MARY writes in response to the discussion in this entry about the pervasive ignorance of the cancer risks and health dangers associated with abortion and contraception:

Planned Parenthood is proud that it doesn’t just do abortions; it also offers pap smears and mammograms – the need for which is accelerated by the sexual freedom they promote. This is tantamount to McDonald’s offering cholesterol tests or Phillip Morris doing free lung exams. It’s ludicrous. In a country that has successfully banned smoking in public in the name of second-hand smoke and whose First Lady has managed to drastically change school lunches for children nationwide due to childhood obesity, why is no one screaming from the rooftops for people to stop sleeping around? We are in the midst of a sexual-activity related crisis and no one will say it. Where is the First Lady when you need her?

I remember being in school and seeing pictures of black lungs – really nasty pictures. It was pounded into our heads not to smoke and that was a good thing. Every young woman deserves the same – to be looked in the eye and told firmly: STD’s can cause cause cervical cancer and infertility. Abortion may cause breast cancer and depression. The best way to avoid these things is to be in a long-term, stable, faithful relationship. It will be up to parents mostly but also doctors and teachers in charge of sex ed classes to disseminate this information, to say in no uncertain terms: You can control yourself. Don’t sleep around.

Many will say we can’t turn back the clock (even while views on cigarette smoking have already been drastically changed as well as views on eating habits and exercise). But we can change the way sexuality is seen in this country and it will be not by turning back the clock, but by moving forward into a new time when everyone finally sees the sexual revolution for what it was and understands that it has been nothing if not a disaster, for women’s health in particular. We have seen what the joys of unfettered sexual activity ultimately lead to: throw-away relationships, epidemic sickness and hardened hearts.

—– Comments ——

Jane S. writes:

Good post from Mary, but it misfires. She writes:

It will be up to parents mostly but also doctors and teachers in charge of sex ed classes to disseminate this information, to say in no uncertain terms: You can control yourself. Don’t sleep around.

Prior to the sexual revolution, people avoided sleeping around because they believed the Biblical injunction against fornication. The only reason parents and other authority figures had any influence at all was because Christian morality was the norm. Without fear of God, no one will pay any attention to exhortations to control yourself. In a truly Christian society, there would be no sex ed classes because everyone would understand that sex education belongs in the home.

She writes:

But we can change the way sexuality is seen in this country and it will be not by turning back the clock, but by moving forward into a new time when everyone finally sees the sexual revolution for what it was and understands that it has been nothing if not a disaster, for women’s health in particular. We have seen what the joys of unfettered sexual activity ultimately lead to: throw-away relationships, epidemic sickness and hardened hearts.

Why is it that so many people believe, if we just travel far enough down the sewer hole of liberalism, sooner or later we will wind up in a bright new enlightened place where everyone sees we are headed in the wrong direction.? I hear this all the time. I find it really disturbing.

Nihilism is the organizing principle of liberalism and not an accidental byproduct. A liberal society is not only set up to implode, but to make people want it that way.

Today there are people who reach adulthood marinating in a pop culture that celebrates throw-away relationships, epidemic sickness and hardened hearts, and almost nothing else. How receptive do you think people would be to the message that everything they’re used to is all a big mistake? They don’t have anything to compare it to. On the rare occasions when you see a Hollywood movie that is joyous and life-affirming, it is almost always set in the historic past.

Until people find their way back to God, they won’t wake up and see anything. They will keep stumbling along blindly in the dark.

Mary writes:

I knew someone would call me on it – that I was perhaps putting practicality over morality; that my last paragraph was a bit pie-in-the-sky-sounding. So just to clarify, I’m a devout Catholic and am staunchly opposed to sex ed, but that is another post. My own children are home schooled. But I was a teen in the 70’s and was subjected to early sex ed classes myself. I’m just old enough to have witnessed the decline from pretty much the beginning.

Jane wrote: “Prior to the sexual revolution, people avoided sleeping around because they believed the Biblical injunction against fornication. The only reason parents and other authority figures had any influence at all was because Christian morality was the norm.”

I would love to say this is true but it isn’t that simple. Yes, Christian morality was prevalent but mostly people didn’t sleep around because they knew sex had a good chance of leading to pregnancy. With the advent of oral contraception, the detachment of sex from procreation began. It is no coincidence that with the first marketing of the Pill in 1960, the skid downward started; when its partner in crime, abortion, was unleashed on society in 1973 it became a runaway train. The sexual revolution was created by the Pill and abortion – people didn’t just one day stop loving God. And the supporting pop culture that has formed around the immorality is like a parasite on a host animal.

