5 Comments

Michael
October 31st, 2011 | 10:12 am

Regarding “The Young Christian’s Guide to Sex at Seminary”:

The average age of a man’s first marriage is 28.4 years in the US. I think it’s impractical to expect a man to stay a virgin until he’s 28 years old. What do you think?

Joe Carter
October 31st, 2011 | 10:18 am

What do you think?

I think St. Paul was right: “if they cannot exercise self-control, ethey should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

Jonathan
October 31st, 2011 | 2:32 pm

“I think it’s impractical to expect a man to stay a virgin until he’s 28 years old.”

What exactly is impractical about expecting a man, or a woman for that matter, to remain a virgin? Last I checked we, as individuals, don’t die if we don’t have sex. Furthermore, I think I would be hesitant to say that the value and general well being of a person’s life is not diminished by not having sex, at least for the first 28 years or so. I fear that the thought process that conceives of the impracticability of the expectation for a man, or woman, to remain a virgin for 28 + or – years will lead to sex as a good, a right, a necessity and a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Blake
October 31st, 2011 | 4:54 pm

What exactly is impractical about expecting a man, or a woman for that matter, to remain a virgin? Last I checked we, as individuals, don’t die if we don’t have sex.

It is a new unquestionable “Obviously True” today that people must have sexual pleasure – and not just any will do, but only the specific kind that is their “preference”.

It’s not a statement that can be challenged. It’s just truth – as one commercial put it, “Gotta Eat, Gotta Sleep, Gotta Ski” – except of course you don’t really have to ski, and the commercial ends up pointing out that sleep and eating can be viewed as optional too. But sex isn’t optional. Of course you can’t expect someone to go without sex.

What exactly happens to young men and women who are robbed of this basic and fundamental human activity is unspeakable – in the same way and for the same reason that Alfred Hitchcock knew that leaving things offscreen gave them more impact. There is no sentence, no paragraph, no essay that can sum up the horror of what would happen if young men and women were somehow stopped from their sexual pleasure.

Michael B.
November 2nd, 2011 | 11:30 pm

“It is a new unquestionable “Obviously True” today that people must have sexual pleasure ….What exactly happens to young men and women who are robbed of this basic and fundamental human activity is unspeakable ”

It’s of course an strawman to say that sex is a need, like food or water, and no one ever said that. Just because sex isn’t a fundamental need doesn’t mean that it’s natural for a person to live life without ever having sex. A human can also live without sunlight, meat, or walking, but how natural is that?

Furthermore, in patriarchal groups and societies where natural sex is suppressed, the results aren’t “unspeakable” in the literal sense, and more light is gradually being shed on them. How many boys have been abused by 40 year old virgins in the priesthood? And if you really want to see some abuse that will turn your stomach, look into some of these movements like Quiverfull, but that’s another topic.