

Hey, this is (or should I say was) a free country. If you want to abstain, please feel free to do so, or not.

I recommend reading Washing of the Spears an excellent history of the rise and fall of the Zulu empire. Shaka, the great Zulu King, forbade sexual intercourse among his unmarried subjects. From time to time Shaka did however permit uku-hoblonga-external intercourse; not full-among unmarried couples. Shaka himself it is believed was concieved as a result of a rather steamy uku-hoblonga session that apparently went all the way.

I think we now have a new euphemism....

uku-hoblonga Matt!

(yeah Matt!)

Is that what the medievals called inter femores?

Just like Moses -- couldn't enter the promised land... how frustrating.

It ain't new Matt:
"Washing the Spears, a scorching Afro-jazz call to the wilderness featuring former Duke Ellington trumpeter Barrie Lee Hall and New York journeyman trombonist Frank Lacy, Jr.; "

If you google it you get hits on preparing asparagus... for the Freudian chefs amongst you.

ivory: "what is the difference between Jolly's Pimp Daddy post above and having your daughter work in the family restaurant?"

Voluntary consent. I said this before. Did you not read????

In principle, I find nothing wrong with charging for sexual acts, sort of like a highly paid therapist. In our current society, however, the association of prostitution with criminal activity makes the career very unappealing. It is the criminality and unsafety I oppose, not the sex for money aspect. In theory sex providers would be like therapists, and the career voluntarily chosen by some.

"Are there any real arguments for not giving your kids pornography to help them "explore"?"

I assume my male child will look at pornography as a teenager. Pretty normal, and from what I have read male sexuality is more visual than female (though there certainly may be many exceptions). I also intend to have my son read more serious information on sexuality when he is older - the Kinsey report, Vern Bullough's Sexual Variance in Society and History, things like that.

Above somewhere you recommended the pope's writings on this topic. Not relevant. He has no personal experience with the matter. Sort of like asking a couch potato how best to exercise and get fit.

OK Jeff, we'll take these one at a time:

Yes I read, and you are begging the question.

Why do you privilege the sex act with voluntary consent?

If the famly has to earn a living and runs a restaurant and everyone in the family has to pitch in to make it work, what is the difference between that and if the family runs a brothel?

It sounds like special pleading to me, unless you agree that there is a specialness to sex that is not found in other human activities.

Jeffrey: for all your claims to be educated in philosophy, I find you to me one of the less philosophical people here.

Wojtyla, like all of us, is a human being who grew up in a family, has had relationships of many sorts, and has had to deal with his own sexuality. His reflections are indeed very interesting -- combining phenomenology, personalism, Lubelin Thomism, modern psychological theories, and contemporary sexual ethics. Your dismissal of him is not offensive to me, it just indicates your narrow mindedness when it comes to perspectives that challenge your own views.

If you were a real philosopher you would be interested in his well constructed arguments and his reflections on the human condition-- even if in the end he did not convince you.

As it is you show yourself to be a "philosophe" -- a Cartesian mechanic looking to perfect a world through technology and "progess", yet without that intrinsic sense of wonder that Aristotle notes as the beginning of the true philosophical experience.

Why do I somehow think that this thread has gone off into the wild blue yonder beyond the every day life experiences most ordinary people experience?

Come back to the planet that we all live in.

That's the great thing about forum threads -- you launch it and never know where it leads. You wanted to stir things up -- now just lie back and enjoy!

Dystopia: a utopia gone wrong. OK. From this one gets dystopic as an adjective. OK. That’s what we’ve got all right. That’s what we’re moving toward. Except that there is no human made utopia possible, utopia itself is an illusion born of reliance on idealism (the gravest of all evils which leads to irrationality and madness). There can’t be anything wrong with a concept that is fundamentally wrong to begin with, therefore the words dystopia and dystopic, as it’s used by writers and intellectuals, are without meaning, without value.

