The View from the Sexual Revolution
-1987, an essay came out “The Overhauling of Straight America” by Marshall Kirk & Hunter Madsen
-it was a marketing strategy for getting straight people to think about gay people in more positive ways
1-desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights
2-desensitization the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference
3-get people to think that it is just another thing so that the battle for legal and social rights can be won
6 steps:
1-talk about gays and gayness as loudly and as often as possible
2-portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers
3-give protectors a just cause
5-make gays look good
6-solicit funds
***1990 book, “After the ball: How America Will Overcome Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s”
-their stated marketing strategy can now be deemed as successful in retrospect
-2015: same-sex marriage was legalized
-culture today overwhelmingly embraces all things LGBTQ+ today
-Kirk and Madsen’s quest for “public desensitization” ended not merely with their desired cultural shrug of the shoulders but with celebratory pride parades
-Christians and others who haven’t gotten on board with the celebration are labeled hateful bigots and homophobes just as step 5 marketing strategy prescribed
***the campaign for the sexual liberation of children is not targeted for cultural acceptance
-children are being targeted with LGBTQ+ content today in areas like children’s entertainment and public school sexual education
-this is merely and extension of the ongoing campaign for broad LGPTQ+ acceptance
-activists naturally want acceptance from everyone and that would include kids
***the LLGBTQ+ activists is to free children from the sexual restrictions placed on them by society’s norms, values, and expectations
-this is a very different goal than convincing people of all ages that homosexuality is “just another thing”
***LGBTQ+ activism and the quest for the sexual liberation of children are intimately connected movements and how they’re impacting children today
The Sexual Revolution and Children:
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939):
-Freud is known for connecting happiness specifically with sexual pleasure
“Man’s discovery that sexual (genital) love afforded him the strongest experiences of satisfaction and in fact provided him with the prototype of all happiness, must have suggested to him that he should continue to seek the satisfaction of happiness in his life along the path of sexual relations and that he should make genital eroticism the central point of his life.”
-think about this central point of life, “genital eroticism”
-consider the implications of culture making genital eroticism the central point of life
1-sex and sexual pleasure become central to what it means to be human–synonymous with our very identity
2-sexual pleasure will take priority over all else, because if we’re not sexually satisfied, we can’t be fully happy
3-most moral and legal restrictions on sexual freedom become harmful barriers to happiness that must be eradicated
-these underlie much of the LGBTQ+ movement
-if human identity is fundamentally sexual in nature, that implies we’re sexual beings from birth
-Yes, this even applies to infants
-Freud’s first stage of development was the oral stage, during which sexual pleasure is supposedly found through breastfeeding and thumb-sucking
-the oral stage was followed by the anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages (the genital stage being all years from puberty to death)
-the process of growing up is inherently a process of progressing through stages of sexual pleasure-seeking behavior
***human identity is essential sexual in nature
Alfred Kinsey:
-Kinsey was a sexologist and biologist who wrote two of the most influential books: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)
-Kinsey reports purportedly scientific descriptions of the sexual practices of average Americans
-Kinsey concluded that his work provided “a good opportunity for understanding the futility of classifying individuals as normal or abnormal, or well-adjusted or poorly adjusted, when in reality they may be nothing more than frequent or rare, or conformists or non-conformists with the socially pretended customs.”
