COMMENTARY: Is it ever okay to tell the truth about sex?

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph,”published by St. Martin Press.) UNDATED _ The graffiti on the wall of morality tell us that it’s alright to lie about sex. Is […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph,”published by St. Martin Press.)

UNDATED _ The graffiti on the wall of morality tell us that it’s alright to lie about sex.


Is there any possible value in or justification for telling the truth about it?

Not according to pundits who assume a worldly-wise condescension as self-appointed and self-conscious guardians of our chic secular ethic. They wink, shrug their shoulders and knowingly insist that everybody who is anybody understands and accepts falsehood as the native tongue of human sexual behavior.

In short, if you can’t say something bad about sex, don’t say anything at all. This mantra hangs in our cultural universe like smog trapped over Los Angeles. The fresh breezes of good sense alone and, indeed, of traditional religious teaching, can blow it away.

Only in this morally loony environment could Hustler’s Larry Flynt be accepted as a quasi-arbiter of sexual behavior. Well, Flynt is not actually accepted. He is given the two-tier treatment the president regularly receives. First the qualifying clause,”Of course, what he has done is completely reprehensible …” This preamble sets up a vindicating conclusion. In the president’s case,”but it does not rise to the level of impeachable behavior.”Those who support this premise condemn people for even talking about the president’s lying about his long sexual frolic with an intern in his care and half his age.

The really immoral thing, they insinuate, is for any of us even to mention this, or any other male sexual escapade, in public.

The moral gymnasts then make a quick somersault for pornographer Flynt. They justify him by saying,”He is only pointing out hypocrisy”and they advocate saying as much as possible in public about the sexual affairs of others.

At one and the same time, we are urged to be disgusted by and to disdain the famous stained dress but to pay close attention to and to be morally indignant about the dirty socks Flynt is buying and putting on exhibit like bad art.

At this point average men and women shake their heads and wonder, in this nightmare from which we cannot seem to awaken, if they are the ones who are crazy. If you sometimes react that way, count it a good thing. It just means you are healthy in a climate morally sick enough to be quarantined.


What is really dirty is the debris that has been heaped on healthy human sexuality. Apparently, this aspect of human personality is to be applauded only for its dissonance and its possibilities of perversion. Neglected, indeed ridiculed, sexuality is displaced as a central and positive dimension of personality through which we express the honest longings of faithful love.

If you can only lie about sex, you can never tell the truth about fidelity or its pledge, as sacred as anything we know, to solidify the total union between man and woman. Paul thought faithful married love lofty enough to employ as a symbol of Christ’s union with his Church.

Growing up is like learning to direct the choir of all our inner voices. In the healthy adult, the constitutive elements of our personalities usually sing in harmony. Are there parts of us that hit flat notes or make sounds that sometimes bewilder us? You bet, but, as the conductor of the music of ourselves, we must learn to master these without tyrannizing ourselves.

Our sexuality is one of the lead voices and through growing up we bring it into harmony with the rest of ourselves. We need others to love us if we are to sing, not only of ourselves, despite Walt Whitman, but for others.

The real song of songs is that we celebrate in faithful sexual unions with those we love. Current discourse has reduced sexuality to the gas station model, the place where your needs are met, where you can avoid human contact and pay at the pump.

We can still forgive sinners, and even ourselves when we must struggle to stay in tune, while retaining our conviction that it really is okay to speak well of sexual fidelity. We cannot live long, well, or happily without it as our present situation poignantly demonstrates.


DEA END KENNEDY

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