SEX!

Sex is a very real part of everyday life, but that doesn’t mean it should be as casual as say . . . eating a hamburger for lunch. The one argument I hear most often from people who are opposed to teaching abstinence in our schools is “They’re going to do it anyway so let’s just teach them how to do it safely.” Am I the only who is offended by this reducing of humanity to the level of dogs and livestock?

One of the things that defines humanity in reference to the rest of the animal kingdom is the ability to deny ourselves both needs and wants a will. No other animal willingly fasts except to protect its young. No other animal passes up pleasure for discomfort. No other animal restrains itself sexually.

Pigs have no choice when it comes to sex. When the sow is in heat she emits pheromones that get the male all riled up. The boar breathes on the female, and pheromones in his breath cause the sow to need it and need it now. Then they mate. When a female dog is in heat not only is she uncontrollably horny, but any male that smells her is too. Among other primates the female only restrains herself long enough to pick the strongest mate, then all bets are off. The only other animal I know of that exercises any sexual restraint is wolves, and then only because the alphas will severely punish or kill anyone else who mates.

Humans on the other hand have none of these instinctual drives that completely override our senses. We refrain from sex even if we really want it for any number of reasons. We fast, sometimes for days or weeks even though we have food readily available. We refrain from consuming alcohol even though we generally like it. We restrain our violent impulses even when we are so enraged we don’t know how we are containing ourselves. No other animal in the world has such restraint.

Why then, are so many people so fatalistic when it comes to sex?

Personally, I think it’s a male-driven industry. We men are typically the aggressors in sexual circumstances. We men have a generally higher sex drive than women. Men are sexually simple, needing only an image or a thought to become aroused, while women have a whole host of thoughts and emotions mixed into their libido. If anyone stands to gain from a sexually permissive society it is men, not women.

Human beings have more emotions mixed into sex than any other creature on the planet, women even more so than men. Men are able to compartmentalize our sexualize activity from our emotions to a large degree. For women sex is so integrated with emotion that such compartmentalization is impossible unless a woman has been emotionally damaged sexually. All to often men are only too happy to do this damage.

It is said that women use sex to get love, and men use love to get sex. How many of us have heard or heard of some horny guy saying “I love you, don’t you love me?” or something to that effect to get into a woman’s panties. The man doesn’t mean it when he says it; he’s just manipulating the woman’s emotions to get what he wants. Other tactics include “It’s okay if you’re scared” which is designed to put the woman on the defensive and back her into a corner where she has no choice but to relent sexually to save face, and pouting after rejection, pulling away emotionally to punish the woman for holding back until she is so overwhelmed that she relents just to keep her man. They’re dirty tactics, but they work.

Women on the other hand have this amazing tendency to fall into this trap: If I don’t have sex with him he’ll leave for someone who will. Ladies, if this guy is so shallow and cold why would you want to keep him in the first place? Listen up, when we men decide we love a woman we go ahead and marry her so we don’t lose her. It allows us to place ownership (sexually) and keeps the object of our undying affection close to us. If your man is a shallow fiend who is only interested in sex there is nothing to stop him from cheating even you are giving it to him. On the other hand, if he respects you and loves you enough to wait odds are he will remain faithful, as long as you do not go frigid after the wedding.

Sex is a beautiful thing. It is the ultimate expression of love between two people, and as such belongs strictly within the bounds of marriage. Within the bounds of marriage sex is safe, fun, beautiful, and bonding. Outside of marriage you take your life into your hands, risk single parenthood, disease, sterilization, terrible emotional damage as the bonds you create are broken over and over again, creates distrust for men (in women), and, while drug-like in excitement level, ultimately empty.

There is no good reason for us as a society to be promoting promiscuity. Some promote it for money, after all, sex sells, and others for ideology, “I wanna get laid.” Yet, in spite of all of this we still have a choice, and the will to make it. Treating premarital sex as though it were inevitable does far more harm than good. Schools and parents need to teach abstinence until marriage, then utter sexual freedom within the marriage, not “I know you’re going to do it so have a condom/sponge/diaphragm/pill/shot and so-on.”

Yes some people will still choose to have premarital sex or commit adultery. It’s a sad fact of life that we must deal with. But if we teach our children, especially our little girls to respect their bodies, and show them how love behaves then there will be less of it, and consequently less disease, abortions, broken hearts, poverty, and deaths. This sounds like a very good reason to teach abstinence, and to chuck promiscuity with condoms out the window.