Ten Arguments for Sanity, 9-10

The last two arguments against homosexual “marriage”:

9.  In one crucial respect the social acceptance of homosexuality makes matters worse, not better, for the homosexual himself.

     If my body needs protein, it will not do to try to fool it with starches.  If the male homosexual needs a true male friendship, and affirmation as a man, he will not attain it by adopting the pose of a woman.  That stands to reason.

     But there are additional psychological reasons why the best society for a homosexual is not one that simply condones his behavior.  I am not talking about cruel severity.  If people understand that some folks are unfortunately attracted to members of their own sex, and if, while they neither seek to reveal it nor feel compelled to punish it, they make it known as a matter of cultural custom that they do not approve of it, then the homosexual is provided with a sane and merciful curb on his behavior.  That explains why homosexuals seem to plunge further and further into the bizarre and self-destructive, precisely in those places where bigotry against them is slight or nonexistent.  Or put it this way: homosexuals themselves admit that they delight in being what they have called “transgressive,” that is, literally, crossing the boundaries of what is decent or even speakable.  It follows that the nature of the transgressing behavior will depend upon where the society draws the line.  Even if it draws the line rather close, the homosexual will likely stay content with merely crossing that line.  If, to be specific, it is unspeakable to suggest that a man will engage in a particular form of sexual release with another man, then the transgressor can do that, and let there be an end of it.

     But if the line is drawn farther off, or not drawn at all, then the homosexual must go ever farther for the same thrill of transgression; must, as we have seen in such cities as San Francisco and Seatte, invent methods and combinations that are too saddening to enumerate, and that cannot be described in a public forum such as this.  That such things are common in the homosexual community should be revealing; and it is a poor charity that shrugs and pretends that all is well.  AIDS is only one disease in a panoply of ailments that the male homosexual suffers, through abuse of his body.  Perhaps the reader should pause to consider why hepatitis is so common a killer of homosexual men.

10.  It spells disaster for children.

     Our society has been corrupting childhood for a long time now, all under the pretense of good hygiene. 

     Why have we forgotten that it is crucial to our emotional and intellectual development that sexual feelings be latent while we are children?  It frees the time for what is then more important: learning.  In the first instance, the boy learns to be a boy and then a man, so that afterwards he can marry; and the girl learns to be a girl and then a woman.  But also the boys and girls are learning about the world around them -- a world of duties and responsibilities.  This social learning is short-circuited by a forced precocity in matters of sex.  Other forms of learning are short-circuited too.  The boy who at age fifteen is not interested in girls may well be forging his way through calculus, or learning to take cars apart and rebuild them from scratch.  The girl who at age fifteen is not interested in boys may be devouring the novels of Charles Dickens.  Since, given the many years we expect our children to be in school and then college, most will not marry until long after puberty, why on earth would we want to hurry the onset of the troubles?  Would we of all people not want instead that our children should not even think seriously about the opposite sex until well into their teenage years, at the earliest?

     But if homosexual “marriage” is accepted, there can be no such wise deferral.  We will be visiting a crisis of identity upon every child in our society.  That in fact is the intention of many homosexual activists, whose revenge upon the children who were once cruel or indifferent to them is to afflict other children with doubts, to make them endure the questions that they themselves endured.  All this is done under the guise of charity for the homosexual teenager; but the true charity would refrain from plunging children into the trouble in the first place, and would instead offer what another commentator has called an “unambiguous expectation of heterosexuality.”  That would give many pubescent teens the wherewithal to shrug off the random doubt, rather than causing it to grow into a dreadful prognosis.  But given the latency of sexual feelings during childhood, no child will be able to say, with confidence, “I am a heterosexual” -- how could the child really even know what that means?  In the meantime, what for boys and girls are wholly natural attraction to members of the same sex, in the years when they are forging their identities as boys and girls, will now be shaded with the suspicion of homosexuality -- as if the boys and girls could really know what that meant, either!

     There is no gainsaying it.  If homosexual “marriage” is condoned, then of course kissing, holding hands, celebrating anniversaries, talking about your first date, and all the rest must be condoned.  If a teacher can casually mention where he met his wife, then the homosexual teacher can casually mention where he met his husband.  Need I mention that logic compels us to travel to the end of this mistaken road?  Why should not the bisexual mention to his third graders where he met his wife and husband?

     Not surprisingly, those who will suffer worst from the confusion will be those who run the gravest risks in the formation of their sexual identity: boys.  How many of them will now “know,” to their dismay, that they are homosexual, when all they are is lonely or just at the stupid dizzy age of thirteen, when every naked body draws their attention?  How many will now avoid the very friendships they long for, in the mistaken fear that their longing for friendship marks them out as homosexual?  What guidelines can we provide for children who are trying to establish themselves as boys and girls, when we have effectively told them that there are no guidelines at all?

     And what about children as objects of sexual desire?  In the few societies wherein homosexuality has enjoyed some measure of acceptance, it has not been homosexual relations between adults, but homosexual relations between a man and a boy, or, more rarely, adolescent girls.  This marked preference for girlish looking youths is seen in ancient Greece, afterwards adopted in Rome; it is also to be found in the decadent years of the Ottoman Empire, and in samurai Japan. Again, it is not a corruption of the relations between husband and wife, but of the relation between teacher and disciple, mentor and protege.  From Plato’s Symposium we can gather that relations between adult men, such as Pausanias and Agathon, were considered unseemly, effeminate, even ridiculous. Pausanias himsef does not try to justify those; but he does complain that ignorant fathers will try to protect their sons from the advances of their lovers (the older men). Evidently not everybody in Athens was pleased by the vice -- and, evidently, Plato himself had his doubts about it, as he casts Socrates as the great frustrator of the desires of the debauched Alcibiades.

     If male homosexuality has its source in painful events in childhood, then it is to be expected that male homosexuals will be preoccupied with childhood; many of them will be attracted to boys, just as they were when they were boys and the natural attraction was frustrated or cruelly rejected.  We hear often that a majority of child abusers are heterosexual; but that is a statistic manipulated for political purposes.  Its effectiveness as rhetoric depends upon the fact that most people do not distinguish between absolute probability and conditional probability.  The question is not, are most child abusers heterosexual -- since by far most men are heterosexual; almost 98%, to be precise.  The question is, given a heterosexual, or a homosexual, what are the odds that that person will be a child abuser?  Put it another way: if being homosexual were absolutely no indicator for an inclination towards viewing children as sexual objects, then homosexuals would be only as likely as heterosexuals to abuse children.  Then 98% of abused children will be girls -- but this is certainly not the case.  In fact, most children who are sexually abused outside the home are boys.

    What the proponents of the homosexual agenda have done is to fold incest into the category of child abuse, further skewing the statistic and making it unusable for those who wish to understand what is going on.  Now, short of banning families, there is no way for us to eliminate occasions of incest; we can at best be vigilant about it and punish it severely.  But if a father and mother know perfectly well that they are not abusing their own children, then the only question of import becomes, “What sort of person, homosexual or heterosexual, is more likely to be trouble?”  I am not implying here that most homosexuals are dangerous for children.  Most are not.  But a very small percentage of the male population is somehow responsible for the abuse of boys at ten times the rate that their numbers should predict.  And the psychological causes of male homosexuality make it no surprise that it should be so.

     The reader will have noticed that I have spoken mainly about male homosexuality, and have only lightly touched upon lesbianism.  Indeed I think lesbianism is the more dangerous of the two, involving a far more radical rejection of the opposite sex, though it would take a long and very different essay to delve into its etiology and the prognosis for a society that accepts it.  I will only say again that any wise statesman must look at us and see that we have gone badly astray; if nothing else, demographics will prove it.  Crucial to our regaining health will be a restored love between man and woman.  That will require the rejection of the sexual libertinism we have taken for granted.  And that means that the very last thing we ought to do now is to give that libertinism a constitutional imprimatur.  We have a long road to travel; we ought not, at its inception, cut off our own feet.

