Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The Hidden Meanings of SSA


C. S. Lewis warned that language matters. For one example, he said that calling every man a gentleman regardless of any evidence of gentlemanliness, would destroy the word gentleman. Which it most certainly has. Have you noticed how this word is now used indiscriminately, such as in reference to any drunk, escaped convict, intruder, robber, pimp, rapist, murderer, or terrorist, all of which are certainly not gentlemanly acts. It makes us wince every time. Listen, you'll hear it.

This term same-sex attraction (or same-gender attraction) is another example of language gone awry. It needs a little dissecting to understand.

For one thing, it is a new term, which should make one consider why it was invented. Whether people realize it or not, this term was fabricated in order to put the unspeakable sin of homosexual lust/sodomy in a benign light. It turns an unnatural act into something much less objectionable, much more clinical, even positive. Think about how the words same sex and attraction are in and of themselves harmless. Same sex can simply refer to people all being male or all being female, and attraction could simply mean friendship or fondness or attractiveness. And if you substitute the word gender for sex the term does not seem to refer to human sexuality at all. How is that for turning sodomy into chastity?

Homosexuality is not pure. It is about lust and corresponding perverse sex habits and acts, all of which are maladaptive and outside God's boundaries for sexual purity.

Then there is the broadness of the term same-sex attraction. This has always bothered us in the backs of our minds. Let's think about it.

If just a decade or two ago you had asked any pure-minded traditionally married person if they were opposite-sex attracted or same-sex attracted, they would have stared at you blankly. This is because people didn't use to think this way. First, they didn't think of themselves as sexual beings, as many people do now. Second, sexuality was a private matter. People kept themselves, or tried to keep themselves, sexually interested in only one person of the opposite sex: their spouse. This is what upright couples promise when they commit themselves to each other. Decent people do not go around seeking to arouse, or entertaining, romantic or sexual attraction toward anyone else; they don't think that way. And if they fall into that temptation in any degree, they recognize it and repent quickly.

Yes, you can help who you are sexually attracted to, who you love romantically and sexually. That's the understanding good married people have with each other and the world. Otherwise there would be no faithful spouses and no limit to sexual relationships.

Speaking of language, the terms love and hate have also been hijacked. In certain senses, the lovely word love has been reduced to mere sex acts. And yet it is well known that all sorts of people engage in sex without love: porn addicts, masturbators, rapists, whatever you call people who hire and pay for sex, prostitutes, actors, porn stars, even sexual abuse victims and slaves who are coerced into engaging in sex acts against their will. And the word hate is now being used to refer to anyone who believes in God and His rules for sexual morality; yes, the sexual revolution is in essence saying: Sex is love and God is hate.

Let's discuss the term SSA (which is the same as gay or homosexual or transgender). It has always bothered us for several reasons. Has anybody ever thought about what this label implies? For one thing, SSA is another way of saying homosexual lust. It is about looking at people of one's same sex with sexual lust in the mind and heart. Otherwise same-sex attraction would be mere friendship. And yet we have heard LDS people say that SSA (the Mormon kind?) is chaste or nonsexual. This is intellectually dishonest, deception, or just plain dumb. All sexual lust is of course both sexual and impure.

And there's more. The sweeping term same-sex attracted also implies no boundaries. Look at it this way. Even before a thoughtful, pure-minded person settles on one partner for life, he or she is not attracted sexually to every person of the opposite sex. That would be ridiculous. There should be only a relatively small portion of the population that would be qualified even within the opposite sex population: someone perhaps of the same approximate age, someone with similar values and goals and beliefs, someone who is pleasant to you, etc. But the term SSA makes no such distinctions, at least we've never heard any. Hence, according to the term same-sex attracted, the group one could choose from would encompass half of the world's population, which would include family members, other people's spouses, co-workers, strangers, children, anybody! And if, as is now being said, human sexuality is "fluid," make that the entire human race. As we said, no limit to sex lusts and acts.

Funny how that idea doesn't sound so strange these days. As barrier after barrier has been broken down---easy divorce, co-habitation, homosexuality, gay marriage, transgenderism, and sexualizing minors---people have become used to the idea of unlimited human sexuality. Some comfort themselves in various ways that seem to excuse the sin, such as by calling this sin a God-given "identity."

In fact, all these terms: gay, homosexual, SSA, and even the corresponding new terms straight and heterosexual, make no discrimination as to demographics and have no such understandings about fidelity attached. Why is this? Why these sweeping new sexual labels? We think it is because homosexualists/sexual revolutionaries/liberals want no such distinctions made. Even as they go about the many normal aspects of their lives, they want no sexual boundaries. They want no such roles or restraints as male, female, nature, biology, health, marriage, fidelity, mother, father, children, integrity, purity, sin, God.

As we see from the growing sexual alphabet soup (LGBTQI) and facebook's current 92 fabricated "genders," this is not about identity or love. It's about no-guilt, perverse, unlimited, in-your-face sex and sexuality.

Can we all be honest and call SSA what it really is?

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