-Kinsey suggested to the world that people’s sexual desires and experiences were far more varied than “repressive” social norms (such as heterosexuality)
-Kinsey suggested that what polite society considered deviant wasn’t deviant at all
-Kinsey’s findings were the validation and permission culture needed to start throwing out presumed norms and living in sexual freedom
-LGBTQ+ activists have used Kinsey’s data for decades
***Kinsey’s findings were based on an extremely flawed methodology
-Kinsey’s model was developed by studying child molesters as a way to make it normal
-Kinsey found his focus on children to be relevant
-he cataloged 317 observations about children of every age from two months to adolescence having orgasms
-Kinsey believed that “these data on sexual activities of younger males provide an important substantiation of the Freudian view of sexuality as a component that is present in the human animal from earliest infancy
***human identity is fundamentally sexual in nature from infancy on
-Kinsey provided the data to validate this
-Kinsey referenced observational details from 317 children to explicitly claim they had experienced “true orgasm"
-Kinsey claims children are sexual beings who not only experience sexual responses but enjoy those responses
“It is difficult to understand why a child, except for its cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched, or disturbed at seeing the genitalia of other persons, or disturbed at even more specific sexual contacts”
Queer Theory:
-queer theory is the branch of critical theory that claims cisgender and heterosexual people are oppressively imposing cisheteronormativity on those in the LGBTQ community
-queer theorists claim that the categories of male/female and heterosexual/homosexual are merely social constructs that don’t correspond to any essential truth independent of society’s beliefs
-in this context, queer doesn’t mean gay
***queer means any way of being that is at odds with what society considers to be normal
-queer theory isn’t a broad term to promote LGBT issues
-it very specifically promotes the destruction of norms related to gender and sexuality
Norm:
-one norm of mainstream America society is the belief that it’s abusive for adults to involve children in sexual acts because children aren’t sexual
Un-norm:
-queer theorists thinks of norms related to gender and sexuality have to go
-queer theorists believe that there’s something inherently wrong with adult-child sexual contact is allegedly one more way cisheteronormative societies oppress the natural, healthy sexual desires of both adults and children
***Biology vs. Social Constructs
-there has been a push to have great empathy for pedophiles
-1984, the essay “Thinking Sex” by Gayle Rubin lamented, “Like the communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boy-lovers [pedophiles] are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation.”
***”childhood innocence” is a social construct that suppresses the possibility of a child expressing queering and protects the assumption that a child will eventually become heterosexual” (Ass. Prof. Hannay Dyer).
-if children are kept from exploring gender and sexuality at a young age under the assumption that they’re “innocent”
-this means children are not sexual by nature
-this means they will be less likely be develop a queer identity
-children need to explore sexuality while young in order to not head down society’s default path of cisheteronormativity
***”understanding the possibility for children and youth to recruit amounts of bodily pleasure” (Dryer). Implement early interventions to develop queer children
-queer theory claims that all norms relating to gender and sexuality are merely social constructs
-this means that norms relating to children and sexuality are merely social constructs as well
***Disturbing: once activists successfully dismantle those “oppressive” norms, children will be free to express their inherently sexual nature
Marketing Sexual Liberation to Kids:
3 important driving forces:
1-Freud: human identity is essential sexual in nature that extends to our youngest humans
-sexuality is who you are
-children are therefore just as sexual in nature as adults
-children should be encouraged to explore their sexuality in pursuit of happiness
-societal restrictions on sexuality repress the true self for both adults and children
2-Kinsey: children are sexual beings who not only experience sexual responses but also enjoy those responses
-the only reason children aren’t normally engaging in sexual behavior is the existence of unnecessarily inhibiting social norms
3-Queer theory: gender and sexuality norms are merely social constructs, so gender and sexuality norms for children are merely social constructs as well
-once those “oppressive” norms are dismantled, children will be free to express themselves queerly
***culture to date has overwhelmingly accepted these ideas as they apply to adults, but it hasn’t yet overwhelmingly accepted the same ideas as they apply to children
-this poses both a challenge and opportunity for the subset of the LGBTQ activists who want culture to accept both sides of the coin
***the average person who broadly embraces LGBTQ+ ideas today assumes that related content for kids is merely about teaching them kindness, diversity, inclusion, and tolerance
-the mainstream allies aren’t part of the LGBTQ+ community themselves, but are oftentimes the most vocal group condemning those who don’t affirm LGBTQ+ morality
***they are protectors with a just cause
-it is step 3 of the marketing strategy which is a perfect tool for activists to get culture to embrace even more
-2015: emergence of Drag Queen Story Hour (DHS) where drag queens read books on LGBTQ+ themes to young children in public libraries or other public spaces across the country
-drag queens are performers (usually gay men) who dress in women’s clothing, wear exaggerated women’s makeup, and perform a variety of musical or comedy acts for audiences, typically of a sexual nature when in an adult context
