Updated 2/26/2013
My Mom gave birth to me, a nine pound six ounce monster, when she was twenty-one years old. Twenty-One! When I was twenty-one I was not ready to be a father, but, alas, before I reached my twenty-second birthday, there I was, a proud father of a beautiful six pound girl. Of course, all I had to do was sit in the waiting room of the hospital while my wife (now of 43 years), my daughter’s mom, did all the work of delivery.
The point is, that we men are always the beneficiaries of what the women in our lives do. My mom birthed me when she was little more than a girl. But she cared for me and raised me with the care of, well the care of a mother, for only a mother would put up with the headaches of child rearing. She boiled my baby bottles, changed my malodorous diapers, fed me, cleaned up the mess that I made, then hugged and kissed me and loved me much more richly than I deserved. She raised me, took me to church, put me through school, bought all my clothes, provided all my necessities free of charge, put up with my rebellious teen years, and still loved me, even as she still loved me until the day she passed away.
When I married, I remained pretty much the same man (or is it boy) as I had been before. I had the same personality, the same friends, the same haunts, the same dreams and desires. On the other hand, my wife completely changed her way of life, her desires, her dreams, her personality, her friends, indeed, her whole life, just so she could please me. She did what I did, went where I went, visited who I visited, and lived where I lived. She sacrificed what would have perhaps been a very lucrative career, just to go and be with me as I traveled the world in my chosen military career.
Men, we owe our lives to the women in our lives. They conceive, carry to term, and birth us. They give of themselves for us all of their lives. We should keep them on the proverbial pedestal.
There was a time when women were kept on a pedestal. Now do not get me wrong, I am not naïve, and I know that the things that go on in our society today are not new, for there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless, I remember a time (when I was in school) that girls said no much more often than they said yes. It was a time when most boys, even though they were always on the prowl so to speak, were stopped from “going all the way” by the girls they dated. Most were stopped from even going part of the way. Modern liberals call that prudery. I call it morality. Now I will admit that by the time I graduated from high school, that the “times were a changin’,” and more and more boys were being allowed by their girl friends to “go all the way”.
Do you see the picture here? Boys have always been driven by their hormones to pursue extra marital relations with girls. However, by saying no, girls kept that under control. Why did girls say no? It was because their moms, dads, and society taught them to. Moms and dads knew the impulses that drove young males and therefore taught their daughters to wait until marriage before having marital relations. So the impetus was on the girls to stop the boys from having their way. Does that seem unfair? Of course it does. It is unfair that the obligation to prevent premarital relations belonged to girls and not to boys. Hey, get over it; life is not fair. It was unfair, but it was the right thing to do.
Even the boys were much more reserved in their pursuit of relations with young ladies. They knew that good girls said no. Of course, that did not stop them from trying, nor did it stop them from seeking out bad girls who would go all the way. When I was a teen, I got a big thrill out of a kiss on the cheek or holding a girl’s hand. I never got much further than that. Today those things seem tame because it is expected that marital relations will be a part of most dates.
That unfairness motivated us, the “enlightened” baby boomers of the hip culture, to seek redress for this perceived injustice. And redress we received, for within a period of about five years, we were able to begin the sexual revolution, hailed by many as the best thing that ever happened to society. Admittedly, and sadly, I was among that group. However, that was youthful exuberance, and inexperience with the world. Perhaps we can excuse, or even forgive such youthful excess, but surely, we should not give adults such an exemption.
Most of us of the hip generation grew up and with experience and maturity, gave up our notions of premarital and extramarital relations. (I am purposely avoiding the term “sexual relations” because it is a much-overused phrase. At one time, it had shock value. Now it is offhand, and that is not such a good thing.) We matured, procured jobs, got married, and had kids. That maturity caused us to re-think our old ideas about free sex, especially those of us who had young daughters. But many of my generation, Like Peter Pan, refused to grow up. That group is known today as modern liberals/progressives.
Liberals today are simply children in adult bodies. Oh, they have doctorates, wear business suits, speak intelligently, and have positions of authority, but they are still adolescents in their outlook on life. Have you ever watched children play? When something does not go their way they will have a tantrum, start an argument, and yell, “That’s not fair!” and run to mom or dad or sitter to try to get their way. Note the similarity. When liberals do not get their way, they have a tantrum, start an argument, and yell, “That’s not fair!” and go to court to try to get their way. Yes their tantrums and arguments are more grown-up, but they are still childish in scope. When children (as opposed to kids, which are baby goats) don’t get their way, they become increasingly vocal, yelling, screaming and crying to try to affect the outcome of the situation to their liking.
