The debate over same sex Marriage - The result of the sexual revolution

If we are to understand the current sexual landscape and how weight navigate our way through it we need to look back. We need to understand how we got here. What were the forces, people and events that gave rise to such a dramatic change in sexual attitudes and behaviour?

The sexual revolution occurred in the 60s. However, we must note that the fuse for the sexual revolution may have been lit long before the sixties. The generation before hand was the Victorian Era which basically believed they could keep Christian morality without God. Those in the sixties asked why morality? Without God why not live for selfish pleasure?

Lets look at the results of this push for freedom of sexual expression. The New York Jewish historian Getrude Himmelfarm noted the following:

Era	1950s	1973	1989
Girls under 16yrs having had premarital sex	5%	30%	59%

Era	1800-1960	1995
% of children born outside of marriage	5-7%	35%

At the turn of the century about 4% of people got divorced, slightly heightened at 6% during a war. Now, in Australia, every third marriage ends in divorce.

As a result of the sexual revolution, and sex outside of marriage and people living in defacto relationships, divorce has drastically increased and so has loneliness, and depression in the children of divorce, among many other negative things. The data all points to people living in defacto relationships, and having sex before marriage, increase the likelihood of divorce and thus increase the likelihood of adverse effects in children. 

Defacto relationships, sex before marriage, children born out of wedlock becoming widespread and accepted is a huge social change. Society has gone through massive social upheaval, and we are now living in new uncharted waters. What we see as normal today is in fact, in the history of mankind, very abnormal. Because we have never seen this in the history of mankind before.

Thus the devastation and damage of divorce is horrific. We have a major problem which is personal, and we see it in our fear of commitment. Nowadays we have people marrying later and postponing children. Bettina Ardnt one of Australias best known sexologists said

“In the past few years, the evidence has become overwhelming that divorce is having detrimental effects on the lives of many Australian children. Abundant research, here and abroad, demonstrates that the intact two parent family offers children distint and life lasting advantages over single parent and blended familes”

Alfred Kinsley wrote ‘Sexual Behavior in the Human Male’ which lifted to light on sexual taboos of discussion such as masturbation, pre-marital intercourse, prostitution & homosexuality. And if his statistics on normality were true perhaps it was time to leave the Victorian Era behind. Alfred Kinsey the mid 20th century pioneer of sexuality research showed research suggesting that homosexuals and bisexuals were “widespread”, not an evil and “tiny minority”, “wickedly choosing” unnatural sexual expressions.

The kinsy report surveyed a massive sample of amiercans and reported that 90 per cent of males masturbated, 85% had engaged in premarital intercourse, 30-45% had conducted extra marital sexual relationships, and around 70% had visited prostitutes. Furthermore Kinsey contended that 37% of males had experienced homosexual orgasm post puberty, that 10% of the population were predominantly homosexual and 4% exclusively so. (Phillip Jensen, Prodigal World, 2003)

The implications of Kinsey’s research were not lost on the American public. If, for example, 10% of the population were homosexual (which was how the figures were popularly represented), then homosexuality was no longer a deviant criminal act (‘sodomy’) only practised by a very small number of social outcasts. It ought now to be recognized as the farily common behaviour of a large minority. Many homosexual activists cite Kinsey as the man who made the modern gay movement possible.

At one level, we act in a certain way because we believe certain things to be true; however, we also come to believe certain things to be true because of how we live, and what we have done. Our behaviour and desires affect our thining. Our intellectual life is profoundly influenced by our moral life. This is particularly true as we think about sex, because sex is such a powerful and basic desire within our personalities.

It is now clear Kinsey himself was a homosexual, and a masochist (in the sexual sense) who, as he grew older, persued an interest in extreme forms of sexuality, with an increasing compulsiveness. At the time of his famous report, Kinsey had begun conducting (and participating in) sexual experiments in his attic, filming members of his staff having sex with each other, and with his wife, and also filming exhibitions of gay sex, especially of the sado-masochistic variety.

Kinsey, there seems little doubt, had powerful personal reasons for pursuing sex research, and for attempting to demonstrate that there was no such thin as ‘deviancy’. Personal bias led Kinsey to scientific sleight-of-hand, if not outright fraud. The details of Kinsey’s work have since been seriously undermined. Judith Reisman provides evidence that Kinsey recruited and trained paedophiles to conduct this research on his behalf,

His sample of American males, although large, was hardly representative of the population as a whole.
26% of Kinsey’s subjects, for example, were ‘sex offenders’, a further 25% were in prison; among the rest, pimps, male prostitutes and frequenters of ‘gay bars’ were over represented. There is little doubt that sexually promiscuous males, especially homosexuals, were massively over-represented in Kinsey’s sample, but this is something that Kinsey repeatedly denied or attempted to obscure. Thus Kinsey’s contention that 10% of the population is prededominantly homosexual is a massive exaggeration. A barrage of more recent studies have put the figure at between 1 and 3% and this after 30 years of gay activism to make being homosexual a socially acceptable lifestyle. (See Andrew Shead “Homosexuality and the church: history of the debate” in B.G. Webb (ed),

Research	Statistics- men	Statistics- women
The 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey	2.8%	1.4%
The 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey	1%	0.7%
1995 Queensland Institute of Medical Research survey	2.5%	1%

We are at a crisis point in our society/civilization. Never has same sex marriage been legitimized and exhorted by any culture. The common understanding of marriage advanced by every known civilization must justify itself before the tribunal of a wholly new and unproven understanding. Where will we make a stand.