Marketing shift:
-drag queen events for children portrayed as sweet-as-candy occasions with performers reading “family-friendly” books and doing silly danced
-it is portrayed as simply a “safe space for reading and creativity”
-mainstream allies (usually parents) enthusiastically line up to give their children the experience of learning about diversity and inclusion from fun performers who supposedly epitomize what it means to be true to yourself
-mainstream allies think they are showing support to the LGBTQ+ community and raising kids to do the same because it is just sparkles, dancing, and reading
***parents like these have been completely fooled; activists themselves will tell you that’t not what these kinds of show are for
-an academic article, “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood” by Drag Queen Harris Kornstein, uses the word pedagogy which means the method and practice of teacher; thus, drag pedagogy is the process of teaching through drag
-drag pedagogy offers one model for learning not simply about queer lives, but how to live queerly
-the purpose isn’t to teach kids about those who may be different from them, but rather, to teach kids to become like them
-to live queerly themselves, resisting all norms of gender and sexuality from a young age
***this is explicitly see drag as an alternative form of education for children who are otherwise “straightened” into a heteronormative vision in their traditional schools
“Building in part from queer theory and trans studies, queer and trans pedagogies seek to actively destabilize the normative function of schooling through transformative education…This is a fundamentally different orientation than movements towards the inclusion or assimilation of LGBTQ+ people into the existing structures of school and society.”
-by their own admission, these programs are “fundamentally different” than the traditional push of LGBTQ “inclusion” that most mainstream allies assume they’re participating in
-they knowingly use language designed to attract the mainstream and keep their true goals in the shadows
-the goal of redefining “family”
-they will tell you it’s family friendly, but what they really mean is they want to prepare kids to be part of another kind of family—a queer family
“It is undeniable that DQSH (drag queen story hour) is ‘family friendly,’ in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is “family friendly” in a sense of “family” as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street. “
Marketing & Activists Objectives:
-justify its educational value
-pulls in mainstream allies who desire to teach empathy in order to promote ideas that are currently less commonly accepted
-dismantling gender and sexuality norms from an early age
-dismantling of norms is the preparatory work needed to achieve the sexual “liberation” of children
***using the mainstream acceptance of LGBTQ ideology for adults to work toward the acceptance of sexual liberation for children
1-Comprehensive Sexuality Education:
-sexual education in public schools today is rooted in a program called Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)
-CSE claims to give young people accurate, age-appropriate information about sexuality
-it is steeped in queer theory and is being pushed to kids as young as pre-school age
-CSE materials normalize and glamorize youth sex and experimentation in the name of inclusion
-this gives the mainstream allies a just cause to protect = inclusion
2-Books in school and public libraries:
-there are a number of books for kids of all ages that are promoted by LGBTQ activists in school and public libraries
-mainstream allies see them as needed LGBTQ representation
-many of these books are very sexual explicit (in language and even in pictures)
-they can easily be labeled as pornographic
-they are clearly designed to awaken children’s sexuality
3-Pride parades and similar events:
-pride parades are being marketed as “family-friendly”
-mainstream allies back this marketing tactic as “family-friendly”
-pride parades and events are highly sexual in nature
Ex. two men perform a sex act in public
-more like family friendly sexual content
-children may not be the main audience, but labeling it “family friendly” intentionally encourages children of all ages to attend and subsequently exposes them to overtly sexual content
***Bottom line is children shouldn’t be sexualized
Identity and Sexuality: The Bible vs. the Sexual Revolution:
3 core biblical answers to the question of human dignity:
1-every human is made in the image of God
2-every human has an objective purpose
3-every human has a sin nature
Every human is made in the image of God:
-this point alone has two implications that separate biblical truths about identity from the claims of the sexual revolution
-we are created beings
-if God created us then it is logical that He has the authority and knowledge to tell us who we are
-God revealed in Scripture the truths we need to know about ourselves, we have an objective source for that information, and it’s independent of anything we might feel about our identity
-the sexual revolution is based on the presupposition that we either have no creator who has the authority to tell us who we are (an atheistic view) or that we have no creator who has told us who we are (deistic view)
-in these perspectives, the ultimate authority on a person’s identity lies in the subjective feelings of the self
-the fact that every human is made in the image of God is that humans are inherently different in nature from animals
-we’re uniquely moral creatures who are able to reflect, reason, and make the choices necessary to execute dominion that God gave us over the earth
-we are more than animal biological instinct
-God gave us a moral law and corresponding conscience to point us toward what is objectively good
-He has expectations of us
“They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them” (Romans 2:15).
