Agreed. So if you want to specifically talk about sexuality, do you think promiscuous lifestyles have had an adverse effect on our culture?
On the whole no, I'd say that religious repression has had a much more adverse affect on our culture. You're also greatly exaggerating the problem seeing as the average person is is not extremely promiscuous regardless of what you might see on TV.
The media is to blame for creating an overly negative and misanthropic perception of the average American - similar to how on every news site each day you'll hear a new story about "someone killing someone", when in reality this rarely happens, and you won't hear about all the people who
didn't kill someone that day.
Sure you can complain that less people have their relationships blessed by the Church today- but ignore the fact that in the early 1900s religious child marriages occurred in rural parts of the US, with girls as young as 10 years old
You're more likely to die in a car wreck than you are to of an STD - the "STD" fear is one which is manufactured rather than realistic, as the risks are comparable to many other things which people engage in daily, yet disproportionately talked about.
Plus one day all STDs will be cured anyway by science.
See above. Not to mention a person who absolutely wanted to avoid said risk could just avoid the act of intercourse altogether - but of course a lot of religious fundamentalists would be against any recreational sexual activity, since preventing unwanted pregnancies isn't their real agenda.
Jimmy Swaggart? Ted Haggart?
Apparently having "found Jesus" didn't help them much. lol
I'd say the increased divorce rate is a positive thing, since what it means in practice is the ending of a lot of sham marriages which are "marriages" in name only but in practice dead relationships.
Famous author Dale Carnegie for example stayed in a horrible marriage for 8 years simply because it was less acceptable at the time to divorce.
And of course according to studies, Christians actually have higher divorce rates than other demographics, such as atheists.
Marriage and divorce were treated more seriously back in a day in age when a woman was much more dependent on the husband for support, and in which producing heirs for her father was considered a much more important "role".
Since the industrial age has made it easier for a woman to support herself without a man, and since we recognize women today individuals rather than "property" of her father, it's natural that long term, monogamous relationships are less of a pragmatic priority in this day and age.
If you want to return to a simpler, more puritanical time, then you'll need to undo all of the industrialization that's taken place over the past 70 years since WWII, which one one hand brought about a lot of the social changes which you're objecting to, yet at the same time made possible modern conveniences like the internet which people take for granted.
Jealousy's caused by emotionally immature individuals. If a person can't control their own emotions it's their problem.
None of Solomon's wives had much of a problem with jealousy apparently
Whether people like it or not, monogamy isn't a "natural" institution within the human species - religious monogamy was invented by the early Catholic church and was done for practical reasons at the time, not because people "naturally" monogamous, because they aren't. it never even existed in the Bible at all - the ancient Israelites were polygamous.
disrespect for the opposite gender.
Your standard of "respect" sounds like it's based more on the mentality that a woman is "property" and that one is "obligated" to marry her and produce heirs for her father (with little individual say in the matter) - than on actual principles of respect in the context of human interaction.
By that logic, then two people having consensual recreational sex are "disrespecting" each other, since "respect" is simply being re-defined to mean something other than what it actually does in the context of real human interactions.
Can a large percentage of these things be traced back to the "sex positive" lifestyle
No not at all. If anything the things you're talking about are a slightly excessive backlash against Puritanical repression of past eras.
As far as disrespect for example, talk a look - or how they were treated in the Old Testament - you'll see far more antisocial behavior occurring toward women in more ascetic cultures than you will in ours, with little exception.
But in in fact, countries which are the most ascetic are pretty much without exception the most barbaric, repressive, and deviant. From Iron Age Israel, to modern day Saudi Arabia - where a woman wearing jeans or showing her face in public is a bigger sin than stoning children or forcing girls to marry their rapists.
What aspect of "our culture" promotes it? Are you talking about the marketing industry?
While I believe that people do have to a degree and innate desire for modesty, I'd say the majority of is simply jealousy and a desire to control, as well as the simple creaton of a false dilemma. Bertrand Russell had a good understanding of this even back in 1936.
If you object to the excessive marketing of sexual content via the internet and the media, then ironically if you need to lay a blame anywhere - it would be excessive capitalism, and the execs who know that selling skimpy clothes or racy music is a great cash cow for marketing to rebellious teens who want to piss off daddy.
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