This document is intended to articulate the understanding of Scriptural teaching on human sexuality by The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada.

1. Creation and Sexuality: God created man and women in His own image, and pronounced them good. Human nature as created consists of a number of dimensions that influence one another. Sexuality is one of these dimensions.

2. God-honouring Expression of Sexuality: All human activity, including the expression of sexuality, should have as its end the honouring of God. Those pursuing godliness are to live lives of purity in thought, word and deed, including purity with reference to sexuality. God is honoured by the mutually intimate physical expression of sexuality when this expression occurs between a man and a woman within a monogamous marriage.

3. Fallenness and Sexuality: Through human disobedience to God, all dimensions of human nature, individually and collectively, have been corrupted. Thus, human sexuality is subject to abuse and misuse which dishonours God.

4. God-dishonouring Expression of Sexuality: God is dishonoured by anything which displaces Him from His rightful place of priority in one’s life. Therefore, He is dishonoured, for example, by sexual obsession, the intimate physical expression of sexuality outside of marriage, sexual activity between persons of the same sex, between an adult and a child, between close relatives, or between a person and an animal.

5. Forgiveness and Sexuality: While some temporal effects of sexual sins may remain, sexual sins, like any other sins, can be forgiven by God through Jesus Christ, upon confession and repentance.

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Roman Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Dissenting View

by Charles E. Curran

In 1987 Charles E. Curran was visiting professor of Catholic Studies at Cornell University. This article appeared in the Christian Century, December 16, 1987, pps. 1139-1142. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation; used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be found at www.christiancentury.org. This article prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.

Issues of sexual morality, always significant ones in the Christian tradition, are among the most vital topics of debate and concern within the Roman Catholic Church today. The content of official Roman Catholic teaching in sexual matters is generally well known. It is equally well known that most Catholic believers disagree with the hierarchy’s absolute condemnation of masturbation, contraception, sterilization and divorce. Many Catholics also question church teachings on homosexuality and premarital sex. This general attitude has been documented in many polls, such as the recent survey conducted for Time magazine which found that only 24 per cent of Catholics consider artificial birth control wrong, despite the church’s condemnation.

Though many married couples who use artificial contraception, along with divorced and remarried Catholics and gays, continue to participate in the life of the church, the great discrepancy between Catholic teaching and Catholic practice has called into question the credibility of the hierarchical teaching office. Because of the church’s sexual teachings, a good number of Roman Catholics have become disillusioned and have left the church. Andrew Greeley and his associates at the National Opinion Research Center have concluded on the basis of their sociological research that Humanae Vitae, the 1968 papal encyclical condemning artificial contraception, “seems to have been the reason for massive apostasy and for a notable decline in religious devotion and belief.”

The vast majority of Catholic theologians writing about sexual morality have challenged the basis for the church’s official teaching. Indeed, the very nature of Catholic teaching has occasioned this type of challenge, for the church maintains that its teaching is based on the natural law, which in principle can be rationally apprehended by all human beings. The church does recognize that reason is illumined by faith in these matters; nonetheless, the natural law methodology claims to rely on human reason, reflecting on human nature rather than directly on faith or revelation.

The official teaching rests on the view that the innate purpose of the sexual faculty is twofold: procreation and love union. Every sexual act must be open to procreation, and must be expressive of love. This is the church’s basis for condemning masturbation, contraception, sterilization and homosexual acts. It is also the ground for condemning artificial insemination, even with the husband’s semen (AIH). Contraception is wrong, in the hierarchical magisterium’s view, because it prevents procreation. AIH is wrong because the act of insemination is not the natural act which, by its very nature, is expressive of love.

But such official teaching suffers from problems—the primary one being its physicalism or biologism. It insists that intercourse must always be present and that no one can interfere with the physical or biological aspect for any reason whatsoever. In this understanding of sex, the physical becomes absolutized. Most revisionist Catholic theologians today argue that for the good of the person or for the good of the marriage, it is legitimate at times to interfere with the physical structure of the act. Note that it is only in questions of sexual morality that Catholic teaching has absolutized the physical and identified it with the truly human or moral aspect. On the question of taking a human life, for example, the church has always distinguished between killing and murder, murder being the morally condemned act, and killing the physical act which is not always wrong. However, in the case of artificial contraception, the church understands it as a physical act that is always and in every circumstance wrong.

Church authorities have taken action against some theologians who have dissented from the official teaching on matters of sexual morality. My own case is by no means the only example. Stephan Pfürtner in Switzerland, the late Ambrogio Valsecchi in Italy and Anthony Kosnick in the United States have all lost their teaching positions because of their writings on sexuality. Rumors circulate that other Catholic theologians who dissent on sexual morality have also experienced problems with the Vatican.

As my account of the controversy indicates, the primary issue in developing a Catholic sexual ethic today is not in deciding the ethical questions themselves but in confronting the ecclesiological question of dissent. Since the church teaching office appears determined to maintain its present positions, and even to discipline some of the theologians who propose other views, those interested in changing the church’s official positions must first deal with the ecclesiological question. Can and should the hierarchy allow theological and practical dissent in these areas? Can and should the hierarchical office change its teaching in these areas?

I have kidded some of my colleagues in ecclesiology by saying that the real ecclesiological issues today, especially those involving the teaching authority in the church, are being faced by moral theologians, particularly those working in the area of sexual morality and sexual ethics. Why is this the case? Obviously, sexuality is a very significant aspect of life which affects everyone personally. Whenever sexuality and authority meet, a volatile situation is bound to result. Also, the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual matters has been inculcated at all levels of Catholic education for a long time. Thus both history and the very nature of the sexual question have guaranteed that the church will be more involved in this area than in most other areas of human life.

There is also a more recent and specific historical reason why the area of sexual ethics is both so troublesome and so entwined with ecclesiological concerns: sexual ethics was not touched by the great changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council. At Vatican II many of the documents prepared by preconciliar commissions, documents that expressed the neoscholastic manualistic theology of the times, were rejected in toto by the council. On the topics of ecumenism, the church, religious liberty, faith, and revelation, very significant developments occurred in and through the conciliar process. However, sexual morality and sexual ethics experienced no such development at Vatican II. For example, one of the most important issues of the time was artificial contraception—which Pope Paul VI took out of the council’s hands and reserved to himself, eventually issuing Humanae Vitae in 1968. Paul VI never issued another encyclical in the remaining years of his pontificate. Thus this area of church teaching is still based on the neoscholastic understanding that prevailed before the Second Vatican Council.

This fact was brought home to me by some of the reading I was doing last spring. Herbert Vorgrimler’s Understanding Karl Rahner (Crossroad, 1986), which provides some biographical information on the theologian, much of it based on his correspondence, shows that in the preparatory and early phases of Vatican II, Rahner frequently spoke of the struggles against the manualistic theology that took place in commission meetings. In this connection he often mentioned the stance of theologians Sebastian Tromp and Franz Hürth, two Jesuits who were my professors at the Gregorian University in the 1950s. In fact, I occasionally had long Latin conversations with Hürth, who was always cordial and seemed to enjoy such meetings, Though I have since changed my own views quite a bit, I remember with fondness my conversations with him.

While I was reading Vorgrimler, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. “The section of the instruction that sparked the most disagreement within the Roman Catholic community was the document’s rejection of in vitro fertilization even when the process uses the husband’s seed. The footnotes to the condemnation of homologous artificial insemination (AIH) referred to Pope Pius XII’s 1949 “Discourse to Those Taking Part in the Fourth International Congress of Catholic Doctors, “ in which the pope condemned AIH because the natural conjugal act itself is not present.

Two comments must be made about the 1949 papal address. First, before it was delivered a number of Catholic moralists held that in practice, artificial insemination between husband and wife could be permitted, provided the husband’s sperm was obtained in some legitimate way. (Those scholars believed that masturbation was intrinsically evil and so could never be the appropriate means of obtaining semen.) Even as conservative a Catholic moral theologian as Thomas J. O’Donnell admits that AIH was an open question in theory and in practice before 1949 (see Medicine and Christian Morality [Alba House, 1976], p. 266). Thus it is difficult to speak about a traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on this topic.

Second, it is well known that Hürth wrote most of Pius XII’s addresses on moral issues. In fact, a commentary on the papal address written by Hürth was published in Periodica even before the papal statement officially appeared.

The conjunction of the Rahner history and the new document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith combined to make me dramatically aware that Catholic moral teaching in 1987 is still based on the neoscholasticism of the pre-Vatican II manuals of moral theology. If this same reality were true in other areas, such as revelation, the church, ecumenism and religious liberty, Roman Catholicism would look quite different today. What would have happened if Vatican II had discussed and decided the issue of artificial contraception? Given the other changes that occurred, perhaps that teaching, too, would have been changed.

How can there be such a change or development in the official teaching of the church? How can the church accept an idea or practice which it had earlier condemned? The best illustration of change at Vatican II was its teaching on religious freedom. John Courtney Murray and others proposed a theory of development based on changing historical circumstances. They argued that in the 19th century the church rightly condemned the understanding of religious freedom that was based on continental liberalism, but that in the 20th century the church could accept religious liberty, understood as a civil right of immunity under a limited constitutional government. One can, of course, criticize this approach for failing to recognize that somewhere along the line the church’s teaching was wrong, or that it should have been changed sooner. On the matter of contraception, it probably would have been necessary to face head-on the issue of error in the official church teaching.

There are many reasons why church authorities are reluctant to change official teaching or to allow dissent. The patriarchal nature of the Catholic Church and of its teaching on sexuality cannot be denied; it has excluded women from any kind of significant decision-making role in the church’s life. (The enaction of the recent synod in Rome has disappointed those who support a full role for women in the church.) I am sure that the desire to control others, along with a celibate’s fear of sexuality, has also contributed to the present teaching and the reluctance to change it. However, those of us working for innovation must address the most significant issues raised by the defenders of the present position, even though we recognize the other factors that support that instruction.

In the eyes of its defenders, the strongest reason for maintaining the present condemnations is the nature of the church’s teaching function, which is believed to be under the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Could the Holy Spirit ever permit the hierarchical teaching office to be wrong in a matter of such great import in the lives of so many Christians? The role of the church and of its officially commissioned leaders is to mediate the salvific word and work of Jesus through the presence of the Spirit. Could the hierarchical teaching role actually hinder and hurt the people it is supposed to help?

Such questions cannot be easily dismissed. One must at least feel their force for those who are posing them. The only adequate response is to acknowledge that the hierarchical teaching office itself has failed to recognize and communicate the proper nature and force of its teaching. Teaching on the specific and complex questions regarding the norms governing sexuality involves what has recently been called the authoritative noninfallible hierarchical teaching office. According to a 1967 document of the West German bishops, such teaching has a certain degree of binding force, but since it is not a de fide definition it involves a provisional element, even to the point of being capable of including error.

The ultimate epistemological reason why this teaching cannot claim an absolute certitude derives from the essence of moral truth. Thomas Aquinas pointed out the difference between speculative and practical moral truth. In morality, with its complexities and many surrounding circumstances, the secondary principles of the natural law generally oblige, but in some cases they do not. Thomas uses as an example the natural-law principle that deposits should be returned. There is an obligation to return to the owner what one has been given to care for and keep safe. Such a principle usually obliges, but not always. If someone has left you a sword for safekeeping and now wants it back, but is drunk and threatening to kill people, you have an obligation not to return the sword. In their two pastoral letters on peace and the economy, the United States bishops have recognized the same reality. At the level of complex and specific judgments one cannot exclude the possibility of error. For example, the bishops maintain that the first use of even the smallest counterforce nuclear weapons is always wrong, but they recognize that others within the church community might come to a different conclusion.

Within the traditional understanding of the teaching function of the church, it is possible for authoritative noninfallible teaching on specific moral issues to be wrong. Church authority has added to its problems by failing to recognize explicitly the somewhat provisional nature of its teaching in these areas. In this light, one can understand the charge of creeping infallibilism that has been made. Noninfallible teaching is thought to be as certain and absolute as infallible teaching. If the very nature and limitation of such authoritative noninfallible teaching were better understood, the fact of erroneous church teaching would not be as great a problem as it sometimes seems. Such a recognition would also serve to indicate the various ways in which all baptized Catholics contribute to the teaching of the church, and it would remind the hierarchical teaching authority that it has not carried out its own learning and teaching function in the most suitable way.

It is very difficult for any of us to admit we have made mistakes. It is obviously very difficult for the hierarchical teaching office, with its understanding of benefiting from the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to recognize that its teachings might be in error. However, such a recognition would not be unprecedented. The Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II humbly recognizes that there has been sin on all sides in the work for church unity, and begs pardon of God and our separated brothers and sisters. In the present situation the first step that can and should be made is for the church to recognize officially the somewhat provisional character of the authoritative noninfallible hierarchical teaching. From this acknowledgment could follow the possibility and perhaps at times even the legitimacy of dissent both in theory and in practice.

What about the credibility of the hierarchical teaching office if it explicitly recognizes the legitimacy of dissent or even changes in its teaching? How can anyone ever again put trust and confidence in such a teaching office? It must be emphasized again that the hierarchical teaching office already has a very great problem of credibility in sexual matters. The case can be made that the teaching office would gain credibility by recognizing the possibility of dissent and even changing its teaching in this area.

In my view, dissent from the authoritative noninfallible hierarchical teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is an effort to support, not destroy, the credibility of the teaching office. The theological community can play the critical role of the loyal opposition, thus in the long run enhancing the church’s teaching role. To carry out this role properly, the magisterium must be in dialogue with the whole church. The primary teacher in the church remains the Holy Spirit—and no one has a monopoly on the Holy Spirit. Wide consultation and dialogue are a necessary part of the function of the hierarchical teaching office.

Unfortunately, dialogue and consultation have not occurred in the area of sexual morality. Compare, for example, the process involved in the writing of the U.S. bishops’ pastoral letters and the process involved in the writing of the recent instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on bioethics. The American bishops engaged in a broad consultation process and shared their drafts with the world in a very public dialogue. Also, the pastoral letters distinguished principles and universal teachings from specific judgments and conclusions. This approach recognizes that the possibility of certitude decreases as the matter under consideration becomes more specific and complex. (However, even in the pastoral letters there is a tendency to claim too much certitude at the level of principle. The pastoral letter on peace maintains that the principle of discrimination or noncombatant immunity must be held by all people within the church; however, the West German bishops’ pastoral letter on war does not accept this principle as an absolute norm.)

Some may wonder where all this will end. Is everything concerning Catholics’ sexuality up for grabs? Are there no limits to legitimate dissent?

It is incumbent upon those of us within the Roman Catholic Church who are calling for a broader area of dissent to talk about limits. We must recognize that dissent, or more positively, pluralism, exists within a broader area of unity, assent and agreement. In the Christian faith community, not everything is up for grabs. The church is called to creative fidelity to the word and work of Jesus. We must distinguish between what is central to the faith and what is peripheral. The emphasis on praxis in contemporary theology reminds us that what we do is an integral part of our faith commitment. However, on specific issues in complex cases there must be room for more diversity and disagreement. For example, the church must always teach and live the values of love and fidelity in marriage, but it does not follow that divorce and remarriage are wrong in all circumstances.

There can be no doubt that there will be more dissent and more pluralism in the church than there have been in the past, and that there will be more gray areas than ever before, especially since the methodology, as well as the subject matter, of contemporary theology points in this direction. However, the realities of pluralism and dissent on specific issues can exist alongside church unity and a credible hierarchical teaching office in the church. We who are loyal to the church and yet perceive the crucial need for it to broaden its perspective must work assiduously to promote the hierarchy’s recognition of these realities.

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Kinsey and the gay crowd (971101)

When Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male was published in 1948 it provoked a social revolution. Today The Times begins serialising a new biography by James H Jones which reveals that Kinsey was a bisexual who used his methodology to justify his own sexuality

Secrets and a sense of power

By the 1940s, Kinsey was riding high. From his timorous beginnings as an obscure researcher, he was now the head of his own research institute which enjoyed the backing of the Rockefeller Foundation. But his financial backers had taken on more than they knew. In Kinsey, they thought they had found a metric-minded, Baconian scientist. They saw him as an instrument, a collecting machine who would compile the data others would use to develop social policies and programmes designed to control human sexual behaviour. Instead, they had been co-opted by a genuine revolutionary, a man who intended to use science to attack Victorian morality and to promote an ethic of tolerance.

Sex research was Kinsey’s mission, a grand cause that filled his every waking moment. People who visited Kinsey during the 1940s encountered a secular priest, a man whose laboratory was his temple. It was not so much that he preached, which of course, he did. Rather, it was the strength of his messianic impulse, the sense of urgency that filled his voice. Sex research had given this chronic do-gooder a new way to do good, and he attacked it with religious fervour.

The essence of Kinsey’s gospel was simple: sexual morality needed to be reformed, and science would show the way. If people knew the facts about human sexual behaviour, he reasoned, one day they would jettison attitudes that had put them at war with their nature and embrace values that treated sexual desires as healthy and wholesome.

To provide this data, Kinsey believed researchers had to divorce science from morality, studying sex with the same rigour that investigators brought to their hard sciences. In the early 1940s, Kinsey set his goal at 100,000 histories. This was an astounding figure. No one in the history of sex research had approached this number. In fact, no previous survey had compiled more than a few hundred case histories.

Early in 1941 Kinsey hired Glenn V Ramsey, an educational psychologist.

There is no evidence that Ramsey knew about Kinsey’s private sex life. Not that Ramsey was unusual in this regard. In the years ahead most of the people who worked for Kinsey did not have a clue. Within the staff that knowledge would always be restricted to a handful of close associates whom Kinsey swore to secrecy, both with regard to what they had learnt about his sex life and what they learnt about each other’s.

As a result of his experiences in training Ramsey, Kinsey felt he had a better idea of what to look for in interviewers. “What is more important than academic equipment is personality, sincerity and an abundantly sympathetic viewpoint in the interviewer,” he wrote in June 1942.

At a minimum, Kinsey expected interviewers to be nonjudgmental. What he really wanted, however, were individuals who were accepting, both of others and of themselves. To learn whether applicants were “sex shy” Kinsey required them to submit to an interview. “I need a sexual history from the person under consideration and long contact with him in order to become acquainted with his attitudes on a variety of things,” he said.

Last but not least, Kinsey was an absolute fanatic on the subject of confidentiality. Exquisitely vulnerable himself, he understood that the majority of human beings at one time or another had done or fantasised about things of a sexual nature they did not wish revealed. Whether significant or trivial, these hidden truths needed to be discovered if science had any hope of mapping human sexuality. And that was why confidentially had to be preserved at all costs. Without it, subjects would fear betrayal.

Yet in reflecting on what he called Kinsey’s “basic rock-like integrity” a close friend remarked: “I think he liked secrets and that their possession gave him a sense of power.” Over the years, the friend continued, Kinsey interviewed “political, social and business leaders of the first rank”. Had he been inclined to reveal what he had learnt, “Kinsey could have blown up the United States socially and politically”.

Kinsey had a preference for co-workers with certain behavioural items in their histories. Homosexual experience was a definite plus, as Kinsey identified with any man who had this in his record. In fairness to Kinsey, however, he was willing to hire heterosexuals with little or no homosexual experience, provided they were not homophobes.

Given his agenda, Kinsey encountered the ideal candidate in Wardell Pomeroy. In 1941, Kinsey delivered a lecture in South Bend, Indiana, where Pomeroy worked as a psychologist for the Department of Public Welfare.

Pomeroy hung around after the lecture to chat, and Kinsey did what he always did: he asked Pomeroy to contribute his sex history. A day or two later Pomeroy arrived at Kinsey’s hotel for an early morning appointment. What happened next was vintage Kinsey. Upon entering, Pomeroy was surprised to find his host undressed and shaving in front of the mirror. Ordinarily, Kinsey kept his appointments with military punctuality, so there was something odd about his not being ready. The suspicion lingers that he wanted to be caught in the nude, perhaps for the delight he took in shocking others or perhaps because he was making a sexual overture. Pomeroy, of medium height, with dark, wavy hair, was handsome enough to be a movie star, and had an engaging personality.

After Kinsey apologised for running late, he got dressed and the interview began. Pomeroy was impressed by the deftness of Kinsey’s technique. “I found myself telling him things I had never dreamt of telling anyone else,” Pomeroy later wrote. “When we were finished,” he continued, “Kinsey told me he was impressed by my attitudes about sex. I appeared to be relaxed, he said, and without fear or unwarranted modesty.”

But then Pomeroy was not a modest man, least of all where sex was concerned. Close friends described a man of magnetic charm and a prodigious sexual appetite, utterly relentless in his pursuit of partners of both sexes, though with a decided preference for women. In February 1943, Pomeroy reported for work in Bloomington and his wife and children arrived a few weeks later. Kinsey put Pomeroy to work as soon as he had memorised the interviewing code. As Pomeroy gained experience and improved his interviewing technique, Kinsey gradually exposed him to individuals whose histories presented “special challenges”, including prostitutes, sex offenders and underworld figures.

By contrast, Vincent Nowlis was a wartime hire who did not remain long on Kinsey’s staff. A man of brilliant intellect, first-rate academic credentials and a firm commitment to research, he arrived in Bloomington in June 1944, accompanied by his wife and their two young sons.

Many years later, he would recall that Pomeroy was constantly engaging in sexual banter. Then, too, there was the issue of Kinsey’s inordinate interest in the private lives of the staff members. “Kinsey would often talk to me about the sexual activity of others on the staff,” Nowlis revealed. Nevertheless, he had no inkling that Kinsey or anyone else on the staff might be gay, let alone that they might be having sex with one another.

About six months after he joined the staff, however, Nowlis’s innocence came to an abrupt end. In October 1944, Kinsey, accompanied by Clyde Martin, Pomeroy and Nowlis, made a trip to Ohio, where they collected histories from juvenile delinquents.

In the course of one such interview, Nowlis became visibly nervous and broke out in a sweat, unable to disguise his distaste for the subject’s behaviour. Word of his reaction got back to Kinsey, who apparently decided that the time had come to “educate” him. That evening Kinsey asked him to come to his hotel room, where Martin and Pomeroy had already assembled.

