The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation.he spouses' union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.
Yet this is just what the sexual revolution has
done—Separate just what God never intended to be separated. But because we have
been given a free will (Luther was wrong on the bondage of the will), we are
free to follow Satan in rebellion against the Father’s plan for sex. So from
time to time I post the fruits of so doing on these pages, the latest being a
dandy: (and it is composed by a separated brother! Alleluia!)
She Only said “Yes” Once
By Reggie Osborne
I stood on a stage in the church I’d grown up
in. I can only vaguely remember my
wedding, but I’ll never forget seeing Allison emerge from the hallway at the
back of the sanctuary. Beautiful.
Looking up at me through her veil, she smiled. She has always been a shy person, so she
should have been intimidated by all of those people looking at her. But this wasn’t her shy smile – the
tight-lipped, head-hung, eyebrows-raised smile that meant she was embarrassed. No, this was a “nothing-else-in-the-world-matters-right-now”
smile.
We all stared at her, a couple hundred people in a
full sanctuary. But she stared down the aisle at me as if we were the only two
people in the room. I’ll never forget
that moment.
Her hair was special. I’d never seen it like that before. She was wearing make-up, a small thing, but
it stands out in my mind because she wears it so rarely. I remember the veil. I remember the dress.
We stood before the pastor, and we went through the
motions of the service. It feels
sacrilege to says this, but they were just words at that point. The promises had already been made.
Finally:
“You may kiss your bride.”
We kissed. A
real kiss…nothing obscene…but not a peck either. My wife is so shy about showing affection in
public, that even to this day we don’t really kiss when we’re out and
about. But we kissed right then and
there, with no shyness at all.
And in that moment, on that stage, when we were
married, my wife – Allison Lynne Osborne – said, “Yes,” to me.
Before that moment, the answer had always been,
“No,” – “no” in my heart and “no” in hers.
“No” in parked cars, in movie theatres, in empty living rooms – “no” to
all of those emotions and desires that threaten to sweep away young people in
love. The answer had always been, “No.”
Not anymore.
On, July 28th, 2001, the answer we gave each other before God and
everyone was: “Yes.” “Yes,” until the
day that we die.
Yes, I could kiss her. Yes, I could sleep with her. Yes, I could steal glances of her in the
shower because I think she looks great even after 5 kids. She said, “Yes,” to
me, forever.
I wasn’t asking for a one night stand or permission
to touch her after a party. I was asking
for forever, and that’s what she gave me.
That’s what I gave her.
She has never had to say it again. She said “yes” only once. She meant it to last. I meant it to last. It has lasted fourteen years. It will remain in effect until death parts
us.
Last October the New York Times published an
article describing what sex education is like for tenth graders now in San
Francisco. A new law requires that
teachers give lessons on something called “affirmative consent”. These children are taught to ask for consent
at every point in a sexual encounter.
Do you want to kiss her? Ask for consent. Do you want to touch her breasts? Ask for consent again. Do you want to take her clothes off? Ask for consent again. Do you want to penetrate? Ask for consent again.
If that’s too graphic for you, just remember, this
is 10th grade material. If it makes you uncomfortable, then just imagine being
one of the 15 year-old kids in that classroom who are hearing those words (and
many that are far more graphic) with other boys and girls their own age…the
same boys and girls they used to finger-paint with in kindergarten.
One student, upon hearing that he needed to check
with a girl before touching her in certain places or doing certain things,
asked, “What does that mean – you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?”
“Pretty much,” the teacher answered.
Somehow that seemed extraordinarily out of place to
this young man, that one would have to pause the progression of an intimate
encounter to ask, over and over again, “May I do this now?”
Those aren’t exactly words of passion and romance,
are they?
So the teacher gave the kids an assignment. Come up with better ways of asking for
consent, ways that won’t seem so awkward and weird. The fifteen year-olds put their heads together
and brainstormed. They spent their class
time trying to invent less awkward ways of asking each other for permission to
have sexual experiences.
They wanted to come up with a way of asking, “Can I
do this to you now?” without actually sounding like an alien from another
planet. Many of their suggestions were
too vague or nonspecific, but finally they settled on one that they could all
agree on.
Two simple words: “You good?”
A boy is about to take the top off a girl: “You good?”
He touches her underwear: “You good?”
Before kissing her body: “You good?”
Before taking her virginity…before losing his own,
he asks: “You good?”
The answer is no.
I’m not good. You’re not
good. None of this is good. This is not what sex is for. This is not what love is for. We’ve ruined it.
Sex has become so detached from anything
meaningful, personal, and private, that Playboy is no longer even bothering to
print nude pictures anymore. People
won’t pay for them because every sexual act imaginable can be freely viewed on
the internet at any moment. Our most popular TV shows, from Game of Thrones to
Two and a Half Men, are full of sex, either explicit or implied.
One generation…two generations, have grown up in a
culture where sex means practically nothing on TV and media, and so they’ve
actually embraced the idea that it means nothing in real life! They’ve heard the message and believed
it: “Sex is no big deal”. They feel totally inadequate and unfulfilled
if they aren’t having it.
And we have done such a good job teaching that
message, that now 1 in 5 women who attend college for four years say they’ve
been sexually assaulted. Or is it 1 in
7, like the authors of the study tried to clarify in TIME Magazine? Am I supposed to feel better about 1 in 7, as
opposed to 1 in 5? Is that supposed to
comfort me?
Virtually every single major publication in our
country, from Sports Illustrated to the New York Times has written extensively
on the dangerous places that college campuses have become for young women. The violence of sex has become so undeniably
prevalent in our culture that now governments feel they must act, they must do
something – ANYTHING – to teach young people the one truth about sex that
should be the most common, basic, intuitive part: it should be CONSENSUAL.
Think about that for a moment. We have so RUINED our image of sex that we
now have to PASS LAWS requiring teachers to explain to our children that they
must be sure someone wants to have sex before they go through with it.
I have worked with youth for 16 years as a leader
and a teacher. I have mentored youth and
cried with them when their worlds have fallen apart on them. I have given them my money, my time, my
vehicle, and my home at various points.
And I can tell you this: in my
experience, the number 1 reason why children leave their homes and wreck their
lives is a desire for sex that our culture has SCREAMED that they must have.
And their parents see it and warn them and plead
with them and try to help them – all to no avail in so many terrible cases,
because if there’s anything the culture has screamed at children more than “SEX
IS FOR YOU”, it’s “YOUR PARENTS ARE IDIOTS”.
Buried behind each act of rebellion is the personal
belief that he or she knows better than the parents who have raised them from
birth. These kids are convinced that
they know more about life and sex than their moms and dads. They are bolstered by their familiarity with
sex, a familiarity not based in actual reality, but based on what they’ve seen
in movies, music, television, and the internet…what they’ve talked about it in
school with their friends after health class.
They are tragically mistaken. They have overestimated their own
wisdom. They have embraced an
understanding of sex that is deliberately deceitful.
Deliberately deceitful. Adults know that sex is not REALLY like the
movies or the TV or the music make it out to be. The adults that make their money off of
selling sex KNOW that their version of it isn’t honest – not in it’s portrayal,
and not in it’s consequences.
But those profiteering off of “selling sex” aren’t
there to help pick up the pieces when they come home diseased, abused,
traumatized, pregnant, or addicted. The
culture isn’t there to help them after an abortion. It’s not there to help them as a single
parent with a baby. “Here’s some food stamps and some government
assistance. Good luck! Make sure you buy my next song on iTunes or
watch my next show on HBO!”
The culture isn’t there to help them with
child-support payments for the next 20 years, made to a young lady you don’t
even know outside of a one-night stand.
The culture isn’t there to help the young lady who never gets a
child-support payment because the father doesn’t love her and could care less
about being a real man.
The culture isn’t really “there” at all.
“Culture” is an abstract thing, an illusion that
tells us how we should think and feel.
It’s built through actors, actresses, singers, rappers, advertisements,
porn-creators, and the like who glorify sex outside of marriage as if it’s some
penultimate experience to achieve. And
when the illusion is stripped away by the cold realities of life on the other
side of these sexual experiences, these kids are left to try to piece together
a life that’s been gutted by a society more concerned about the dangers of
“censorship” than the dangers of the culture we’ve fostered.
And the proposed answer to all of these problems
is: education.
“We just have to teach them about
contraception. We just have to teach
them safety. We just have to do a better
job handing out condoms. We have to do a
better job making abortions available.
We have to increase social support programs. We have to come up with medication for the
diseases and vaccines and protocols for treatment.”
It’s like running around with a garden hose trying
to put out a fire that’s burning your entire house down.
We have ruined sex.
We have taken what was sacred and made it casual, pretending that is
won’t hurt us.
We ought to mourn what we’ve done, but instead, we
glory in our own shame. We boast about
the sexual revolution as if it were an accomplishment. We mock those who believe that it belongs
only to marriage, where consent has been given and relationships rest in
promised exclusivity. We laugh at the
happily married couples who have never known another partner as if they somehow
“missed out” on all the fun.
What fun?
Step out of your little world and look at what this trivialization of
sex is doing to our people!
Let me pose to you the same question that those
kids came up with in San Francisco…a question, by the way, that no one’s ever
asked in a porn scene: “You good?”
Sexual violence dominating college campuses: “You
good?”
19 year-olds with three abortions: “You good?”
Pornographic websites becoming the main source of a
child’s first sexual experience: “You
good?”
Sex addiction being a real and tragic thing: “You
good?”
No…I’m not good.
Excuse me while I go throw up.
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