Back in middle school, I remember Dad, a barber, trapping me in the barber chair ostensibly for a haircut while he talked to me about what we used to call the Facts of Life. Dad was a good man, but I sure don’t remember him telling me about Sex Week at the university.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #3 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Some of us celebrate Valentine’s Day, and a few even Valentine’s Week, but on the campuses of colleges and universities across the country, Valentines has morphed into “Sex Week.”
Events include:
SEXtravaganza
Freaky Friday: A Beginner’s Guide to Pleasure
Condom Bingo
Sex Ed Quickie
Good Vibes and Pleasure
There’s even a “Genital Diversity Gallery” at Tulane University featuring anatomically correct displays of human genitalia, which ostensibly is intended to “destigmatize genitals and celebrate the diversity of bodies that exist.”
There are workshops on bondage, submission, sadism, dominance, masochism, fetish, foreplay, and use of various sex toys.
Other discussions center on polyamorous relationships and something labeled “ethical non-monogamy.”
An organization called The Newcomb Institute, which promotes gender equality, offers what it calls a “Wheel of Fornication,” listing statistics about sex and sexuality.
Many of these events are justified in the name of something called “Sexual Health Awareness,” or as the Ohio State University representative put it, a “deep and abiding commitment to free speech.” Apparently one event at OSU allows students to “thank abortion providers” for their perceived great service to the American people.
Believe it or not, I am holding back in this podcast, meaning I’m intentionally not repeating the most graphic, crude and lewd, examples of what is taking place. Needless to say, it’s a long way from the “Birds and the Bees.” And it would appear there’s a serious lack of discernment among the adults in the room.
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Yale University hosted the first identifiable “Sex Week” in 2002, and the idea’s popularity has grown steadily since, as has the eroticism, pornographic displays, lasciviousness, and wanton wickedness that apparently recognize no standards of decency.
It is ironic indeed to witness universities posturing sexual “freedom of speech,” while they simultaneously corral students in “free speech zones,” limit or even attempt to cancel expressions of religious or conservative ideas, propagate woke values that suppress Christian morality, issue mask or vaccine mandates, politicize sports, and racialize virtually everything in the name of inclusion. Differing point of views, please be silenced.
But Sex Week is not about sexual health. Not really. It’s about celebration of the self and the rejection of truth, God, responsibility, and accountability. It’s a contemporary, salacious bacchanalia.
You would think that the adults operating these Sex Week events, people who, like me, grew up in the 60s, would have figured out by now that “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n Roll” really is not a recipe for a long, healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. But alas, too many university adults are still looking for Mr. Goodbar themselves, adrift on a sea of cultural relativism they helped create, delusionally thinking they and their students can find fulfillment in a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrha.
I spent 35 years of my working life in academia, the last 19 in higher level administration. I loved every minute of it, even the hard times. And I still find ivied halls, oaken campuses, and glorious libraries compelling.
Even more, I loved the idea of learning, the pursuit of truth, free inquiry, discussion and debate, discovery. These were values rooted in my Christian faith back to the earliest European and American universities founded by people of faith. Oxford University’s motto, dating from the mid-16th Century, is Dominus Illuminatio Mea, meaning “'the Lord is my light.” Harvard University’s motto, adopted in 1692, is Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church.”
But these values celebrating knowledge, light and wisdom, truth, capital-T Truth in Christ, and the calling of the Church are fast fading if not already gone, even on some Christian college and university campuses.
Today, much of American higher education is a woke-dominated caricature of what it once was, and Sex Week is simply further evidence.
Bible believing Christians are “people of the book.” Christians believe the Bible is what it claims that it is, the Word of God once delivered.
Since we are people of the book, and since we understand that Creation is a gift from God to be developed for his glory and our blessing,Christians have historically initiated, supported, promoted, and worked in and for education. We want people to be literate, to be able to think and discern what is best, to be able to care for the world and our families, even as we carry the message of hope in Jesus Christ.
Since centuries-past, Christians have founded schools and universities and energized them with a Christian worldview rooted in the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, commissioning us to develop culture as unto the Lord.
That’s the vision we should still maintain for free and independent, nonpolitical, quality higher education. It’s “higher” not because it’s post-high school grades 13-16 but because it aspires to lofty values, the best of and the betterment of human civilization.
Sex Week is fools’ gold, false values that lead to the broad road to destruction. Higher education can do better. Our students deserve better.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
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