     I have until now not spoken from a religious point of view; the truths I have cited can be seen by anyone, regardless of faith.  But I wonder whether a wise ruler would care to sever his culture forever from the religion that gave birth to it and nurtured it to maturity.  At the least he would thus alienate those for whom the religion is still the polestar of human existence; these would suddenly find themselves in a nation as hostile to them, though perhaps not yet so cruel about it, as ancient Rome was to the first Christians. But other consequences must follow.  It is foolish and shortsighted to believe that all the moral and cultural victories won by one’s nation’s dominant religion will remain after that religion has been expressly rejected.  It is one particular victory of Christianity -- and this is an historical fact, whatever one may believe about Christ -- to have preached to the world the dignity of all those whom the world had scorned: the dignity of women, and children, and the poor, and the weak, and the suffering.  The first written tribute of a man to the virtue and intelligence of a woman -- not to her physical beauty -- was Augustine’s account of the life of his mother, Monica.  No higher esteem was ever paid the child than when Christ said, “Except ye become as one of these little ones, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." We take for granted that we will keep a few of the moral precepts of Christ even after we have marked his followers out for derision.  That is an assumption no true statesman would make.  He would know that no culture that denied its very roots -- the exhausted and agnostic Athens after the Peloponnesian War; the supine emperor-worshiping Rome, once built upon the sweat of its own aristocratic farmers, now buying time from the sweat of slaves -- has ever survived for long.  We won’t, either.

Comments

[Daniel]

You're kidding, right? If your body needs protein, then don't give it starch? What about different bodies with different nutritional needs? What you're telling us is, if in your estimation our bodies need protein, then it doesn't matter whether our bodies need protein or starch - you'll make sure we get protein. That's the faulty premise upon which your whole argument is based. You don't consider whether different bodies have different needs, be they related to nutrition or romance. You assume away what must be demonstrated by science, and I don't see the science.

And another thing - evidence isn't evidence unless it can be independently examined and repeatedly observed. You can't say that gays are doing awful things, ergo we shouldn't support gay rights, but I won't tell you what those awful things are. Conservatives are doing awful things, so awful that we should outlaw church, but I'm not going to tell you what those conservative things are - it would spoil the nice nature of a forum like this.

BTW, globally, the number of straight people with AIDS outnumbers gay people with AIDS. In fact, more women are contracting AIDS than men today. So check your facts.

[Chris Roberts]

You can't say that gays are doing awful things, ergo we shouldn't support gay rights, but I won't tell you what those awful things are.

I'm sort of breaking with the spirit of Anthony's argument but I'll name one thing: violating the commands of God while praising themselves for doing what they are doing. It is one thing to be a sinner who cries out to God in repentence; it is another to delight in one's sin. Romans 1:18-32 comes to mind.

BTW, globally, the number of straight people with AIDS outnumbers gay people with AIDS. In fact, more women are contracting AIDS than men today. So check your facts.

Do you have percentages for that? The percentage of heterosexual people with aids vs homosexual people with aids?

[Tony Esolen]

Daniel,

Your points, in order:

1. Men need the friendship of other men. Homosexuals attempt to attain that in what is ultimately a delusive way. If you don't like my nutritional analogy, chuck it. I do not buy the notion that men are fundamentally so different from one another; see argument 8 above. The science is out there, too, if you care to look at it with a dispassionate eye.

2. This is a public Christian forum. I deleted the sentence describing the sorts of practices celebrated by homosexual men. In another, more clinical forum, where children and teenagers are excluded, the descriptions could be more graphic. Or do you deny that most of what goes on in a homosexual bathhouse is utterly inconceivable to the typical heterosexual, and would be deeply disturbing should any child accidentally find out about it?

3. Everybody alive on this earth is a sinner, period. But that does not mean that we don't have the duty to distinguish between right and wrong, or between what will help destroy a culture and what will build it up. In the case of homosexuals, if what they are doing is as natural as breathing, then why do they, in such staggering numbers, go on to engage in -- all right, I will bend my own rule here -- group sex, sadism, masochism, anonymous sex, "fisting," ingestion of feces, etc.? Is all that natural, too? If those are natural, then the word ceases to have any meaning. But then "right" and "wrong" cease to have any meaning, too.

4. It is not true that more women contract AIDS than men. This issue has been dealt with at length by Thomas Bethell in a chapter of his Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. It's all cooked statistics. What the gay advocates needed to do was to cast AIDS as potentially a heterosexual disease, and to that end they recast the qualifications for who has it, regardless of any proof of how they got it. Africa gave them what they needed. Now a lot of people in central Africa are starving; a lot of them have filthy water to drink; a lot of them are afflicted with systemic troubles brought on by untreated infections, insect bites, and malnutrition. In other words, they suffer from immunodeficiency -- and they have been suffering from it, as peoples, for a long time. When somebody, then, shows up at a western clinic in Africa with immunodeficiency problems, that person is categorized as having AIDS, regardless of its provenance. Some, no doubt, actually have the disease we know as AIDS, gotten through sexual contact with men who got it through -- sexual contact with other MEN, or through dirty needles. To the extent that women ARE getting AIDS, then, it is primarily the men who are to blame, men who are having sex with other men. That's because the disease is difficult to pass from woman to man; it requires fluid-to-blood contact.

[GL]

With all sincerity, I am not sure how much weight I can give to point 10.  It is not that I disagaree with the point that open homosexuality will add further to our over-sexualization of children (I'm setting aside your other points under point 10), it is that so much over-sexualization already exists.  Have you ever tried to buy clothes for a 7-year-old girl?  My wife has just completed the back-to-school update of our oldest daughter's wardrobe.  She found the process nauseating, but finally succeeded in finding clothes that allowed our little girl to go to school looking like a little girl, not a child prostitute.  "Children's" movies are full of sexual innuendo.  Prime-time TV (I am told; we don't watch it) and popular music (I am told; we don't listen to it) are full of fornication, adultery, masochism, sadism and misogyny.  Even after the pastor of our former church gave a lecture from the pulpit on the proper attire for young women in the church and disclosed that several men (young and adult) had expressed to him how such attire tempted them, parents continued to send their teenage daughters to church with enough flesh showing to turn the heat up on any testosterone-saturated teenage boy and even adult men, undoubtedly hoping that their little sweeties would attract the attention of the "best catch" without recognition about how a teenage boy so attracted would treat (i.e., use) their little sweetie and with naivete about what he would do once he had satisfied the lust which the "bait" had aroused. (That is, with the bait eaten off the hook before the hook was set, he will move on to the next hook dangled by an unwise fisherman.)  Meanwhile, little girls and boys the ages of my children witnessing this behavior in church are further over and prematurely sexualized.

Again, Christians need to clean our own house here while expressing concerns about a further slide into Gomorrah.

[Dcn. Michael D. Harmon]

One of the things that sadly surprised me about the comments appended to Dr. Esolen's wise, sane and temperate series of points on this topic is that so many of the replies, even on this site, have attacked him and defend the actions of sodomites. Truly the corruption he describes has impinged itself deeply on us and our culture.

And yes, ordinary Christians have many sins to answer for, both sexual and otherwise. But to the best of my knowledge, when I see them discussed on this site, it is with sorrow and a desire to call their practitioners to repentence. There are not a great many admirers of adultery, fornication and easy divorce writing for Touchstone or commenting on this site. However, every time "homosexuality" -- i.e., sodomy -- is discussed, it finds its strong defenders, even here. God help us.

[Philomytha]

I would like very much to read your analysis of the evils of lesbianism. It is certainly a beast of a very different colour to the male sin, but I am intrigued by your statement that it is a more dangerous one, since superficially it seems less corrupt and vile. Perhaps that is the trap?

[James A. Altena]

Daniel,

If you want to demand "science" from Prof. Esolen to back his position, where is your "science" to demonstrate that certain men necessarily, by nature, need "starch" instead of "protein" for the unnatural carnal relations that you euphemistically and disingenuously term "romance"? (Yet another example of the dishonest manipulation of language so fundamental to the pro-gay agenda.)

Dear GL,

We of course agree (per previous posts) on the need for the church to get its house in order here. But I don't think that you and Prof. Esolen are contrary to one another on this point. His argument is really an extension of yours.

I agree with you that the undermining of the deferral of conscious sexualization (forgive the neologism, please) of children is a general phenomenon, not a specifically homosexual one, part and parcel of modern society's idolatrous obsession with sexual intercourse in general.

