Why is Sex Wrong?
By Jill Whitney
Even after the sexual revolution of the sixties, our society has managed to hold to its belief
that sex is dirty. Many religions have their leaders take a vow of celibacy. Parents are embarrassed
to tell their children the "facts of life", because the explanation would involve an introduction to sex,
and parents rarely want their children to ever find out about that. However, it seems a little odd that
something considered so evil could be the act of creating life, an instinct more powerful than any
other.
The censorship boards in Canada are apparently among those who believe that sex is
something away from which the general public should be kept. Movies playing in the cinema which
involve any sexual content whatsoever receive an 'R' rating, meaning admittance restricted to those
over the age of eighteen. However, a film with brutal violence, such as Schindler's List, receives
only an 'AA' rating, allowing any child over the age of fourteen to view its scenes of murder and
brutality unaccompanied by an adult. It seems that the destruction of life is more sociably acceptable
than its creation.
Parents seem to agree with censors that children shouldn't be exposed to information about
sex. Although the school boards in Ontario begin teaching sex education to ten-year-old children in
the fifth grade, many parents still refuse to have their children participate in this program. One would
think they would embrace the idea of having someone else explain how babies are made, as
uncomfortable as parents often are when cornered with the question "where did I come from?" Far
from accepting this idea, the parents who are most afraid of this question are usually the ones who
most protest having a child hear about periods and wet dreams from a nurse.
Another group of organisations that has a tendency to gang up on sex is religion. When
condom dispensers were being installed in high school washrooms, religious groups were some of
the first to protest that it was immoral to endorse use of birth control, that it would seem to
hormonally overwhelmed teens that the schools were encouraging them to become nymphomaniacs.
For some reason, it is believed that the sight of the word 'condom' will turn an ordinary, intelligent
teenager into a huge chunk of testosterone or estrogen, the two most evil chemicals that Satan ever
invented.
Although society seems to be changing many of its beliefs, the immorality and sinfulness sex
is, at the moment, still one of the main ones. Sex appears to be an individual, daring to stand up for
its rights against the bullies who keep knocking it down. The bullies are slowly, one at a time,
changing sides, but many of them are still knocking sex down. Someday, maybe it will be able to
fight back and stand erect.
Send any comments to Jill:jleigh@bch.umontreal.ca