How Not To Have Sex

There are times when I look and survey the modern world and understand the appeal. I understand why the preachings of wealth, materialism, modernism, relativism, secularism and all the doctrines and dogmas of Today hold the congregation sway. It’s attractive – at a shallow glance – and I get it, because it’s all about our selves, and that’s fun. No rules, live for yourself, nobody is more right than anyone else – all fine and dandy drugs for the taking.

But what I simply cannot fathom, what stretches my mind beyond it’s limits and puts me in a state of shaken awe is the current modern policy of having really terrible, boring, divorce-worthy sex. I hope – though I am not entirely sure – that there was no single individual responsible, no persuasive, bookish man – probably with a small mustache – who stood on a podium and said, “You know what I think would be really great? If sex sucked. If sex was so lame that it couldn’t hold marriages together. If sex became so commonplace and biological that it would be paired with watching a movie on ’20 Things To Do on a First Date’ lists.”

Actually, I know there was no such man, because the common sense and justice of humanity would have hung him long before he finished speaking. No, it has been a matter of degrees, a steady worsening of a good thing, like slowly adding preservatives and chemicals to a food until, over the course of 70 years, you have a poison that nobody wants.

But it was the general attitude of “let’s get rid of taboos” that started the whole thing, that much seems apparent. Might I take the moment to ask anyone reading this to be skeptical of a man advocating the eradication of a taboo, for the very word implies that human beings have been doing it forever, and it’s a certain ugly pride to think yourself better and more brilliant than your hundreds of forefathers. If a thing is really old-fashioned – as in thousands of years of use – then it is not decrepit, not limping with a cane; it is a rugged survivor, probably wearing flannel. Abortion is decrepit. Wine is old. So when the common consensus of all of humanity is that sex is beautiful, doubt and feel free to mock the porno industry that says it’s ugly.

Let’s give it the run down, shall we? Call it The Unofficial Timeline and List of Stupid Ideas Propagated by all Manners of Millionaires, Horny Individuals, Pseudo-Intellectuals and Eugenicists Concerning and Leading to the Crapifying of Sex. First was the idea that sex is just a biological act, and should thus be freed of all the morals and virtues that surrounded it. From what I can understand this came about when people thought they were the first people to realize the scientific concept that sex leads to children. But vomiting is a biological act and now – in the new and improved morality of the modern world –  the two are on par. In steps birth control, and with some big shoes to fill. It sought to make sex safe, because S.T.D’s and babies are caused by the lack of condoms, doncha know? (Actually, it first sought to get rid of those dirty Blacks, Jews and Irishmen, but shhhhh…)  But safety – especially false safety – is never what makes a thing fun, rather, safety is the mom who put out your campfire and made you microwave marshmallows. Safety – which really only means the lack of responsibility – is the death of adventure. And if that weren’t enough, the same pills that make sex unexciting make women unexcited. Genius.  Pornography followed up on this “no-virtue” sex and did the world the massive favor of showing other, unrealistically better-looking individuals having sex, which had the marvelous effect of making realistic sex – that is to say, the only kind anyone has – disappointing, addicting men and women not to the flesh of their flesh, but to digital re-runs of actors whose once attractive bodies are now corpses, dead from AIDS years ago. (Oh snap.) This is all so pleasant.

Then – and if the rest was amusing, this is dark – then there is the attitude that, if all else fails, we can get an abortion. That’s an attitude that can only ever darken the recesses of the mind, for if it were ever spoken aloud, if it were ever whispered “if all our attempts to avoid responsibility fail, we can kill a child for it.” then the very foundations of the universe would tremble, and I fear no prayer or fasting could hold back the wrath of God.

So to recap, the world is currently in the business of promoting unattractive, unfulfilled, unexciting, unrealistic, meaningless safe sex. To which I say “What the hell is going on with you people? I’m a seventeen year-old virgin and – on the merits of being Catholic alone – I could have better sex than you!” Run that one up the flag pole, see if the porn industry’s cool with it. The Church, in the face of all this nonsense, makes the radical statement that sex should be awesome. Which is really a little like making the bold statement that food should taste good. But in this with-it world, who knows what we’ll be called to witness too – the very blueness of the sky may soon be at stake.