[quote]kneedragger79 wrote:
Why, because self control is too much to ask? Are you able to speak for all the kids I know who can think without jerking off and have a mind more powerful then you? NFP teaches a couple how to know when the fertile period starts and when the infertile period begins. Simple traits are charted and once a pattern is observed, nothing more needs to be done. That is until the couple decides they want to have kids. In addition, when a couple is only with each other where do these STDs come from? Those type of diseases come from people who lack the self control to be mature.
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I don’t have the time to wade through this addled mess of a post, so I’ll just stick with this excerpt right here.
I am not able to speak for “all the kids [you] know who can think without jerking off [Aside: do you have hidden cameras set up in their bedrooms, or are you just taking their word for it? Cause I’ve got news for you] and have a mind more powerful [than me].” What I am able to do is to support my contention–that the human sex drive is simply far too powerful to be overcome on a societal or global scale by people preaching abstinence, especially when abstinence cannot be demonstrated to be an objectively desirable thing in the first place–with data from any time, and any place, and any people in the history of humanity. You ask if I think that the hook-up culture is going to be around much longer.
Yes, yes I do. Because it is simply a modern manifestation of an inexorable and timeless human truth, a human truth that you’ll see exactly everywhere you look. To take one of literally billions of examples, the same thing that drives college kids into awkwardly waking up next to strangers and then awkwardly shame-walking home was driving Union soldiers to go out a’lookin’ for some strange centuries ago.
How do I know this? Because the Union army recorded more than 100,000 cases of gonorrhea in just a two-year period during the Civil War. The human tendency to promiscuity hasn’t changed since then, and it isn’t changing in the future, especially now that protective contraceptives, if used properly, have greatly reduced–in fact essentially eliminated–the risks and costs associated with the modern sex life.
Regarding “those type of diseases come from people who lack the self control to be mature.” Well, I agree, in a way. Unprotected sex with people whom you’re not familiar with is a pretty dumb thing to do in this world. But I suspect that you mean something more–something along the lines of, “people who abstain are mature and people who don’t are not.”
Well, to quote the Dude: That’s like, your opinion man. Your religion wants you to wait until marriage, mine doesn’t. my worldview, in fact, considers consensual sex to be among the healthiest and most important aspects of life as an adult human, right up there with exercise, reading, and watching football. [And nothing makes a responsible man mature like learning his way around a woman’s body, whether he’s married or not.]
Take that little conundrum, take the fact that the set of moral axioms by which you live your life mean exactly nothing to me and to the billions of other people who live their lives by a completely different set of moral axioms, multiply it by 7 billion and you’ve got a problem that you’re not, and I mean not ever, going to solve.
You will never, in other words, convince me and/or people like me that abstinence is a good thing.
But, luckily for all of us, abortion isn’t about sex, it’s about pregnancy. And sex doesn’t need to lead to pregnancy. Because you know what you can do? You can win on abortion where you failed on abstinence. You can, in the context of abortion, appeal to certain moral axioms that are, unlike the “wait 'till marriage” ones, universal or very nearly universal. You can make inroads with the Christian, the Jew, the agnostic, and even the atheist–inroads that cannot be made vis-a-vis abstinence.
Convince Christians not to wear condoms, that’s fine as long as they aren’t going to get abortions. But when it’s non-Christians you’re talking about, who gives a damn if they wear them? Whereas when a non-Christian gets an abortion, we all give a damn. People who wear condoms don’t generally get abortions. And shouldn’t the enemy of your enemy be your friend?