-the sexual revolution is the outworking of naturalistic evolutionary assumptions that all living creatures–including humans–developed from a single-cell common ancestor
-in this assumption, we as humans are not inherently different in our identity from animals
***if animals are driven by sexual instincts, we must be too
Every human has an objective purpose:
***male and female are not social constructs
-we are created for something
-we have a Creator who with the authority and ability to tell us the purpose for which He created us
The Bible teaches:
-God desires our steadfast love and knowledge of Him
“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).
-we are to have corresponding love for others
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and, Love your neighbor as yourself” Luke 10:27).
-He desires you to know Jesus
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
-that all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth
“Who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
***we are to know God, love God, and make Him known to others
-God has a design for human flourishing to facilitate the fulfillment of this purpose including a design for gender and sexuality
-the Bible repeatedly condemns sexual behavior outside of marriage between a man and a woman
-God designed sex specifically for the physical, sexual, and emotional union between a husband and wife
***sex is designed for marriage so it should never include children
Sexual Revolution:
1-our purpose is to maximize happiness
2-sexual fulfillment is central to maximizing happiness
-these ideas come from an uncreated animal-based view of humanity
3-Every human has a sin nature
-the Bible teaches that every human has a sin nature which is a desire to rebel against God and go our own way
-Paul says that before coming to Christ, all of us “lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3).
-we are by nature pleasure-maximizers
-the Bible agrees with the sexual revolution on this point
-the disagreement is whether that’s descriptive or prescriptive
Ex. prescriptive: describes what we do by nature or prescribes what we should do
Ex. descriptive: the Bible acknowledges it’s what we do by nature, but teaches that there’s a moral law that’s greater than our instincts; it's not what we should do
-sexual revolution: we’re literally defined by our strongest instinct: We are sexual beings
-sexual revolution: our sexual instincts are our very essence
-sins isn’t a consideration because God isn’t in the picture
-without God we are governed by our sexual instincts
***clearly the Bible and the sexual revolution are at great odds
LGBTQ Activism and the Sexual Liberation of Children: Hand-in-Glove Movements
***note: not everyone who identifies as LGBTQ want to sexualize kids
-there are LGBTQ groups that understand the nature of the sexual revolution
-they see how activists are extending the ideas to kids, and proactively rejecting this extension
-the quest for the sexual liberation of children is also not exclusively a subset of LGBTQ activism
***the preponderance of activism for the sexual liberation of children is attached to LGBTQ activism
-the sexual revolution facilitated the cultural acceptance of LGBTQ ideology by convincing culture that your identity is in your sexuality, so any sexual expression is valid because our desires are simply who you are
Christians:
-the culture hates you because you are fighting against the sexualization of children through LGBTQ-connected initiatives like Drag Queen Story Hour or Comprehensive Sexuality Education
-the mainstream allies do not necessarily want sexualized children
-the mainstream allies think Christians are fighting against LGBTQ people
-the mainstream allies have not connected the initiatives of how certain LGBTQ-connected initiatives are used to promote the sexual liberation of children
-sexual revolution explains why culture hates anyone who doesn’t accept LGBTQ ideas in the first place
***if you presuppose that a person’s sexual behavior is literally who they are then rejection of the morality of that behavior is seen as a harmful and hateful rejection of the whole person
-Christians aren’t rejecting people
-Christians are advocating for societal righteousness in connection with gender and sexuality whether for adults or children
***we are affirming God’s design for all people
***the culture hates you because you fight against the sexualization of children
Responses to Challenges:
1-Christians are hateful bigots
-there will always be bad examples of people saying terrible things or using derogatory words
-remind others that in an imperfect fallen world we have imperfect fallen people
-do not apologize for those people, but stay consistent with Jesus’s command for Christians to love others
-condemn the behavior while still loving the broken human in front of you
2-Christians are harming LGBTQ people by not accepting the for who they are
-Be practical = no one accepts everything about everyone
3-Christians are homophobic
-phobic is an irrational fear of something or someone
-just because Christians believe God has a design for gender and sexuality doesn't mean they have an irrational fear of those who live in other ways
4-Taking kids to LGBTQ events like pride parades and Drag Queen Story Hour teaches them about diversity and equality. No parent should oppose that.
