When I read the latest report on what the Washington Times termed the "economy of sex," I wasn't really expecting to read an analysis of the very thing Pope Paul VI warned about way back in 1968! It was surprising to see lines like this one, "[T]he birth control pill disconnected the sexual and marriage markets, and now both men and women typically enter the sexual market first." It was then followed closely by this insight:
The new sexual economy is especially disadvantageous to any woman who wants to remain a virgin until her wedding day, [University of Texas sociology professor, Mark Regnerus] said. These women essentially never enter the sex market, but instead "hold out for the highest price for sex, which is marriage."
Today, that is a high-risk strategy, Mr. Regnerus explained, using a housing-market analogy: "You can't just decide that your house is worth $500,000 if everyone else is getting $200,000. … You can try for that price, but it's unlikely you will get it."
Regnerus opines that, in today's sexually saturated society, "the price of sex is pretty low."
That may not sound like much of a revelation to those of us who have struggled to teach the profound connection between the practice of contraception and the act of aborting a child - not to mention other sexual perversities. We know that once the contraceptive floodgate was opened to one and all, it was no short political leap to decriminalizing abortion. Lest we forget, the first legitimized abortions were those caused by the most popular birth control pills.
The modes of actions of any birth control pill include interfering with the preborn individual's ability to implant, resulting in that person's death. It's called chemical abortion - the precursor to medical and surgical abortions. But nobody talks about that in their economic analyses of the low cost of sex.
However, what they are talking about - the actual devaluing of the dignity of the human person - is perhaps a new insight for folks trying to raise their middle school children in an era when a seventh grader can be required to complete a taxpayer funded questionnaire that includes questions about oral sex. When Massachusetts Memorial Middle School principal Fran Thomas told Fox News that the federal grant funding "Youth Risk Behavior Study" included the survey, he took no responsibility for it or its content. He said, "It was not optional. It's part of a grant that they applied for and the district said you have to administer this survey."
While some parents were horrified, the fundamental question should be why such an event happened in the first place. Frankly, if the price of sex was already cheap before these twelve- and thirteen-year-old kids were being queried about oral sex, then clearly a fire sale is already in full swing and liaisons are going to "go for" even less than current market values.
So it should come as no surprise that today we are confronted with middle school kids being asked inappropriate questions that would make many adults uneasy.
Fundamentally, what this latest middle school event suggests is that the economy of Godly morality is being trashed in the bargain basement of human experience. Society is fast losing its ability to get hold of itself and straighten out the mess created by the so-called sexual revolution more than 40 years ago.
Why is this happening? The biggest reason is that the mystery surrounding the great gift the Lord has given to males and females, enabling them to cooperate with Him in the procreation of children, has disappeared. Long ago it gave way to the idea that sex is a mechanical function of the human body - nothing more, nothing less. Contraception became the wall separating God from man, and abortion became the solution to cracks in the wall.
Frankly, if we are honest, we will admit that the souls of many adults, along with the children of our present age, are not only at risk, but perhaps already damned by those who have worked tirelessly to equate human dignity with nothing but a commodity that is sold to the lowest bidder.