But Prof. Esolen's point is that, unlike with normal heterosexual development, the dynamic of the development of homosexual preference is different here. It depends upon cultivation not just of precocious sexuality in general, but specifically of confusion and self-doubts about sexual identity and preference in the adolescent, due to the need for the homosexual population to perpetuate itself precisely by this means, since it cannot do so straightforwardly by procreation. (It is also part of the dynamic of the particular homosexual obsession with youthful age, which far outstrips even the correspondingly diseased one among heterosexuals.) This gives homosexuals, with their celebration of the "transgressive", an extraordinarily strong and special investment in the undermining of the deferral of conscious sexualization. Since it is only by targeting malleable and fragile youth with confusion that homosexuals can perpetuate themselves, any dismantling or weakening of barriers and limits will further that goal. Thus homosexuals are more than happy to promote this undermining among heterosexuals as well. Every advance of morally corrupt heterosexual conduct (beginning with divorce apart from adultery, and general contraception) provides a cloak of justification for homosexual conduct as a counterpart.

Also don't forget the dominant control that homosexuals exercise in the advertising and fashion communities. I once saw a newspaper article that estimated 80% of male fashion models to be gay. I also once met a straight male model, who told about losing many job opportunities because he refused to "flirt" with gay interviewers, such "flirting" being a standard component of virtually every such interview.

Dear Prof. Esolen,

I don't have the source immediately at hand (I'm trying to gather together a set of web link to statistics on homosexual behavior and its consequences to post here), but I recall seeing a statistics that about 60% of child molestation is "heterosexual" and 40% "homosexual" (those terms not really properly applying to children, but used here for shorthand convenience). Given that 98% of the general adult population is heterosexual and only 2% homosexual, that means that the incidence of pedophilia in the homosexual population is about 20 times as great as in the heterosexual one.

The same pattern holds true for AIDS. Even if heterosexuals constitute a sheer numerical majority of those infected, in terms of relative proportions of the heterosexual and homosexual sub-groups the rate of infection in the latter is many times greater.

I do hope you will separately develop and post your argument regarding lesbianism as "more dangerous" than male homosexuality. I confess that this is the one point in your series where I am sceptical of your argument. While it is the sort of thing that one can't prove, I think it does appear from history that societies have been able quietly to countenance lesbian couples far more readily and easily than gay male ones.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>but I recall seeing a statistics that about 60% of child molestation is "heterosexual" and 40% "homosexual" (those terms not really properly applying to children, but used here for shorthand convenience). Given that 98% of the general adult population is heterosexual and only 2% homosexual, that means that the incidence of pedophilia in the homosexual population is about 20 times as great as in the heterosexual one.<<<

Not to pick nits, but having said that, let me now proceed to pick. It seems to me that the "heterosexual pedophiles" are not really engaging in heterosexual behavior, but are simply sexually disordered in a particular way with the same being true, mutatus mutandus, of the "homosexual pedophiles." Consequently, without more to the argument (and I realized James might not be putting the whole argument out yet), this doesn't wash. There are lots of wrong ways of acting out procreational behavior, but only one right one. Is it possible the only thing these folks behavior has is common is that it is all disordered?

[James (the lesser)]

One well-known blogger approached the issue of homosexual "marriage" from the direction of the "marginal case." http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

(Do not assume anything about my politics/religion from her views, please--I just thought this was an interesting analysis.)

[Steve Cavanaugh]

As for lesbianism being more dangerous to society than male homosexuality, one possible reason for that would be our contemporary reproductive technologies. It is now possible for women to conceive children without ever meeting the "father" (in fact, there is a post relating to this on Jimmy Akin's blog today). Cloning is quite possibly not far in the future. At that point, there becomes possible a reproducing lesbian community completely apart from heterosexual society. Because lesbianism is often characterized by an intense hatred of males, this would indeed be a dangerous social development.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Mr. Winters,

Plese note again my parenthetical comment about "heterosexual" and "homosexual" pedophilia:

"(those terms not really properly applying to children, but used here for shorthand convenience)."

I wrote that precisely because the pedophilic behavior involved is indeed not properly heterosexual or homosexual. I used it as shorthand for designating whether a male or female molester chooses a boy or girl victim.

Since some elaboration is implicitly requested --

No orthodox blogger here is disagreeing with the fact that all of this behavior is disordered. But here are kinds and degrees of disorder that are properly distinguished as being more or less disordered, and more or less harmful in their effects. The point is that homosexual preference, being disordered to begin with, will generate certain associated pathologies at a significantly higher percentage of the homosexual sub-population than would be generated by the overall population or heterosexual sub-population. (This also includes alcoholism, drug abuse, AIDS, venereal disease, and suicide.)

To spell out the point a bit more, pro-gay activists are very fond of denying any link between homosexuality in adults and pedophilia. Yet the homosexual sub-population has about 20 times the occurence of pedophiles in its ranks as does the heterosexual population. While it is true that, strictly speaking, there is no direct path from adult homosexual behavior to pedophillia, this statistical correlation is not a mere accident either. The particular homosexual obsession with youth (a well-documented phenomenon distinct from the general heterosexual preoccupation with youth in modern culture, as I previously noted) means that homosexuals of any age are drawn far more than heterosexuals to seek out young (or younger) partners for intercourse, rather than people their own age. Essentially (as with the homosexual disorder in general) it is a form of emotional vampirism. With persons whose desires are especially disordered, this ultimately leads to crossing boundaries toward ever younger and more submissive partners, down into pre-adolescence. The reason that pedophilia occurs far more often among homosexuals proportionate to their total population is the toxic combination of the obsession with youth and the "transgressive" crossing of forbidden boundaries. A society that countenances open homosexuality will have increased pedophilia as an inevitable by-product. And it is not surprising that most gay-rights organizations have pointedly refused to issue any formal statement opposing or condemning pedophilic organizations such as NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association -- its slogan: "Sex before eight or else it's too late") or the pedophilic pseudo-scholarly journal Paedia (pardon any mis-spelling of that in haste) that seeks to justify what is now euphemistically termed "intergenerational intimacy."

[James A. Altena]

Dear Steve,

You make a very good point. I had thought that something of the sort might lie behind Prof. Esolen's allusion. If so, however, then it means that only now has lesbianism becomes more dangerous to society than male homosexuality, due to reproductive technologies, instead of being intrinsically such. If, on the other hand, Prof. Esolen holds the latter position, then we still need to see the rationale behind it.

[Startled Saint]

You state that you feel lesbianism is the more dangerous of the two homosexualities, involving a more severe "cut" from the opposite sex, but in fact I think it is the opposite. I've heard of many lesbians (Ann Heche, for a famous example) who have later "turned" straight or entered into sexual relationships with men. I've heard only one or two stories of gay men turning straight and having sexual relationships with women.

[Tony Esolen]

Startled, and Everybody:

You are right in guessing part of my reason for believing that lesbianism is now more dangerous to the culture than is male homosexuality. It is because lesbians now have the capacity to "reproduce," sort of, by means of artificial insemination; they are also in the forefront of the ugly reproductive technologies that will bypass the need for the male altogether, by the union of two egg cells. In my experience (which in the company of lesbians is exceedingly limited), they are more politically inclined than are their male counterparts, and more deeply committed to a radical severance of the sexes.

I know that sometimes women in their twenties will fall in and out, almost casually, of lesbianism, often becoming happily married. My wife's college roommate had that experience. These are obviously not the sorts that are dangerous. By the way, it is equally true, though the gays do not want to admit it, that men who are sure they are homosexual grow out of the obsession, or can be brought out of it by therapy -- or by the grace of God, with whom all things are possible. I am personally acquainted with several such men.

Everybody: With regard to argument 10: I am being informed by two friends, as I sit writing this, that the schools in Nova Scotia -- Tory Nova Scotia, of all places! -- have mandated a sex manual for grade school students under the age of puberty. The effect of this corruption on one 11 year old boy was to persuade the poor soul that he was gay. The manual includes instructions on how a boy can have sexual relations with another boy.

I follow a simple rule. I've said this before. If the guy down the street teaches your son algebra without your being aware of it, you are surprised and grateful for it. If the guy down the street teaches your son about how to have sexual relations with another male, and uses the same curriculum at use in the schools, and does nothing other than what the teacher does, you call the cops on him, immediately, and have him arrested for corrupting the morals of a minor. Rule: Don't do in school what if the man down the street does would put him in the clink -- justly.