As an example, let me describe a public gathering I attended. The local school board was to vote on whether or not to add “sexual orientation” (read homosexual rights) to the school system’s nondiscrimination code. We are in a very conservative area. Many conservatives turned out to the school board meeting in opposition to this proposal. There were an equal number of liberals at this event. Many were imported from out of the area for this event, but that is another story. The conservatives who spoke laid out a fair case for the defeat of this proposal. Their reasoning had merit and the board defeated the measure. But the liberals who spoke all had emotional arguments for its adoption. Here is the kicker. Whenever a liberal spoke, the conservatives listened politely. But when a conservative spoke, the liberals tried to shout him down. I personally watched an agitator, sitting very near me, rouse the liberals to shout, scream, and boo every time a conservative made a good point. She would stand and raised her hands and make an upward motion with them. When she did, the liberal crowd went wild.
Now, I am not saying that the liberals could not elucidate well thought-out arguments; I am just saying that they did not do so. That tends to make me believe that theirs was a straightly emotional cause and they had no reasoned arguments. Consequently, they acted like a group of children with a grievance against another group. Children let their emotions control them. Adults control such emotions and allow reason to triumph over their emotions. Like children, liberals simply use emotional arguments and responses to situations they do not like.
When it comes to premarital relations among youth, liberals simply use the emotional argument that youth are going to do it anyway so why try to influence them to stop? They argue that the sexual drive among youth is so strong that nothing we can do will prevent them from acting on it. Based on that emotional argument, they have enacted or caused to be enacted such programs as condom distribution at school, abortion for children without parental consent or knowledge, and sex education courses in school that teach sexual techniques to our youth. Abstinence based sex education is deemed by liberals to be “religious” and therefore not allowed in the public sector, and especially not in schools.
And what is the net result? Premarital pregnancy rates have skyrocket in the last 30 years, and we perform about 1.2 million abortions per year in the USA, and 55 million worldwide. The abortion rate in 2013 is down about 5% from its peak in the eighties Additionally, single mother households are growing at an alarming rate. Many of these single mothers are adolescents. They make up a sizeable proportion of the poverty group in the USA. Because of so many single parent homes, the crime a rate among youth and young men is astronomic. Gangs of youth prowl the streets killing, raping and maiming. AIDS is epidemic. STDs (the PC term for venereal diseases) are becoming endemic. And many of those diseases have no known cure. It is amazing that there are drugs on the market to control incurable sexual herpes just so those with herpes may continue having extramarital sex. The commercials tell them to go on having extramarital sex because, as long as they take that drug, they have nothing to worry about. What price will we ultimately have to pay for our sexual indulgences? God knows; I do not. But let me be clear on this point. God will not be mocked and what we sow we will reap. To carry it further, what we have already sown we are reaping today. We are on the slippery slope. The latest on the horizon is certain groups trying to legalize pedophilia. The way things are going, the might succeed. Simply unbelievable!
Certainly, there has never been a time when sin did not abound in the world. It always has and always will. But societies are tasked to control the sinful behavior of citizens. That is why we have laws; it is also why we have taboos. I realize the word ‘taboo’ in politically incorrect and liberals rail against taboos. They want society to be totally free from any taboos whatsoever. That is a dream world. Where I live, reality reigns. Taboos are a reality. Political correctness, the contrivance of liberalism, is a system of liberal taboos. It is a religion, if you will (see Is Political Correctness Christian?). I think that a return to some of those sexual taboos would be beneficial to our country.
I think a “just say no” campaign to prevent youthful premarital sex is a good idea. Liberals tell us that is overly simplistic. But their reason for that conclusion is faulty. Remember, their argument is that youth are just going to do it anyway so why bother. The truth is that such overly simplistic ideas worked in the past. It was when liberals dismantled the old taboos, in the name of sexual freedom, that our current national immorality began. Before that, society kept immorality under much better under control. As I said, I am not naïve, and I know that premarital sex has always occurred, but not at the pandemic levels it occurs today.
Yes, unfortunately, it is the girls’ responsibility to stop premarital sex, no matter how unfair that seems. Let us put women and girls back on the pedestal they were kept on when I was a child. Let us replace some of those sexual taboos our society had at one time. They were not repressions of freedom. They were the guarantors of freedom. Who is freer, the young girl who has not had sexual relations, or the young single mom who has an incurable STD and cannot finish her education because she is a single mom? Who is freer, the youth with two parents and a home to go to, or the child on the street fending for himself? Is our country freer today that it was when the taboos were in place? No, for now we have nearly become a police state in order to prevent the crime caused by the sexual mores of a libertine society.
God has told us in Proverbs 14:34 that, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” He also told us that sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage is sinful. (Thou shalt not commit adultery, Exo 20:14; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, Exo 20:17; fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Cor 6:9; etc.) The rampant frequency of extramarital sexual relations we have in our country today is sinful in the eyes of God. That sexual sin is a reproach to all Americans.
© 6/4/2004 by Mark Oaks. All Rights Reserved.
Taboos
Updated 2/26/2013
My Mom gave birth to me, a nine pound six ounce monster, when she was twenty-one years old. Twenty-One! When I was twenty-one I was not ready to be a father, but, alas, before I reached my twenty-second birthday, there I was, a proud father of a beautiful six pound girl. Of course, all I had to do was sit in the waiting room of the hospital while my wife (now of 43 years), my daughter’s mom, did all the work of delivery.
The point is, that we men are always the beneficiaries of what the women in our lives do. My mom birthed me when she was little more than a girl. But she cared for me and raised me with the care of, well the care of a mother, for only a mother would put up with the headaches of child rearing. She boiled my baby bottles, changed my malodorous diapers, fed me, cleaned up the mess that I made, then hugged and kissed me and loved me much more richly than I deserved. She raised me, took me to church, put me through school, bought all my clothes, provided all my necessities free of charge, put up with my rebellious teen years, and still loved me, even as she still loved me until the day she passed away.
When I married, I remained pretty much the same man (or is it boy) as I had been before. I had the same personality, the same friends, the same haunts, the same dreams and desires. On the other hand, my wife completely changed her way of life, her desires, her dreams, her personality, her friends, indeed, her whole life, just so she could please me. She did what I did, went where I went, visited who I visited, and lived where I lived. She sacrificed what would have perhaps been a very lucrative career, just to go and be with me as I traveled the world in my chosen military career.
Men, we owe our lives to the women in our lives. They conceive, carry to term, and birth us. They give of themselves for us all of their lives. We should keep them on the proverbial pedestal.
There was a time when women were kept on a pedestal. Now do not get me wrong, I am not naïve, and I know that the things that go on in our society today are not new, for there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless, I remember a time (when I was in school) that girls said no much more often than they said yes. It was a time when most boys, even though they were always on the prowl so to speak, were stopped from “going all the way” by the girls they dated. Most were stopped from even going part of the way. Modern liberals call that prudery. I call it morality. Now I will admit that by the time I graduated from high school, that the “times were a changin’1,” and more and more boys were being allowed by their girl friends to “go all the way”.
Do you see the picture here? Boys have always been driven by their hormones to pursue extra marital relations with girls. However, by saying no, girls kept that under control. Why did girls say no? It was because their moms, dads, and society taught them to. Moms and dads knew the impulses that drove young males and therefore taught their daughters to wait until marriage before having marital relations. So the impetus was on the girls to stop the boys from having their way. Does that seem unfair? Of course it does. It is unfair that the obligation to prevent premarital relations belonged to girls and not to boys. Hey, get over it; life is not fair. It was unfair, but it was the right thing to do.
Even the boys were much more reserved in their pursuit of relations with young ladies. They knew that good girls said no. Of course, that did not stop them from trying, nor did it stop them from seeking out bad girls who would go all the way. When I was a teen, I got a big thrill out of a kiss on the cheek or holding a girl’s hand. I never got much further than that. Today those things seem tame because it is expected that marital relations will be a part of most dates.
That unfairness motivated us, the “enlightened” baby boomers of the hip culture, to seek redress for this perceived injustice. And redress we received, for within a period of about five years, we were able to begin the sexual revolution, hailed by many as the best thing that ever happened to society. Admittedly, and sadly, I was among that group. However, that was youthful exuberance, and inexperience with the world. Perhaps we can excuse, or even forgive such youthful excess, but surely, we should not give adults such an exemption.
Most of us of the hip generation grew up and with experience and maturity, gave up our notions of premarital and extramarital relations. (I am purposely avoiding the term “sexual relations” because it is a much-overused phrase. At one time, it had shock value. Now it is offhand, and that is not such a good thing.) We matured, procured jobs, got married, and had kids. That maturity caused us to re-think our old ideas about free sex, especially those of us who had young daughters. But many of my generation, Like Peter Pan, refused to grow up. That group is known today as modern liberals/progressives.
Liberals today are simply children in adult bodies. Oh, they have doctorates, wear business suits, speak intelligently, and have positions of authority, but they are still adolescents in their outlook on life. Have you ever watched children play? When something does not go their way they will have a tantrum, start an argument, and yell, “That’s not fair!” and run to mom or dad or sitter to try to get their way. Note the similarity. When liberals do not get their way, they have a tantrum, start an argument, and yell, “That’s not fair!” and go to court to try to get their way. Yes their tantrums and arguments are more grown-up, but they are still childish in scope. When children (as opposed to kids, which are baby goats) don’t get their way, they become increasingly vocal, yelling, screaming and crying to try to affect the outcome of the situation to their liking.
