Friday, February 24, 2006

The Crisis Of No Sexual Rules

The Heteroflexible, Pansensual, Bi-Curious Teenager—The Fast Lane in the American High School

by Albert Mohler
February 24, 2006

Teenage sexuality has been a perpetual concern for parents--and for good reason. In our own times, American teenagers have unprecedented opportunities to experiment sexually and they are bombarded with cultural messages that encourage sexual experimentation and promiscuity. In a very real sense, the chickens have come home to roost as this nation faces the inevitable result of a breakdown in sexual morality.

A shocking portrait of the new shape of teenage sexual activity is provided in a cover story published in the February 6, 2006 edition of New York. In "Love and the Ambisexual, Heteroflexible Teen," Alex Morris introduces us to the "cuddle puddle" of New York City's Stuyvesant High School. Brace yourselves--this is a shocking form of reality therapy.

Morris first introduces his readers to Alair, a sixteen-year-old junior at Stuyvesant High School. Alair is dressed in a tight white tank top that is cut off above the hem in order to expose her midriff. She accessorizes with a black leather belt that features metal chains and studs, and she attracts a great deal of attention as she walks down the halls of her very selective high school.

Alair is on her way to the "cuddle puddle" that takes place during the students' free tenth period of the day. As Morris describes the scene, "There are girls petting girls and girls petting guys and guys petting guys." Alair quickly connects with Jane and Elle, fellow juniors at the high school. "All three have hooked up with each other. All three have hooked up with boys--sometimes the same boys. But it's not that they're gay or bisexual, not exactly. Not always," Morris advises. The boys and girls of the "cuddle puddle" are experimenting with sexuality in all of its varied forms--and this will stretch the imagination of most adults.

"With teenagers there is always a fair amount of posturing when it comes to sex," Morris admits, "a tendency to exaggerate or trivialize, innocence mixed with swagger. It's also true that the 'puddle' is just one clique at Stuyvesant and that Stuyvesant can hardly be considered a typical high school. It attracts the brightest public-school students in New York, and that may be an environment conducive to fewer sexual inhibitions. 'In our school,' Elle says, 'people are getting a better education, so they're more open-minded.'"

In other words, the "cuddle puddle" at this New York high school is not fully representative of adolescents across the nation, but it may soon be. Indeed, data released by the National Center for Health Statistics indicates that eleven percent of American girls age fifteen to nineteen reported same-sex sexual encounters.

As Morris explains, "More girls are experimenting with each other, and they're starting younger." Many analysts believe that these numbers are actually under-reported. One researcher indicates that as many as twenty percent of teenage girls experiment sexually with another girl during their teenage years.

"Go to the schools, talk to the kids, and you'll see that somewhere along the line this generation has started to conceive of sexuality differently." No kidding. The teenagers at this high school greet each other sexually, grabbing various body parts, the way students used to slap each other on the back or the way adults shake hands.

The difference in the way these teenagers conceive sexuality has led some child-development specialists to identify them as the "post-gay" generation.

Homosexuality--lesbianism in particular--is seen as a developmental stage or as a completely valid lifestyle choice. The participants in the "cuddle puddle" tend to think of themselves as more than heterosexual or homosexual. As they have collected and coined words to describe themselves, they use terms like "polysexual, ambisexual, pansexual, pansensual, polyfide, bi-curious, bi-queer, fluid, meteroflexible, heteroflexible, heterosexual with lesbian tendencies" or "just sexual." As Morris concedes, "The terms are designed less to achieve specificity than to leave all options open."

Alair, for example, admits to frequent sexual hook-ups with both boys and girls. She is featured on the front cover of the magazine holding on to a half-naked boy named Jason and cuddling next to Molly, another girl.

Her parents are only mildly concerned, if at all. Morris describes Alair as "one of the lucky ones whose parents don't mind her bisexual tendencies." He goes on to describe Alair's father as the president of a company that manages performance artists and her mom as a "professional organizer." As Alair sees it, her parents are "awesome." She reflects: "I think they've tried to raise me slightly quirky, like in a very hippie little way, and it totally backfired on them." She now understands that she has gone "further than I think they wanted me to go."

Speaking to Morris, Alair's mom said: "I can't say I was pleased . . . . But I can't say that I was upset either. I like that she's forthright about what she wants, that she values her freedom, that she takes care of herself. But I have all the trepidations a parent has when they learn their child is becoming sexually active."

The "cuddle puddle" is a puzzle of complicated relationships. Many of the girls have hooked up with each other in the past and some continue to do so in the present. They caress each other's hair and bodies and do so in front of boys who may be hooking up with each other as the girls watch. Occasionally, the girls and boys hook up with each other, but this seems to be less frequent, at least for the girls, than same-sex activities.

