“We Want Sexy Back!”

Sex is good.  Sex is fun. Sex is sacred. 

That’s the message from the eager young voices over at 1flesh.org.  The website is the creation of a group of young adults, mostly college students, who have launched a grassroots movement in opposition to the use of artificial contraception and dedicated, to use their words, to “bringing great sex to the entire universe.”

Pope John Paul II spoke about the beauty and the holiness of the marital embrace in a series of Wednesday audiences from September 1979 through November 1984.  That series of reflections has come to be called the “theology of the body”—inspired by Pope Paul VI’s assertion in Humanae Vitae that the problem of birth regulation must be considered in light of a “total vision of man.”

Catholic author Christopher West summarizes John Paul II’s “theology of the body” like this:

This is to say that everything God wants to tell us on earth about who he is, the meaning of life, the reason he created us, how we are to live, as well as our ultimate destiny, is contained somehow in the meaning of the human body and the call of male and female to become “one body” in marriage. How? Pointing always to the Scriptures, the Holy Father reminds us that the Christian mystery itself is a mystery about marriage – the marriage between Christ and the Church. Yes, God’s plan from all eternity is to draw us into the closest communion with himself – to “marry” us! Jesus took on a body so we could become “one body” with him (which we do in the Eucharist).

In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the continuing proscription of most forms of birth control.  He warned that if sex were reduced to a form of casual recreation, and if the unitive (or relational) and procreative aspects of sexuality were severed by artificial contraception, then marriages would be weakened, divorce would be increasingly common, and the family and society would suffer serious consequences. 

Sounds like today’s culture, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, though, there are many people who will never read a papal encyclical, and who will never be exposed to the “theology of the body” in a classroom or in the pew.  How to reach those people?

Enter 1flesh.org.  This upbeat, high-spirited message about the meaning of sex in marriage is geared toward a younger crowd, even those who are not well schooled in Catholic theology. They explain:

If anything can be said of our generation, it’s this: We want sexy back. Our parents’ generation, well, they lost it. They delivered to us a world with sky-high rates of divorce, abortion, and STDs; a world bored with sex and bored with romance; a world in which more and more people are turning to pornography to find sexual satisfaction; a world in which 1 in 5 women report being sexual assaulted, and the human body — the sexiest thing in the universe — is used to sell cars.

After extremely little consideration, we decided we don’t want that. We want awesome marriages and mind-blowing sex lives. We want women and men to be respected and loved for who they are, to the very depths of their being. We want sex free from fear, love free from use, and a world of people who love and respect their own bodies. In short, we want sexy back. In fact, we demand it.

If you haven’t heard from these kids yet, check out their website.  Watch the videos. 

Help them bring sexy back.