Decades later Nowlis grew tense and sombre when he related what had happened. Describing what he considered a blatant sexual overture, Nowlis declared: “Kinsey definitely seemed to be setting up some kind of homosexual activity.” As near as Nowlis could tell, his boss was offering to provide “seductive instruction” that would involve “learning plus pleasure”. At the time, he recalled, only one thought was racing through his head: “Jesus, I’m getting out of here!”

At this point, Nowlis politely declined, bolted for the door, and retreated to his room. Too upset to sleep, he spent the night pondering what to do. By sunrise he had made up his mind to leave Kinsey’s staff.

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Pedophile’s diary basis for Kinsey’s report on children (Washington Times, 980927)

Alfred Kinsey, whose groundbreaking “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was published 50 years ago, based much of his “scientific research” on the experiences of a sole predatory pedophile, according to new evidence.

Mr. Kinsey, credited as the father of the sexual revolution whose statistics and research ushered in the age of sexual liberation, based a key section of his book about the behavior of children on the experiences of a man who had abused at least 800 boys and girls.

That man, an U.S. government land examiner now identified as Rex King, was given the code name “Mr. Green.” He was contacted by Mr. Kinsey after he had heard that Mr. King had recorded in explicit detail his catalogue of abuse in a series of diaries, which he had buried in the Arizona desert.

Mr. Kinsey’s reliance on this pedophile was disclosed a year ago with the publication of a biography. But the content of the diaries, recorded over a 20-year period, were disclosed for the first time in August on British TV in a program called “Secret History.” It reports that Mr. Kinsey’s chapter on the sexual behavior of children was based solely on Mr. King’s experiences, after the sexologist had convinced himself that they were “vital data.”

In 1948, Mr. Kinsey published large sections of “Mr. Green’s” diaries verbatim in his book but, rather than presenting them as the claims of a child abuser, he put them forward as the first scientific “proof” that children were sexual beings from birth.

In what scientists now say totally discredits much of Mr. Kinsey’s research, he published --with no independent corroboration --”Mr. Green’s” detailed descriptions of how he abused hundreds of children. “Mr. Green” lent his analysis a quasi-scientific bent by timing children’s reactions with a stopwatch.

Mr. Kinsey, who died in 1956, concluded that children could, with the assistance of an experienced adult, enjoy sexual activity from the moment they were born. This claim appalled his critics.

Judith Reisman, an academic, said: “We have a whole chapter in which children have been tortured for this so-called scientific data. This data suggests that a minimum of 317, and a maximum of 1,200 children [were abused], with some boys being sexually raped around the clock.”

New evidence also suggests that Mr. King was active with children until 1954, more than 11 years after he met Mr. Kinsey --during which time the sexologist continued to collect his “data” for his research.

“If Green was sexually abusing children until 1954 --and Kinsey’s last book came out in 1953 --that would certainly mean that all the violence and all the abuse was going on throughout the entire time Kinsey was collecting this data,” Miss Reisman said.

“Based on Kinsey’s writings, he approved fully of adult-child sexual interactions. Not only that, he recommended that adults could effectively aid their children in better sexual lives by giving them ‘orgasms’ at a very early age.”

Vincent Nowlis, one of Mr. Kinsey’s original team, has spoken for the first time about his disgust with the sexologist’s methodology. He said: “When I saw the table on timed orgasms . . . carried out to a fraction of second, I thought it was an absurd page in science.”

But Paul Gebhard, a senior member of Mr. Kinsey’s team, defended the use of “Mr. Green’s” accounts of his illegal activities, saying: “We knew it was illegal, but it’s very important for people to study childhood sexuality. Green . . . contributed a fair amount to our knowledge of sexuality in children.”

The current director of the Kinsey Institute, John Bancroft, believes Mr. Kinsey was morally justified.

He said, “Unless we know about these behaviors, we’ll be in a much worse position than if we have no information about them --that was Kinsey’s view.

“Kinsey didn’t ask anybody to carry out any particular form of sexual behavior. He simply asked them to let him know of their experiences.”

Dr. Adrian Rogers, the director of the Conservative Family Institute, described Mr. Kinsey’s research as unbelievable and unscientific, “yet it was given an almost sacrosanct authority.”

Victoria Gillick, a leading moral rights campaigner in Britain, said that Mr. Kinsey was the “first of the sexual freak shows.

“He was the excuse that was needed as justification for sexualizing the young, a process that has continued to this day.”

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Pornography and the Integrity of Marriage: Part One (Christian Post, 050608)

The intersection of pornography and marriage is one of the most problematic issues among many couples today--including Christian couples. The pervasive plague of pornography represents one of the greatest moral challenges faced by the Christian church in the postmodern age. With eroticism woven into the very heart of the culture, celebrated in its entertainment, and advertised as a commodity, it is virtually impossible to escape the pervasive influence of pornography in our culture and in our lives.

At the same time, the problem of human sinfulness is fundamentally unchanged from the time of the Fall until the present. There is no theological basis for assuming that human beings are more lustful, more defenseless before sexual temptation, or more susceptible to the corruption of sexual desire than was the case in any previous generation.

Two distinctions mark the present age from previous eras. First, pornography has been so mainstreamed through advertising, commercial images, entertainment, and everyday life, that what would have been illegal just a few decades ago is now taken as common dress, common entertainment, and unremarkable sensuality. Second, explicit eroticism--complete with pornographic images, narrative, and symbolism--is now celebrated as a cultural good in some sectors of the society. Pornography, now reported to be the seventh-largest business in America, claims its own icons and public figures. Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, is considered by many Americans to be a model of entrepreneurial success, sexual pleasure, and a liberated lifestyle. The use of Hugh Hefner as a spokesman by a family-based hamburger chain in California indicates something of how pornography itself has been mainstreamed in the culture.

Growing out of those two developments is a third reality--namely, that increased exposure to erotic stimulation creates the need for ever-increased stimulation in order to demand notice, arouse sexual interest, and retain attention. In an odd twist, hyper-exposure to pornography leads to a lower net return on investment--which is to say that the more pornography one sees the more explicit the images must be in order to excite interest. As the postmodernist would explain, in order to “transgress,” pornographers must continue to press the envelope.

One further qualification must be added to this picture. Pornography is mainly, though not exclusively, a male phenomenon. That is to say, the users and consumers of pornography are overwhelmingly male--boys and men. In the name of women’s liberation, some pornography directed towards a female market has emerged in recent years. Nevertheless, this is decidedly a “niche” market in the larger pornographic economy. The fact remains that many men pay a great deal of money and spend a great deal of time looking at and looking for pornographic images in order to arouse themselves sexually.

Why is pornography such a big business? The answer to that question lies in two fundamental realities. First, the most fundamental answer to the question must be rooted in a biblical understanding of human beings as sinners. We must take into full account the fact that sin has corrupted every good thing in creation, and the effects of sin extend to every dimension of life. The sex drive, which should point toward covenant fidelity in marriage and all the goods associated with that most basic institution, has instead been corrupted to devastating effects. Rather than directed toward fidelity, covenantal commitment, procreation, and the wonder of a one-flesh relationship, the sex drive has been degraded into a passion that robs God of His glory, celebrating the sensual at the expense of the spiritual, and setting what God had intended for good on a path that leads to destruction in the name of personal fulfillment. The most important answer we can give to pornography’s rise in popularity is rooted in the Christian doctrine of sin. As sinners, we corrupt what God has perfectly designed for the good of His creatures and we have turned sex into a carnival of orgiastic pleasures. Not only have we severed sex from marriage, but as a society, we now look at marriage as an imposition, chastity as an embarrassment, and sexual restraint as a psychological hang-up. The doctrine of sin explains why we have exchanged the glory of God for Sigmund Freud’s concept of polymorphous perversity.

In addition to this, we must recognize that a capitalist free-market economy rewards those who produce a product that is both attractive and appetitive. The purveyors of pornography know that they succeed by directing their product to the lowest common denominator of humanity--a depraved sexual mind. Without the legal restraints common in previous generations, pornographers are now free to sell their goods virtually without restriction. Beyond this, they base their marketing plan on the assumption that an individual can be seduced into the use of pornography and then will be “hooked” into a pattern of dependence upon pornographic images and the need for ever-more explicit sexual material as a means towards sexual arousal.

The bottom line is that, in our sinfulness, men are drawn toward pornography and a frighteningly large percentage of men develop a dependence upon pornographic images for their own sexual arousal and for their concept of the good life, sexual fulfillment, and even meaning in life. Medical research can document the increased flow of endorphins, hormones that create pleasure in the brain, when sexual images are viewed. Given the law of reduced effect, greater stimulation is needed to keep a constant flow of endorphins to the brain’s pleasure centers. Without conscious awareness of what is happening, men are drawn into a pattern of deeper and deeper sin, more and more explicit pornography, and never-ending rationalizing, and all this started when the eye first began its perusal of the pornographic image and sexual arousal was its product.

The postmodern age has brought many wonders as well as incredible moral challenges. Often, technological achievement and moral complexity come hand in hand. This is most explicitly the case with the development of the Internet. For the first time in human history, a teenager in his bedroom has access to an innumerable array of pornographic websites, catering to every imaginable sexual passion, perversion, and pleasure. Today’s teenager, if not stranded on some desert island, is likely to know more about sex and its complexities than his father knew when he got married. Furthermore, what most generations have known only in the imagination--if at all--is now there for the viewing on websites, both commercial and free. The Internet has brought an interstate highway of pornography into every community, with exit ramps at every terminal or personal computer.

Pornography represents one of the most insidious attacks upon the sanctity of marriage and the goodness of sex within the one-flesh relationship. The celebration of debauchery rather than purity, the elevation of genital pleasure over all other considerations, and the corruption of sexual energy through an inversion of the self, corrupts the idea of marriage, leads to incalculable harm, and subverts marriage and the marital bond.

Tomorrow: The Meaning of Sex in Marriage

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Pornography and the Integrity of Marriage, Part Two (Christian Post, 050613)

The Christian worldview must direct all consideration of sexuality to the institution of marriage. Marriage is not merely the arena for sexual activity, it is presented in Scripture as the divinely-designed arena for the display of God’s glory on earth as a man and a wife come together in a one-flesh relationship within the marriage covenant. Rightly understood and rightly ordered, marriage is a picture of God’s own covenantal faithfulness. Marriage is to display God’s glory, reveal God’s good gifts to His creatures, and protect human beings from the inevitable disaster that follows when sexual passions are divorced from their rightful place.

The marginalization of marriage, and the open antipathy with which many in the culture elite approach the question of marriage, produces a context in which Christians committed to a marriage ethic appear hopelessly out of step with the larger culture. Whereas marriage is seen as a privatized contract to be made and unmade at will in the larger society, Christians must see marriage as an inviolable covenant made before God and man, that establishes both temporal and eternal realities.

Christians have no right to be embarrassed when it comes to talking about sex and sexuality. An unhealthy reticence or embarrassment in dealing with these issues is a form of disrespect to God’s creation. Whatever God made is good, and every good thing God made has an intended purpose that ultimately reveals His own glory. When conservative Christians respond to sex with ambivalence or embarrassment, we slander the goodness of God and hide God’s glory which is intended to be revealed in the right use of creation’s gifts.

Therefore, our first responsibility is to point all persons toward the right use of God’s good gifts and the legitimacy of sex in marriage as one vital aspect of God’s intention in marriage from the beginning.