I am overhearing more about this program: the teachers instruct the students on the varieties and advantages of various rubbers ... It makes me wonder what sort of people LIKE talking about sex to children. To paraphrase the words of Jesus in a particularly ugly way: Beware not those who diddle with the body, but who diddle with the soul to boot. God help us.

[Bobby Winters]

James Altena,

First let me just ask you to call me Bobby. If you believe that is to informal for your tastes , then Dr. Winters is more appropriate. (I prefer the former.) The unpacking of your argument was what I was after. I've become aware of the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia because of the Roman Catholic priest sex scandals and the press's inability to tell the difference--when they have a chance to embarrass the church.

Pedophilia is such a horrid label that, since learning of the various ways it has been misused, I've always been careful to highlight the difference when it is brought up in a discussion so that all will be aware. You've done that nicely. Thank you.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Bobby,

Thank you for your comment. And I'm happy to address you as you prefer. While I admittedly haven't been fully consistent about it on "Mere Comments" (which has the ethos of familial closeness among its regular participants), I generally address people in a more formal style (title and last name, or full first name rather than nickname) unless and until they inform me otherwise. To go directly to the more informal mode of address strikes me as presuming to a familiarity that does not exist.

This could open up an entirely new blog, but few things grate on me as much as the modern presumption of immediate familiarity. E.g., the salesman who opens with: "Is this James Altena?" "Yes." "Hi, Jim, I'm . . ." Excuse me, but my name as given at my baptism is James, not Jim, and James is what I put on the correspondence or bill that prompted the contact. And in the case of a salesman, it had better be "Mr. Altena" instead. "Jim" is limited to two or three old friends of 20 or more years' standing.

[Stuart Koehl]

This interesting piece from The American Spectator Online, Tuesday, 16 August 2006:

Going Beyond Same-Sex Marriage
By Mark Tooley
Published 8/15/2006 12:08:33 AM

WASHINGTON -- Advocates of same-sex unions of course argue that they only want equality for homosexual persons. Conservative skeptics surmise that the campaign to redefine marriage is about considerably more than simply legal recognition for same-sex couples. In fact, they suspect, the ultimate goal is to set aside marriage altogether as a repressive and patriarchal anachronism. In its absence, all consensual sexual arrangements will be legitimate.

The suspicions will find confirmation in a new statement from a coalition of sexual pioneers called, "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships" (www.beyondmarriage.org). Released last month, the statement specifically endorses "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner," among many other sexual alternatives.

Organized by a "diverse group of nearly twenty LGBT [lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender] and queer activists," the several hundred signatories include a predictable list of homosexual rights advocates, sexologists, self-professed pagans, and practitioners of polyamory, among other colorful categories. But it also includes Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun, Cornel West at Harvard, Gloria Steinem of Ms. magazine, and a smattering of rabbis, Unitarians, Quakers, ex-nuns, and leftist Protestant clergy.

"We offer this statement as a way to challenge ourselves and our allies working across race, class, gender and issue lines to frame and broaden community dialogues, to shape alternative policy solutions and to inform organizing strategies around marriage politics to include the broadest definitions of relationship and family," the organizers explained.

In their statement, they advocate a "new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families." This new vision, they hope, will move the nation "beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics" as they exist today. Naturally, they want a "flexible set of economic benefits," regardless of the nature of the association, "conjugal" or otherwise.

The brave pioneers of relationship innovation, standing with people of every "sexual identity" throughout the world, are striving to resist the "structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression, and to build an unshakeable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge." It's an ambitious agenda!

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE RIGHTS are only "one part" of a larger effort to legitimize and gain benefits for "diverse" households and families. Indeed, families and relationships "know no borders." There is no norm. Most Americans do not live in traditional nuclear families, they assert, lumping together widows living with grown children with more exotic associations. All households "struggling for stability" will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.

Besides fighting for relatively conventional "domestic partnerships," the movement affirms the rights of a wide range of "non-traditionally constructed families and non-conventional partnerships." And do not forget the "the transgender and bisexual movements!" Too often, the statement warns, they have been left behind or left out by the "larger lesbian and gay movement." But the transgender and bisexual movements have "powerfully challenged legal constructions of relationship" and "include members who shatter the narrow confines of gender conformity."

For the government to define as "legitimate families" only couples in conjugal relationships is a "tremendous disservice" to other "kinship networks," we are told. Among these other arrangements are seniors citizens living together, children caring for elderly parents, grandparents raising grandchildren, single parent households, blended families, "queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households," and the ubiquitous "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner.

According to this crowd, there is apparently no possible assortment of people who should not be recognized as "family" and therefore entitled to a wide range of legal benefits. It is nice that they are concerned about elderly people and grandparents, but economic benefits for the alternative sexual relationships seems to be the chief emphasis of their advocacy.

"Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others," they explain. They generously insist that they "honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal -- for some, also a deeply spiritual -- choice," but they also insist on recognition for their other households.

Unfortunately, they note, their larger drive for social justice has much to fear. The litany includes: "corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction." Civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, we are warned. The larger "conservative agenda" is pushing for "coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion, "heterosexist definitions of marriage" and limits to government funding for "reproductive services."

THE PUSH TO "PRIVATIZE Social Security and many other human needs benefits" also is "at the center of this attack," the statement asserts. "Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance." The signers want to "repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture," and advocate on behalf of full "gender and sexual diversity." They want "freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression."

At a time when the Right is asserting a "scarcity of human rights," the movement for "Beyond Same Sex Marriage" plans to fight to "make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives." It is a sweeping agenda!

"Beyond Same Sex Marriage" could be dismissed as marginal, if not silly. But in fact, its conglomeration of issues and interest groups is quite edgy and even clever. Throw in special benefits for one parent families and the elderly with legal recognition for multiple sexual partners. Align everyone who is not in a two-parent with children household as a coalition, from the spinster sisters living together to the pagan polyamores. This new coalition's one unifying characteristic would seem to be resentment aimed at people in conventional marriages.

Political movements based on resentment are often powerful and long-lived. Do not expect this one to go away quietly.

Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.

[Startled Saint]

Part of the reason that schools are having sex education curriculum for younger children is that many girls are now starting puberty as young as age 8. They do need the basic information about what is going on with their body, but I think the other basic sex ed can wait until they are older. However, with children as young as 8 also having sex, maybe it is appropriate...

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Part of the reason that schools are having sex education curriculum for younger children is that many girls are now starting puberty as young as age 8.<<<

Those children are a very small percentage of the whole. Therefore, it is neither necessary nor appropriate to have schools teaching about sex at that age. As the father of two girls, I'm not certain I want them teaching it at all. I opted my older daughter out of the "Family Life Education" (nice euphemism) in 8th grade, mainly because, although the curriculum stressed abstinence, it did so from a value-free, utilitarian perspective. It also taught that homosexuality was biologically determined, and that we should be "accepting" of alternative lifestyles and family arrangements. I think rather not.

>>>They do need the basic information about what is going on with their body<<<

That's why we used to have classes called "health and hygiene".

>>>However, with children as young as 8 also having sex, maybe it is appropriate...<<<

Mainly, they should be taught to respect and protect the integrity of their bodies, and how to resist the blandishments of adults.

[Nick]

>>Part of the reason that schools are having sex education curriculum for younger children is that many girls are now starting puberty as young as age 8. <<

Let's assume you are right. Let's also assume that the bell curve still rests at about 12 for girls. Let's also assume that the sexes are roughly equally divided. If there is a straight increase from age 0 to age 12 of say 50% then 33% of *girls* or 16% of the total population need this education. Sounds like this is small enough that if its needed we can funnel them to another class.

Of course, this begs the question, where are their mothers? Are all mother's incompetent in this regard? How much does an eight year old know? If incompetent mothers in 16% of the population is a problem can the nurse be used to educate these few mothers?

>> However, with children as young as 8 also having sex, maybe it is appropriate...<<

Parents of children that have sex at age eight should be punished. This is a critical failure in child rearing. How does an eight year old sneak off to have sex with another eight year old? In addition, while the mechanical problems aren't too difficult, how would they know how everything worked? In other words, what exactly is the education going to teach them to do?

[James A. Altena]

Haven't we learned by now, from the disastrous results already evident in our society, that so-called "sex education" belongs in the family and not at school? The state is already a Leviathan, consuming everything within reach of its insatiable maw
and lust for power and control.

