 Originally Posted by bradybaker
So I was reading the Bill Clinton topic. His sexual deviance seems to be a major issue for a lot of Americans.
Look at American media, violence and obscenities are common place in TV and movies now. But when an actress wears nothing but a towel on Monday Night Football, it's a national issue. Grand Theft Auto's violence wasn't recieved well, but the reaction doesn't compare to the one garnered by the San Andreas 'hot coffee' incident.
Where does this aversion to sex come from? Their closest allies in Europe and even their neighbours to the north are much more enlightened when it comes to this most basic of human expressions. It's easy to see where the violence comes from, America was born out of revolution. Is there a similar cause to the sex aversion?
Help me figure this one out.
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It's not what I would call an American thing. It's a Christian thing. We have tons and tons of Christians here, and the Christians here seem to be more obsessed with what everybody else is doing than Christians in other countries. It probably has to do with the Protestantism that is so prevalent here, especially in the South. I am pretty sure that the Baptists own Mississippi, for example. In the U.S., we have a clash of cultures, and you are talking about just one of the cultures. We have a huge world of views and lifestyles outside of the conservative Christian culture. We have a huge porn industry here. We also have a gigantic strip club industry. Prostitution is legal in Nevada. That shows how the conservative Christian culture does not dominate. A very large portion of the country is open minded about sex. The amount of sex on television and in our movies is a good illustration of the other culture, and it's the one that dominates the media. It is definitely not anything close to the entire country that is so appalled by fornication.
The Clinton-Lewisnky scandal was not so much an illustration of an American aversion to sex or even a Christian aversion to sex outside of marriage. It was more of a conservative aversion to Bill Clinton. They couldn't bring him down with any of the other crimes he was being investigated for, so they had to settle for trying to bring him down with a perjury charge. Clinton was in trouble for perjury, not oral sex by itself. Judicial precedent suggested that convicting Clinton of perjury would involve selective prosecution. That is why the investigation was unjust. I heard a lot of Americans, Canadians, and Europeans screaming that Clinton was in trouble for having oral sex. That is not what was happening. It was just a case of conservatives finding a loop hole where Clinton technically committed a felony and could be brought down, so they hoped. It was like how the FBI couldn't get Al Capone on murder, laundering, extortion, or anything else, so they got him on tax evasion. It was not a matter of an American aversion to tax evasion. It was the only apparent way to bring down somebody seen as a criminal for other reasons.
I agree with encouraging teenage abstinence. I know it won't be completely effective, probably not even 25% effective. However, if just one person in an entire junior high or high school is convinced to wait on sex, that could be one person who avoids having to deal with the birth of his or her child or an abortion at a time when it will be so incredibly difficult to handle it. We have so many kids born into families that are not ready for them, and even more often into no family at all, often not even a mother. That is a real problem here, and teenagers usually don't quite get it. They know that sex causes pregnancy and can transmit sexually transmitted diseases, but it way too often happens where teenagers get pregnant or get somebody else pregnant or end up with a sexually transmitted disease and then say, "Oh!!!!!! Now I get it!!!!!!!!" and it's too late. I do believe that the added message that if they do it they need to use condoms should be given, but teenagers need to greatly understand in vivid detail what the consequences of sex can be. Although I agree with that much, I respect other people's wishes and actions concerning their sex lives. I think pornography, prostitution, stripping, gay marriage, and multiple spouse marriages should all be legal. I have no problem with anybody who wants to engage in those things. I just think the consequences of sex are too much overlooked by too many people who don't quite get what they are doing, and those people need to be given really good information and encouragement.
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