The Church, the School and the Family as Powerful Primary Teen Sex Educators

Human beings are sexual beings throughout their entire lives. The stages of sexual development are a human developmental process involving biological and behavioral components. It does not take much insight or cultural awareness to realize that we need to be concerned about the culture in which our children are growing in. The patterns of behavior among the youth reveal morality level is at an all-time low; long regarded as a consequent factor of modernization. The philosophies of materialism, autonomy, entitlement, and hedonism beckon them at every turn. Moral values such as honesty, obedience, kindness, respect, hard work, self-discipline, humility and fear of God have significantly been affected by modernization. Lack of self-control, dishonesty and careless attitude is the character of modern youth. Sexual risk behavior among Kenyan youths is a major public health concern. Nearly 400,000 young women aged between 12 and 19 years become pregnant in Kenya each year, most of them unintentionally, and half of the roughly 200,000 new sexually transmitted infections (STIs) diagnosed each year are among 15 to 24 years old. Sexuality is God’s life-giving and life-fulfilling gift. Our culture needs a sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts. All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure. Grounded in respect for the body and for the vulnerability that intimacy brings, this sexual ethic fosters physical, emotional, and spiritual health. A great deal of research attention has been and remain devoted to understanding what puts adolescents at risk to these outcomes, given their enormous social, economic, and public health consequences. More effort is required to address these risky sexual activities among youths. One of the ways is through the identification of additional contributors to this behavior that have been understudied factors that put teens at risk and levers that can be used in preventive interventions.

Surviving the “Sexplosion”: Christianity Today and Evangelical Sexual Ethics in the Long 1960s

This paper examines how the editors and contributors to Christianity Today (CT) called for an evangelical sexual ethics in the 1960s. Editors and contributors alike were concerned that the supposed sexual immorality on college campuses, the liberalization of obscenity laws, the approval and sale of the birth control, and secular sex education programs threatened the United States’ social health. They believed that evangelicals needed to learn how to talk about sex, and this belief resulted in the development of conservative Protestant sex manuals by the middle of the 1970s. Overall, talk about sex in the pages of CT demonstrates that evangelicals are neither anti-sex nor traditionalists. They instead forged a new sexual ethic in response to the historical events and developments of the 1960s.

Children of God: Exploring URCSA’s Catechetical Sexual Ethic

Human sexuality has been on the agenda of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA’s) General Synod since at least 2005. Since then, at each respective General Synod, the discussion has been set forth to theologise about the lives of members who are LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other sexual minorities). Yet, throughout this time no attention has been afforded to the denomination’s catechesis, specifically its sexual ethic. This essay, then, attempts to contribute to the present dialogue on human sexuality with a focus on catechesis, or faith formation. It does so by following a queer theological hermeneutic, informed by the cultural criticism tradition in the form of queer theory. In order to investigate the sexual ethic at work in URCSA, the primary text engaged is its catechetical literature, Children of God. The essay, as such, attempts to note how URCSA has constructed its sexual ethic as heteronormative; and therefore, against all other sexual orientations. In order to do this, the essay probes three questions. First, it questions the existence and identity of URCSA. Second, it questions how a queering of catechesis may be done and what value it may contribute to the denomination. Third, it asks the question: quo vadis, where to URCSA? By asking this question, an attempt is made to qualify what it is that URCSA may need in queering its catechesis. Still, it is important to note that this reflection is much informed by the author’s experience of the denomination as a gay man.

Dude Looks Like a Lady: Gender Deception, Consent and Ethics

Finding the answer to whether consent is present within a sexual encounter has become increasingly difficult for the courts. We argue that this is due to the focus placed on entrenching gender binaries, a conservative sexual ethic and clear offender/victim roles. It should be the case that the court’s task is to find the truth of the encounter in coming to a judgment as to the ethical balance, rather than judging the parties’ conformity to cisnormative and heteronormative roles. This endeavour is obscured by the court’s need to exclude ‘sex talk’, or otherwise testimony as to the messy reality of the encounter, in favour of asserting gender identity and a procreative understanding of sex. We are, therefore, left in the position where the required information necessary for valid consent is obscured by the courts. We draw on an analysis of cases involving issues relating to consent to sex in order to argue for a judicial approach that is informed by a more flexible understanding of sexual autonomy.

