Morality @ MindSay 
christianity
A few weeks ago, my daughter decided to challenge my teaching by asking me if her father and I had ever had sex before marriage. I was a little taken aback and apparently had a little smile on my face. “You’re smirking!” she exclaimed. “You guys so did it!” I paused for another moment and just looked at her. I smiled even bigger and said: “I really don’t know how to answer your question. Sex is first of all a very private matter between two people. Second of all, what we may or may not have done does not change how we feel about it. Anyway, if I say ‘yes’, you will say ‘Busted’ and if I say ‘no’, you will say ‘You guys just don’t understand how things are these days.’ So, I am not going to answer your question. You will have to answer the question yourself for your own life one day and it will be your decision. And you won’t have to tell your children either.” She sighed and said something to effect that she knew I’d turn a question into a lesson. And so the drumbeat goes on…
Thank you to those of you who responded to my ... "Outrageous Question" the other day. I was looking for more reply, but at the same time ... I do realize it is a personal issue and perhaps some were/ are afraid of personal attack ... ? That's not my style.
I am a mother to 3 kids who are searching for their identities ... as we all do in early adulthood. They each have their own struggles as we all do, but I think what I was/ am hoping for is more input about when and how the decision is made to engage in sex with a partner.
Some of you may have seen the episode of "Law and Order" that involced a 14 yr old boy accused of raping 3 or 4 students between the ages of 9 - 11. He was an only child to a single dad, left alone more than perhaps he ought to have been, with access to the internet and TV porn. He formulated a notion that sex = power, and with no alternative viewpoint and no one to tell him otherwise, he set out to ... acquire power!
The episode also, in my understanding, put a great deal of the responsibility on the shoulders of the various media who make this stuff readily available. My kids were raised being taught that sex was something very special and ultimately intimate to be shared only with one person to whom you have committed your future life in marraige. From very early ages they were taught this, but still the bombardment of OTHER voices, OTHER moralities or lack thereof influence their lives more than I would like. (Yup, mom speaking here!)
So ... is sex a sport? Is there such a thing as "casual sex" with no strings? Is there still a double standard, i.e male conquests are HOT while females who sleep with many successive partners are sluts? When & how do you decide YES or NO? Do you have boundaries? If so, where do they come from?
(Please help out a mom, here ... )
~ B
That is not to say that either sex is boring or hypocrisy acceptable. It is just ... yeah? Welcome to the human race! Although it is my personal opinion, that leadership, ANY leadership, should be held accountable for both their private AND public decisions at least to some degree ... One more is just that ... One more.
Anyone watch the horrific (IMHO) TV show "Moment of Truth?" I'm just cynical enough to be assured these people are being paid tons of $$$ before they even appear on screen to blast their marriages out of the water ... I admit, this show ... that fact that it exists, angers me ... in a similar way to Maury or Springer or ... any of those sensationalist shows that capitalize on the misfortunes & ignorance of others. It is the worst of human nature, again, in my opinion. 99% of these shows are about sex in one form or another. Sex sells, just ask, well anyone! 
Which brings me to my outrageous question: It used to be rather obvious, but with all the graphic sexual images flashing across various media ... it seems these producers may be having a greater influence on our corporate morality than any religious, ethnic or political group could ever dream. Too bad it can't be a bit more, ummm, positive, hmmm? That said ... Is there a moral right & wrong in your mind? How do you decide when and/or with whom to have sex?
~ B
The Dallas Morning News printed a piece by Susan Jacoby who recently published “The Age of American Unreason.” She writes that, “Americans are in serious intellectual trouble—in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and low expectations.” Her specific bête noir is video, and although there is much evidence to suggest that she is correct, her analysis is shallow.
There is little doubt that technology has contributed to the dumbing-down of America. The first assault may have come with the hand-held calculator which has almost extinguished Americans’ knowledge of arithmetic, not to mention higher mathematical disciplines. But technology in itself is not the monster. When technology becomes commercial, it becomes available to everyone—saints and sinners, decent people and scoundrels. It’s the old story about guns which don’t kill people; the people who use them do. And so it is with all technology.
What can we do to stop people from using guns to kill other people? Some suggest that we take the guns away, which if feasible, might work, but it isn’t. Some unscrupulous people will find ways to get guns to other unscrupulous people and the killing will go on. Smuggling and black markets are, after all, common forms of economic activity.
The only alternative is to reform people. What’s needed is serious and comprehensive moral and civility training. But societies today have abandoned that task.
It was once assumed that the place for such training was the family at home. But the institution of the family has been weakened if not destroyed by economic conditions and cultural changes. Today, parents themselves are just as apt to be scoundrels as others, and scoundrels cannot be expected to teach morality and civility.
The churches sometimes like to claim the moral arena, but they have not seriously promoted morality and civility either. In a Christian society, the morality is not a priority of churches, salvation is. And as someone once said, the promise of forgiveness and salvation guarantees bad behavior.
The upshot of all of this is that morality and civility are taught nowhere anymore, and people everywhere have become uncivilized and immoral. When we put guns and any other kind of technology in the hands of such people, the result cannot be other than bad.
The advance of technology cannot be stopped, not even retarded, and unless we get serious about morality, there is little hope for America or anywhere else.
Dumbing people down is easy; the hard part is smartening them up, and unfortunately beating the technology beast will not help, because that ass does not respond to whipping.
©2008, John Kozy
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