Dystopic, dystopic… yes, maybe some of our medical people could comment more succinctly, relates specifically to parts of an anatomy, specifically internal organs, being out of place due to a pathology of some kind, very often a cancer. Yes, we’re moving toward that too as a metaphor for what has happened to our society and culture here and in other parts of the world.

Jeffrey seems fond of using this word and being apparently far too young to give up either the pornotopia of endless teenage sex or to question what the “oh so’s” of various classes of intellectuals tell him, is using it as they do. Reminds me of certain computer software technicians desiring to fancy up what they do by saying, “I’m installing a DELTA (a term from higher math),” rather than the more commonplace and possibly frightening, “I’m making a change.” In any case just another on the endless list of things that irritate me.

If any form of relativity means that anything can mean anything (and it doesn’t) then nothing means anything, therefore there are no references for what is good or bad, no consequences for action or inaction; a life and universe that’s boiled down to attraction to pleasure and avoidance of pain; hedonism. This too is the goal of the narcissistic left. Then, when people are too old to enjoy themselves or others to enjoy them, they are disposed of; we’ve heard of disposable pianos? How about disposable people at both ends; the unborn and the very old? This is what happened in Huxley’s Brave New World and Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

As I’ve said many times and in may ways, I have nothing to prove to anyone. I’m now a 50 something VERY white male ADULT with strong Eurocentric cultural preferences, who nevertheless thinks that basic traditional American values are the best that mankind has EVER come up with in all of recorded history and one who is quite annoyed by those who so blithely wish to cast aside the universal for the temporal, believing in “progress,” which in this case is not unlike what the Muslim terrorists are promised; a land of endless sex.

I was greatly heartened to read this from someone on the left. It indicated that the dispute was more over a policy direction than a social or cultural direction.

"There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it."

Again, Aldous Huxley seems to sound a lot like me and he had as much advance warning of the conspiracy to bring this kind of society about as anyone, being close to the center of its concoction and development. I’m sure that’s one reason he left England and came to America and ultimately lived, worked and died in Southern California. He might even be one of the 100 writers who were most influential in forming my outlook. Is this not what is happening today in the advanced countries? Huxley was in many ways truly prophetic, but so too were many of the New Testament writers. They predicted a time like ours when people would abuse sexuality and as a direct result THEIR LOVE WOULD GROW COLD, and it is happening. It is happening.

Apple* clearly gets it. Her answer to Jeff’s “cost benefit analysis” are right on the mark. Some on here don’t get it at all. I’m going to try my best, but frankly it is more like “those who have ears to hear, let them hear,” and if you don’t get it, you don’t.

When people speak of love these days, most have no idea what it is, or rather they have their own selfish idea of what it FEELS like. They certainly confuse it with sex. Being “in love” has completely taken over what real love is for most people and it has NOTHING to do with real love, which involves sacrifice, selflessness, the willingness to give anything and everything for another’s welfare. Someone could lay their life down for their spouse, relative, child or friend, but if they had no love for those they sacrificed for, even this ultimate self sacrifice is meaningless and without value. Love is the basis for it all and without it one has nothing but a totalitarian mechanical and meaningless existence. Love, by the way, has little to do with “having fun” either, although it may promote it. Love establishes a basic set of values which are called “values” because they have something lasting about them by which other objects (to use AN Whitehead’s notion) are related.

Value; another thing the lefties know nothing about because the assume WRONGLY that a scale of values is infinitely flexible when it isn’t. A set of values is universal and never changes, otherwise it is ultimately valueless. Someone asked someone else on here if they wanted the schools to teach their kids values. YES, I want the schools to teach our kids values, that’s what’s wrong with the schools, that’s why most of the teens in this generation are sick of school, because they aren’t as gullible and stupid as prior generations who just drank up the liberal pap without questioning it. This generation deeply questions it and they see the world on the brink of destruction because real values have been ignored for far too long. They see most of their teachers as moral idiots with no stature worthy of their profession to be able to teach anyone anything. I know, I listen to my kids and their friends. The problem is that few know what real values are and therefore are not qualified to teach them.