For these kids, the only sin is repression. They consider any opposition to homosexuality--any notion that any form of consensual sexual activity among these teenagers could be morally wrong--to be evidence of nothing more than psychological repression and intolerance.

"To these kids, homophobia is as socially shunned as racism was to the generation before them," Morris explains. "They say it's practically the one thing that's not tolerated at their school. One boy who made disparaging remarks about gay people has been ridiculed and taunted, his belongings hidden around the school. 'We're a creative bunch when we hate someone,' says Nathan. Once the tormenters, now the tormented."

As it turns out, the "cuddle puddle" is only a warm up for what follows. The real action for these teenagers takes place at parties, most often held in their own homes. With parents distracted by work and their own interests, these kids are given a free reign in empty houses and, as this account makes graphically clear, this leads to all kinds of sexual activity that takes place in the bedrooms and bathrooms of the homes.

When the group shows up at Nathan's home, the guys begin to hang out in Nathan's room. Before long, they are joined by some of the girls and making out begins. The group orders Chinese food and passes an ice cube around the room, which everyone is expected to put into their pants.
"It's just another afternoon of casual flirtation. The boys showing off for the girls, the girls showing off for everyone. No strings attached. In theory, anyway."

The industrial revolution and the other massive social changes that have so reshaped American life led to the development of what we now call adolescence--an extended (and growing) period of time in which sexually-mature young persons are largely congregated together without a great deal of adult supervision. They are not expected to accept and fulfill adult responsibilities, and the sexual boundaries and rules that had at least defined and restricted teenage sexual behavior in the past have largely evaporated.

Stuyvesant High School may be somewhat atypical, but the "cuddle puddle" is not. The development of the American high school has produced a social context for teenagers that separates them from parental oversight, gathers them together in one place, and privileges their own social structure, friendships, and peer morality above all others.

Anyone who doubts the impact of the sexual revolution needs only to read this article in order to see our present crisis--much less the future. Of course, there are some who, like Alair's parents, will celebrate teenage sexual liberation, even to the point of ambisexual and heteroflexible sexual experimentation.

Missing from this entire picture is any notion that human sexuality is a stewardship to be protected and a gift to be respected, rather than simply a physical capacity to be used in personal experimentation and polymorphous gratification. This is what a world without sexual rules looks like--a giant "cuddle puddle" of sexual experimentation. Can we even imagine the life-long and eternal consequences of the "cuddle puddle?"

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.
Widely sought as a columnist and commentator, Dr. Mohler has been quoted in the nation's leading newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution and The Dallas Morning News. He has also appeared on such national news programs as CNN's "Larry King Live," NBC's "Today Show" and "Dateline NBC," ABC's "Good Morning America," "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS, MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" and Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."

Click here to contact Dr. Mohler, or visit his website at www.albertmohler.com.

© Copyright 2006 Business Reform. "All Rights Reserved." Reproduction of any portion of the Business Reform magazine is limited to bulletins/newsletters published by local churches, businesses, or individuals at no-cost distribution. All other uses require written permission from The Business Reform Foundation, unless noted otherwise (some authors hold copyrights on certain articles, in which event written permission to reprint should be directed to their attention). Each copy must include the following statement: "Reprinted with permission from the Business Reform magazine, a bimonthly magazine published by The Business Reform Foundation (http://www.businessreform.com/), Ashland, Ohio."

Another excellent resource by Albert Mohler:
Homosexuality and the Bible

6 comments:

Christinewjc said...

From Albert Mohler's pdf paper:

"As E. Michael Jones argues, most modern ideologies are, at base, efforts to rationalize sexual behavior. In fact, he identifies modernity itself as “rationalized lust.” We should expect the secular world, which is at war with God’s truth, to be eager in its efforts to rationalize lust, and to seek legitimacy and social sanction for its sexual sins. We should be shocked, however, that many within the Church now seek to accomplish the same purpose, and to join in common cause with those openly at war with God’s truth.

Paul’s classic statement in Romans 1 sets the issues squarely before us. Homosexuality is linked directly to idolatry, for it is on the basis of their idolatry that God gave them up to their own lusts. Their hearts were committed to impurity, and they were degrading their own bodies by their illicit lusts.

Their idolatry — exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worshipping the creature rather than the Creator — led God to give them over to their degrading passions. From here, those given over to their degraded passions exchanged the natural use of sexual intercourse
for that which God declared to be unnatural [literally, against nature].

At this point Paul explicitly deals with female homosexuality or lesbianism, as well as male homosexuality. This is one of the very few references in all ancient literature to female homosexuality, and Paul’s message is clear: All forms of homosexual eroticism and sexual behavior fall short of God’s glory, violate God’s revealed law, and are inherently unnatural.