Many individuals--especially young men--hold a false expectation of what sex represents within the marriage relationship. Since the male sex drive is largely directed towards genital pleasure, men often assume that women are just the same. While physical pleasure is certainly an essential part of the female experience of sex, it is not as focused on the solitary goal of genital fulfillment as is the case with many men.

A biblical worldview understands that God has demonstrated His glory in both the sameness and the differences that mark men and women, male and female. Alike made in the image of God, men and women are literally made for each other. The physicality of the male and female bodies cries out for fulfillment in the other. The sex drive calls both men and women out of themselves and toward a covenantal relationship which is consummated in a one-flesh union.

By definition, sex within marriage is not merely the accomplishment of sexual fulfillment on the part of two individuals who happen to share the same bed. Rather, it is the mutual self-giving that reaches pleasures both physical and spiritual. The emotional aspect of sex cannot be divorced from the physical dimension of the sex act. Though men are often tempted to forget this, women possess more and less gentle means of making that need clear.

Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed. As the Apostle Paul states, the husband and wife no longer own their own bodies, but each now belongs to the other. At the same time, Paul instructed men to love their wives even as Christ has loved the church. Even as wives are commanded to submit to the authority of their husbands, the husband is called to a far higher standard of Christ-like love and devotion toward the wife.

Therefore, when I say that a husband must regularly “earn” privileged access to the marital bed, I mean that a husband owes his wife the confidence, affection, and emotional support that would lead her to freely give herself to her husband in the act of sex.

God’s gift of sexuality is inherently designed to pull us out of ourselves and toward our spouse. For men, this means that marriage calls us out of our self-focused concern for genital pleasure and toward the totality of the sex act within the marital relationship.

Put most bluntly, I believe that God means for a man to be civilized, directed, and stimulated toward marital faithfulness by the fact that his wife will freely give herself to him sexually only when he presents himself as worthy of her attention and desire.

Perhaps specificity will help to illustrate this point. I am confident that God’s glory is seen in the fact that a married man, faithful to his wife, who loves her genuinely, will wake up in the morning driven by ambition and passion in order to make his wife proud, confident, and assured in her devotion to her husband. A husband who looks forward to sex with his wife will aim his life toward those things that will bring rightful pride to her heart, will direct himself to her with love as the foundation of their relationship, and will present himself to her as a man in whom she can take both pride and satisfaction.

Consider these two pictures. The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity, and is living in sexual integrity with his wife. In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, to talk, to lead, and to love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love. The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other. Neither uses sex as means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion. In this picture, there is no shame. Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man. He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.

By contrast, consider another man. This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage. Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification. Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal. Rather than taking satisfaction in his wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand. Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.

This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife. Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, and his physical appearance. He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire. Instead, his eyes roam across the images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no. There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.

These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love. In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about God.

Pornography is a slander against the goodness of God’s creation and a corruption of this good gift God has given his creatures out of his own self-giving love. To abuse this gift is to weaken, not only the institution of marriage, but the fabric of civilization itself. To choose lust over love is to debase humanity and to worship the false god Priapus in the most brazen form of modern idolatry.

The deliberate use of pornography is nothing less than the willful invitation of illicit lovers and objectified sex objects and forbidden knowledge into a man’s heart, mind, and soul. The damage to the man’s heart is beyond measure, and the cost in human misery will only be made clear on the Day of Judgment. From the moment a boy reaches puberty until the day he is lowered into the ground, every man will struggle with lust. Let us follow the biblical example and scriptural command that we make a covenant with our eyes lest we sin. In this society, we are called to be nothing less than a corps of the mutually accountable amidst a world that lives as if it will never be called to account.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Sexual Clash of Civilizations (Christian Post, 050611)

In the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain, prominent writer V. S. Naipaul declared the dawn of a “universal civilization.” According to Naipaul’s vision, the end of the Cold War was a signal that the entire planet was moving toward a single civilizational form that would transcend ethnic differences, ideological cleavages, and the fault lines that have separated cultures in the past.

As events were soon to demonstrate, this “universal civilization” did not come to pass. To the contrary, the fissures of our contemporary conflicts tend to fall precisely along civilizational lines. The great prophet of civilizational conflict is Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, whose seminal 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, set the terms for a debate that, in our post 9/11 world, is still very much on the front burner.

Rejecting the idea of any comprehensive global civilization, Huntington argued that a clash between civilizations is the primary cause of conflict on the global scene today. While acknowledging that virtually all civilizations hold certain shared beliefs, Huntington argues that these beliefs are minimal and clearly insufficient to avoid deadly conflict.

Huntington, who directs the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and also serves as chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, was director of security planning for the National Security Council during the Carter administration. His book and thesis set the table for a scholarly debate that raged on college campuses until it became a concern to millions on September 11, 2001.

Huntington argues that the West “is and will remain for years to come the most powerful civilization.” Yet, Huntington sees Western power declining relative to other civilizations. Even as the West seeks to assert its worldview and interests, non-Western societies challenge its power and dominance.

As Huntington sees the world, the current pattern is a global structure of seven or eight major civilizations, each competing for its own interest and values. As he explains, the leading countries of the world represent different civilizations as well as different interests.

The potential for conflict becomes clear: “The local conflicts most likely to escalate into broader wars are those between groups and state from different civilizations. The predominant patterns of political and economic development differ from civilization to civilization. The key issues on the international agenda involve difference among civilizations. Power is shifting from the long predominant west to non-Western civilizations. Global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational.” Other scholars and strategic thinkers have argued with details in Huntington’s analysis. Nevertheless, the basic structure of his argument is difficult to refute.

If any one civilizational conflict appears most likely to escalate into a broader threat to world peace, Huntington points to the clash between the West and the Islamic civilization.

As Bernard Lewis, another formidable scholar of world affairs, comments: “It should now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations--that perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the world-wide expansion of both.”

What Lewis identifies as “our secular present,” may represent the greatest flash point of conflict.

In a fascinating article published earlier this year in the journal Foreign Policy, researchers Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris argue that the real clash between civilizations is not about democracy--but sex.

Inglehart and Norris insist that some concept of democracy is claimed now by almost every government and regime. Peoples throughout the world claim to desire democracy and to want political freedom. Yet, at the same time, the actual content and character of democracy is very much up for grabs.

In “The True Clash of Civilizations,” Inglehart and Norris state their case: “Although nearly the entire world pays lip service to democracy, there is still no global consensus on the self-expression values--such as social tolerance, gender equality, freedom of speech, and interpersonal trust--that are crucial to democracy. Today, these divergent values constitute the real clash between Muslim societies and the West.”

Inglehart and Norris base their argument on data from two different periods covered by the World Values Survey [WVS], covering the years 1995-96 and 2000-2002. The WVS explores worldview beliefs and values in more than 70 countries. According to Inglehart and Norris, “the WVS is an investigation of sociocultural and political change that encompasses over 80 percent of the world’s population.”

According to the data from the WVS reports, culture determines values. But, where Huntington pointed to a worldwide clash over political values, Inglehart and Norris argue that “the real fault line between the West and Islam ...concerns gender equality and sexual liberalization.” Or, as these researchers assert, “the values separating the two cultures have more to do with eros than demos.”

The clearest evidence for this fundamental clash is seen in the radical difference between the sexual mores found in the modern West and those of the Islamic world. As has been well documented in the rantings of Osama Bin Laden, many Muslims see the sexual permissiveness of American culture [joined by the rest of the West] as a sign of a terminal sickness at the heart of western civilization.

On issues ranging from marriage to divorce to abortion to homosexuality and to the role of men and women, a vast chasm now separates the Islamic world from post-Christian societies in the West.

Inglehart and Norris also point to a basic conflict over the role of religious authority within the civilizations. The separation of religious and secular authorities in the secularized West is not a pattern admired by the Islamic masses or their leaders. The decline of Christianity’s binding authority in Europe and North America is all the evidence many Muslims need to know that western-style democracy is not a future they will chose.

This thesis of a sexual clash of civilizations points to realities far more complicated that the clash between the secular West and Islam. The furor over the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson as the first openly-homosexual bishop in a major denomination [Episcopal Church, USA] reveals a sexual clash of civilizations within Christianity itself. The leaders of the opposition movement against the normalization of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion are from what is known as the “Global South”, encompassing Africa, southern Asia, and much of South America.

At the same time, this conflict is about more than geography. Christian believers committed to biblical orthodoxy throughout North America and western Europe, though dwindling in number, still hold tenaciously to biblical morality and patterns of sex and marriage--even against the liberalizing tendencies of some branches of institutional Christianity.

Perhaps the most interesting civilizational conflict is found at the fault-lines between orthodox Christianity and the secular world. When it comes to the destruction of the family, the undermining of marriage, and the unleashing of eros into sexual anarchy, the “true believers” remaining in Christendom have found what amounts to a bridge too far.

Inglehart and Norris are undoubtedly right when pointing to a sexual clash of civilizations as an important global reality. What they missed is a sexual clash of civilizations found right here at home, where millions of Americans share a fundamental hope for democracy, but inhabit different worlds when it comes to sexual morality.

You do not have to go around the world to find a sexual clash of civilizations. Just turn on your television.

This article was originally published on November 12, 2003. New daily columns will resume on August 1, 2005.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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A New Look at Lust: The Secular View (Christian Post, 050718)

When philosopher Simon Blackburn was invited to present a lecture on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, he feared he would be asked to address sloth. “I did worry,” he said, “not because of unfamiliarity with the vice, but because of doubts about having the energy to find something to say about it.”

As it turned out, Blackburn was not invited to speak about sloth. Instead, he was invited to address the issue of lust, and on that topic he found enough energy to say a good deal about a vice that has driven humanity throughout the ages.

Lust, Blackburn argues, “gets a bad press.” His project, based on his lecture sponsored by the New York Public Library and Oxford University Press, is to rescue lust from misunderstandings and historical abuse. He does acknowledge that lust has a bad reputation. “It’s the fly in the ointment, the black sheep of the family, the ill-bread, trashy cousin of upstanding members like love and friendship. It lives on the wrong side of the tracks, lumbers around elbowing its way into too much of our lives, and blushes when it comes into company.”

Blackburn is a philosopher of wide reputation who has taught at the University of North Carolina, Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge. He is an excellent writer who combines both style and wit. In recent years, he has written Think and Being Good, two works intended to introduce philosophical subjects to a general readership. In those books, Blackburn presents a fundamentally secular understanding of life and a rather dispassionate engagement with philosophical and moral issues.

In his new book, Lust, Blackburn presents an updated vision of lust as sexual desire for its own sake. If lust now has a bad press, Blackburn wants to be its public relations agent.

Lust is inevitably compared with love. Blackburn understands the quandary, noting: “We smile at lovers holding hands in the park. But we wrinkle our noses if we find them acting out their lust under the bushes. Love receives the world’s applause. Lust is furtive, ashamed, and embarrassed. Love pursues the good of the other, with self-control, concern, reason, and patience. Lust pursues its own gratification, headlong, impatient of any control, immune to reason.”

As a moral philosopher, Blackburn understands that love requires knowledge, reason, and time, combined with truth and trust. Lust, on the other hand, is symbolized by “a trail of clothing in the hallway” that represents a loss of reason, self-control and discipline.

