REAL ART RERUN
NEXT YEAR'S MORALITY MEME 3
US teens celebrate 'purity day'

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on February 15, 2004.

From the BBC via Eschaton:

Thousands of teenagers across the US are celebrating a "Day of Purity" to promote sexual abstinence.

High school students are wearing white t-shirts and encourage classmates to remain virgins until they are married.

The conservative US Christian group Liberty Counsel, which organised the day, said US teenagers should make a "public demonstration" of purity.

It said the day offered teenagers a chance to stand in opposition to "a culture of moral decline".

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Fundamentalist Christians take advantage of capitalist sexual exploitation by loudly and forcefully offering teenagers an irrational bipolar alternative. That is, the fundamentalist position on sexuality is just as extreme as the corporate media's position, only in reverse. Alas, given the billions of dollars and unholy host of political connections involved, exploitation and puritanism are the only two philosophies that seem to be given any standing in the public discourse: exploitation, I think we can all agree, is pretty awful by any rational standard; "purity," however, takes a wee bit of explaining to see why it's such a screwed up concept.

Linguistically associating the concept of abstinence with the concept of "purity" makes sex out to be impure or dirty. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sex is simply something that human beings do. Eating, breathing, working, socializing, laughing, crying, and having sex are all vital parts of human existence. Certainly, depending on the circumstances, these aspects of human existence can be bad sometimes, but none of them, as ideas, are impure or dirty by themselves.

I have no problem with tolerating opinions with which I disagree--if you want to be celibate, go right ahead; it's really none of my business. But this "Day of Purity" can only be seen in terms of the overall politically powerful and well-funded fundamentalist cultural push to puritanize American society: this is a battle for the conventional wisdom, and, frankly, the terms of the debate are royally fucked (sorry for the naughty word; I just couldn't resist the pun).

As a debate, corporate media driven sexual exploitation versus fundamentalist driven "purity" totally ignores any discussion of scientifically derived ideas about sexual health, both psychological and physical. Humans have sex--this is an inescapable fact. Most Americans do it before marriage; this includes fundamentalists. Most people end up having more than one partner when all is said and done. Making teenagers feel dirty or fearful of what is natural (that is, screwing with their minds) and pushing "abstinence based" sex-ed programs that leave them open to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases when they finally give in to the inevitable is, quite simply, dangerous to society.

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