Words matter. Words shape how we view and feel about things. How we describe sexually deviant behaviors can have a big impact on how society views that behavior. Incest seems to be the latest sexual perversion that is vying for public acceptance. Social scientists are not calling it incest, but rather “genetic sexual attraction.” The similarity this has to “same-sex attraction” is obvious, and I would argue that this similarity is intentional, and political. It’s clearly not an accurate description. “Same-sex attraction” is an accurate, scientific description because these people are attracted to members of the same sex as themselves. The same cannot be said of “genetic sexual attraction.” One is not literally sexually attracted to someone’s genetic material. They are sexually attracted to a close family member (parent, sibling).
The American public has largely come to view “same-sex attraction” as morally benign. By describing incestual attraction with similar wording, the hope is that the public will come to accept incest as morally benign as well. Many Americans falsely believe that “same-sex attraction” is biologically determined (which is why, in large part, they have come to accept homosex), and are likely to reason that similarly worded “genetic sexual attraction” must mean that incestual attraction is biologically determined as well (and thus should be accepted by the public). If gay people can’t help their desires, then neither can the incestuous. It’s all in their biology.
The train of the sexual revolution is not stopping any time soon. It began with the push to normalize pre-marital sex between men and women (including cohabitation), and then engaged in a long battle to normalize homosexuality. Once that was accomplished, the train quickly moved on to transgenderism with amazing success, and started gaining momentum toward the acceptance of polygamy. Now, it’s trying to normalize incest. The train of the sexual revolution will not stop until there are no moral restraints in the area of sex whatsoever. Sexual libertarianism will not accept any restraints on sexual autonomy. Sex with whoever we want, whenever we want, and without social judgment is the goal. Whether the train arrives at its station depends on people with moral sensibilities to stand up and proclaim the truth about human sexuality.
April 14, 2016 at 7:41 pm
Jason:
Your reasoning is the same old, same old that all religious believers have been advocating for thousands of centuries: the control of control human sexuality.
You just cannot do it regardless of how much you hate it or criticize it; you cannot control sexuality anymore than you can control gravity. Sexuality is controlled only by the Life Forces that propel it, from men to mice to mosquitoes. No matter how many burkas you clothe the women in, no matter how loud you shout you will never impose religious morality on sexuality of every living creature.
But religion is more than just a belief, religion wants to impose a universal morality which is why it has always attracted the kind of person who thinks other people’s private lives are their business. And giving respect to this mentality is exactly what’s got us into the mess of war, hatred, intolerance and discrimination that the world is wallowing in and you should thank knowledge and understanding that secularism has brought some semblance of normalized civilization to the world in the last hundred years that it has not had in the last ten thousand centuries.
We’ve given religion ideas that are above its station and we persuaded it that it’s something it’s not. Yet religion always takes every advantage they can; in the West by Free speech, in the East by ravage of war and death which is called peace on that side of the fence.
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April 14, 2016 at 9:24 pm
Let’s take your “control thesis” at face value, despite the fact that you just blithely assert it without evidence. Have you ever stopped to ask why “religions” seek to “control human sexuality”? Don’t you think that perhaps it has something to do with the outcomes of “sexual freedom”? On a practical level, what bad comes out of reserving sex to the confines of a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman? I don’t know of any. No diseases, higher income, emotionally healthy children.
But what about other forms of sexual expression? What happens when we say you can have sex with multiple people that you aren’t in covenant with? Disease, fatherless children (which leads to more poverty and more anti-social behavior in those children). Sounds great doesn’t it?!?! We should definitely promote that.
What about homosexuality? What good comes from that? More diseases and premature death. Awesome! The more the merrier.
How about no-fault divorce (so you can more than one sexual partner)? Broken homes, emotional problems for children, poverty. Bring it on! The more divorce the better.
Only an ignoramus would think that it’s bad for society (religious or not) to regulate sex when sex is so powerful and can be so destructive when not exercised in the proper context. Only the morally deviant would want to promote a world in which sexual behaviors that we know have so many negative effects would be promoted rather than prohibited (or at least discouraged). Do you count yourself as one of those people, or do you just like slinging mud whenever and wherever you can? I fail to see how a moral, thoughtful person could slam people for wanting to promote healthy sexuality.
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April 14, 2016 at 9:25 pm
And you act as though humans can’t control themselves. Of course they can. We are moral agents, not animals.
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April 15, 2016 at 7:33 am
Jason:
“On a practical level, what bad comes out of reserving sex to the confines of a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman?” Sounds good in a perfect world. but you scenario is exactly what you do have: Broken homes, emotional problems for children, poverty, disease run amuck without a healthcare system if you cannot pay for it; drunkedness, widespread prostitution…that’s the practical level.
Just look at the poverty level in the Philippines to see what bad can come of your characterization of “in a perfect world” scenario. And that poverty, is the outcome of Catholic Church Control, not allowing for divorce or contraceptives. Thousands of children scrounging in the dump heaps to “…..give us this day our daily bread……”; women used like chicken breeders; a country whose GNP is based on the servants(mostly women) forced to go abroad and leave that well functioning, perfect world scenario family, strangers in another land that tears apart the very fabric of the family foundation you cannot see any problems with so they can make enough money to remit back home to feed their husbands and children for whom they must now spend their years apart from, to make ends meet.
“I fail to see how a moral, thoughtful person could slam people for wanting to promote healthy sexuality.”
What you fail to see is that what you promote is the denial of natural sexual design in the guise of healthy relationships that spawn everything but healthy relationships. Young men in the Middle East go to war, willing to die from pent up frustration without knowing the love for or from a woman; that’s what denial spawns.
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April 17, 2016 at 10:16 pm
What does a perfect world have to do with anything? You are speaking evil of those who believe sex should be reserved for marriage only, when that is clearly the best environment for sex. Sex outside of marriage almost always leads to heartache. People can restrain themselves if society demands it. A permissive sexual ethic is what leads to the America we are seeing today: abortions, children out of wedlock, children without fathers, increased depression and crime, etc. Anyone with any sense would want to promote the Christian sexual ethic because it is best for people. It’s only people of darkness who want to promote things that have proven to be so bad for people on a practical level.
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