Good for you, Stuart, in wisely protecting your daughter from this menace.

This issue is actually not recent. Historians of medicine have inferred from surviving documents that the average age of menarche among girls in England c. 1750 was as high as 18 years old. (These figures are assumed to be more or less those that prevailed in previous generations throughout all pre-industrial societies.) Boys also began puberty several years later than at present. If so, this means that over the last 250 years, industrialized Western society has increasingly faced a problem of struggling to maintain sexual continence in a youthful population reaching sexual maturity at an ever-earlier age, for whom marriage was not an available option as biological maturity outstripped the corresponding necessary emotional maturity. The problem hs been further compounded by marriage being delayed to an increasingly later age in adulthood. Thus, whereas Hebrew or Greek youths in the ancient world might have faced practicing only five years or less of continence before marriage, that figure has now expanded to typically 12 years or more for the youth of our own time. This obviously presents a formidable challenge to virtue and temptation to sin, of which the tempter takes full advantage.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>This issue is actually not recent. Historians of medicine have inferred from surviving documents that the average age of menarche among girls in England c. 1750 was as high as 18 years old.<<<

This probably had to do with levels of nutrition, which among the peasantry and the urban poor were worse in 1750 than they had been in 1350. We know that, during the Middle Ages, women frequently married at fifteen or even a year or two earlier, and that many became mothers within a year or so of marriage (or before marriage, for that matter, since peasants were rather loose with the formalities).

>>>Boys also began puberty several years later than at present.<<<

While it is true that men married somewhat later than women in the Middle Ages, we'e only talking about a year or so, i.e., about sixteen or seventeen. Which would track with the difference in rate of sexual maturity between boys and girls today.

>>>If so, this means that over the last 250 years, industrialized Western society has increasingly faced a problem of struggling to maintain sexual continence in a youthful population reaching sexual maturity at an ever-earlier age, for whom marriage was not an available option as biological maturity outstripped the corresponding necessary emotional maturity.<<<

All that is really happening is a return to the historical norm. When people died before thirty, they had to get an early start on reproduction--and high mortality rates dictated that they be able to have and raise several children just to ensure the survival of one or two. So marriage and parenthood in the mid-teens was not that unusual (and still isn't in many undeveloped countries, for that matter).

The problem we have today is rather new, in that we have (through good nutrition) managed to roll back the onset of puberty to what it was some 600 years ago (when preindustrial society required a rapid transition from childhood to adulthood), while at the same time living in a society that requires evel-longer deferrment of childbearing in the name of extended education (ostensibly to meet the requirements of the job market, which is a crock, for what it's worth). Thus, we get raging hormones at thirteen (I'm in the middle of that right now with #2), but also demand that they not do anything about it until the age of 24 or 25. Insofar as I believe that monasticism is a personal calling from God, I think we are asking a bit much of our kids.

From my perspective, the problem isn't so much "teenage sex" or "teen pregnancy" (if your'e going to have kids, the late teens and early 20s are probably the optimal time, from a biological perspective), but a lack of support for teenage marriage, including the kind of social structure that helps young families get on their feet and stay together. Certainly, it is hard to balance parenthood, education and work--but lots of us do it at a later stage in life, so it is also doable for people in their teens and early 20s.

>>>for whom marriage was not an available option as biological maturity outstripped the corresponding necessary emotional maturity.<<<

On this, I just have to say that it's our own fault. We infantilize our kids and try to isolate them from the world. When one considers that boys were making their way in the world at fifteen, that some were ruling countries and fighting battles at eighteen, and that teenage girls were running farms or even acting as chatelains of large manors, that we have kids living with their parents into their twenties is just ludicrous.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Let's assume you are right. Let's also assume that the bell curve still rests at about 12 for girls. Let's also assume that the sexes are roughly equally divided. If there is a straight increase from age 0 to age 12 of say 50% then 33% of *girls* or 16% of the total population need this education. Sounds like this is small enough that if its needed we can funnel them to another class.<<<

If the standard deviation for the onset of menses is about a year, then an 8-year-old would be at about -4 sigma (given your assumption of 12 being the average), on the normal curve that's about 1 in 10000.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>If the standard deviation for the onset of menses is about a year, then an 8-year-old would be at about -4 sigma (given your assumption of 12 being the average), on the normal curve that's about 1 in 10000<<<

What's a few orders of magnitude between friends, eh?

[James Kabala]

The average age of marriage in medieval Europe was NOT 16 or 17. In early modern Europe (a period I know more about than I do about the Middle Ages) it was actually about the same as today. In seventeenth-century England it was slightly HIGHER than it is today (28 for men and 26 for women, compared to 27 and 25, respectively, in the present-day U.S.). Only in noble families, where dynastic alliances and such came into play, was teenage marriage even close to common. In colonial New England the average age was somewhat lower than in Europe, but still in the early twenties. The American 1950s, where people commonly married at 20, were actually a period where the age of marriage was atypically low. This strikes me as the Number One myth among Christian bloggers, and it deserves to be stamped out, whatever the consequences for our pet theories. I will concede that the increasing age of first period is a problem, though; the age of 25 means something very different when it is twelve years after menarche than when it is only seven or eight years after.

[James Kabala]

Also, people didn't commonly die at 30. When we say the average age of death was below 30 in bygone centuries, that's factoring the high percentage of infant deaths - it's a mean, not a median or a mode. If you made it out of infancy, you would probably live into at least your forties or fifties and maybe longer. (That is, if you were male - for women, death in childbirth was a constant threat. A man would not uncommonly have a succession of two or three increasingly younger wives.)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The average age of marriage in medieval Europe was NOT 16 or 17. In early modern Europe (a period I know more about than I do about the Middle Ages) it was actually about the same as today.<<<

I do not concur. I refer you to "A History of Private Life, Vol. II: Revelations of the Medieval World", Georges Duby, ed. (Belknap Press, 1988), pp. 290-291:

"In the Trencento the period of infatuations ended early; girls were married off quite young. in 1370 the average age of marriage was sixteen in Prato (Tuscany). in 1427, again in Prato and in Florence, the average was sixteen and a half. In Siena in 1350, parents began planning a girl's marriage as early as age twelve. A century later, they delayed a little longer, until age fourteen, and girls actually wed at sixteen or eighteen. There were further evolutions after this date. In 1470, in Prato, Florence, and the surrounding countryside, most brides were twenty or twenty-one. The long delay may account for the new exuberance of romantic scenes such as those just described which rarely led to marriage".

Moris Bishop, in "The Middle Ages" (Houghton Mifflin, 1968), p. 209, notes:

"Marriage came early in Germany and France, but in England it was likely to be late, since the groom's father would not yield land to his son until he was ready to retire" [am effect of the rule of primogeniture]".

And of marriage among the nobility, he writes (p. 115):

"Their life was precarious and had to be lived fast and hard. To balance the high incidence of infant mortality, women had to marry when barely nubile and bear three times as many children as they do today. The genetic effects of the mating of twelve year olds can only be guessed at. Polluted water, tainted food, the rheumatic, pneumonic damp of stone-walled rooms [I've slept in one, by the way], mistreatment of wounds, epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, smallpox, influenza, and the plague took a heavy toll."

>>>If you made it out of infancy, you would probably live into at least your forties or fifties and maybe longer.<<<

The noblility were more likely to achieve that goal than the peasantry. For one thing, the antibiotic and antiparasitic effects heavy spicing were available only to them; for the bulk of the population, intestinal diseases would either kill outright (usually through dysentary) or render one too weak to ward off other fatal pathogens. The percentage of the population reaching forty was rather low. To reach fifty was to be in old age. To get into one's seventies qualified one as ancient indeed. One need only look at the ages at which so many of the saints died--even those who were living lives of regularity with adequate food, drink and medical care. As Tuchman notes (in one of the few instances where I agree with her), the rambunctiousness of the Middle Ages might partially be attributed to the fact that the world was dominated by the young.

[GL]

I must assume that 18 was not the age of menses for women in British North America and the early U.S.  From my genealogical research, it appears that many of my femal ancestors on the continent prior to 1910 married several years before that age and had more than one child by their 18th birthday.  Somehow they learned what they needed to know about sex without a federal program or even a local school mistress.

