this just about sums up my feelings on the matter...
Katherine Kersten: The truth about the Vikings' party
startribune.com
Minnesotans are expressing shock at the alleged sex party on Lake Minnetonka. Fans are disgusted. Politicians are outraged. The Vikings can kiss a new stadium goodbye.
But I've noticed something. Everyone sputters with outrage, but no one really articulates why. When pressed, people generally mutter something about the Vikings being poor role models for our kids.
We sense something is disastrously wrong with such lascivious conduct. But in America in 2005, we've lost the language to say exactly what. The players and women involved were apparently consenting adults. And consenting adults can pretty much engage in whatever sexual activities they want, right? For decades, enlightened free thinkers have worked to drill this into our heads.
It's time to speak the truth. Nothing happened on those boats that many of our teenage boys haven't already seen repeatedly on the Internet, where the raunchiest porn is a mouse-click away. Our 14-year-old girls have heard jokes about oral sex and masturbation on "Sex and the City," maybe watching with Mom. On cable TV shows such HBO's "Real Sex," explicit sex acts are regular fare. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that "virtual" pornography that portrays life-like children in the most degraded acts is protected "free speech."
In many taxpayer-financed sex education classes, our kids learn that sex is a matter of lifestyle choice. You decide when you're ready, and then have sex whenever and with whomever you want. Just make sure it's safe sex.
What about Grandma's conviction that sex is about love and family? What about abstinence till marriage? They're laughed out of town.
Our kids don't need "Vikings behaving badly" to act on the messages that society gives them every day. A recent survey found that 55 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds have engaged in oral sex. (I have friends who moved back from Chicago because their elementary school kids were regularly witnessing oral sex in the back of the school bus.) In college, kids "hook up" for anonymous sex, or enjoy "friends with benefits" - a sexual relationship that neither party expects to lead to commitment.
It's estimated that pay-per-view porn now accounts for 80 percent of total in-room entertainment revenue at chains such as Holiday Inn and Hyatt. Researchers report that 70 percent of 18- to 24-year-old men use Internet porn regularly. As these men become desensitized, they need to see increasingly extreme sexual acts and perversions to achieve sexual excitement. According to Pamela Paul, author of a new book on pornography, "Today, pornography is so seamlessly integrated into popular culture that embarrassment or surreptitiousness is no longer part of the equation."
What were the Vikings thinking? Unfortunately, perhaps merely what our society has taught them to think.
Minnesotans' reaction to the Vikings' sex-capades may be muddled, but it's heartening. At some level, we still revere the dignity - the sanctity - of sexual love. Occasionally, our residual sense of decency can still rise to the surface and shout its outrage. |