Needless to say, lust has been a part of human desire and human experience ever since the Fall. Blackburn, who provides no evidence of even believing in anything like sin, sees lust as one of the greatest moral challenges facing modern individuals. “Living with lust,” he says, “is like living shackled to a lunatic.” Frankly, it’s hard to improve upon that description.

Much of the difficulty in addressing the issue of lust in our modern times can be traced to the highly sexualized character of contemporary culture. Even if lust is reducible to sexual desire (rather than desire for power, money, or other goods), it is increasingly difficult to separate lust from the ordering of everyday life. Sex has lost its public shamefulness, moral boundaries have been pulled down in the name of moral “progress,” and overt sexuality now drives much of our entertainment, advertising, and cultural conversation. How is lust to be separated from all that?

Blackburn defines lust as “the enthusiastic desire, the desire that infuses the body, for sexual activity and its pleasures for their own sake.” That definition is more sophisticated than may at first appear. Blackburn combines powerful concepts like enthusiasm, desire, sexual activity, and pleasure, but focuses his definition of lust on the desire for sexual pleasure for its own sake. This elevation of sexual desire, stripped of moral context and boundaries, well represents lust as it appears in our contemporary world.

The ancients identified the Seven Deadly Sins as pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. The entire panoply of human sinfulness was, they believed, traced to one of these root sins and the deadly effects that follow. The Christian church embraced the notion of the Seven Deadly Sins and joined them to the Seven Heavenly Virtues, identified as prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity. Presumably, temperance was designed to limit lust, but lust appears to have gained the upper hand.

Tracing the idea of lust through Western thought, Blackburn rejects the common association of lust with excess. Lust is not really about excessive desire, argues Blackburn, but rather a desire for sexual pleasure as an end in itself. Lust met disaster in the form of the Stoics who feared a life ruled by passion rather than reason. The Roman philosopher Seneca popularized a Stoic philosophy in adopting his motto as “nothing for pleasure’s sake.”

Seneca argued that lust was to be overcome for the survival of humanity, even as sexual was to be directed only toward “the continuation of the human race.” Of course, Seneca made this argument about lust in a letter he wrote to his mother, so it is difficult to know how seriously to take his description. Nevertheless, Blackburn takes him at his word.

But if the Stoics represented a significant setback for lust, this deadly sin met its deadliest opponent in Christianity. Blackburn describes this as “the Christian panic” that directed moral scrutiny to sexual pleasure itself, not just to what might be considered “excess.”

Predictably, Blackburn directs his attention to Augustine, the fourth-century bishop whose views on sex have influenced at least fifteen centuries of Christian thought. Augustine, whose youth had been given to sexual excess, was, after his conversion, determined to deny that sexual pleasure was a part of the Creator’s design for human sexuality, even from the beginning. Had the Fall not occurred, Augustine argued, sex would be a purely rational affair, untainted by any physical pleasure. Copulation would be, in effect, just like shaking hands.

Later, as represented in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the Church argued that sexuality was defined both by Scriptural command and the revelation found in nature. This additional dimension of lust was directed at the “unnatural” desires evident in much of humanity.

Blackburn’s purpose is to overcome all pessimism towards lust. He even defends the use of pornography, which can, he argues, point towards the higher purposes of sex, rather than the lower degradations. He takes on the evolutionary psychologists, arguing that their naturalistic view of sex is too mechanistic. But his main effort is to overcome what he sees as Christianity’s pessimism towards sexual desire as an end in itself. In effect, Blackburn’s effort is to deny that lust should be considered a sin at all, deadly or otherwise.

Blackburn’s short book does not answer all the questions he raises. Even as he attacks Christian “pessimism” and calls for lust to be accepted as a universal human reality, Blackburn does not call for the removal of all moral boundaries on human sexuality.

In the end, Lust is a fascinating little treatise offered by a prominent intellectual, safely removed from the hard moral decisions of everyday life. His view of lust is not only sanitized, it is more deeply rooted in literature than in life. Perhaps this is due to Blackburn’s profession as an academic philosopher, or perhaps it is because a modern secular philosopher can talk about sex only in the context of irony.

The Christian worldview finds congruence with Blackburn on this essential point--that lust is best described as a desire for sexual pleasure as an end in itself. Augustine aside, there is no biblical reason to suspect that sex before the Fall would have been devoid of physical pleasure. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that sexual pleasure is one of God’s sweetest gifts to his human creatures. Sexual desire--and the promise of sexual pleasure--is meant to draw us into marriage, toward children, and into fidelity and responsibility. Lust is sinful precisely to the extent that sexual desire and passion are stripped form this moral context. In a God-centered worldview, nothing on earth can be seen as an end in itself--nothing is to be understood as existing for its own sake.

Sexual desire for its own sake is sexual desire stripped of the Creator’s glory and stolen from its moral context. What Blackburn celebrates, Christianity rightly condemns. Intentionally or not, Simon Blackburn has put lust back on the line for debate, and his lecture-turned-essay is about as thoughtful a secular defense of lust we are likely to find. There is, of course, an altogether different understanding of lust, but it is not to be expected from a secular worldview. Christianity alone can explain why lust--and sin in every form--is so deadly.

Tomorrow: Another Look at Lust--The Christian View

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 14, 2004. New daily columns will resume on August 1, 2005.]

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Another Look at Lust: A Christian View (Christian Post, 050719)

Joshua Harris takes lust very seriously--so seriously in fact that he has written a new book that takes the issue head-on. In Not Even A Hint: Guarding Your Heart Against Lust, Harris provides a candid appraisal of lust as a challenge for the Christian believer.

According to Harris, lust is wrongly directed desire. “To lust is to want what you don’t have and weren’t meant to have,” he explains. “Lust goes beyond attraction, and appreciation of beauty, or even a healthy desire for sex--it makes these desires more important than God. Lust wants to go outside God’s guidelines to find satisfaction.”

Joshua Harris’ approach is counter-cultural from the start. Most Americans reject the very notion that there are any pleasures that we are not “meant to have.” Our society has institutionalized lust, weaving the patterns of illicit sexual desire throughout the culture’s interplay of media, entertainment, status, and advertising. Lust is now part and parcel of the modern vision of the good life.

Harris argues that “lust may be the defining struggle for this generation.” Previous generations faced the moral challenges of war, poverty, and pestilence, but this generation is absorbed in a continual cycle of lust and sexual gratification.

A best-selling author, Harris is known to many young Christians through his works on biblical courtship and marriage. In I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl, he helped to educate a generation of evangelicals about the biblical notion of courtship as preparation for marriage.

Senior Pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Harris combines pastoral experience with keen spiritual insight. In his earlier works, he focused on the dangers inherent in the conventional pattern of dating that has become the norm among young Americans. This system of one-on-one dating between young men and women is morally suspect because it places the couple in a context of premature sexual intimacy. The escalating rate of premarital sex among young Americans--including many who claim to be Christians--is sufficient evidence to give Harris’ arguments credence. Furthermore, he roots his argument in a more biblical vision of courtship as intentional preparation for marriage.

Why choose now to write on lust? “Writing two books on the topic of dating and courtship in the last five years has helped me to see just how serious this problem is for a broad spectrum of believers,” Harris explains. “I’ve received thousands of letters and e-mails from people of all ages around the world who are struggling with sexual impurity.” As Harris sees it, the problem is deadly serious. “The stories are heartbreaking and they’re from both women and men. They’re stories of small compromises that lead to serous sin and regret. They’re stories of secret and anguishing battles with premarital sex, with pornography, and with homosexuality. They’re stories from those who once swore to remain pure and now can’t believe the depths of impurity to which they’ve descended.” With lust now standing at the center of American culture, celebrated as a vital part of the good life, Harris sounds like an absolute extremist when it comes to the seriousness of lust. What is God’s standard when it comes to lust? How much lust is allowable in the Christian life? Harris’ answer is the essence of simplicity: “Nada. Zip. Zero.” Just in case you missed his point, Harris goes on to insist that lust has no place at all in the Christian life--not even a hint.

Why such a high standard? “I’m not saying this to be dramatic,” Harris insists. “I really believe it’s what God calls each Christian to regardless of what kind of culture we live in or how old we are. And its not because God is heavy-handed, or strict for the sake of strictness. Its because He loves us--and because we are His.” Joshua Harris is an honest man, and he brings that honesty to Not Even A Hint. He confesses his own struggle with lust as a young man, and allows readers--both male and female--to identify with the depth of his moral and spiritual struggle.

When addressing lust, defined as an illicit sexual desire, the chief difficulty we face is in defining the distinction between lust and a healthy sexual desire. Harris admits the difficulty, and he attempts to draw the distinction by insisting that lust is not being attracted to someone nor is it a sudden eruption of sexual temptation. The essence of lust is the enjoyment of the illicit desire, the pleasure of temptation prolonged.

Nevertheless, even innocent desire can turn into lust if given the slightest invitation. As Harris explains, “A sexual thought that pops into your mind isn’t necessarily lust, but it can quickly become lust if it’s entertained and dwelled on. An excitement for sex in marriage isn’t sin, but it can be tainted by lust if it’s not tempered with patience and restraint.” Clear enough?

The human sex drive is not the product of biological evolution or cosmic accident. Our Creator made us sexual beings and put a strong sex drive within us in order to drive us toward marriage and all the goods that are united in the marital union. As fallen creatures, we need the guiding assistance of the sex drive to pull us out of lethargy and self-centeredness into a fruitful and faithful relationship with a spouse. In making us male and female, God intended for men to be sexually attracted to women and for women to be sexually attracted to men, but this attraction is not merely a matter of mutuality between two genders, but is intended to direct us toward a mutuality of two persons, united in the covenant of marriage.

Within marriage, sexual pleasure and sexual passion are essential parts of the relational glue that holds the union together, points towards procreation, and establishes an intimacy described in the Bible as a one-flesh relationship. Joshua Harris understands this, and he affirms that “God gave us our drives so that we would drive toward something.”

So far, so good. The deadly problem of lust arises when the sex drive is directed toward something less than or other than the purity of marriage. As philosopher Simon Blackburn argues, lust is sexual passion and pleasure defined as an end in itself. Blackburn’s secular argument leads to an open embrace of lust as an act of self-definition. Harris’s Christian understanding leads him to see lust as a reminder of the believer’s need for self-denial. He understands the fact that we live in a pornographic age and in a society driven by lust. Given these realities, he proposes a “custom-tailored plan” for every individual. With the complex and immediately available seductions of pornography and sexual enticement, Harris understands that every individual is likely to be faced with a different pattern of temptation. As he acknowledges, “there can be no ‘one size fits all’ approach to combating lust.” That being the case, the Christian is required to be honest about the pattern of temptation he or she faces. Harris deals with lust as packaged and presented in books, the Internet, the mailbox, and the general context of every day life. He points to the need for accountability and ruthless honesty about lust and its consequences.

Having been there himself, Joshua also knows that the struggle against lust cannot be won by mere personal determination and the application of self-control. Furthermore, legalism is no antidote to lust. “We can’t save ourselves and we can’t change ourselves,” Joshua explains. “Only faith in Christ can rescue us from the prison of our sin. And only the Spirit can transform us. Our job is to invite His work, participate with it, and submit more and more of our thoughts, actions, and desires to Him.”

