In Theory: Is permissive ideology to blame for campus sexual assaults?
“All around, the message is the same,” writes senior writer David French for the National Review. “Parties are part of the college experience, and parties include sex. Indeed, sex is often the entire point of the party.”
In a Sept. 15 column about campus sexual assaults, French blames universities for fomenting a permissive culture of “lies about the nature and morality of sexual relationships” and suggests a combination of alcohol and open attitudes is fueling a “sexual crisis.”
“The root of the problem is an ideology that deliberately attempts to strip sex of its inherent spiritual meaning and transform it into little more than transactional, physical, pleasure-seeking behavior,” French says, further stating the “rightful, sacred place” of sex is “in the union of man and wife.”
In another column in July, where the same columnist reports Bureau of Justice statistics that show “women are safer on campus than off,” he argues a “fake crisis” drew moves from the Obama administration to eliminate due process in prosecutions of college rape cases, prompting campus officials to step into “a miasma of drunken hookups and broken hearts.”
Q. Are accusations of sexual assault on campus — regardless of statistics — a symptom of moral decline and misplaced attitudes toward sex? Are messages of marriage and monogamy the answer?
I believe a number of factors converge to form a “perfect storm” for both sexual irresponsibility and sexual assault on college campuses. First, there is a general antireligious bias among most university faculty members. “Professing to be wise, they became fools,” says Romans 1:22. The atmosphere is charged with the rejection of God, and as a natural result, a rejection of the moral sexual standards he sets. Second, the university student population is away from the restraints of home, charged at a physical and hormonal peak and placed together in close proximity. Add a little alcohol or drugs, a third factor, to loosen the restraints and the carnal desires are off and running, which include “immorality, impurity, sensuality … drunkenness [and] carousing” (Galatians 5:19-21). They also include violence, selfishness, lack of consideration for others and placing one’s desires over the welfare or rights of others.
The monogamous marriage of a man and a woman is the only proper context for sexuality as established by God our creator. But to run around telling college students just to “wait until you get married” would be like trying to convince a pack of wolves to become vegan. I mean no disrespect by that, it’s just that the lusts of the flesh aren’t tamed by the law. The message proclaimed must be Jesus’ statement: “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Our hearts must be changed. Only the regenerate heart desires God’s ways over the ways of fallen man, and God’s ways include sexual morality and putting the welfare of others above our own.
Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank
..
Recently I had a grown man extol for me the virtues of his success, and his especially proud achievement was that his celebrity had won him sexual access to an endless supply of willing women. What’s life, after all, except having serial intercourse with strangers until you die? Ask Hugh Hefner (who I am certain is regretting his earthly lechery right about now). But I don’t see how we should expect college kids to behave, if adults behave just as childishly and recklessly and without any wiser moral constraint. How do you tell teenagers, barely out of high school, most still under drinking age, that they shouldn’t be promiscuous and drunken, when everything their culture teaches is that these are the measures of success? Maybe you don’t score as high as an A in Chemistry, but you can readily get high and “score” at the night’s frat party where everyone who’s anyone will be doing it with abandon!
So, yes, we are in serious moral decline and our misplaced attitudes toward sex are part and parcel. It is because of this that 3,000 innocent babies are murdered in utero on a daily basis in America. Why so many dead babies? Because we have so many dead souls using sex as a sport, as a social badge, as a measure of virility, as a buzz, as validation, and not as it was intended: to bind a man and woman together as family, as one. Sex is the joy of commitment, the pleasure of blessedness, and there is no regret, no trip to Planned Parenthood, no guilt, no STDs. We must recover chastity, and then model it.
“Marriage is to be honored by all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers” (Hebrews 13:4 CSB).
Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga
..
The media and popular culture portray sex as a casual encounter that does not require love or any other emotional commitment. I believe that French is right that this perspective has erased social and cultural boundaries that would help prevent both predatory behaviors as well as unfounded allegations of assault.
When the commitment comes first, sexual intimacy becomes a bond that strengthens the relationship between a man and a woman. Sex should be an outcome of love and commitment, not a precursor to them. My view, and that of the Mormon Church, is that this commitment should be expressed through marriage.
If more young men and women accepted the idea that sex is something more than the mere fulfillment of a physical urge then, yes, there would be fewer sexual assaults on campus.
It is baffling that university administrators embrace policies that put young students in situations for which they are unprepared. The argument that students must be treated as adults is unconvincing because most of them simply aren’t.
This isn’t just a parent’s assessment. Research has demonstrated that the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that assesses risk and regulates emotional impulses — isn’t fully developed until around the age of 25, after a majority of students have graduated. As the University of Rochester website explains, this is why teens and younger adults who make mistakes often, “…can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling.”
The attitudes that French describes are a consequence of the “neglected virtues” described by the late LDS church President Gordon B. Hinckley in his book “Standing for Something.” He warned of a “serious unsteadiness in our country’s stance in terms of morality, ethics, principles and behavior.” The truth is, casual sex is a selfish act that ignores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of a loving relationship. A culture that dismisses those things in favor of easy gratification leaves young people poorly prepared for life.
Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta