This is a response to the Rolling Stone article, "The Young and the Sexless," which was about christians and virginity.
'The New Virgin Army'—Rolling Stone Meets Sexual Abstinence
Several years ago, an article in the journal Theology Today suggested that sexual abstinence just might be "the last sexual perversion." In a world increasingly given to unrestrained sexual activity and a cornucopia of sensuality, voluntary sexual abstinence appears radical, suspicious, and downright odd.
This certainly seems to be the case as Rolling Stone magazine reported on what it called "The New Virgin Army" in its June 30-July 14, 2005 issue. The article, written by reporter Jeff Sharlet, identifies this new "army" of sexually abstinent Christian young people as, "the young and the sexless." As the article declares, "There's a new sexual revolution going on . . . . Meet the Christian soldiers who are fighting the fire down below."
A couple of decades ago, Rolling Stone magazine represented the voice of the counter-culture. Now, Rolling Stone is no longer part of the counter-culture--it's mainstream in both audience and ideology. The magazine, we should note, has not shifted right. The culture has shifted left--at least on sex.
The sexual radicalism of the 1960s--the very culture that produced skyrocketing rates of teenage sexual activity, unmarried heterosexual cohabitation, the homosexual rights movement, and the eroticization of everyday life--has produced a moral context in which sexual abstinence before marriage appears nothing less than a perversion of the sexual norm.
Sharlet's article begins by suggesting that the "true face of the Christian right" just might be "that of a twenty-four-year-old religious-studies graduate student at New York University." Sharlet introduces us to Matt Dunbar, a young man who is described as committed to sexual abstinence, but not to prudery. To him, marital sex is "communion," and the act of sexual intercourse--and all other sexual activity--is restricted to the confines of heterosexual marriage.
As Dunbar understands, "Abstinence is counter-cultural." He ties it to a rejection of materialism, consumerism, and the sensuality that has debased the culture even as it has corrupted sex itself.
Dunbar and his three New York roommates are committed to sexual abstinence until marriage. For three of the young men, sexual abstinence has meant virginity. The fourth has had sex in the past but is now committed to abstinence until marriage. All four are from Visalia, California, and the photographs accompanying the article portray young twenty-somethings who look pretty much like their generational peers.
The young men are brutally honest about the difficult challenge of sexual purity. Scantily clad young women, sexually explicit advertising, and an entertainment universe saturated with sensuality produce a context that makes sexual purity a very difficult goal to achieve. Beyond all this, the moral message constantly communicated by the mainstream culture is that being sexually active is normal and sexual abstinence is something like an indication of mental imbalance or sexual cowardice. At the very least, it represents an eccentric form of moral Puritanism that is hardly understood by the mainstream culture.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/editorial/407/8|15|25/the.new.virgin.army%97rolling.stone.meets.sexual.abstinence/1.htm R. Albert Mohler, Jr. Christian Post Columnist
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin