Tag: Sex

Silence is Golden

Published on by D. G. Hart69 Comments

The controversy surrounding a post at the Co-Allies of the Gospel website has me thinking that if the Mark Driscolls and Tim Kellers of the world would not write books about marriage and sex we all might be better off. Open discussions these days of sex and marriage has nurtured an environment where Doug Wilson, provocateur par excellance, has stepped in “it” by writing about sex in a way offensive or objectionable to some. Since the point here is that silence about sex might do Christians some good, I am not going to quote from Wilson here.

I am going to comment as an aging baby boomer, though, that when I was a kid growing up in evangelical circles believers didn’t talk about sex. We didn’t even conceive of our parents or minister (and wife) conceiving. Call it the Hamlet phenomenon where you don’t want to picture what your parents do in privacy. But that notion of privacy has of course been shattered not just by the sexual revolution but by cultural assumptions about the goodness of intimacy and transparency and the badness of hang ups or uptightness.

The literature on marriage and sex from Christians is from one angle, then, not a reflection of the Lordship of Christ over all areas of life. It is instead a further indication of Christian capitulation to a culture that lacks restraint about private matters. Just as the 1950s knew something (though imperfectly) about distinctions between religion and politics, so that era also could distinguish between the living room and the bedroom. The United States (and probably the West more generally) was better for it.

Any Tie to John Frame?

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

I wish so, but I don’t see one.

Also, if a connection between the Baylys and the Gospel Coalition existed, I’d like to find it. But I can’t. Old Life is a responsible blog, after all.

Though there is a Tim Keller reference here that is not of my doing (mmmmmmm TKNY).

The Baylys have continued their hysteria on matters sexual with a post about a New York Times article on toys and the way they reinforce differences between boys and girls.

Girl toys are responsible for gender apartheid. So says the New York Times. With its newspaper of record such a nag, could anyone really be surprised that Manhattan’s most marketable church is pervasively androgynous?

Isn’t this a little like shooting fish in a barrel, sort of like the New York Times going after Pat Robertson to perform a dig at Christianity? Do any of their parishioners in Toledo or Bloomington actually care what the New York Times says? And do ministers of the gospel really want to pick Barbie dolls as a battle for the church militant?

Still you can’t help but love the reference to Keller’s Redeemer Church. As if Keller alone is responsible for gender confusion in the PCA, as if the residents of Toledo and Bloomington have thoroughly worked out a theology of sexual identity.

And that raises a question the Brothers Bayly seldom if ever consider: if Keller is to blame for (and a symptom of — it is a sloppy two-way analytic street) what’s wrong with New York City and cosmopolitan culture in the U.S., are the Baylys to blame for what’s wrong with the American heartland (because they certainly are not a symptom)? Can their cities really withstand the standards they set for Keller’s Manhattan? Can any? (By the way, could we please have a side of the gospel with that large plate of law?)

Update: I believe I have discovered the tie between Frame and Tim and David Bayly.

If I Liked Bunk, Can I Still Admire Joe Pa?

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

Morality is alive and well on the airwaves of sports talk-radio. The ethical crisis of the moment is what did Joe Paterno know about the sexual abuse of boys by a former assistant coach and when did he know it. The issue has led to remarkable moral clarity for talk-show hosts who generally embrace views that the Baylys associate with secularism and relativism in the United States. Why, Angelo Cataldi, has even called for the firing of Joe Paterno for not controlling the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the security forces of Penn State University, and not knowing every single aspect of the football program at PSU. In other words, Joe Pa should be fired for not being God.

This is not a post about sexual abuse. It is about ethical abuse.

First, Angelo and company have no apparent capacity to consider what friendships may do in preventing someone from leaning hard on a friend and colleague. Would those who are calling for Paterno’s firing be so quick to decide so categorically to eliminate a friend or relative? Isn’t one of the most persistent problems of human existence that moral ideals run up against personal allegiances all the time? Does this make violations of an ethical code right? No. But the inability to imagine the angst that someone like Paterno may have gone and still be going through is the sort of one-dimensional outlook that prevents evangelicals and other pietists from ever reading novels that explore morally ambiguous circumstances.

For instance, Bunk Moreland is one of the great characters on The Wire. And in Season Five Bunk knows what Jimmy is doing to bring a drug lord to conviction — namely, breaking the law and police regulations. Bunk disapproves mightily of Jimmy’s misdeeds. But Bunk never tells on Jimmy. Was I outraged that Bunk didn’t rat? Duh! Bunk remains one of my favorite characters despite his moral weakness. This is the stuff of life. It is likely what Joe Pa has gone through many times. (Of course, it could be that Paterno doesn’t care a wit about his former colleague or the boys the ex-coach abused. But how someone could be that cynical and that morally self-righteous all in one gulp gives my brain indigestion.)

But the moral crisis thickens when listeners remember that the show Angelo and company broadcast is sponsored by many gentlemen’s clubs where the lines distinguishing the righteous from the unrighteous are not so clear. Granted, Angelo may argue that pedophiliac sex is not consensual, is if voluntarism justifies willful lying before a grand jury or driving eighty-one miles per hour on the Ohio Turnpike. But last time I heard, human trafficking was one of the great illicit activities in our time and many of the women who come to the United States through human trafficking wind up in gentlemen’s clubs (see Season Two of The Wire). And has Angelo ever considered that some of the people who engage in the activities that transpire in gentlemen’s clubs end up being hurt by such behavior — from sexually transmitted diseases to psychological and spiritual scars that will follow the dancers and their tippers around the rest of their lives?

