But If Sex is Allowed into Society, It will Destroy America! Just Look at the Romans!

Sex is bad. This is the message we are given from our elders from our birth until we get married. Any sex we have before marriage is of the devil. Despite no biblical passage explicitly forbidding sex until marriage, many of the Christian churches liberally hand out that stance, desiring much more control than Jesus could ever forgive. Of course, commenting on the sorry state of affairs for the Christian church today is a topic for another day.

I do believe that the commandment “Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery” means just precisely that. The ancient laws forbade a married person to have sex with anyone but their spouse. There is no mention in the bible of anyone being punished for having sex before marriage, unless the person they were having sex with was married. To break up a marriage by trashing the holiness of their union is a sin that deserves punishment indeed, but too many people are inclined to spread that punishment and guilt to all who have sex.

People in ancient Judea were married as soon as they became adults, which, back then, was when they hit puberty. Since they were physically ready to have sex, they were deemed emotionally ready. Their sex drives were relatively placated by their spouses. Now, to get married at 18 or 19 is seen as rushing it. Where does the sex drive go? Teenagers do not just stop lusting after the flesh, no matter how much it is stigmatized or ignored.

Some imagine that before the hippies took over, the world was chaste and every family was like “Leave it to Beaver”, and they want to bring the world back to that idyllic time. Unfortunately, anyone who has read much literature from any time period will see that sex and drugs have always been a part of the world. We just stigmatize it more now. Sex is bad. Any desire for sex, especially for women, is even worse. We are supposed to hide sex, and pretend it doesn’t exist.

The abstinence-only education that all publicly schooled American children receive is a joke. America is so prudish about sex that if a school wants to slowly introduce sex ed to elementary-age children, they are met with angry phone calls and unhappy parents. “Kids won’t want sex until they’re in high school, and that’s when we need to address the problem,” or “Introducing it to them now will only make them have sex earlier. “

The argument that the rise in sex has led to the rise in divorce is short-sighted. Coupled with the way sex has become more mainstream was the rise of feminism, and the rights of women to assert themselves. Again, reading any literature reveals that just because people don’t get divorced does not mean that they are happy together. Divorce is more socially acceptable now, and I wager that if it had been the same way one hundred years ago, the divorce rate would be little different.

What does all this mean for sex in videogames? Since sex is bad, and only those over 18 are legally allowed to have sex () or to view it, it makes no sense to let our poor children be exposed to that dirty, dirty sex in videogames. In videogames, they are actually acting it out!! Just like games like Grand Theft Auto are “murder simulators” (), so any game with sex in it will make our kids have sex more frequently. And that’s just sex with a computer, who knows the chaos that will ensue if they’re pretending to have sex with actual people?

Online narrative games steer very clear from sex, because even suggestions of sex would certainly mean an “M” rating. An M rating limits the audience, and most Massively Multiplayer Online Games usually rely on the 13-18 year-old boy segment as their base. If that large group cannot play their game, then they have effectively signed their own death warrant. They are censoring themselves to make more money. If games are continually being pigeonholed as mere child’s play, then they will be censored as such. Luckily, websites like www.2old2play.com are raising the banner for older gamers, and calling for mature games that they can play. And slowly, more mature games are being released for them, though mostly mature in the sense of being chock-full of violence and dismemberment. As the generation that first introduced Atari and Nintendo into the world grows older, there will be more games aimed toward them. As the irrational fear of sex slowly fades away, there will be more games with sex themes built in. If the market demands it, there will always be someone willing to make it.

– Daddo

 

~ by Mikil Taylor on November 2, 2007.