Today at Public Discourse, Carson Holloway finds a glimmer of hope for the remnants of conscience, and the recognition of what is naturally right and good, in the use of the word “slut” by a California high-school “Fantasy Slut League” that has made the news recently.
I’ll admit that it’s hard to find much to be optimistic about in the colleges these boys will wind up attending, when one reads Rutgers sociologist Jackson Toby’s “Majoring in Fun.” Or when one reads this local story, of a 19-year-old sophomore at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) who has begun a business called CondAm (short for “condom ambulance”), promising the on-call delivery of condoms to his fellow students in the dormitories, when they find themselves about to have “unprotected sex” in the happy-go-lucky hook-up culture. This was a front-page story in the Times of Trenton, and was treated throughout as a clever business idea, not just impossible to imagine anyone objecting to, but clearly a force for good on campus. In a world in which it is perfectly normal, even positively good, for sexual relations to be treated as altogether casual and commitment-free, with no thought of any connection to marriage, family, and childbearing, then of course young Mr. CondAm is a hero of social justice. The only moral norms in the hook-up culture are consent, and “protection” against disease and pregnancy. Of course these norms are not, shall we say, perfectly observed, nor can we expect they ever will be in a culture that hears the word “chastity” and laughs. About disease alone, one might consult Dr. Miriam Grossman and learn a great deal of truth that is uninteresting to the elites in our culture.
It was not too long ago that no college, public or private, would tolerate the shenanigans of our young TCNJ “entrepreneur,” and no high school principal (like the one in California) would blithely say, of the young sexual predators in his charge, that “off-campus activities are not subject to school discipline.” The revival of conscience, and the recognition of the law written on our hearts, seems to grow increasingly difficult. But with my friend Carson Holloway, I cling to hope.
December 11th, 2012 | 1:54 pm
“Today at Public Discourse, Carson Holloway finds a glimmer of hope for the remnants of conscience, and the recognition of what is naturally right and good, in the use of the word “slut” by a California high-school “Fantasy Slut League” that has made the news recently.”
They also made their league “underground”, which suggests they knew that someone might find it objectionable. Once they get to college, they can probably establish it openly as a university-supported club.
December 11th, 2012 | 3:13 pm
“If you’re not ready to have children, you’re not ready to have sex.”
Just today, I was able to discuss the purposes of sex in a classroom with about 50 students, leading up to the above conclusion, in a secular state college. Most of them had never heard of “unitive” or “procreative” purposes, but they were listening.
Thanks be to God. Do whatever you can, whenever you can; never give up.
December 11th, 2012 | 3:41 pm
While my reaction to the story of the Fantasy Slut League when I first read it was just a bit short of apoplexy, and I can’t even begin to imagine how decent parents with a teenage son would discipline and “rehabilitate” him after finding out he participated in such a thing, I don’t see a huge gulf between young men as I knew them fifty years ago (when I was around that age) and what I read today. Teenage boys want to have sex. They often aren’t particularly empathetic about relationships, and they are capable of grossly mistreating females emotionally. One the other hand, some of the people I knew in high school married their “high school sweethearts” and are now devoted grandparents. I suspect the people I think of as callous young monsters preying on females in their Fantasy Slut League will mostly grow up the same way young men now my age did.
Unfortunately, since I am using my real name, I can’t tell any stories about my college roommates to illustrate. I suspect if I could magically morph into a teenage and go back and live in my old college dorm as part of the class of 2013 or 2014, there might be a bit of a shock at current attitudes, but I imagine I would wind up concluding that most thinks hadn’t really changed much. I would think very seriously about switching my major, though.
December 12th, 2012 | 12:00 am
Although such stories no longer surprise me, they have not lost their ability to sadden me. The sadness in part is that what we see reported as achievements in popular media, we also see reported with regret by morally conscious media. Where do people turn when they are repeatedly told and influenced that morality is judgmental (which it is) and judging any behavior is considered unenlightened?
It is all too much for me. How do you persuade someone that they are making poor moral judgments when they deny making any judgments?
Yet we do constantly. We are free to decide on the side of what is good and what is true.
But if ‘its all good’ and truth is ‘relative’ so not an objective guide, who has the high ground?
This appears to be what is at issue:
1 there is an objective moral high ground
2 those who preach Christ crucified and resurrected have it
The story is no easier 2,000 yrs later.
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