Not Even A Hint is a ground-breaking book of Christian candor and biblical honesty. Once again, Joshua Harris has given young Christians a great gift--a book that combines Scriptural wisdom with a sense of deep urgency. He writes with passion and credibility, and this author does not duck the hardest issues.

Simon Blackburn thinks that lust is a virtue, and many Christians fool themselves into thinking that lust is no real problem. Joshua Harris has offered an antidote to those tragic misperceptions. Lust is not only a vice, it is a sin that ignites yet other sins. Not Even a Hint is a sober-minded antidote to this sex-saturated age.

[Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 15, 2004. New daily columns will resume on August 1, 2005.]

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Age of Polymorphous Perversity, Part One (Christian Post, 050920)

The sexual issues now confronting our nation--from the breakdown of the family to same-sex marriage--are really pieces of a much larger puzzle. In order to understand what is happening, one must look carefully at the entire picture, the entire trajectory of Western civilization over the past century. What we face today are not merely individual, isolated issues, but rather a massive social transformation which has not happened by accident and which will not break apart on its own.

In 1930, the esteemed historian Christopher Dawson wrote this: “Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis, which is essentially different from everything that has previously been experienced. Other societies in the past have changes their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced a prospect of a fundamental alteration in the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests.”

From the vantage point of 1930, Dawson looked forward to the rest of the 20th century, and he understood what was happening. He was a prophet.

In order to understand the shift that Dawson foresaw and that ultimately took place, it is necessary to look back to 1909, when Sigmund Freud released his understanding of human sexuality. Trying to understand something as powerful as sex, Freud turned to what he called the “infantile” stage of human development, and identified the leading characteristic of infantile sexuality as polymorphous perversity. Freud explained: “What makes an infant characteristically different from every other stage of human life is that the child is polymorphously perverse, is ready to demonstrate any kind of sexual behavior, with any kind of pleasure, without any kind of restraint.” He then explained how “civilization” emerges only after this innate, polymorphous perversity is restrained by psychological repression, social form, and custom. Such restraint, Freud felt, was inevitable and indeed necessary, for procreation is necessary for the continuation of the race, and therefore heterosexual coupling was absolutely essential for civilization itself.

Even if we finally reject Freud’s theory, it is crucial that we understand its influence. Freud is no doubt one of the ideological horsemen of the twentieth-century apocalypse, but even he was outdone by those who came after him.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Herbert Marcuse revisited Freud in his book Eros and Civilization, mixing his theories with those of Marx in order to develop a theory of sexuality as liberation. The whole problem, Marcuse thought, was the very restraint that Freud believed was inevitable and necessary, the repression that Freud saw leading to civilization itself. According to Marcuse, the only way to achieve liberation is to undo that repression, to reverse that restraint, and thus to unleash in society itself that infantile stage of pure sexuality--of polymorphous perversity.

When Eros and Civilization appeared in the 1960’s, it received much attention on college campuses--where such ideas are always met with an enthusiastic audience--but the rest of the culture remained largely unaware of, and untroubled by, the assault that had begun to take place upon the very foundations of civilization itself. Now, in the year 2005, all one must do is look at the daily newspaper or review the events of the week, and it quickly becomes obvious that this ideology of polymorphous perversity is inch by inch, if not yard by yard, gaining ground. The very idea of normality, of fixed institutions, of heterosexuality, of something as basic as marriage being a heterosexual union, is now very much under attack, subverted by the culture and marginalized by cultural elites.

What we now face is the subversion of humanity’s most basic categories and institutions--gender, marriage, and family. In the eyes of all too many in our culture, gender is merely a plastic social construct. Indeed, in the postmodern world, all realities are plastic and all principles are liquid. Everything can be changed. Nothing is fixed. All truth is relative, all truth is socially constructed, and anything which is constructed can also be deconstructed in order to liberate.

We are now told that even gender should be seen as a continuum. This means that human beings are no longer categorized as male and female, but as any number of chosen gender options. Furthermore, gender is flexible--at least according to the postmodern prophets of liberation. You can always change your gender if you do not like the gender you were assigned at birth. Interestingly, some surgeons are now even reversing gender transformation surgeries they had earlier performed.

All this represents a denial of gender as a part of the goodness of God’s creation. According to the biblical account of creation, human beings were created as male and female, and these categories establish the very basis for human order. This is now dismissed as inherently oppressive and intolerant.

For years, the ideological elites have believed that marriage is repressive and inhibiting. It is, they say, merely a product of social evolution, an institution that developed because civilization needed a way to protect children and to encourage child rearing. But of course, that which has evolved can always evolve further, and the next step, we are told, is to move beyond marriage altogether. This was the goal of the cultural elites in the latter half of the 20th century, and we must admit that they have made great strides toward accomplishing this objective.

If any one institution in human life was most subverted in the 20th century, it was without doubt the institution of marriage. Assaulted by divorce, by lifestyle, by media, by law, by politics, and by custom, marriage was undermined in its very essence. Of course, the attack also necessarily took its toll on the family as well. The very idea of the family as a fixed unit--a husband and wife and their children, together with their extended family--is now seen as an archaic, antiquarian, and intolerant institution, one which must be undone in order that humanity may be liberated from oppression.

The subversion of marriage and the family has extended to law and morality, to authority and to custom. The very habits of human life--the customs and traditions on which civilization is grounded--are now being reversed, marginalized, and discarded in an effort to eliminate all norms by normalizing the abnormal. For those whose agenda is to undermine Judeo-Christian morality and to disconnect Western civilization from biblical norms, there is no better strategy than to subvert marriage, family, and sexuality, and unleash on society an age and culture of polymorphous perversity.

[Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of an address Dr. Mohler gave earlier in 2005. This is Part One of four. Tomorrow: What Kind of Strategy Has Been Employed? ]

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Age of Polymorphous Perversity, Part Two (Christian Post, 050921)

For the last half century, the goal of America’s cultural elites has been to disconnect Western society from Judeo-Christian morality. By subverting the prevailing norms of marriage, the family, and sexuality, they hoped to establish a new age and culture of polymorphous perversity. The massive social transformation that is now taking place in America--the jettisoning of tradition, the overthrowing of fixed institutions, the normalizing of the abnormal--has not come about by accident. It is the result of a comprehensive strategy intended to change the way people think at every conceivable level.

First, there is a psychological strategy. We live in a therapeutic age in which every movement must be presented within a psychological framework. The strategy of those who push the agenda of polymorphous perversity has been to define sexuality as merely a matter of self-conscious orientation. When the question is changed from what individuals do to what individuals are as a psychological construct, the moral equation is absolutely transformed. The idea that personal autonomy is at the very core of what it means to be human is now ubiquitous in the therapeutic culture, and thus the most important realities here have become autonomy, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Anything that represses the uninhibited demonstration of the inner yearnings of the self is considered unhealthy and repressive, and should therefore be illegal and even immoral, marginalized and eradicated.

Second, there is a medical strategy. Anything that can be “psychologized” can also be “medicalized.” In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the organization’s official list of mental illnesses. In other words, one day homosexuality was considered to be a mental disorder, the next day it was not. But of course this is medicine based on ideology, rather than on science. The decision by the APA to normalize homosexuality did not come as a result of unquestioned scientific studies, nor because someone in a laboratory suddenly discovered that homosexuality was in fact normal. To the contrary, the APA’s decision came because special interest groups forced the change upon them, and the physicians willingly surrendered.

Do not underestimate the significance of that decision. It is not merely that homosexuality was considered aberrant in one moment and normal in the next. It is that believing homosexuality to be wrong and aberrant was normal and acceptable in one moment, but a symptom of mental illness and bigotry in the next. This was a complete moral revolution, and yet it went unnoticed by most Americans.

We now face a new concept of normal that has been foisted upon society by medical authorities, and which has brought about a great reversal in moral thinking. The belief that heterosexuality is normative--once a given of healthy and stable moral thinking--is now seen to be unhealthy and repressive. On the other hand, homosexuality--once considered unhealthy and wrong--is accepted as a perfectly legitimate “alternative lifestyle.”

Not only is there a psychological strategy and a medical strategy, but there is also a political strategy. The late 20th century saw the development of special interest politics, in which every group with a special agenda formed itself into an organization, hired lobbyists, and went at the political process with gusto. Protest was the first step, and political action was its aftermath.

When we think about this political strategy, we must raise an interesting question--just how successful has it been? Amazingly, of all of the strategies we will discuss, this political strategy has actually been the least effective for the homosexual movement--and for the age of polymorphous perversity as a whole. Why? Because the American people simply are not buying it. Americans are often asleep as fundamental changes are taking place, but when they face an actual choice at the ballot box, overwhelmingly they tend to choose to normalize the normal, rather than the abnormal. Think about the eleven different constitutional amendments passed by various states on November 2, 2004, identifying marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and you will begin to understand why the proponents of polymorphous perversity have been so frustrated in the political realm.

Of course, with the failure of the political strategy to deliver a satisfactory outcome, the age of polymorphous perversity has leaned largely upon a legal strategy. This was made possible by the judicial usurpation of politics. As former Judge Robert Bork has so prophetically stated, we now face a tyranny of judges with an ideology of judicial activism, who treat the law as a playground for social innovation, social revolution, and ideological subversion.

As Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon has also very insightfully noted, most of the Left’s language in the legal arena now comes in terms of what she identifies as “rights talk.” Everything is about rights. Right and wrong no longer have any meaning as categories in the law. According to the critical legal theory now being taught in law schools, there is no right or wrong, but only competing rights. And of course, many of these rights competing in the legal arena are invented rights, supposedly discovered in the penumbras and emanations of the United States Constitution.

This legal strategy has been extremely effective, of course. From the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to the Lawrence v. Texas decision of 2003, the Supreme Court has been a willing accomplice of the Left in bringing about social and moral revolution. In his scathing dissent from the majority’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision amounted to nothing less than the end of all morals legislation in the United States of America. Given the specific arguments Justice Anthony Kennedy made in the majority opinion, no legislation based on morality would ever pass constitutional muster again. In one decision in the year 2003, the United States Supreme Court swept morality off the table of America’s public life.

These psychological, medical, political, and legal strategies have all played their parts in furthering the culture of polymorphous perversity. By redefining homosexuality as normal in psychological and medical terms, and by undermining all morals legislation, cultural revolutionaries have gained great political momentum. However, these four strategies do not exhaust the tactical arsenal at the disposal of these revolutionaries. Education and theology have also been conscripted into their service.

[Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of an address Dr. Mohler gave earlier in 2005. This is Part Two of four. Tomorrow: The Educational and Theological Strategies.]

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Age of Polymorphous Perversity, Part Three (Christian Post, 050922)

The transformation now taking place in Western culture has been fueled by a multi-pronged, comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining the traditional foundations of Western civilization. In psychology, medicine, politics, and law, cultural revolutionaries have gone on the offensive. Their assault has not been confined to those fronts alone. The postmodern prophets of polymorphous perversity have also conscripted education and even theology into their service.

