Gay Rights, Sexual Liberation or Moral Depravity?

[awediot]

Our fight for equal rights, to marry, adopt and simply live as normal as normal people live, has the added difficulty of occurring simultaneously as larger, less productive changes sweep the country. As we see younger girls emulate the risqué styles of pop stars who oops, capitalize on well marketed, stolen videos, and young boys , convinced oral sex doesn't count, master the art of seducing them, we run the risk of being lumped in as merely another sign of the morally decaying times. It is a little shocking to see kids coming out so young and one can't help but wonder if it is all good, indicative of the broader acceptance fought for, or maybe also the result of something not quite so healthy.

The certainty with which I used to proclaim, "no one would choose to be gay," is unbelievably fading. The increased, not always positive visibility of gays, the over reaching backlash against labels (including straight, gay and bi), the desensitizing pervasiveness of sexual innuendo and multi-billion dollar, instant access porno industry, are combining to do some of the dirty work for us, so to speak. It seems 'choosing to be gay' is being subverted by the openness to choose to just be horney and free from moral restraint. The collective effort to tweak societal structure may succeed better than we ever imagined, and unfortunately, we may win the gay rights we seek by default, only to be blamed for the wider moral decay.

Another happy thread, courtesy of Awediot

What's another word for thesaurus?

[Zerbie]

Well, the sexualizing of young people is an enormous problem. There are 13 year old girls out there, who by the shape of their bodies and the way they are dressed, made-up, look 20 - should they? Probably not. At one and the same time, marketing reaches even very young people with the message that they should be "sexy" even while the broader culture is retreating into what amounts to a backlash (abstinence-only education, for ex) - and the balance lies somewhere in the middle. Why teach young people that they can't get married til they're 21 and can't have sex til then AND that they have to look like Aphrodite and Bacchus from the moment they turn twelve! You can't sexualize and asexualize people at the same time - life requires balance. This one is a marketing issue methinks - if consumers stopped demanding sexy sexy sexy all the time, maybe we wouldn't have 12 year old sex goddesses wandering around.

Sure, people can blame gays as a whole for whatever they want - it doesn't make them right. Individuals make their choices, and we hope they make responsible ones. But it does not logically follow that eschewing a label makes one free from moral restraint. I don't have a good label for moi, but if not having a label means I'm free from moral restraint as a monogamous, happily married, ordinary-looking chick, then I shudder to think what one would have to be, to be considered "moral." Ya see? There IS a distinction between being and behaving, the right wing is right about that. Don't confuse the two - or we end up with two polarized sides each throwing out a tubfull of bathwater babies.

[themattperry]

Society gets off -- doesnt it -- on denying itself the very thing it most wants ... forbidden fruit. This is the fruit of one of our great american traditions: repression.

Young adolescents should not be sexualized. Nor should we deny their sexual nature (they are sexually capable beings) ... our popular culture etc does both, simultaneously worshiping addolescent sexuality and doing everything possible to keep us as stauatory and psycological children well into our adulthood.

I think we need to empower our young people to take responsibility for and celebrate their own sexuality and not allow society to appropriate for its own ends -- economic or otherwise.

The bottom line as far as I'm concerned: no one owns or legislates a person's sexuality except for that person ....

[revtj]

I think we need to empower our young people to take responsibility for and celebrate their own sexuality and not allow society to appropriate for its own ends -- economic or otherwise.

Matt, I couldn't agree more. I think religious communities should teach sexuality in Sunday School, inside a broader topic of the sacred dignity and worth of all people and relationships.

Parents and public schools haven't done a good job on this at all.

I think public schools should still teach seuality as a matter of health but I think faith communities can do a better job of tying it to ethical and values-oriented living.

Funny, both conservatives and progressives seem to want this but denial is sooo much easier (and less embarrassing.)

Meanwhile, the price of denial is all around us in the ways awe pointed out.

[dewdrop_world]

Originally Posted by revtj

Matt, I couldn't agree more. I think religious communities should teach sexuality in Sunday School, inside a broader topic of the sacred dignity and worth of all people and relationships.

That sounds a lot like the Unitarians, who have the best Sunday school sex-ed curriculum I know of. My best friend in grad school taught it, and said the junior-high and high-school grapevine was that if you needed to know something about sex, ask a Unitarian kid because they know everything.

He also said that at Unitarian summer camps like SUUSI, the teens have every opportunity to have sex in the dorms but many choose not to of their own free will.

But I don't hold much hope to see that approach on a large scale in the US. The mentality is too deeply entrenched that religion is to protect people from themselves.

James