This observation leads me to an aside: when you hear people express concerns about women having 9 or 10 kids if couples stopped using contraception (ignoring the assumption that they make that there is something wrong with that), you should remind them that the women in bygone days who had that many children married 8 to 10 years earlier than they do today and were married throughout their peak years of fertility.  Few women today could be expected to have anywhere near that many children when they delay marriage until they are in their mid-20s.

Finally, I recall a Touchstone piece a few months ago about what sex was for.  It appears that all of our sex education has left our population deeply confused about this fundamental question which previously generations of young people without any formal education in the matter understood intuitively.  The only conclusion I can reach based on this observation is the that the primary accomplishment of such programs is to obfuscate the obvious.  From that observation, one must conclude that this is the purpose of such programs or that those advocating them are just as blind to the truth as are their pupils when they are through teaching them.

[Stuart Koehl]

Two other points also occur to me. First, that a lot of the research being cited refers not to the Middle Ages but to the 15th and 16th centuries, and is heavily weighted towards the experience in England (where the most accessable records exist). But England is a unique case on several counts, one being its rather unique legal system with its emphasis on primogeniture (as opposed to inheritance laws in France and elsewhere that allowed the partition of property among all children (sometimes including women). This in turn would require younger children to assure their own livelihood before marriage, resulting in a delay.

A second fact to consider is that the peasantry were rather lax about formal marriages. Indeed, throughout large parts of Europe for a good portion of the Middle Ages, most peasant marriages weren't formalized at all, but were, as we would put it today, "common law". To some extent this affected the sacramental theology of marriage in the West (something not formalized itself until the 14th century), wherein the couple are ordinary ministers of the sacrament (i.e., they plight their troth, or "marry" each other), with the priest merely a witness on behalf of the Church (this, as opposed to the theology of marriage in the East--where central authority and urban remained intact far longer--the priest is the minister of the sacrament who unites the man and woman together in Christ). In many cases--probably the usual one--a man and woman simply announced before the village that they intended to live as husband and wife, and would at some later point have the union consecrated (since not every village had a church or a priest, this might take some time, if ever).

[Stuart Koehl]

One last thing, before bed. I came across the following interesting dissertation, which tends to support my position:

Widows as Marginal Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Elisabeth Carnell
Western Michigan University

Marriage and Societal Change

The pronounced shift in marriage patterns that appeared most markedly in the sixteenth century profoundly contributed to the treatment and perception of women in a period referred to as "one of the most bitterly misogynistic periods ever known."14 The modern European marriage pattern dates back to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. This pattern is characterized by late marriage for both men and women, and many ultimately never marry.15 Distinguished by much higher ages at marriage,16 small difference (often only 2 or 3 years) between the ages of the bride and bridegroom,17 and larger numbers of individuals who never marry,18 it gradually became the dominant pattern from some time in the seventeenth century into the twentieth century in all of Western Europe except the Mediterranean. Not restricted to, nor caused by, urban areas and increased urbanization,19 its development caused pronounced changes in women’s roles. This shift both exacerbated the misogyny already present in medieval society as well as increased the mobility of women within society.
Medieval marriage patterns represented a continuation of the Roman marriage type, which involved a large percentage of young (age 20 or younger) brides,20 older (at least 5 years beyond the age of the bride) bridegrooms21 and a high rate of remarriage after the death of a spouse.22 Although Aristotle claimed that the perfect age for men to marry was 37 and women at 18, the age of bridegrooms tended to be slightly younger at around 30 years of age.23
Early medieval patterns brought the age of grooms down and closed the gap between bride and groom. Age at first marriage nearly equalized and marriages occurred in their middle twenties.24 Also, a traditional practice involved payments from groom to bride, a reverse dowry system25 based on the Germanic custom of men (particularly in the common classes) providing bride-money.26 By the central Middle Ages, this bride-price shifted back to the Roman tradition wherein responsibility of the dowry rested with the bride’s family.27 Commentaries on Gratian’s Decretum and other papal letters suggested that the dowry be at least four times the donatio of the bridegroom. The pressure of the dowry on the family of the bride was so high some cities needed to set up special funds to help families out with dowries so the possibility of obstructed marriages would be reduced.28
The marriage pattern of the central Middle Ages was also characterized by a high number of betrothals of very young adolescents.29 At this period the age of marriage for girls dropped as low as 12 in parts of Italy, as St. Clare of Pisa and St. Francesca de’Ponziani of Rome are examples, and outside Italy, low ages were also common. Records of marriage of women as young as 14 in France in the case of St. Hildeburgis of Chartres,30 12 in Germany in the case of St. Christina of Sommeln,31 and a literary example, 12 in England with Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The age of men at first marriage seems to have been slightly more subject to change, but remained in the mid-twenties or higher, and beginning in the thirteenth century men appeared to consistently put off marriage, or even decline marrying altogether. A French soldier of fortune, Guillaume le Marechal, for example, is recorded as marrying at 45, and Thomas More married at 27.32
After the recurring cycles of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century the marriage age for women rose once again to their early twenties; males, however, continued to marry at around the same age as previously.33 From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the marriage age continued to rise.34 As the shift from the former, pre-plague, medieval pattern to that of the modern European pattern progressed, marriage ages rose to the highest in Western history. This increase led to neither sex marrying until their late twenties compared with the early fourteenth century that found young women entering marriage contracts typically between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.35 The percentage of those who never married rose to upwards of 20%, and in some areas the percentage of women who never married reached 45%.36 The tendency of families to only place their eldest sons in marriage, leaving their younger sons to an ecclesiastical career and large numbers of women without potential husbands, only exacerbated this trend.37

[Bobby Winters]

>>>What's a few orders of magnitude between friends, eh?<<<

Close enough for government work. ;)

[James A. Altena]

Well, my previous post has unexpectedly stirred up a lot of interesting and informative debate! I do think that an important point (among several) I was trying to make has gotten somewhat obscured. The problem is not just the absolute age of marriage, or the relative ages of men and women at marriage (a good point I hadn't considered). It is the correlation of the age of the onset of puberty to the age of marriage, and the corresponding considerable increase in the number of years of sexual abstinence required of youth in order for them to be chaste. Indeed, early betrothals and marriages in medieval times probably often meant that such marriages were contracted before the bride was capable of pregnancy, and very shortly after the groom has become capable of intercourse. And common-law marriages among peasantry that were only later solemnized would only confirm that further. That's a very different situation than what prevails today.

Stuart, while you make several good points, your statement that

"The problem we have today is rather new, in that we have (through good nutrition) managed to roll back the onset of puberty to what it was some 600 years ago (when preindustrial society required a rapid transition from childhood to adulthood). . ."

fails to distinguish puberty as biological maturation from puberty as social role. Children 600 years ago were not generally entering puberty at age 12 or so in terms of biological maturation of their bodies for procreative and reproductive capacities, even if they were being married off. It is that change which is central to the new problem we have today.

I agree that modern Western society now tends to infantalize youth, in the sense of relieving them of moral responsibility. (E.g., witness the US Supreme Court incrementallly raising the age at which persons can be held criminally responsible for murder.) But I don't think that rolling back the age of marriage to the teen years is any solution. This fails to consider that prior to the 19th c., the vast majority of people were illiterate or marginally literate (with exceptions such as Puritan New England) in an agrarian society. There was thus no problem with setting even children as young as five years old to work in the fields, who were ready to assume that livelihood independently by age 15.

The situation is far different in an industrial (increasingly now, post-industrial "information age") society that requires extensive education and literacy of its members in order for them to function productively. Schooling is the modern apprenticeship of youth. (Would that it were generally treated with corresponding seriousness!) But unlike an agricultural apprenticeship (or even that of a medieval guild shop), it is not immediately economically productive in providing a means of support. Thus when teenagers now to marry and start families (or, most often, simply have children out of wedlock), it almost always prevents completion of education, and results in a lifelong inability to earn more than a marginal living.

[Of course, there is also the problem of a "dumbed-down" educational system that now makes college an expensive requisite for acquiring knowlege and skills that high schools once provided at far less cost, locking people into a vicious cycle of student loan borrowing and long-term debt to pay skyrocketing tuition, to colleges that know the endless cycle can be fed by ever more governmetn largesse -- another instance of infantalizing.]

