Why is human sexuality so controversial?

[Fat Old Sun]

First off, you will have a hard time finding someone who believes it is a good thing for someone to use any such lobby as a means to gain power. I don't care if they are the pro-choice lobby, or the pro-life lobby, it is bad news.

It is bad news, but it is also big money.

More importantly, I am having a difficult time understanding how this lobby causes sexuality to be controversial. Can I start a lobby against surfboards and make surfing controversial? Isn't it the inherent controversy in sexuality that allows this Dobson fellow to profit from it?

Anything can become controversial if enough people in positions of power decide to make it so. It wasn't that long ago that you could not turn on the news or pick up a newspaper without seeing a story about a black church being burned down. Black churches were being burned down for years. White churches were also being burned down in even greater numbers. Enough people who make decisions in the media decided to make this a 'hot-button issue'. They did the same thing with school shootings to boost the gun control lobby. Just as many high school kids die on the football field every year as do from the class nerd going postal.

The problem with your assertion is that an overwhelming majority of voters agree with Dobson, yet I doubt many of them have even heard of him. If you do not see any merit of such a position you may not be trying to understand these people and where they are coming from.

Anyone who listens to talk radio has heard his Focus On the Family bits. I could go on about Jimmy Dob, and his fascination with Freud, but I don't want to hi-jack the thread.

 

[Prima]

Just resurrecting this thread for a brief moment after reading about the Human Sexuality Summit. Read here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050619/D8AQRO5O0.html

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And while there's plenty of talk about Hollywood, masturbation and all topics titillating, the premise is that ignorance and intolerance about sex have disastrous consequences - whether it's an inadequate response to AIDS, the stigma suffered by rape survivors or teenagers having unsafe sex.

Hooray for people trying to end the ignorance
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[Stick of Joseph]

I believe its controversial because the two most powerful things we can do is take life and give life. Both are very closley related and dont usually get taken lightly in society today.

 

[Stormygale]

I was just discussing this the other day with someone at work. Weird, how that happens to me so much. It's like I see the conversations coming before they are even on. Anyway...
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Sexuality is taboo. It was very bad in the eighteen hundreds when religious aspects were pushed to the front. Pentecostal and baptist were running rampid, only under different names. Anything to do with something that was 'bodily' and 'nasty', was 'hell fire and brim stoned against'. It still sets a president to this day. Sex is looked on as a bad thing....

 

[godfree1]

What is the root reason(s) that human sexuality is so controversial?

I'm with Maize; I think your friend has hit the wretched nail on its head. Any reasons other than power or control over others would be far less important. We're naturally sexual human beings--we just don't like looking at ourselves in an unapologetic light. Truths scare the living daylights out of too many of us.

 

[linwood]

What is the root reason(s) that human sexuality is so controversial?

Religion

Is there a better explanation for why human sexuality is so controversial?

Nope.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

I believe its controversial because the two most powerful things we can do is take life and give life. Both are very closley related and dont usually get taken lightly in society today.

There's something in that. If sex wasn't responsible for reproduction do you think it'd be such a religious and political issue? I very much doubt it. Everyone would be at it all the time and there would be no wars :jam:

 

[mr.guy]

If sex wasn't responsible for reproduction do you think it'd be such a religious and political issue?

Yes. Even if one procreated by other means, I don't think you'd have religion or politics without sex.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

Yes. Even if one procreated by other means, I don't think you'd have religion or politics without sex.

Best argument for celibacy I've ever heard.

 

[michel]

I am not really sure; I just reread an answer I posted a few months ago, and can't understand a word I was saying!

I would suggest that one of the reasons sexuality is so contraversial is because it is our prime motivator in life (drives ambition - going back to the freudian outlook, which I believe is very true).

Add to that the fact that until 50 years ago, sex was hush hush; the sixties saw a 'revolution' which forced sex out in the face of the public, homosexuality became a matter of debate (before then it had just been regarded as a criminal offence). I guess that particular period in our history brought sex to the fore, and therefore something new for people to cope with. I actually remember the Kinsey report being talked about - mostly in a humourus way (because people were trying to sound as if they were quite happy discussing sex - when they probably weren't.)

Since then, we have had the 'innovations' of all forms of sexuality being explored, the exploitation of pornography, contraception being openly discussed; the advances in medicine (in all aspects of sexuality); thinking about it, it is no surprize that sexuality is contraversial. The whole subject has been raked up from under the carpet, and put out for everyone to look at and discuss; the Church got in on the act.....

I guess we have come a long way in the last 50/60 years; change can't be quick without breaking a few eggs.