The following comes from a May 30 story in the Los Angeles Times by Bob Laird.
It appears that more young people are starting – finally – to question the “hookup” mentality that has become so common on many college campuses.
Harvard sophomore Lisa Mogilanski put it this way: “Hookup culture is an unnavigable mush of vague intentions and desires. … We can try to dress it up as being freeing or equalizing the genders, but I fear it only leaves us equally impoverished.”
Voices like Mogilanski’s are still the exception, however, and even many of those who see hookup culture as a problem stop short of embracing better alternatives.
Casual sex on college campuses today, which often grows out of binge drinking, leads to sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and low self-esteem. It removes the romance, love and deep caring from relationships between men and women.
Yet many American colleges and universities seem to be at least tacitly condoning the culture.
While accompanying one of my children on a college tour several years ago, another high schooler asked the student guide about being able to drink and “have fun with my girlfriend” in the dorm rooms. The guide proceeded to tell him not to worry; no one enforced those rules.
Boston University religion professor Donna Freitas, in her new book The End of Sex, suggests that the culture of casual hookups is leading to an unhappy, unfulfilled and confused generation. She cites overwhelming research showing predominantly negative experiences that result from hooking up because, for one thing, “it is purely physical and emotionally vacant.”
But still, she denigrates abstinence education as “extreme to the point that students cannot imagine living it, nor do they wish to.”
Columnist Emma Teitel, writing in Maclean’s, suggests that “if you have empty, meaningless sex throughout college, you’ll become an emotional cripple, contract gonorrhea and, most likely, vomit.” But then she adds: “These are lessons learned through experience, not indoctrination.”
That seems nonsensical. I didn’t have to learn that, say, heroin was bad for me through experience. I didn’t learn it through “indoctrination” either. Young people who are given sound information can make rational decisions without having to engage in risky and detrimental behavior.
In a 2012 report titled “Strategies for Reducing Binge Drinking and a ‘Hook-Up’ Culture on Campus,” Loyola Marymount University professor Christopher Kaczor found that “the ramifications of unhealthy behaviors in both drinking and sex go beyond the physical, psychological and social damage to the individuals partaking in the activities.” This behavior “inhibits ethical development through the focus on private indulgence of using other people for pleasure, rather than on loving, committed relationships.”
To read the entire story, click here.
Excellent article!
“That seems nonsensical. I didn’t have to learn that, say, heroin was bad for me through experience. I didn’t learn it through “indoctrination” either. Young people who are given sound information can make rational decisions without having to engage in risky and detrimental behavior.” This idea in itself is nonsensical. The attraction of heroin is not the same as the attraction of sex. Also, here is another claim that information will save the day; it’s the same thing as “read the Bible and you are home free”. Hopefully the rest of his essay provides a better insight for solving the problem. I wonder also if the problem with college involves postponing the best age range for marriage.
Per the US CDC (Center for Disease Control) –
” Across the country, at any given time, 110 million people are afflicted with chlamydia, genital herpes, genital warts, syphilis and other sometimes silent, sometimes painfully obvious, damaging diseases. ” (AIDS not mentioned.)
” According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in February, there are 19.7 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections in America every year. ”
” Half of the cases are among young people, aged 15 to 24. And one in four American teenagers is infected every year — worse odds than a game of Russian roulette. ”
” The CDC estimates the total direct medical costs of this epidemic to be about $16 billion per year. ” (Which will mostly fall under Obamacare for taxpayers to pick up the tab.)
(Quotes taken from – “Abstinence Education Downplayed as Method of Combating America’s STD Epidemic”, National Catholic REGISTER, 5/31/13.)
One third of the USA has a sex disease, MAC?!?!?! The “official” figures could never be way off, now, could they be?
These are the official figures of the US CDC as of Feb., 2013.
The fact that the CDC did not clearly include AIDS was also interesting. It may or may not be included.
I gave exact quotes from the article in the “National Catholic Register”.
( _ _ ) are my comments.
Obama Administration has cut funding to teach abstinence. But is adding more tax dollars for condoms.
CDC has a web site – which can be found by searching “CDC stds” explaining the various types of stds.
So, do you believe the figures, MAC? I don’t. Be sure always to remember the rule: “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”. Do you know how statistics are manipulated, MAC? Do you know how they are figured up? They take a sample from society, and they do it by asking questions: The devil being in the details, and the sampling being probably reasonable, then you have to look at the questions and ignore the “clarification” given by the organization putting out the stats. Read the questions used in the samples: You will find out how freekin’ easy it is to manipulate the responses you are seeking. The research is always paid by somebody, and in the case you cited, it is paid by the federal govt, which we all know is beyond honest and trustworthy.
If a young (or older) person dies in the state of Mortal Sin without repentance then they shall spend their eternity in HELL.
CCC: ” 2396 Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.”
CCC: ” 1852 There are a great many kinds of sins. Scripture provides several lists of them. The Letter to the Galatians contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.
I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.”
2517 The heart is the seat of moral personality: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication. . . . ” The struggle against carnal covetousness entails purifying the heart and practicing temperance:
Remain simple and innocent, and you will be like little children who do not know the evil that destroys man’s life.
CCC: ” 2353 Fornication is carnal union between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of persons and of human sexuality which is naturally ordered to the good of spouses and the generation and education of children.
Moreover, it is a grave scandal when there is corruption of the young. ”
Parents you have an obligation to teach your children.
Yes, the hookup culture is vacuous and degrading, but going back to the extremely strict abstinence standard is a place no one wants to return to. Committed and monogamous relationships between single adults are very different from the frat house mentality that worships hookups. The criminal case of two Bay Area male teens now on trial for digitally penetrating a 15 year old drunk girl who then committed suicide when the video of the act went viral is the latest example of the hookup mentality’s results.
Here in CA, UC Santa Barbara has the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases of any college campus in the entire state. No wonder it’s so popular…
So called “Good Cause”,
Re.: “but going back to the extremely strict abstinence standard is a place no one wants to return to. Committed and monogamous relationships between single adults are very different from the frat house mentality that worships hookups”.
Just who is this “no one wants to return to” you so flippantly mention?
Kenneth M. Fisher
Good Cause, based upon your posts, I know you are not Catholic or even a good Christian.
Whether fornication is for one day or on-going over years – it is still fornication.
Dying in the State of Mortal Sin – sends Souls to HELL.
It’s time to start doing God’s Will, not our wills.
CCC: 2353, 1755, 1852.
Gal 5:19-21; Rom 1:28-32; 1 Cor 6:9-10; Eph 5:3-5; Col 3:5-9;
1 Tim 1:9-10; 2 Tim 3:2-5.
All Sexual activity outside of a lifetime Marriage (between one man and one woman) is a MORTAL SIN.
Contraception is a Mortal Sin. (CCC 2370, 2399)
Parents teach your children. Never do anything that can be assumed as approval for fornication, or a lifestyle of fornication.
“Committed and monogamous relationships between single adults” between man and woman constitute what is known as a common law marriage. “Committed”, however, is a loaded word, good cause, which you ought to know. “Committed” could mean anything … Also, good cause, are you not also an occasional supported of the gay agenda? Your loose ended post needs a lot of clarification.
Supervision goes a long way. People behave differently when they know they are being monitored.
Anonymous, are you saying that you supervise your neighborhood at night and the local college on the weekends?
One third of America? Think of how many people who fall into ages groups in which sexual activity is unlikely, including children and the elderly – and those in hospitals, nursing homes, not to mention safely married (if there is such a state of affairs, so to speak) – and you have a significantly higher percentage of single people who are sexually active and have sexually transmitted diseases – far more than half, I’d guess.
I’ve read that the majority of married people are faithful to their spouses the majority of their time, but more than half of Americans of marriageable age are not married now, so we are in the minority. You think you are safe when you marry if you are faithful, but I had a next-door neighbor, a faithful young Mormon wife, whose husband cavorted with prostitutes and brought the HIV virus home to her. She developed full-blown AIDS and died in her 20’s, leaving 2 small boys behind. It turns out that women are much more vulnerable to developing the disease than men are. Hus widowed husband is still alive and has not developed full-blown AIDS, and the family has been open about this situation all along, not wanting people to think ill of their daughter or well of this man, who is still dating women and doing who knows with whom.
Sexually transmitted diseases don’t just happen to gay men, my friends – this is devastating even faithful young Mormon wives who bake and sew and live in the manner they are raised to do so. It takes both spouses being faith, and preferably abstinent before marriage as well, to make sure we are safe from these deadly statistics even within what we believe is a faithful marriage with our spouses.