Simply positing a "kind of social structure that helps young families get on their feet and stay together" as a deus ex machina does not address all this. [What kind of social structure will do this, pray tell? I know that you, like I, oppose the welfare state, Stuart. Are you planning to let your kids drop out of school to marry at age 16 and then support them while they get a GED in night classes?] The ability of people at "a later stage of life" to "balance parenthood, education and work" is not simply transferable to "people in their teens and early 20s," because the people later in life have requisites for this balancing act that youth does not possess. They have generally completed their basic educations and established themselves in stable employment BEFORE they start to attempt the balancing act. (And additional schooling is generally part-time and at leisure, not a full-time occupation.) And, above all, they have experience and (one hopes) the wisdom thereby obtained. (Does "youth is wasted on the young" sound familiar?)

In short, we still have the probem I posed: how do we cultivate maintaining chaste abstinence until marriage in an adolescent population that now has to practice such continence for several years longer than would have been the case up to 200 years ago, especially in a society that has abandoned belief in chastity as a necessary moral norm? Unfortunately, with the advent of the Pill, the roof caved in 50 years ago on existing social restraints that aided the Christian endeavor here. The basic answer, of course, lies in sound Christian parenting, with solid support from the church, to inculcate the right values. But does anyone else have further constructive suggestions?

To address some minor points along the way:

It's also not entirely accurate to say that e.g. adolescents were running countries at the age of 15. They were the titular rulers, but in fact power and decision-making lay in the hands of older advisors until the rulers were closer to 20 years old. Likewise 15-year-olds did serve in armies, but that was not the norm either.

Whether the nobility really lived significantly longer than the peasantry in medieval times is something I would question, though I don't know the data. I do recall once seeing (years ago) a statistic that the average age of death among adult English male gentry in the 14th c. was 31 years old, due primarily to deaths in war from injuries or disease. Also (from the same source), while we complain about horrific crime rates today, the percentage of the population in 14th c. England that died from murder was about 14 times that of our modern urban murder rates.

Dear GL,

How far back does your genealogical research go? I ask because the figure of 18 years as the average age of menarche among English girls I cited is from the early 18th c. By the end of the 18th c. that age has already shifted downward at least a couple of years. The impact of the Agricultural Revolution and the subsequent Industrial Revolution in that century was as dramatic and immediate as the introduction of a Western diet to post-WW II Japan, where members of the generation born in the decade after 1945 averaged four inches taller in height than their parents. So your familial data may not really be contrary to what I wrote. (Also, your family may be exceptional. E.g., if it belonged to a higher social strata enjoying better nutrition, then the age of menarche among its members might be consistently earlier than that of the population as a whole.)

As for women having 9 or 10 children -- yes, they did. But with high infant mortality rates (up to 50% before age 5 well into the 19th c., if memory serves me correctly), they generally weren't raising 9 or 10 children to adulthood, but only four or five. And even today, children born to adolescent girls suffer higher rates of various health problems than those born to women in their 20s to mid-30s. (We of course agree on your remaining points about the purpose of sex, etc.)

[Peter Gardner]

Like what you were saying, a "kind of social structure that helps young families get on their feet and stay together" would by its very nature require first an un-dumbing-down of primary education, and a restoration of secondary education to its proper place as training for more complicated professions. The very existence of generic college degrees is evidence that something is wrong -- for example, a friend of mine who spent four years studying english and is now working at a nonprofit company; I'm not sure exactly what she's doing there, but I'm fairly certain it's unrelated to Shakespeare. So what makes her BA in English more useful than a high school diploma?

My suggestion is this: High school should remain free, but optional, and it should be possible to take it over as much as, say, ten years, part time, at any point in life. Really, a middle school education is enough for most unskilled jobs, so it should be made simple to work full time and stay in high school, thus qualifying you for those jobs that now want a generic college degree (in part, I think, to prove that you're willing to put in the effort, which optional high school would prove equally well).

The addition of older students (with the option to delay or extend high school) and students with outside jobs would add a degree of maturity to high school, and make it less of a closed society (closed societies tend to be unpleasant). After high school, as now, those who want to do something complicated, like medicine, engineering, teaching, or whatnot, go on to college, which would cost money as today.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The situation is far different in an industrial (increasingly now, post-industrial "information age") society that requires extensive education and literacy of its members in order for them to function productively. <<<

I disagree here, at least as far as one can talk about substantive knowledge. In fact, from my own research and personal experience with this issue, it would appear that many employers set higher academic requirements for positions than the tasks and duties of the position require. For instance, there is nothing a bank teller does that requires a bachelor's degree (indeed, with the advent of calculators and computerized banking systems, the job requires a lot less mathmatical skill than it did half a century ago). But most banks insist on a college degree. So I asked why (I did this for a number of different positions) and was told that employers generally see possession of a degree as an indicator that an applicant has a certain minimum level of cognitive ability which is not guaranteed by possession of a high school diploma today; many also cited the ability to get through college as pointing to a degree of emotional maturity and stability that would make the applicant a reliable employee.

In other words, the undergraduate degree today does not impute anything more than the basic skill levels that used to be conferred with the high school diploma.

If a position requires real specialized skill, employers either hire people with post-graduate degrees (which reduces post grad studies to a form of vocational education) or have their own in-house training systems. With the rapid advance of technology, an increasing number prefer the latter, which ensures a uniform degree of expertise in systems relevant to the particular company.

>>[Of course, there is also the problem of a "dumbed-down" educational system that now makes college an expensive requisite for acquiring knowlege and skills that high schools once provided at far less cost, locking people into a vicious cycle of student loan borrowing and long-term debt to pay skyrocketing tuition, to colleges that know the endless cycle can be fed by ever more governmetn largesse -- another instance of infantalizing.]<<<

Well, there you have it. Although, please note, most employers don't see college as a place where students gain "knowledge", but as a place where they are supposed to do a little growing up.

>>> I know that you, like I, oppose the welfare state, Stuart. Are you planning to let your kids drop out of school to marry at age 16 and then support them while they get a GED in night classes?]<<<

Reform of the education system is probably a prerequisite for whatever follows. That is, we have to admit to ourselves that not everybody can or ought to go to college. Rather than retaining the existing "comprehensive" approach to secondary education, we need to recognize the need for distinct "academic" and "vocational" tracks depending upon student aptitude and performance (and this, more than anything else, will drive parents to demand better performance from primary and middle schools, since it will have a real impact on their children's futures). With regard to the vocational track, I would certainly seek out mentoring relationships between schools and companies that would allow for realistic vocational training and work experience.

Assuming this is done, we would have more people entering the workforce at age 18 or younger, with access to well-paying jobs. That in itself ought to allow the age of marriage to begin falling back towards the early twenties, which is far healthier for society than delaying marriage into the late twenties, or even early thirties (not to mention the dire trend towards not marrying at all).

A tax structure that actually rewards people for getting married, staying married and having children would do much to ameliorate the problems facced by young families. I think I pointed out elsewhere, for instance, that if the personal exemption was indexed to a 1956 benchmark, it would be worth about $5000 today. That would drive most lower middle class families entirely off the tax rolls, making it easier for a single wage earner family.

Paradoxically, I would severely cut back on ostensible "family friendly" programs like subsidized day care, Head Start and the like. You get more of what you subsidize (an iron law of economics), and thus if we want to see fewer single parents or working moms, then we have to make it as difficult as possible to be one. Temporary assistance for people in trouble is OK (espeically if privately administered by charitable groups that demand something (such as specific standards of behavior) in return for the help), but open-ended assistance (except for those utterly incapable of work) must be ruled out altogether.

A bit of social stigma would be nice, too. No more euphemisms intended to protect people's tender feelings--call adultery adultery, fornication fornication, and bastardy bastardy.

Of course, this is going to put a real crimp on the gay/lesbian/bisexual/trangendered lobby, to say nothing of the various polygamists, polyandrists and polyamorists waiting their fifteen minutes on the tube. Deglamorize and stigmatize deviant behavior. Stop "defining deviancy down", as Pat Moynihan put it, and enforce societal norms. Giving greater latitude to faith-based organizations to fulfill their ministries in the public square would help in this process.