Sobre las dimensiones de la paternidad en la adolescencia | On the dimensions of fatherhood in adolescence

Resumen – El artículo es producto del proyecto Visibilizando la Paternidad Adolescente en sectores de Pobreza, financiada por la Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC) de la Universidad de la República. Dicha investigación fue avalada y respaldada por organizaciones públicas y privadas tales como: Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES); Aldeas Infantiles S.O.S. y Vida y Educación. El texto dialoga en ese espacio fronterizo entre saberes académicos, saberes técnicos y el saber cotidiano de adolescentes entrevistados. Pretendemos poner en común los resultados de esta investigación, de carácter exploratorio, sobre los sentidos y experiencias de la paternidad en la adolescencia pobre y suburbana. Especialmente desde la ética sexual que rige la vida de los entrevistados, en términos de cómo entienden su virilidad y su vida de pareja. Para ello nos hemos guiado por la intención de elucidar el problema estudiado, en términos de pensar y saber lo que se hace y piensa científicamente.Palabras Claves: paternidad; adolescencia; pobreza; ética sexual. Resumo – O artigo é produto do projeto Visibilizando a paternidade na adolescência pobre, financiado pela Comissão Setorial de Pesquisas Científicas (CSIC) da Universidade da República. Esta pesquisa foi apoiada por organizações públicas e privadas, tais como: Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social (Mides); Aldeias Infantis S.O.S. e Vida e Educação. O texto, portanto, dialoga nesse espaço de fronteira entre o conhecimento acadêmico, o conhecimento técnico e o conhecimento diário dos adolescentes entrevistados. Pretendemos, assim, compartilhar os resultados desta pesquisa, de caráter exploratório, sobre os sentidos e experiências da paternidade na adolescência pobre suburbana, abordando especialmente a ética sexual que rege as vidas dos entrevistados, em termos de como eles entendem sua virilidade e a vida com seu parceira. Para isso, fomos guiados pela intenção de elucidar o problema estudado, em termos de pensar e saber o que é feito e pensado cientificamente.Palavras-Chave: paternidade; adolescência; pobreza; ética sexual. Abstract – This article is a product of the project Visibilizing Adolescent Fatherhood in Poverty Sectors, financed by the Sectoral Commission for Scientific Research (CSIC) of the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. This research was endorsed and supported by public and private organizations such as: Uruguay’s Ministry of Social Development (MIDES); Aldeas Infantiles S.O.S., and Vida y Educación. The article bridges the border space between academic knowledge, technical knowledge, and the daily knowledge of the teenagers interviewed. We intend to share the results of this exploratory research about the senses and experiences of fatherhood in poor and suburban adolescence, especially on the sexual ethic that governs the lives of the interviewees, in terms of how they understand their virility and their life as a couple. For this we have been guided by the intention to elucidate the problem studied, in terms of thinking and knowing what is done and think scientifically.Keywords: fatherhood; adolescence; poverty; sexual ethics.

Was It Good for You Too? The New Natural Law Theory and the Paradoxical Good of Sexbots

We normally think of the so-called new natural law theory (NNLT) for its as a relentlessly conservative sexual ethic, one which argues both for the rightness only of “reproductive-type” sex (and that only within a different-sex marriage) as well as the moral impossibility of masturbation, sex outside of marriage, and sex of a non-reproductive-type. On the face of it, the human intent behind the creation of sexbots, let alone with the act of having sex with them, would seem to be wrong on all these counts. However, this chapter argues that matters are not so simple. NNLT can reveal the intrinsic moral importance of sexbots. If sexbots and human each are beings capable of choosing and remaining committed to complete friendship, and of loving, then the embodied union that we do achieve will not be morally objectionable even according to NNLT properly understood.

Nailed: Lytton Strachey’s Jesus Camp

Avery explores Lytton Strachey’s engagement with Christian ethical discourse and iconography to promote a queer ethical ideal of friendship and intimacy unfettered by moral convention. In his famous biographies and in a series of essays, short stories, and dialogues, it is clear he was perennially interested in religious questions and themes. Despite his atheism and disapproval of religious faith, he believed that the achievement of sexual and ethical autonomy, the legitimation of alternative sexualities and a new sexual ethic, demanded a serious critique of Christian moralism. In a sado-masochistic crucifixion experiment in the late 1920s, he allowed himself to be affixed to a cross and pierced in the side by his lover Roger Senhouse, providing a striking example from the modernist period and from the Bloomsbury milieu of how an iconically normative object may be used to express a queer ethical, sexual, and social vision.

VIRTUE ETHICS, SEX, AND REALITY TV: IF ARISTOTLE HAD WATCHED SNOOKI

Television, like other forms of art and media, functions as a moral educator. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle places great emphasis on the role of the moral tutor for guiding children in their moral development, and in his Politics and Poetics, he (as did his mentor Plato) argued that the arts importantly functioned as moral tutors. In this paper, I will present an Aristotelian analysis of the effects exposure to highly sexualized media (with an emphasis on television) can have on the character of children and adolescents, who are in vitally formative years when it comes to their sexuality. Particularly, I am concerned that our youth is being habituated into a kind of sexual ethic that is based on treating their sexual partners as mere means and objects to sexual pleasure, rather than as intrinsically valuable persons with whom one can uniquely share sexual experiences.