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Recently, a rare combination of shock and righteous
indignation overtook us in our living rooms when news of a raid on a Texas polygamist
compound hit the TV screens. Why the outrage? Some of the (older) husbands were
suspected of taking for themselves teenage girls as new wives.
State prosecutors justified the extreme family disruptions
and their war-like intervention in terms of rescuing brainwashed and coerced
teenage girls and declared their actions to "be about child sexual abuse
and our commitment to protect children."
So much for coherence and consistency in our present
society.
While Texas authorities were invading a well ordered
community in which, some argued, the vast majority of adults (older teen aged
girls included) freely consented to live and remain, they seemed to forget that
60% of girls in America who had sex before age 15 were coerced by males an
average of six years their senior. And that more than two-thirds of births to
teenage girls were fathered by adult men age 20 or older. If the numbers in
Canada are only half of those in the US, it is indeed a shocking picture of
child sexual abuse arising from the mantra of "choice" in sexual
matters.
Are the mothers involved being arrested or losing custody of
their children because of this kind of sexual activity? Is there even a
call from society—more especially the women's rights groups—to track down and
prosecute the perpetrators of such abuse? Hardly. To put it mildly, our society
regularly turns a blind eye to such sexual impropriety.
I point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Texas incident in
order to draw attention to our confused and dangerous "pleasure
ethics." No, I was not trying to defend polygamy. Current laws which
proscribe polygamy are based on solid rationale and ought to be strictly
enforced for the common good of society.
We were right as a society to be aghast at the abuses
inherent in polygamy. To be consistent and rational, however, our outrage can
be justified only if we ourselves abide by and uphold Christian marriage in its
fullness. In part, this standard dictates that sexual relations take place
exclusively within marriage and be open to the gift of life (no contraception)
and that the marriage bond may be broken only by the death of either man or
woman.
Even from a "natural," atheistic and Darwinian
point of view, no other arrangement between the human sexes is better geared to
the survival and successful propagation of our species than Christian marriage.
Furthermore, we can demonstrate how well this formula of man/woman union is
attuned to nature by observing that HIV/AIDS and all other forms of STD's would
surely be eradicated within a generation or two through its strict and
exclusive practice.
Many non-Christian, religious cultures and prophets
throughout history have also come, through observation and reason, to the same
conclusions and have restricted sexual choices accordingly for the good of
society. However, no prophet of God has been more instrumental in defining for
us the purpose and limits of divine marriage than Jesus Christ, Son of God and
Saviour of the world.
But "pleasure ethics" draws different conclusions.
Inside of asking, "What is good?" we are overtaken by "What
feels good?" Instead of focusing on moral standards which constrain our
pleasures by reminding us of what's right and good, our "choice" is
the selfish path of our own desires—with devastating consequences personally,
socially and spiritually.
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