University Sex Culture Today
The report in the September 7, 2012, Chronicle of Higher Education (entitled “Sex and College at Yale”) should serve to motive responsible Christian parents to prepare their children for a culture hostile to Christian sexual morality:
In the winter of 2010, during a popular tradition at Yale University known as Sex Week, a representative of a sex-toy company called Babeland gave a talk to an eager audience of more than a thousand Yale undergraduates. Before long, the students, who had packed a lecture hall in one of the university’s stately Gothic buildings, were chanting popular slang for male and female genitalia, simulating oral sex techniques using their hands (and pieces of fruit), and absorbing the speakers tips on how to maximize sexual performance.”
The 2010 event may be a bit toned down from some previous iterations. In 2008, a violent pornographic film was shown to interested students.
How do university officials respond to criticism of the hosting and support of such events? (And yes, there apparently was some university support from tuition dollars paid by parents…)
Student and faculty speech is protected – even when it strikes some as unsettling. What’s more, [says a prominent First Amendment scholar and former college president] universities can’t force moral expectations on students. “There are values that one hopes students will inherit and respect and adhere to, but not anything that can be mandated or superimposed upon a diverse student body.”
This is a movement that appears to be growing. The Chronicle notes that prominent universities such as Brown, Northeastern, the University of Kentucky, and Washington University in St. Louis have all held similar events. Harvard hosted its first such event in March, 2012.
Parents who send their young adult children to distinctively Christian college campuses should expect better at those institutions. As opposed to the secular culture that shares almost no common moral understandings, and believes that honoring “diversity” means silence and tacit approval towards debauchery, Christian institutions of learning should strive to be communities in which there are clear moral and behavioral expectations that, while not “forced” on our students, are encouraged and modeled effectively.
For those parents who send their children to nonreligious institutions, the stakes get ever higher for our preparation of our children to withstand the morally toxic environment of the contemporary university. And thankfully, a faithful Christian minority at many of these schools continue to foster a counterculture where God’s moral law is respected.
Indeed, such a group offered an alternative to Sex Week at Yale in 2010, featuring events promoting fidelity and love; the event was called True Love Week. I think it likely that some of those children grew up in Christian homes where parents had been at work since young age in shaping the sexual character of their children.