I went on two websites and looked up HPV and Clamydia (both STD’s). The first was the boring-looking CDC website and it had this, in part, to say about how to avoid getting an STD: “People can also lower their chances of getting HPV by being in a faithful relationship with one partner; limiting their number of sex partners; and choosing a partner who has had no or few prior sex partners”. The second website, Planned Parenthood, was cheery and inviting and had this to say about how being careful in choosing a partner will help avoid STD’s: ” “. That’s right, nothing. They did mention that the use of Saran wrap would help. I’m not kidding.

Did Planned Parenthood make an innocent mistake in leaving out that important information? I should say not. They know very well that what they say is as important as what they don’t say. They withhold, to a criminal degree, information that opposes their philosophy because they know people will listen to it and act on it. Hard facts about the ramifications of sleeping around will indeed be taken to heart by many women. PP has tremendous influence on sex ed curricula – through careful crafting of their image they are thought of not as the radicals they are but as experts, and this puts millions of teenagers in their hands, like balls of clay yet to be shaped and fired. Are we going to sit back and say, well these kids aren’t God-fearing so nothing is going to help them?

Of course people need to find their way back to God, as Jane S. stated. There are many souls out there waiting to be converted. So shouldn’t we try to help them? More important than a fear of God is a knowledge of God’s perfect love for us and His perfect mercy and His design for us. People who have no religious faith, but are are encouraged to act more in line with God’s plan for us become ripe for conversion. When they live a more wholesome life they are more likely to end up creating a loving family and feeling God’s plan within that family; this will also bring them closer to Him. He has beautiful ways of reaching us by touching our hearts through healthy family life, strong marriages and lovely babies thriving in these healthy families. Natural family life is one of God’s great gifts. PP fears it for a reason.

It is unjust and un-Christian to leave today’s young people in the hands of the wolves. It has nothing to do with liberalism but with simply making sure these kids don’t lose their souls before they even graduate college. Teenagers are not stupid and they’re not impossible to get through to. It may be too late for some adults, but it’s not too late for our young people. We should compel parents, doctors and teachers to look young people in the eye and tell them until they are blue in the face the cold, hard truths about sleeping around.

Laura writes:

While I agree with much of what Mary says, I disagree that the sexual revolution was caused by the Pill and abortion. These facilitated the sexual revolution, and indeed it would not have been possible in the same way without them. But moral and spiritual revolutions never have physical causes. Remember, contraception was illegal in this country not all that long ago. Acceptance of the Pill came after attitudes toward contraception had changed.

Jessica writes:

I’d like to make a smewhat digressive comment.

Mary wrote: “In a country that has successfully banned smoking in public…”

We haven’t successfully banned smoking in public, but we’ve successfully put up a lot of perfunctory NO SMOKING signs. The middle and upper classes ignore these signs because, aside from a handful of college kids with artistic or solidarity-with-the-proletariat affectations, they don’t smoke. The lower classes ignore them and smoke, for the most part without consequence. (I read this post while smoking and waiting for a train. The platform is long and constructed in such a way that, when you are at one end, you cannot see the other for all the chairs and maps and miscellany between, but of the ten or so people fully in my line of vision, five were smoking. There were NO SMOKING signs, but we ignored them; there was a police officer, who could in theory have written us tickets, but she ignored us. We knew she would. Unless you look underage or you have warrants, the cops do not enforce this particular law.)

Mary writes:

Yes, I overstated when I said that the Pill and abortion created the sexual revolution. I should have said greatly accelerated the sexual revolution. As Laura said, the mentality was already in place. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the timing wasn’t deliberate.

As far as my comment on smoking is concerned, it was a throwaway comment to make a point, but I will say that I haven’t encountered a smoker in a restaurant or bar in years and that’s what I had in mind. I guess train platforms even when underground are sort of considered outdoor spaces.

Terry Morris writes:

May I ask Mary how it is that she proposes to “compel parents, teachers and doctors” to do what she says they need to do, while justifying it by saying that it does not emanate from liberalism?

I’m not saying her idea does emanate from liberalism. I am saying that if she means to do this through legislation, liberalism will direct it, annihilating her purpose at the outset.

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