The Caelum of Sex

I am proud to be sex-positive. The Dawn Patrol is a sex-positive blog.

One of the biggest deceptions of the Planned Parenthood crowd—perhaps the biggest—is that those in favor of legal abortion, contraception-based sex ed, and the like are "sex positive," while pro-life supporters, who back abstinence education, are sex-hating prudes.

Viewed objectively, it is clear that it is the Planned Parenthood crowd that thinks sex is disgusting, while those who are pro-life and support abstinence education have a complete understanding and appreciation of sex.

Planned Parenthood's Web site currently features an article stating that "healthy marriages" are dependent upon contraception. The organization founded by Margaret Sanger asserts that unintended children are "potential marriage killers."

St. Augustine saw this contraceptive mentality over 1,500 years ago*:

Whoever says that to procreate children is a worse sin than to copulate thereby prohibits [the purpose of] marriage; and he makes the woman no more a wife than a harlot, who, when she has been given certain gifts, is joined to man to satisfy his lust. If there is a wife there is matrimony. But there is no matrimony where motherhood is prevented; for then there is no wife.

Note that Augustine criticized those who say "to procreate children is a worse sin than to copulate." Surely, if anyone believes that, it is Planned Parenthood. That is the organization's reason for existence: to separate sex from its natural effects.

I suggest that it is cowardly to refuse to face the consequences of one's acts. Persons who use contraceptives will never learn the value of self-restraint. They will not need it. Self-indulgence with contraceptives may prevent the coming of children but will sap the vitality of both men and women, perhaps more of men than of women. It is unmanly to refuse battle with the devil....

It is a sin to bring forth unwanted children, but I think it is a greater sin to avoid the consequences of one’s own action. It simply unmans man.

The above was said by Mahatma Gandhi. It appears in a page of quotes about contraception on a Web site maintained by the sage's followers.

Another Gandhi statement, from the same source, could be speaking to Planned Parenthood today**:

My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking it for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control. Some of them even go so far as to say that even if they can, they ought not to do so. To them, no matter how eminent they may be in their own spheres, I say, in all humility but with utmost confidence, that they are talking without experience of the possibilities of self-control. They have no right to limit the capacity of the human soul.

And my plea, based on positive experience, is that even as truth and ahimsa are not merely for the chosen few but for the whole of humanity, to be practiced in daily life, so exactly is self–control not merely for a few "Mahatmas," but for the whole of humanity. And even as, because many people will be untruthful and violent, humanity may not lower its standard, so also, though many, even the majority, may not respond to the message of self–control, we may not lower our standard.

Is it "sex-positive" to say, "Have all the sex you want, but don't exchange body fluids?" To say, "Have all the sex you want—but forcibly alter your body's chemistry so that it won't operate the way it should?"

Think about the nature of contraceptive hormones—the pill, the patch, and so on. Since when did it become "healthy" to attack the body's normal, healthy processes?

A diabetic woman takes insulin because her body is not in perfect health and she needs the hormone to function as she should. I wear contact lenses because I do not have perfect vision naturally. A heart patient gets a pacemaker because his heart rate will not be normal otherwise.

Taking hormones or using other contraception, by contrast, prevents the body from doing exactly what it would do if it were in perfect health. That's not "sex-positive." That's an abject, utter fear of sex's consequences.

Abstinence education is not about how bad sex is. It's about how good sex is—a precious gift that enables a man and woman to be intimate in a unique and intense way, and gives them the creative power to bring forth new life. What's bad is to limit the sexual act, to take certain aspects of it and vaunt them above all others, so that the Promethean fire of sexual union is diverted from illuminating the partners' full humanity—including their potential fertility.

The people who coined the term "sex-positive" think that Christians hate and fear sex.

If only they knew. Christian couples do it like bunnies—even the ones who use Natural Family Planning as a means to space children. For the NFP couples, sex is all the more exciting because they have to abstain a few days out of the month. When they do have it, there are no barriers, no hormones, no condoms—just two devoted lovers giving and receiving everything they have to give. Now, that's sex-positive.

The so-called sex-positive feminists, so terrified of the natural consequences of sex in all its God-given glory, don't realize they're reducing themselves to nothing but a bunch of vaginas.

*The Augustine quote is taken from an essay published by American Life League.

**I first learned about Gandhi's vocal stand against contraception from a lecture on the topic by Fr. Bryce Sibley. The lecture is on CD; copies may be available from Fr. Sibley, who can be reached through his Web site.