-So ask if there is no other way for a parent to teach their children about diversity and equality?
-Christians greatly value diversity and equality when rightly defined in terms of God’s standards, but culture uses those words to mean something very different
Ex. often the moral equality of diverse sexual beliefs and behaviors
-my opposition isn’t that I don’t value teaching kids about diversity and equality, but because I do not believe these events teach kids a right understanding of diversity and equality
-these kinds of events often expose young children to highly sexualized content so I find them to be age-inappropriate
5-Book bans are harming LGBTQ kids by removing books from school libraries
-Ask if they have personally looked at the books parents are asking to be removed?
-Ask them to defend the essential need to have sexually explicit materials available to children and/or teenagers?
-the books being asked to be removed from school libraries have extremely explicitly sexual passages or picture—to a degree that many people consider them pornographic
***no kids needs to have access to pornography in their school
What to do:
-find out about pornographic or otherwise sexualizing books in your local schools and take action accordingly
-get educated and educate others on the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programs being used in schools nationwide
-get educated and educate others on the role of Planned Parenthood in sexualizing children
***there is every financial incentive to encourage sexual activity and experimentation in kids
-find how your local schools are using social emotional learning (SEL)
-schools nationwide foster social and emotional skills within school curriculum
-SEL is wrapped up in positive sounding language
-SEL is steeped in critical theory
-harmless-sounding programs gets children to question their identity and reject social norms relating to gender and sexuality
***If you have concerns time to address them at the next school board meeting
-lead the kids or youth at your church in a course on biblical sexuality
-lead a homeschool co-op
-wherever you lead make sure Christian youth are equipped with strong understanding of biblical sexuality
-encourage your pastor to equip your congregation on this issue and other issues of culture significance
***Christians are to be salt and light on culturally prominent issues
Reminders:
-speak truth even when culture hates you for it
-think biblically about defining what’s truly good for society
-we should not be afraid to get “political”
-see the truth that culture loves evil and hates righteousness
-evil has become palpable in many whole new ways
-culture is in deep rebellion against its Creator
-the hatred of Christians ultimately stems from people’s deep-seated desire for self-rule
-culture doesn’t want Christians to impose policies they do not like
-culture doesn’t want Christians to impose norms, values, and expectations
-culture doesn’t want Christians to impose bodily rules on them
-culture doesn’t want Christians to impose gender restrictions on them
culture doesn’t want Christians to impose sexual restrictions on them
-righteousness is despised by a fallen world
-God’s messengers advocate for righteousness in society means working for people’s good against their own desires
***feeling the weight of evil in the world can be heavy
-evil is dark, but exposing the unfruitful works of darkness puts God’s goodness on beautiful display for the world to see
“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).
***It is our mission to persevere as Christians in a hostile public square for the glory of God and the good of others
