I came across this opinion column by R. Albert Mohler, Jr, Guest Columnist for the Christian Post. Again the “moral” minority gets it wrong, or simply has their head buried deep in the sand they don’t want to get it. I think Allena Gabosch, Director of the Center for Sex Positive Culture has it right when she says in the recent Newsweek article about polyamory that people are afraid of it because “it shakes up their worldview.” Which is the reason people are afraid of a lot of things in this world, like the religion of others.
Mohler shows just how far his head is in the sand with this one paragraph:
Perhaps the best way to understand this new movement is to understand it as a natural consequence of subverting marriage. We have largely normalized adultery, serialized marriage, separated marriage from reproduction and childbearing, and accepted divorce as a mechanism for liberation. Once this happens, boundary after boundary falls as sexual regulation virtually disappears among those defined as “consenting adults.”
Normalized adultery? Albert (may I call you Albert?), adultery has been the norm since the dawn of man (and that was 200,000, not 6,000 years ago, by-the-way). It simply wasn’t called “adultery” until religion got involved. Before that it was called “sharing” or “ensuring the survival of the species through multiple sex partners and genetic variety.” The fact is that an estimated 70% of marriages will experience cheating, whether discovered or not. It has been this way throughout Christian history where men having a “virgin” wife and an experienced mistress is the norm, not the exception. Sure it may be written differently in your Bible, however the holiest of the Holy Men in the Bible practiced plural marriage, and God’s reward to men was to give them more wives. In your Bible God never has an issue with multiple wives, what he has a problem with is stealing that wife from another man. Adultery in the Biblical-sense has to do with taking another man’s property: his wife.
Serialized marriage? Marriage has always been serialized. According to Websters “serial” means: performing a series of similar acts over a period of time. Which isn’t that what marriage has been for years and years and years. And guess what, “traditional” monogamous marriage still doesn’t work for most people (hence the 70% infidelity rate).
Separate reproduction and childbearing from marriage? Are you saying that reproduction is THE reason for marriage? Much like a couple of hundred years ago it was about money and power exchange through trading your daughters to dirty old men that had enough money to pay a handsome dowry or could offer daddy a higher position in society? That is a huge part of Christian history in relation to marriage. You can ignore it, but it doesn’t make it less true. Whatever happened to getting married because you love someone?
Accept divorce as a mechanism for liberation? This goes back to serialized marriage, which your accepted way isn’t working for most. It has been said that 50% of all marriages end in divorce; 40% who stay married do so unhappily; and only 10% of those that stay married report being happy. And in 7 out of 10 marriages one or both partners are cheating on each other. So your traditional view of marriage isn’t better, it just buried the issues and has forced people to stay in unhappy and often abusive situations because to divorce was akin to wearing a scarlet letter on your chest and being a social outcast. I know here in Utah that a divorced Mormon might as well have the plague when it comes to having a social life, and I’m sure it’s the same in other areas where one religion dominates the demographics.
As far as sex, I think your sentence
Bennett quotes Allena Gabosch, director of an organization known as the “Center for Sex Positive Culture,”
as well as your mocking of the Kinsey Institute shows just how repressed you yourself really are. “Sex positive” is something that really scares the Hell out of you and your kind, doesn’t it? Especially when it comes from a woman.
It would seem that Mohler, like so many of his mindset, would like to return us to an idealized version of the past.
Bigger Love 