As an example, let me describe a public gathering I attended. The local school board was to vote on whether or not to add “sexual orientation” (read homosexual rights) to the school system’s nondiscrimination code. We are in a very conservative area. Many conservatives turned out to the school board meeting in opposition to this proposal. There were an equal number of liberals at this event. Many were imported from out of the area for this event, but that is another story. The conservatives who spoke laid out a fair case for the defeat of this proposal. Their reasoning had merit and the board defeated the measure. But the liberals who spoke all had emotional arguments for its adoption. Here is the kicker. Whenever a liberal spoke, the conservatives listened politely. But when a conservative spoke, the liberals tried to shout him down. I personally watched an agitator, sitting very near me, rouse the liberals to shout, scream, and boo every time a conservative made a good point. She would stand and raised her hands and make an upward motion with them. When she did, the liberal crowd went wild.
Now, I am not saying that the liberals could not elucidate well thought-out arguments; I am just saying that they did not do so. That tends to make me believe that theirs was a straightly emotional cause and they had no reasoned arguments. Consequently, they acted like a group of children with a grievance against another group. Children let their emotions control them. Adults control such emotions and allow reason to triumph over their emotions. Like children, liberals simply use emotional arguments and responses to situations they do not like.
When it comes to premarital relations among youth, liberals simply use the emotional argument that youth are going to do it anyway so why try to influence them to stop? They argue that the sexual drive among youth is so strong that nothing we can do will prevent them from acting on it. Based on that emotional argument, they have enacted or caused to be enacted such programs as condom distribution at school, abortion for children without parental consent or knowledge, and sex education courses in school that teach sexual techniques to our youth. Abstinence based sex education is deemed by liberals to be “religious” and therefore not allowed in the public sector, and especially not in schools.
And what is the net result? Premarital pregnancy rates have skyrocket in the last 30 years, and we perform about 1.2 million abortions per year in the USA, and 55 million worldwide. The abortion rate in 2013 is down about 5% from its peak in the eighties Additionally, single mother households are growing at an alarming rate. Many of these single mothers are adolescents. They make up a sizeable proportion of the poverty group in the USA. Because of so many single parent homes, the crime a rate among youth and young men is astronomic. Gangs of youth prowl the streets killing, raping and maiming. AIDS is epidemic. STDs (the PC term for venereal diseases) are becoming endemic. And many of those diseases have no known cure. It is amazing that there are drugs on the market to control incurable sexual herpes just so those with herpes may continue having extramarital sex. The commercials tell them to go on having extramarital sex because, as long as they take that drug, they have nothing to worry about. What price will we ultimately have to pay for our sexual indulgences? God knows; I do not. But let me be clear on this point. God will not be mocked and what we sow we will reap. To carry it further, what we have already sown we are reaping today. We are on the slippery slope. The latest on the horizon is certain groups trying to legalize pedophilia. The way things are going, the might succeed. Simply unbelievable!
Certainly, there has never been a time when sin did not abound in the world. It always has and always will. But societies are tasked to control the sinful behavior of citizens. That is why we have laws; it is also why we have taboos. I realize the word ‘taboo’ in politically incorrect and liberals rail against taboos. They want society to be totally free from any taboos whatsoever. That is a dream world. Where I live, reality reigns. Taboos are a reality. Political correctness, the contrivance of liberalism, is a system of liberal taboos. It is a religion, if you will (see Is Political Correctness Christian?). I think that a return to some of those sexual taboos would be beneficial to our country.
I think a “just say no” campaign to prevent youthful premarital sex is a good idea. Liberals tell us that is overly simplistic. But their reason for that conclusion is faulty. Remember, their argument is that youth are just going to do it anyway so why bother. The truth is that such overly simplistic ideas worked in the past. It was when liberals dismantled the old taboos, in the name of sexual freedom, that our current national immorality began. Before that, society kept immorality under much better under control. As I said, I am not naïve, and I know that premarital sex has always occurred, but not at the pandemic levels it occurs today.
Yes, unfortunately, it is the girls’ responsibility to stop premarital sex, no matter how unfair that seems. Let us put women and girls back on the pedestal they were kept on when I was a child. Let us replace some of those sexual taboos our society had at one time. They were not repressions of freedom. They were the guarantors of freedom. Who is freer, the young girl who has not had sexual relations, or the young single mom who has an incurable STD and cannot finish her education because she is a single mom? Who is freer, the youth with two parents and a home to go to, or the child on the street fending for himself? Is our country freer today that it was when the taboos were in place? No, for now we have nearly become a police state in order to prevent the crime caused by the sexual mores of a libertine society.
God has told us in Proverbs 14:34 that, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” He also told us that sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage is sinful. (Thou shalt not commit adultery, Exo 20:14; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, Exo 20:17; fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God, 1 Cor 6:9; etc.) The rampant frequency of extramarital sexual relations we have in our country today is sinful in the eyes of God. That sexual sin is a reproach to all Americans.
© 6/4/2004 by Mark Oaks. All Rights Reserved.