Three 20-something women trying to figure out what it means to be lay, Catholic, and modern all at once.


November 13, 2009

Close But No Cigar, Newsweek

I was pleasantly surprised to read an opinion piece by Lisa Miller in Newsweek this past week entitled "Sexual Revolution: Part II." The magazine was highlighting Harvard University's True Love Revolution, an organization promoting abstinence and the reintroduction of romance into relationships (as opposed to random, casual hookups). Miller includes in her piece the following:

Donna Freitas, a visiting scholar in religion at Boston University, studied attitudes about sex on seven college campuses and published her findings in her 2008 book, Sex and the Soul. She believes college students are not given an opportunity to tell the truth about what they want out of sex and relationships—desires that can include courtship, romance, and, yes, chocolates—without drawing the derision of their peers and even their professors. Their health service gives them condoms and lectures about sexually transmitted infections; their friends boast and complain endlessly about hookups real and imagined. "The average college student is miserable about sex. The idea of getting to step away from it is really appealing."


Though she praises the movement for giving women "liberation to say no," she does say that "True Love Revolution might do better...to leave aside the divisive and wrongheaded 'one man, one woman' language and help guide students through this modern sexual wilderness."

Why must an abstinence-based organization refrain from suggesting that heterosexual monogamy IS a way through the sexual wilderness? Why exactly is the organization's suggestion divisive? Why is it wrongheaded? Can we no longer dare to suggest that heterosexual monogamy may in fact be good for someone's well-being?

I guess the question I pose is whether or not we should be happy that sources like Newsweek are paying attention to the good found in these organizations (or the aspects which they deem good), or if we should demand even more from them.

3 comments:

Margaret E. Perry said...

TLR is sponsored by The Love and Fidelity Network. They do stuff at campuses all across the country, and are in fact having their national conference this weekend (wish I could go). Fellow readers should know about them!

Angela Miceli said...

Demand more from them! Great if they acknowledge some goodness - but they are ultimately missing boat on the greater revolution taking place in the hearts of young people.

E. B. said...

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