But the women involved in lesbianism were not and are not alone. Men, too, have given up natural intercourse with women and have been consumed with passion for other men. The acts they commit, they commit without shame. As a result, they have received within their own bodies the penalty of their error.

Beyond this, God has given them up to their own depraved minds, and they do those things which are not proper. The message could not be more candid and clear, but there are those who seek to deny the obvious. Some have claimed that Paul is here dealing only with those heterosexual persons who commit homosexual acts. The imaginative folly of this approach is undone by Scripture, which allows no understanding that any human beings are born anything other than heterosexual. The modern — and highly political — notion of homosexual “orientation” as a natural human condition cannot be squared with the Bible. The only orientation indicated by Scripture is the universal human orientation to sin.

In other letters, Paul indicates that homosexuals — along with those who persist in other sins — will not inherit the Kingdom
of God. The word Paul uses in
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy
1:10 is arsenokoites, a word with a graphic etymology. Some modern revisionists have attempted to suggest that this refers only to homosexual rapists or child abusers. This argument will not stand even the slightest scholarly consideration. The word does not appear in any Greek literature of the period. As New Testament scholar David Wright has demonstrated, the word was taken by Paul directly from Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, and its meaning is homosexuality itself.The biblical witness is clear: Homosexuality is a grievous sin against God and is a direct rejection of God’s intention and command in creation. All sin is a matter of eternal consequence, and the only hope for any sinner is the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ, who on the cross paid the price for our sin, serving as the substitute for the redeemed.

Our response to persons involved in homosexuality must be
marked by genuine compassion. But a central task of genuine compassion is telling the truth, and the Bible reveals a true message we must convey. Those seeking to contort and subvert the Bible’s message are not responding to homosexuals with compassion. To lie is never compassionate — and their lie leads unto death.

In the end, the Church will either declare the truth of God’s Word, or find a way to run away from it. It really comes down to trust. Do we trust the Bible to tell us truthfully what God desires and commands about our sexuality? If so, we really do know where we stand, and we really do know what to say. If not, let’s just admit to the world that we really haven’t a clue."

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Juan Buhler said...

"For these kids, the only sin is repression. They consider any opposition to homosexuality--any notion that any form of consensual sexual activity among these teenagers could be morally wrong--to be evidence of nothing more than psychological repression and intolerance."

Imagine how much better our society would be if people like Dr. Mohler had had their share of "cuddle puddles" when they were young...

Christinewjc said...

Romans 1:25 - Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

That verse (as well as the entire chapter in Romans) specifically discusses lies that lead to sexual sin and idolatry. The lies that our youth are currently being subjected to and indoctrinated into (such as the "cuddle puddle" mentality) are just duping and fooling them into the fallen realm of rationalized lust which keeps them in the bondage of sin. They are following the lies of satan and are, unfortunately, at war against God's truth.

I pity any children that you would bring up, Juan.

Christinewjc said...

This verse is quite fitting, also:
(Jesus speaking)

John 8:44 - Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Juan Buhler said...

"I pity any children that you would bring up, Juan."

Wow.

You see Christine, we live in different worlds. Your Bible is for you the source of all truth, and your criteria for a good life is to maximize the rules set by your god that you follow.

That god for me is imaginary. My criteria for a good life is to maximize happiness in our species. This means I try to treat others in the way I'd like to be treated, and also means that the concept of "sin" is meaningless. As long as nobody is harmed in any way, anything goes, and pleasure is a good thing.

By my "morals", if you want to call them that (although I cringe at the idea of dogma, which the word "morals" suggest) the position of people like you causes unhappiness in a lot of your fellow men. A good friend of mine is gay. He and his partner have one of the most loving, lasting relationships I know. They got married here in San Francisco in 2004, only to see their marriage dissolved by law a few months later. Are you telling me that I should put up with people like you, who want my friends to be unhappy because your god told them to make it so?

Think about it. Your actions are causing unhappiness and pain. Mine aren't. Thanks for your pity, but I believe my children will be fine.

One last note: The Romans chapter you mention ends by saying that I deserve death (1:31-32). Very nice. What kind of reaction did you expect from me after reading that?

I don't wish death upon you.

Best,

j

Christinewjc said...

We all deserve death.

Rom 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

We all die physically. But the spirit lives on either with God or apart from him...for eternity. 70 or 80 years of "pleasure" isn't worth losing my soul and life eternal with God.

Jesus said:

Mar 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Juan: "also means that the concept of "sin" is meaningless"

Jesus didn't think sin is meaningless.

The bad news...

John 8:24 - I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am [he], ye shall die in your sins.

The good news...

Romans 8:1 - [There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

You have made your choice and I have made mine. So be it.