It is undoubtedly a long-term project, but every day we delay makes the process that much more difficult. Of course, if history is any guide, this ought to come about through the natural corrective processes that seem inherent in Western culture. Just as the Puritan era of Cromwell was superseded by the raucus Restoration, which in turn was supplanted by the more sober era of Queen Ann, which in turn gave way to the loose Georgian and Regency periods, then the long Victorian era, so I think that equilibrium will be restored largely through a reaction to the libertinism which is affecting us today.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It's also not entirely accurate to say that e.g. adolescents were running countries at the age of 15. They were the titular rulers, but in fact power and decision-making lay in the hands of older advisors until the rulers were closer to 20 years old. Likewise 15-year-olds did serve in armies, but that was not the norm either.<<<

True in many cases, but not all. There are numerous examples of kings actually wielding power in their own name as early as 15--and many more who were doing so by age 18. The nobility grew up fast, or they did not grow up at all.

>>>Whether the nobility really lived significantly longer than the peasantry in medieval times is something I would question, though I don't know the data. I do recall once seeing (years ago) a statistic that the average age of death among adult English male gentry in the 14th c. was 31 years old, due primarily to deaths in war from injuries or disease. Also (from the same source), while we complain about horrific crime rates today, the percentage of the population in 14th c. England that died from murder was about 14 times that of our modern urban murder rates.<<<

Undoubtedly mortality among the nobility was quite high, especially for males (while a lot of noblewomen did die in childbirth, there were as many or more who saw two or more husbands into the grave, picking up nice inheritances along the way to make them more attractive to suitors. But the nobility did not suffer (as badly) from the endemic parasitic diseases that plagued the peasantry, mainly due to their access to spices (though nobody knew that at the time--they just liked the way it covered the rancid smell and taste of the food). Also, their larger and more balanced diets tended to protect them from the endemic malnutrition that made the lower classes more vulnerable to disease. Finally, unlike peasants, the nobility could up stakes and move in the event of plague or famine. All contributed to lower mortality from natural causes. On the other hand, more of the nobility died in war. But, as you note, private violence was endemic in medieval society, so murder was a much higer risk for all classes.

>>>As for women having 9 or 10 children -- yes, they did. But with high infant mortality rates (up to 50% before age 5 well into the 19th c., if memory serves me correctly), they generally weren't raising 9 or 10 children to adulthood, but only four or five. And even today, children born to adolescent girls suffer higher rates of various health problems than those born to women in their 20s to mid-30s. (We of course agree on your remaining points about the purpose of sex, etc.)<<<

My wife has recently developed the geneology bug, and has been tracing various parts of her family back as far as the 18th century in North America. From various records she has collected, it would look as though the age of marriage throughout those 300 years varied from 16-21 (though there are a few outliers of 14 or so). Many of them did have upwards of a dozen kids--almost one a year until menopause or death in childbirth. A surprisingly high percentage seem to have lived to a ripe old age. On the whole, only about half of their children lived to adulthood. Sometimes entire lines disappear--probably periodic epidemics, since many of them were living in Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas and Texas, where yellow fever was a regular occurance).

Interestingly, the men tended to remarry women much younger than their first wives. The typical age difference between husband and first wife was only about 2-3 years, while the difference between husband and second wife was often ten or even twenty years. Sometimes these women were widows themselves, therefore in their middle twenties or so (with a few children in tow--more labor for the farm), but sometimes you see a few child brides married off to men in their late thirties or early forties.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>My suggestion is this: High school should remain free, but optional, and it should be possible to take it over as much as, say, ten years, part time, at any point in life. Really, a middle school education is enough for most unskilled jobs, so it should be made simple to work full time and stay in high school, thus qualifying you for those jobs that now want a generic college degree (in part, I think, to prove that you're willing to put in the effort, which optional high school would prove equally well).<<<

Not as presently structured. I sent my kids to an "elite" private middle school, where they received an excellent education by today's standards--but it does not give them the kind of skills that were once common for kids graduating from 8th grade half a century ago. I have NYC textbooks from that era, and they are comparable to (and in many cases, more advaned than) material being taught to high school juniors today. When we get back to that standard of learning, maybe your idea will be practical.

[James Kabala]

Thank you to Mr. Koehl for his data. I think we can conclude the following: the average age of marriage has varied greatly throughout history. Some Christian societies had very low ages, some very high ones. Therefore, while the fact that we are currently in a high-average-age period may be a one of the reasons why the culture has become sexually decadent, it cannot be the sole or even primary reason, as many, albeit not all, non-decadent societies have had high average ages.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>In other words, the undergraduate degree today does not impute anything more than the basic skill levels that used to be conferred with the high school diploma.<<<

It also means you've navagated a bureaucracy for a few years.

[GL]

James,

My genealogical research goes way back and I have pretty reliable sources back to the late 15th and early 16th centuries for some lines, but not all. I would have to look at it more carefully to determine variations in age of first marriage and family sizes through the centuries. My recollection is that age of first marriage dropped and family size increased after migration to the New World, but I do not have access to the data as I type this.

I actually think we agree on the point where you raised issues of infant mortality, etc. My point was that the "concerns" of proponents of contraception about women having 9 or 10 kids is a canard. Families of those sizes are an anomaly, primarily existing only when the mother marries very young, which is not the case for the vast majority of women today. You are, of course, correct that even when women did have such large families, in many cases (but by no means all) one or more of the children did not survive to their fifth birthday so that even then few families actually reared to adulthood that many children. (My grandparents' generation seems to have been an exception to this. My paternal grandfather was one of nine, eight of whom survived to adulthood. My paternal grandmother was one of was also one of nine, eight of whom survived to adulthood. My maternal grandmother was one of nine, all of whom survived to adulthood. My maternal grandfather was the exception, being one of only 4, all of whom survived to adulthood.) In each case of the three larger families, my great-grandmothers were in their mid-teens when they married and began having children within two years of marriage.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Gl and Sutart,

Thank you for further thoughtful and detailed responses, which which I generally agree. (Except, Stuart, I still maintain that a post-industrial 'information age' society requires extensive education and literacy of its members in order for them to function productively. Even if high schools functioned at the level of 50 years ago, I doubt they would be sufficient to teach e.g. computer science, engineering, or even nursing at a sufficiently sophisticated level for most employment in those fields today.)

One problem (as noted by several here) is that it would likely take decades to get the educational system back on track (it didn't go off the rails in a day). Now that most employers want a college degree as certification of a certain degree of cogntive competence (would that it were actually such, alas! We need a separate blog site for college instructors to share stories and commiserate on the woes of teaching modern undergraduates), how could one persuade them to go back to lower-level credentials and believe that it constitutes no loss of skills and knoweldge? Gresham's Law applies here in all its rigor, as it does to other departments of life. Diplomas as well as currency suffer from inflation. So too does language -- increasingly broad and vague definitions of words inexorably drive more specific and precise ones out of use.

(This, to bring us back to Prof. Esolen's original topic, is a fulcrum of the apologetics for feminism, homosexuality, theological revisionsim, abortion, euthanasia, etc., etc. The case for these is made largely through obfuscatory tricks with language -- sleight-of-hand redefinitions of terms, use of euphemisms, etc.)

It would be a good thing to get the age of marriage back down to the early 20's. But, as I pointed out, that still leaves a gap of about 10 years between the onset of adolescence and marriage, as opposed to only 2 - 4 years prior to the early 18th c., in which youth must exercise sexual continence through abstinence while their sexual drives are at maximum intensity. I still suspect that the (approximately) tripling of that time frame greatly increases the pressure and temptation toward masturbation, fornication, and perhaps even experimentation with various perversions.

I don't have children of my own, having come to marriage only last year at the age of 46 -- at least, not yet. But I do teach young adolescents in Sunday School at church. Most of them are from ghetto homes, born out of wedlock, often living with people who are not biological parents. (I've heard kids as young as 7 refer to absent biological fathers as "sperm donors.") Their adult caretakers (for lack of a better word) do not attend church. We generally only have a couple hours a week to try to plant and nurture some small seed of the Gospel in their hearts and minds. (We do try to spend time with them outside of Sunday school -- e.g. weekday homework clubs, fun outings, etc.) In short, these kids don't have the familial or social support structure posited by e.g, Stuart. I'm looking for practical advice here. How do we inculcate chastity in such kids for a prolonged period of time, without simply giving up on them as products of "bastardy"?

[Michael M]

I personally think that one should gain as much information and knowledge as possible on this topic. Here is another page that may be of interest to some, it’s all about this subject of Christian parenting magazine, check it here http://www.parenting-education-rights.com/Christian-Parenting-Magazine.php