There are all kinds of not so clever dodges to the basic issues involved with abusing one’s sexuality whether they be a teen or an adult. It has nothing to do with one’s “issues about sex.” It has to do with THE VALUE OF SEX and its devaluation (adulteration). Sexual bonding is about the most personal thing each of us can ever do. Once it has happened, there is always something that binds, an experience that whether it was good or bad, can never be undone. Those who do not feel this binding or can shrug it off because in their minds they think that everything is just material anyway, are without love BY DEFINITION.

In the south sea islands when people get depressed they find someone, anyone and have sex. It makes them feel better. But love has nothing to do with it. This was the basis for pornotopia; a utopia based on unlimited sex. They also throw their babies into the ocean and if they don’t swim back, “bye bye baby.” Happiness is possible without love, but let’s not confuse the two. This is where we are headed, and the people we are becoming; we care for nothing but our pleasure and are incapable of helping or caring for anyone who becomes un-sexy.

For those of us who get it: We don’t want to “condemn sexual activity.” We aren’t prudes. We want the value of sexuality to be recognized and addressed. You do that, you bind with someone. You break it off, or they break it off, if you feel nothing, then there was no love to begin with. Love can’t be either found or lost, it either is or it isn’t. Everyone suffers a broken heart if they have ever loved truly and the bond breaks for whatever reason. Sex is the physical glue for the emotional, psychical, mental and spiritual union of people, families, communities, nations, the entire human race.

Certainly we can tell our kids the risks, we can even get them contraceptives if they are adamant about having an experience, but abstinence is the ultimate safety. And by the way Jeff your analogy with crossing a street is proof of your youth; it’s sophomoric. None of us are taking it seriously, OK?

Abstinence always works.
Don’t want to end up a drunk? Never take a drink. Drinking alcohol can be fatal.
Don’t want to end up hooked on drugs of any kind? Never take drugs of any kind. Most drugs if abused can be fatal.
Don’t want to end up losing everything and perhaps being murdered? Never gamble; play games of chance. Even gambling can be fatal.
Don’t want the unpleasant unplanned or potentially fatal risks associated with sex? Don’t play around. Having sex (making love is another absurd phrase) can be fatal.

Thank God playing the piano never leads to anything more harmful than becoming a pianist.

We did, as we read Sid's stuff, and others.

At the root of this discussion is not Bush, nor Conservative policies, but one's attitude towards sex.

To frame it in a more religious argument, sex is a special gift from God, and should be treated as such. It is not plebian or vulgar, not in its proper place.

But as such, it means committment, nurturing, and yes, love. To do otherwise, treates another human being as nothing more than an object, a plaything, a toy.

And that is the background for much of my argument concerning abstinence. Many who turn their noses up at the idea, seem to hold sex as nothing more than a biological function - a swapping of bodily fluids, and little else. A function whose urges cannot be denied, even by the most intelligent life form on the planet. It seems to me as if they consider man nothing more than a sexual lemming, that only begs the question of when he will launch himself off of the cliff, not noting that in this case, the lemming has a mind of his own.

Sure, condoms and birth control work. But abstinence is much more effective. Therefore, the crux of the argument...why denigrate the most effective tool we have, to try to put sex into its proper place in life? It should be the primary position, with others taking a subordinate, and lesser importance.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce the recent opening of my sex therapy clinic. I still have a few openings, and am taking new clients, female only of course.

Your first visit is free.

And if the session goes well, so are the rest of your visits........

It comes with a free dinner. If you don't eat too much, maybe a movie too.

Outpatient sessions also available as time permits.....

bcarey, most of the country has matured passed the Bush Hating dysfunction. Don't you think it's time you let go of it too, and started actually thinking?

Larry, please try to get "passed" the personal insults. :rolleyes:

Round 3: since you did not address the first two rebuttals, I am not sure you are still interested in continuing this thread, but to give you the benefit of the doubt:

Again, you did not answer the question. I would assume like you that many, nay most, pubescent boys will look at their daddy's Playboys, see porn swapped around the school yard, prowl on the internet, etc.

It is undoubtedly "normal", but is it positively "healthy"? Does pornography not teach boys and men to treat women as mere objects for their own sexual gratification? Does it not divorce the sex from an interpersonal experience?

In short, if "exploration" of body and emotion are so important, then why not give your child pornography, and set him up with his own little internet account since he cannot get a credit card for himself?

Yes or no, do you value you son's sexual education and expression of passions so much that you will give him porn when he starts puberty?

wow, what an eye opener on a saturday morning! thanks for shaking things up around here, bcarey.

most of you are thinking a lot more clearly than i can before having had my full cup of tea, but i wanted to make a couple of points:

1. ax, one problem with your proposal (to have universal, temporary sterilization for teens) is that it does not protect them from stds. i like your magic water idea a lot better.

2. apple, why on earth would anyone want to surgically address pulchritude? please don't do it!

jeffrey, i recognize your attitudes as those from a good libertarian, but also i suspect they are culturally derived. i knew a few parents, growing up, who let their teens have sex with their "steadies" at home in their own beds with full parental blessings. one friend who was the beneficiary of such parental generosity always waxed nostalgic about what a huge benefit this was in his young life. oh, to be 15, horny, and have a girlfriend whose parents give you all the time in the world to explore your sexuality in a safe, accepted, protected environment! he was forever grateful, and accredited his own healthy sexual attitudes to the fact that he didn't have to sneak around or take risks at such a critical developmental stage in their young lives.

of course, birth control/std protection was provided.

parental consent also took some of the adventure out of it, but perhaps that was a good thing. it kind of reminds me of how my parents always let us have a sip of wine or a cocktail whenever we wanted when we were little. at age three, you spit it out and your curiosity is gone for the rest of your childhood! as a teenager, you drink wine with dinner at home, so that kind of takes the forbidden rebellion charge out of drinking. nobody in our family has any drinking problems. lots of people i know who do or did have drinking problems were forbidden to drink at all as teenagers. the attraction of the forbidden is irresistable to a lot of teens, and they lose the ability to have moderation. instead they gorge. could it be the same with sex?

now, my own parents were extremely strict when it came to sex. my mother fiercely believed that early sexual activity would damage us--not because of pregnancy or stds, but simply because we weren't mature enough yet, emotionally. at the same time, sex manuals, books about sex, and banned books like lady chatterly's lover and fanny hill were scattered about in the family room bookcase, all set out for us to explore at our liesure. we kids never dreamt that when we snuck those books off to our rooms in the middle of the night that it was just what our parents had intended.

mysteriously, my father began a playboy subscription when i turned 12 or 13. it was left out where any of us could find it. nobody ever said a word when it vanished, to be hidden under one of our mattresses. just as mysteriously, the subscription stopped when the youngest left for college.

that magazine, at least in the 60s, was a great source of responsible sex education. had some pretty decent articles, too.

so, as kids, we got both messages: sex was private and something you saved for when you were old enough to handle it and you were with the right person. but it was also a beautiful and wonderful thing that nobody needed to be ashamed of and that could be talked about openly.

there were no teenage pregnancies or stds in my family. i waited until i went to college and was in a steady relationship to become sexual, though it was hard to wait. but i did because i trusted my parents' insistence that it was best to wait. and i trusted them because they didn't deny reality. they didn't tell me not to do things that they knew were hard to resist, and they gave me enough information to be able to make my own well-informed decision, and they trusted me to make my own decision.

really, if by the time the kid is 14 you feel you can't trust their judgment, it's already too late, you didn't do a very good job.