Besides the psychological, medical, political, and legal strategies, there is also an educational strategy directed at the schools and at the young. The goal here is to reach the young and ultimately to separate them from their parents, freeing them from parental authority and parental teaching. Earlier in the 20th century, it was John Dewey who first argued that society ought to act decisively to free children from the repressive prejudices of their parents. His philosophy largely won the day, and that is where we now stand. Elementary schools have essentially become laboratories of social engineering. In fact, groups like the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) have mobilized to influence the curriculum of the schools with the goal of changing young minds. By introducing their programs, literature, and media into elementary school classrooms, they hope and intend to infect the next generation with this ideology of polymorphous perversity.

Take a look at the artwork now found in elementary school textbooks. Look at who is holding hands. Look at who is embracing. The nuclear family--Mom, Dad, Dick, and Jane--is no longer to be taken for granted. If the agents of polymorphous perversity have their way, Dick and Jane will now be raised with two moms, or two dads, or any other conceivable “family arrangement.” The important thing is for children to be disabused of the notion--brought on by their parents’ irrational prejudices--that marriage and family are somehow normatively heterosexual.

This strategy is only accelerated in middle and high schools. There, the ideological induction is radically increased with mechanisms such as comprehensive sex education. Comprehensive, of course, does not refer to a deeper understanding of the nature of human sexuality. Nor does it point to a deeper comprehension of the moral issues at stake. Sex education is comprehensive only in the sense that nothing is deemed out of bounds, including sexual technique and contraceptive advice. Morally, anything goes--so long as it is personally fulfilling.

School-based clinics are another tool of the age of polymorphous perversity. Once again, children are separated from the authority and teaching of their parents, and shuffled off to clinics where they are offered all manner of “assistance”--from sexual counseling to contraceptives. Often this happens without any parental knowledge at all, much less parental notification or permission.

Other special programs are directed to middle and high school students in such a way that most parents have no idea what their children are actually learning. Rarely do these events have the word “sex” in them, and only by mistake are they ever packaged in such a way as to trigger parents’ concern. Instead, they are advertised as “special emphasis weeks” focusing on diversity, tolerance, and difference. Of course, anything labeled “difference week” will undoubtedly be much more “different” than you think different can be!

Even textbooks reflect these changes. The agents of polymorphous perversity have made public school curricula the object of their strategic concern, and it is increasingly common for teenagers and even younger children to read books categorized under “young adult literature.” Many of these books are nothing less than pornographic. They are worldview evangelism for the age of polymorphous perversity, and they have found their way even onto the shelves of many school libraries.

The college and university level, for its part, is now a circus of sexual revolution. Considering this, author Paul Berman once said: “It is now forbidden anymore to forbid.” But the revolution is not strictly from the bottom up. It is also being pressed from the top down, with increasing numbers of colleges and universities even offering programs in gay and lesbian studies. All this is an ideological engine for placing within the university structure, within the faculty, and within the curriculum, a seed of sexual revolution that will ultimately normalize the abnormal and abnormalize the normal. Furthermore, anyone who is not “with it,” is not only sick and pitiable, but is in fact dangerous to the body politic--backward, ignorant, and repressive.

This has led in many university cultures to a specific targeting of Christian organizations. At places like Tufts University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and some Ivy League institutions, there have been cases in which Christian organizations have been told that they must allow practicing homosexuals to be officers in their organization, or they will be barred from campus and removed from recognition as an official student group. In other words, a Christian organization may remain on campus only so long as it forfeits Christian morality--all in the name of diversity and tolerance.

There is also a cultural strategy focused on the elite centers of American culture. The media industry, the entertainment industry, music, and even advertising have essentially become the bulletin board dissemination service for the age of polymorphous perversity. Many Christians would be shocked to see how some companies who carefully manage their wholesome image, advertise to the homosexual community. Many of these are corporations whose names we know and whose products we buy, but they present an entirely different face when extending themselves to the culture of polymorphous perversity.

It is no exaggeration to note that Hollywood, with very rare exceptions, is simply given over to this culture. In fact, Hollywood’s movies have become the principal means whereby the culture of polymorphous perversity is mainstreamed to the entire nation. So even though it might appear from electoral maps that this polymorphous perversity is confined to the coasts and a few other urban areas, the reality is that this philosophy of liberation reaches into every community and into every home by means of entertainment, music, movies, and advertising.

Finally, there is a theological strategy. The single greatest obstacle to the victory of the culture of polymorphous perversity is the Judeo-Christian heritage. The greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexuality is the Bible. Therefore, the cultural revolutionaries have implemented a strategy to completely transform the understanding of sexuality as handed down in the scriptures and as understood by the Christian church throughout the centuries. What has emerged from this subversion of theology is two rival traditions, two religions, each claiming to be Christian. One of these “Christianities” is no longer based upon biblical authority, no longer committed to the great doctrines of the faith, and no longer committed to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Yet it continues to bear the name Christian and continues to claim that its adherents have not in fact abandoned the authority of scripture.

The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, they claim, was not homosexuality, but inhospitality. This, however, is a recklessly subversive argument. It simply ignores the clear import of the story in favor of advancing a cause. What about those passages in Leviticus which condemn homosexual acts? What they suggest, according to the cultural revolutionaries, is that homosexual acts are sinful only insofar as they are specifically committed by persons who are heterosexual. A similar argument is made about Paul’s reasoning in Romans 1. Paul had no understanding of our modern idea of sexual orientation, the argument goes. Nevertheless, his teachings are still useful because they remind us that a person should follow his or her orientation: To violate one’s sexual orientation would be a sin against nature--not nature itself, but one’s own nature.

Yet it seems clear from Romans 1 that the apostle Paul had a pretty good idea of sexual orientation. In fact, Paul very clearly indicts sinful sexual orientation, for he deals not only with sexual activity, but with the passions that lead to such activity. “Men with men,” he says, “leaving the natural use of the woman and burning with desire one for the other.” The Bible simply leaves no room for equivocation.

As the late Elizabeth Achtemeier of Union Theological Seminary once argued, if there is any one thing that is plainly revealed in Scripture, it is Scripture’s absolute condemnation of homosexuality in every form and in every context. There is no room for negotiation. If homosexuality is to be squared with biblical teaching, it will only be through subverting the entire authority of Scripture and by setting up a rival version of Christianity.

In all these areas--psychological, medical, legal, educational, cultural, and even theological--the age of polymorphous perversity has made great strides toward entrenching itself in the Western mind. The great question is whether our civilization can survive this assault. And the answer, of course, is no--not unless there is a fast recovery of the biblical worldview.

[Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of an address Dr. Mohler gave earlier in 2005. This is Part Three of four. Tomorrow: Can Civilization Survive?]

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Age of Polymorphous Perversity, Part Four (Christian Post, 050923)

Revolutions are fueled by ideas. The cultural upheaval represented by the age of polymorphous perversity has been grounded primarily in the ideas of three individuals: Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, and Michel Foucault. To understand the force and speed with which this philosophy of polymorphous perversity has impacted and changed the culture, one must first understand the ideas which undergird it.

Margaret Mead is considered one of the founders of anthropology in America. After a research visit to the Pacific Islands, Mead wrote a book in 1928 entitled Coming of Age in Samoa. The book, which essentially launched Mead’s career as an anthropologist, argued that Samoan adolescence--unlike Western adolescence--was a time of smooth transition from childhood to adulthood because Samoans tended to enjoy casual sex for many years before they settled into marriage. The bottom line, according to Mead, was that promiscuity is healthy. History has proven, however, that Mead was a fraud. Her entire project was based on falsehood and misinformation. Five years after Mead’s death in 1978, Derek Freeman published a book entitled Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth in which he challenged and refuted every one of Mead’s major claims. Returning to Samoa to question the actual subjects of Mead’s research, he found that the young women to whom Mead had spoken had simply lied to her about their promiscuity. Even so, the book had an enormous influence on American culture and attitudes toward sex and marriage for more than fifty years.

Another intellectual engine of the age of polymorphous perversity is Alfred Kinsey. Quite frankly, Kinsey was one of the most influential sexual deviants of the 20th century. In fact, he stands as a symbol of everything that went wrong during that period. His book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, prompted a revolution by providing a pseudo-scientific cover to those who were pushing the age of polymorphous perversity. Kinsey simply pushed Margaret Mead’s conclusion one step further. If Mead taught that promiscuity is healthy, Kinsey argued that perversity itself is healthy. Sexual deviance is simply to be celebrated.

Finally, we turn to consider Michel Foucault. Probably the least well-known of this trio, Foucault was a dominant influence in the American academy--a French philosopher who died after being infected with AIDS in the gay bars of San Francisco, California. Foucault, one of the dominant figures in postmodern thought, taught that sex is everything and that the only way to be liberated is to sexualize every dimension of life in the direction of polymorphous perversity. In essence, Foucault argued that sexuality is itself a modern invention and that one of modern society’s central ambitions has been to institutionalize sexual repression. Though he died in 1984, Foucault is undoubtedly still one of the most influential persons on American college campuses today,

Fueled by the ideas of Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, and Michel Foucault, this age of polymorphous perversity is now upon us. Moral relativism is the order of the day, and it all begs the question, Can civilization survive? The answer is, quite simply, “no.” Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself. Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution--all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity.

Looking at the history of Western civilization, William and Ariel Durant argued that one of the first achievements necessary for the establishment of civilization is the restraint of sexuality. As they put it, sexuality is like a hot river that must be banked on both sides. Sadly, what we see in the latter half of the 20th century is the un-banking of that river.

Pitirim A. Sorokin, founder of the discipline of sociology at Harvard University, argued that “Heterosexual marriage is the one fundament of civilization itself.” You simply cannot build or maintain civilization without heterosexual marriage, and without heterosexual marriage being understood as the norm. Unless heterosexual marriage is protected by law, custom, and habit, to the exclusion of every other arrangement, civilization is impossible. Sorokin made this point more than fifty years ago. Even from such a distance, he saw this age of perversity arising, and he argued that this age of rebellion would destroy civilization. Yet he also held out the hope that civilization would wake up when the issue finally came down to the preservation of marriage. Was he right?

That is the great question of our day--whether or not this civilization will indeed wake up once marriage is clearly understood to be the critical battleground and the primary target of attack.

Today, we face a cultural crisis that actually threatens to reverse civilization and to embrace barbarism. Can civilization survive under these circumstances? I would have to argue that it cannot. There is no example in the history of humankind of a civilization enduring for long when an age of polymorphous perversity is set loose.

Can we recover from this? Well, we certainly must hope and pray so. But any recovery will have to be based on a re-embrace of biblical truth. We simply will not find enough sociological capital to reverse the prevailing trends. We will not find enough legal conviction to withstand this assault from cultural revolutionaries. Nor will we find enough political momentum to halt this movement. In the end, there is only one thing that stands between this culture and absolute dissolution, and that is the fact that sex was not our idea. Human beings are creatures made by a sovereign Creator, who made us male and female for His glory, and who created the institution of marriage both for our health and for our happiness.

As J. R. R. Tolkien once said to his son Michael, “You must remember, son, that monogamy is a revealed ethic.” No one accidentally stumbles across monogamy, and this culture will not stumble onto recovery. It will have to submit itself to recovery. What is needed is a spiritual, theological and biblical recovery, one that sees gender not as some kind of evolutionary accident, but as God’s gift, part of the very goodness of God’s creation. We see God’s glory in the masculinity of the male and in the femininity of the woman. We understand gender to be a fixed category, not an accidental aberration in the evolutionary process of humanity. Given this, we must remind the culture that marriage is not merely a social contract between two (or more) people, but an arena in which the glory of God is displayed in the right ordering of one man and one woman who come together in the permanent, holy covenant of marriage.

We must refuse to separate the goods of marriage, and we must again point out that part of the essential function of marriage is procreation. Those who are able to have children must welcome children, because this is what God has instituted. Sex, procreation, marriage, and family must be woven together in a seamless garment that recognizes children as a divine gift. In this family--man, woman, and children--civilization is enriched and strengthened, and even more importantly, God’s glory is evident in the midst of His creation.

What then are we to do in order to work for recovery from this age of polymorphous perversity? First, we must fight on every front. We must fight on the legal front, the political front, the media front, the cultural front, the educational front, the psychological front, and the medical front. In each of these crucial arenas, we must bear witness to the truth. In doing so, we may be marginalized, we may be voted down, and we may be criticized, but we cannot simply surrender the field to the other side.

Second, we must bear witness to the truth. This means that we must be very careful not only to say the right things, but also to show the right things. In other words, we must make certain that our marriages and our families are a testimony to God’s intention, and that we live before the world declaring that even if insanity, irrationality, and sexual anarchy rule the world, it will not rule us. God’s glory will be shown in faithfulness wherever it is found, even in the tiny domestic picture of our seemingly insignificant families. The age of polymorphous perversity may one day become the rule of the land. The cultural revolutionaries may one day be successful beyond their wildest dreams. But so long as there remains one man and one woman united in holy marriage, receiving children as God’s gifts and ordering their family life by the Word of God, there will still be a witness--a powerful witness the world cannot ignore.

Third, we must create communities of faithful marriages and healthy families. Our churches must become communities that demonstrate the wonder of God’s glory in marriage and the health holiness of God’s intention in sex. We must band ourselves together so that we live this witness before the world and train our children to do the same.

Fourth, we must rescue the perishing and love the unlovely. What happens when those who give themselves to the culture of polymorphous perversity finally get sick or collapse in despair? The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is made up of sinners saved by grace--sinners who understand what sin is and who understand that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Thus, we must be about the task of rescuing the perishing and loving the unlovely, for so also, in our own way, were we.

Let us see this trend toward sexual anarchy answered with true resolve. Let us mount a movement, not consisting so much of placards, billboards, and advertising, but of couples and families, men and women who will not bend, will not bow, and will not surrender to the culture of polymorphous perversity.

[Editor’s Note: This is an edited transcript of an address Dr. Mohler gave earlier in 2005. This is Part Four of four.]

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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The Sexual Clash of Civilizations (Christian Post, 051114)

If any one civilizational conflict appears most likely to escalate into a broader threat to world peace, Huntington points to the clash between the West and the Islamic civilization.

What Lewis identifies as “our secular present” may represent the greatest flash point of conflict.

According to the data from the WVS reports, culture determines values. But, where Huntington pointed to a worldwide clash over political values, Inglehart and Norris argue that “the real fault line between the West and Islam...concerns gender equality and sexual liberalization.” Or, as these researchers assert, “the values separating the two cultures have more to do with eros than demos.”

On issues ranging from marriage to divorce to abortion to homosexuality and to the role of men and women, a vast chasm now separates the Islamic world from post-Christian societies in the West.

This thesis of a sexual clash of civilizations points to realities far more complicated than the clash between the secular West and Islam. The furor over the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson as the first openly-homosexual bishop in a major denomination [Episcopal Church, USA] reveals a sexual clash of civilizations within Christianity itself. The leaders of the opposition movement against the normalization of homosexuality in the Anglican Communion are from what is known as the “Global South”, encompassing Africa, southern Asia, and much of South America.

You do not have to go around the world to find a sexual clash of civilizations. Just turn on your television.

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Tasteless trampling of taboos (Washington Times, 051123)

If I told you that sex on TV is incessant, you would say you already know that. Then I would say you really, really don’t have a grasp of just how much sex steams up the tube.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently issued a new biennial study finding the number of sexual scenes on television has nearly doubled since 1998. Think about it: In just seven years. In its review of more than 1,000 hours of programming, the study found 70 percent of all shows include some sexual content, and that these shows average 5 sexual scenes per hour, compared to 56 percent and 3.2 scenes hourly in the Victorian days of 1998.

These increases combined represent nearly twice as many scenes of sexual content on TV since 1998. Not everything increased: The number of shows in which sexual intercourse is either depicted or strongly implied is down slightly in recent years (from 7 percent in 1998, to 14 percent in 2002, to 11 percent in 2005).

Many sex scenes and sex chatter are played for laughs in sitcoms. The new ABC show “Hot Properties” had an entire plotline on Nov. 4 making fun of one character’s encounter with a man she claimed she didn’t know was a male prostitute. When he asked for his money, she replied she “did stuff to him, too” so she deserved a discount. He gave her a coupon for the next time around. Ha-ha.

In 2005, prostitution is played for laughs, and so is bestiality. I kid you not. On the Nov. 8 episode of the ABC drama “Boston Legal,” one of the show’s lawyers was asked to defend a man in a divorce proceeding. He said his wife was seeking an annulment because he “strayed” -- ready? -- with his pet cow. He explained “we became very close” and he’d “had a bit to drink.” The lawyer spit out: “You strayed -- with livestock?” He protested: “It’s not what you think. It was all very loving.”

As she backed away, he admitted a “mistake,” but argued he had been a model philanthropist and a deacon at his church.

A deacon -- of course. Hollywood loves to make its sickos into active churchgoers.

How low will Hollywood go? Even lower. Try mocking God. The Nov. 13 episode of the Fox cartoon “American Dad” featured the show’s titular CIA agent’s housewife dancing in the streets in Saudi Arabia in a black bra and panties, singing a song and shaking her breasts at the Arab men. “If you wanna drive a car, you better have a penis. So if you’ve got a vagina, vulva, a clitoris, and a labia ... stay the hell away from Saudi Arabia.”

With these explicit references to sexual organs, can we get any closer to baiting the Federal Communication Commission’s Keystone Kops than a sentence like this?

But wait, it gets worse. When the teenage son Steve pleads for help in the desert, God descends from Heaven “in the form most pleasing” to the boy -- voluptuous Angelina Jolie. After God in female form tells him to enjoy being a child, he asks: “Hey, can I see your boobs?” God replies: “All right. But be warned: A single glance at the rack of Infinite Wisdom could drive a man to madness.” Steve responds that, “Oh. Now I have to see them.” And God flashes him like a “Girls Gone Wild” spring-break video. The boy is blinded in the sacred glow and is transformed, white-haired, like Moses. He offers God’s cure to all the problems of the Middle East but gets rejected when he claims God is a woman.

If the U.S. military showed this cartoon to Guantanamo detainees, it would be considered a world-class human rights offense. But since it’s just on American television, God is merely another easy mark for envelope-pushing fun and profit.

Appearing on a panel to discuss Kaiser’s findings on oversexed TV, Fox boss Tony Vinciquerra still blames parents for letting their children watch the sewage he puts out. Fox has spent “tens of millions of dollars” promoting lockout technology to parents, and “It’s a five-minute exercise. It’s not difficult and parents do need to take that responsibility.” He claimed they debate the propriety of their TV offerings daily.

If that’s so, the on-air content suggests that how-low-can-you-go crowd wins every time.

L. Brent Bozell III is the founder and president of the Parents Television Council and is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Why is Sexuality so Important to the Church? (Mohler, 061031)

Dr. Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, is one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The archdiocese he leads is among the most conservative within the Communion and, not surprisingly, one of the healthiest as well.

In a recent address to the synod of his archdiocese, Archbishop Jensen explained why issues of human sexuality are so important to the Christian church. A church that will abandon biblical truth on issues of sexuality will set the pattern for denying biblical authority when addressing any issue. Consider this passage from his address:

As you know, I have taken the view from the beginning that the crisis over human sexuality is a very deep one indeed. The idea that we are somehow to blame for making so much fuss about sex is ludicrous. Human sexuality is so powerful a gift and so basic to our human nature, and so fraught with both good and ill, that it is bound to occupy a large part of our thinking. Indeed it is all part of our cultural reappraisal of the roles of men and women, with vast consequences for the quality of family life and the good of the begetting and nurturing of the race. In the end, it is also a crisis over biblical authority and its clarity; hence the importance of Biblical Theology. Here is a crucial sticking point. To accept various contemporary ways of reading scripture will leave us vulnerable at all points. We will not defend the uniqueness of Christ, if we will not defend the plain teaching of scripture on human sexuality.

Exactly. To allow these “contemporary ways of reading scripture” in matters of sexuality is to allow them in other theological contexts as well. These new “ways of reading scripture” are, in essence, ways of denying what the Bible teaches and what the church has always understood the Bible to teach. Other approaches include the argument that the Bible cannot really be understood, that it is a collection of discordant voices, or that whatever the Bible addresses (and condemns) is not equivalent to modern sexual practices. All of these lead to disaster and undermine the authority of Scripture.

More from Archbishop Jensen’s address:

This was at the heart of the discussions that I shared in public and in private with our fellow evangelicals and indeed with others. At the same time we have had contacts with others in Asia, Canada and South America. I have to report that there was virtually universal agreement about the significance of this issue. Our evangelical and other Bible-based colleagues agree that deviations from biblical teaching on human sexuality is not a matter which can simply be allowed to pass without strong protest and appropriate action. These are matters which affect our humanity itself. It is widely agreed that we must make as clear as possible and amongst as many as possible that we have reached the limits of tolerance when it comes to the teaching of scripture. Furthermore, it is for the good of the gospel and thus in the interests of the Diocese and that we support others with the same views and receive support from others. This is where true unity lies.

In other words, true unity lies in an embrace of the truth. Archbishop Jensen is absolutely correct when he asserts, “We will not defend the uniqueness of Christ, if we will not defend the plain teaching of scripture on human sexuality.” Once we decide to abandon a commitment to biblical authority, every doctrine is instantly negotiable. We do not have to wonder where that leads.

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RESOURCES: In a recent article on the wrath of God, Dr. Jensen wrote this:

[KH: great!!]

[T]he contemporary church uses three strategies to soften the offence caused by the cross. The first is to cloud the whole thing with mystery. We are permitted to say that Jesus died for us but we are not permitted to say what this means and how it relates to sin and wrath and judgment. Second, is to offer some other explanation for the cross than what the Bible itself says. We are told that the cross occurred solely to demonstrate the solidarity of God with us in our suffering. Third, is to ignore the cross altogether and find the centre of Jesus’ mission in the incarnation or even worse in his present friendship for us, sung about in endless trivial songs.

The wrath of God is as real as your sin. The only thing which can satisfy the wrath of God is a satisfaction paid for your sin provided by God himself. Jesus has done this by dying for you on the cross, saving you ‘from the wrath to come’. Whether we like it or not, that is the heart of the gospel. Turn the wrath of God into something else, or ignore it, and you will not have Christianity, but some other religious look-alike. That is our choice.

Those words sound refreshingly like the great Anglican leaders of the past, such as Bishop J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), the first Bishop of Liverpool. An Anglican archbishop preaching on the wrath of God? Read it for yourself.

The Sydney diocese is an encouragement and hope in the Anglican Communion.

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