So it is not at all clear that Angelo and others who self-righteously condemn Joe Paterno are all that free and clear from the moral law they so eagerly enforce.

Will I be disappointed if it turns out that Joe Pa looked the other way too many times and didn’t seek to protect kids from lecherous men? Yes. But I am also disappointed in a talk-show host who (while driving my wife nuts when he talks about babes and boobs) is generally entertaining but so morally obtuse not to see that most days he should be disappointed in himself before pointing out the moral failings of others.

Mencken Week 2011

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

Unfortunately, old Henry’s birthday anniversary got lost in the shuffle of thoughts generated by 9/11. Since he was born on 9/12 Mencken will forever have to compete in the memories of Americans for attention. Even so, he has been much on my mind since I am offering a seminar on him for Hillsdale students. And thankfully he has not disappointed.

The following is from “A Loss to Romance” and indicates ways that Americans might support public decency and oppose sex education in public schools without having to appeal to biblical morality.

Perhaps the worst thing that this sex hygiene nonsense has accomplished is the thing mourned by Agnes Repplier in “The Repeal of Reticence.” In America, at least, innocence has been killed, and romance has been sadly wounded by the same discharge of smutty artillery. The flapper is no longer naive and charming; she goes to the altar of God with a learned and even cynical glitter in her eye. The veriest school-girl of to-day . . . knows as much as the midwife of 1885, and spends a good deal more time discharging and disseminating her information. All this, of course, is highly embarrassing to the more romantic and ingenuous sort of men, of whom I have the honor to be one. We are constantly in the position of General Mitchener in Shaw’s one-acter, “Press Cuttings,” when he begs Mrs. Farrell, the talkative charwoman, to reserve her confidences for her medical adviser. One often wonders, indeed, what women now talk of to doctors. . . .

Please do not misunderstand me here. I do not object to this New Freedom on moral grounds, but on aesthetic grounds. In the relations between the sexes
all beauty is founded upon romance, all romance is founded upon mystery, and all mystery is founded upon ignorance, or, failing that, upon the deliberate denial of the known truth. To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anaesthesia—to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess. But how can this condition of mind survive the deadly matter-offactness which sex hygiene and the new science of eugenics impose? How can a woman continue to believe in the honor, courage and loving tenderness of a man after she has learned, perhaps by affidavit, that his hæmoglobin count is 117%, that he is free from sugar and albumen, that his blood pressure is 112/79 and that his Wassermann reaction is negative? . . . Moreover, all this new-fangled “frankness” tends to dam up, at least for civilized adults, one of the principal well-springs of art, to wit, impropriety. What is neither hidden nor forbidden is seldom very charming. If women, continuing their present tendency to its logical goal, end by going stark naked, there will be no more poets and painters, but only dermatologists and photographers. . .

Barefoot, Pregnant, and Unplugged

Published on by D. G. Hart35 Comments

To say that the Bayly brothers have a one track mind would be to traffic in innuendo. I do not know them well enough to speculate on their sexual desires. I presume that as ministers of the gospel and as husbands their sexual passions are properly regulated.

But in a sense they do have sex on the brain, not in the sense of your average beer sipping NFL fan, but in the sense of men’s and women’s roles and sexual relations that produce offspring. After all, if you have a web page at Amazon dedicated to the ten best and worst books on sex, people might properly conclude you have women on the brain.

Beyond book lists and blog categories, Tim Bayly gave a good example of the borderline obsessiveness that he and his brother have about keeping men men and women women and never the twain shall meet except . . . well, . . .this is a PG blog. When news came out that the Presbytery of Missouri had exonerated the Federal Vision pastor, Jeff Myers, Doug Wilson posted a short notice that led to a rather moderate number of comments. Responses were chugging along about the merits and ties of Federal Visionaries, with an occasional distaff iteration when Tim decided to weigh in – not about Federal Vision, its theology, or merits – but about whether or not women should be discussing such matters at a public forum like a blog. To one female writer, Tim wrote (with love, of course):

it might be best for you to limit your comments when the subject matter here is the discipline of ordained officers of Christ’s Church and the application of God’s Word to that discipline. If there’s ever a time when it might be good for women to limit their online contributions, this would be a good candidate for careful consideration.

When another woman rose to the rebuked woman’s defense, especially because of a recent personal loss, Tim, to his credit, conceded that he should have been more circumspect and offered comfort.

But in further explanations, Tim reminded readers about the need for women to respect church officers like Doug Wilson. He wrote:

We’re not talking about submission, here, but the public rebuke of teaching elders on a matter of doctrine by a woman who does so, publicly, and with some considerable invective. Read what she said about my dear friend, Doug Wilson (who by the way is one of the more humble pastors I’ve met), and ask yourself if it’s seemly for a Christian woman to address a pastor in such a way at all, let alone in public?

Feminine deference is not “submission,” nor is a teaching elder “all men.”

For some reason, the public rebukes that he heaps out on ruling elders and pastors is fine. But the little ladies need to watch out for men and especially for the ordained ones.

I do wonder if Tim realizes the propensity he displays to view almost every issue according to what women are doing as sexual beings. We were once having a very nice conversation at Old Life about Presbyterian justice when Tim had to intervene and censor us for not talking about abortion even though that was not the subject. Now he interjects femininity into a discussion of a controversial and potentially damaging teaching like Federal Vision. Does Tim think that our society and churches would be fine if we could put the genie of women’s spunk back in the bottle of Calvin’s Geneva?

Update: I forgot to add this: when will the Baylys notice that Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia has two pastors with feminine names? Shocking.