Brave New World?

Shrinkwrapped has an important post up, The Academy Awards, Pan Sexuality, Narcissism And Lonliness. He quotes from an article that appeared in NY Magazine:

The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School

Researchers find it shocking that 11 percent of American girls between 15 and 19 claim to have same-sex encounters. Clearly they’ve never observed the social rituals of the pansexual, bi-queer, metroflexible New York teen. He goes to say, Children, and adolescents are children, differ from adults in many ways, one of which is that they have not yet established a completely stable sense of identity. Adolescents typically experiment with all sorts of personal styles, looks, affectations, all in the process of trying to figure out just what kind of person they are going to be, and want to be, when they grow up. Too many of our adolescents have grown up in a hyper-sexualized environment, which is over-stimulating and confusing. Adolescents also have very little real sense of cause and effect...

Shrinkwrapped goes on to say,

These are the kinds of children I often treat as adolescents and young adults. The confusion on how to approach each other, the way early sexual involvements turn potential relationships into impersonal "hook-ups" and the poignant despair at ever finding a true love are almost invariably part of their sadness and anxiety. Many have only seen failed relations among their peers. They know that all possibilities are open to them yet cannot tolerate that adulthood requires voluntarily relinquishing the fantasy that they can do whatever they want without penalty or responsibility. It is not only their personal future ability to function as adults in the world, but a prerequisite for our civilization to function, that requires adolescents to make the painful choice of giving up the free expression of all their instinctual desires.

Shrinkwrapped's post is illustrative, disturbing and most of all, important. We can debate the merits of this brave new world of the 'progressives' all we want, but there are consequences to limiting behavior to the outcome of a 'debate.' What kind of society will we have if, as SW notes,

The unfortunate young people in the article will be well versed in the mechanics of sex, heterosexual, bi-sexual, and homosexual and many more permutations; they will yearn for the connection they so clearly want and it will remain just out of their reach. They know how to use each other as sexual objects for momentary pleasure, but relating to each other as fully fledged people is a much more problematic endeavor...

There is also a vast difference between teaching our children tolerance and teaching that "anything and everything goes" and all sexual behavior is equivalent and represent mere "life style choices."

Read the post.