Our culture has become preoccupied with sex
Joe Cannon
The only thing more repugnant than publishing this story is the fact that such tragic and depraved activities occur in our community.
The sickness of child sexual abuse has been with us for centuries. In recent years it would seem the problem of sex crimes has grown. Is it possible that perpetrators are encouraged in their ugly crimes by feeling a sense of permission from our sex-saturated culture?
We have had a number of reminders this week of the increasing degeneracy of our culture. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer ended his political career after allegedly scheming to unlawfully hide many years of infidelity. A report this week tells us that as many as one in four teenage girls in the U.S. are infected with some type of sexually transmitted disease.
In our own community, teenagers are being prosecuted for sending each other pornographic images of themselves. And, of course, there is the ever increasing deluge of pornography that is being consumed by many.
We have become inured to too many aspects of our sex-drenched culture. Implicit in virtually every movie, TV drama or sitcom is the notion that sexual relations, without regard to marriage, are just fine — maybe even necessary to a normal relationship — as long as they are mutually agreeable. The language and images are becoming increasingly explicit on network television. Of course, there are seemingly no bounds on cable and in most movies.
It is not just movies, bad music, pornographic books and magazines; look at the many TV and magazine ads that rely on sex to sell virtually any product. And that doesn't count the hundreds of millions of dollars drug companies spend to sell sexual enhancement pills to old men who can't get over their dreams of youthful energy.
The old immorality has become the new orthodoxy.
We even have high priests of this new orthodoxy. In response to the Spitzer fall, evolutionary biologist David Barash tells us in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, "I told you so." Barash knows this because "one of the most important insights of modern evolutionary biology has been our enhanced understanding of male-female differences. Startling discoveries of the last 15 years" alert us that in their natural state "pretty much the default among mammals," including that male mammal man, is that male animals are "inclined to engage in sex with multiple partners when they can."
Recent comments
Why does the DNEWS allow Joe Cannon to write? He is terrible at it...
Willie | March 17, 2008 at 1:31 p.m.
Because people are commenting on the article itself....
Denise | March 16, 2008 at 10:07 p.m.
If we're so sex-obsessed how come this article has only drawn...
Lewt | March 16, 2008 at 9:00 p.m.
