Apologetics Online

Christian Apologetics Resources

Week 8 – Sexuality

Week 8 – Sexuality

            Synopsis

            Every form of abhorrent sexual behavior listed in the Bible is now promoted by culture and in K-12 education. Learn how to speak to school-age and young adults about this challenging topic.

            Further Study

            The Biblical Understanding of Sexuality

            The Sexual Revolution

            Sex After Christianity  
            • This raises a critically important question: is sex the linchpin of Christian cultural order? Is it really the case that to cast off Christian teaching on sex and sexuality is to remove the factor that gives—or gave—Christianity its power as a social force?
            • Sociologist Christian Smith’s research on what he has termed “moralistic therapeutic deism”—the feelgood, pseudo-Christianity that has supplanted the normative version of the faith in contemporary America
            • They are fighting the culture war moralistically, not cosmologically. They have not only lost the culture, but unless they understand the nature of the fight and change their strategy to fight cosmologically, within a few generations they may also lose their religion.
            • In classical Christian teaching, the divinely sanctioned union of male and female is an icon of the relationship of Christ to His church and ultimately of God to His creation.
            • Marriage and sex is how God invites us to be co-creators in bringing life to the planet.
             

            Sexual Sin

            The Point: An Idol to Impurity
             

            Research Studies

            Neurobiology of Sex and Pornography Addictions: A Primer
            Hypersexual behavior and pornography addiction come to the fore when the behavior becomes intensive, out of the individual’s control, and persists in that pattern despite harmful consequences and risk of harm to one’s emotional and/or physical health.
            Brain Imaging of Human Sexual Response: Recent Developments and Future Directions - PMC
            Several studies using visual sexual stimulation have shown that (perceived) hypersexual behavior (aka compulsive sexual behavior, sexual addiction, or problematic pornography use) is correlated with alterations in neural activation patterns...
            Sex Addiction and Drug Addiction Linked in the Brain | Live Science
            People with so-called "sex addictions" may have patterns of brain activity similar to those of people with drug addictions, a new study finds.
            Exposure to continuous or fluid theories of sexual orientation leads some heterosexuals to embrace less-exclusive heterosexual orientations | Scientific Reports
            In Study 2, after exposure to fluid or continuous manipulations heterosexual participants were up to five times more likely than controls to rate themselves as non-exclusively heterosexual.
            Sexual Addiction Disorder— A Review With Recent Updates - B. R. Sahithya, Rithvik S. Kashyap, 2022
            Sexual addiction, hypersexuality, sexual compulsivity, and sexual impulsivity are all terms that describe a psychological disorder that is characterized by a person’s inability to control his or her sexual behavior.
            Introduction: Narratives of the sexual child: Shared themes and shared challenges - Gail Hawkes, Tinashe Dune, 2013
            For the past five years in the Anglophone West, narratives of the sexual child have been dominated by anxieties about sexualization (of girls), sexting (by both girls and boys) and most recently, children sexually ‘abusing’ children.
            Man/boy love and the American gay movement - PubMed
            The issue of man/boy love has intersected the gay movement since the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the first gay rights movement in Germany. In the United States, as the gay movement has retreated from its vision of sexual freedom for all in favor of integration into existing social and political structures, it has sought to marginalize cross-generational love as a "non-gay" issue. The two movements continue to overlap, amid signs of mutual support as well as tension--a state of affairs that also characterizes their interrelationship in other countries.
             

            Books

            Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity
            A perfect example of the undermining of the concept of biblical inspiration and authority comes from progressive Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber’s book Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. Bolz-Weber argues that the view of sexuality and gender Christians have held for two thousand years needs a serious overhaul. She believes that teaching young people to wait to have sex until they are married can be harmful and repress their sexual flourishing. Along with affirming same-sex relationships, gender nonconformity, abortion, and even moderate pornography consumption, Bolz-Weber isn’t just suggesting that we make a few amendments to our Christian sexual ethic. She writes, “I’m saying let’s burn it the f*** down and start over.” – Another Gospel p. 120
            We Will Not Be Silenced: Responding Courageously to Our Culture's Assault on Christianity
            Nowhere do we see the work of Satan in American then where we do in the sexualization of children, destroying their identity, confusing their gender, and creating unresolved guilt and self-hatred. – Erwin W. Lutzer, author
             

            Podcasts & Websites

             

            Legislation

            FACT SHEET: The Equality Act Will Provide Long Overdue Civil Rights Protections for Millions of Americans | The White House
            The Equality Act will help protect LGBTQ+ Americans who continue to report facing discrimination.
             

            Consumer Products

            Why Mattel Is Releasing the First Gender-Neutral Doll | TIME
            An 8-year-old who considers himself gender fluid and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s dolls at home, but they’re “girly, princess stuff,” he says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent body and childish features, looks more like him, right down to the wave of bleached blond bangs.
             

            Sexualization of Children

             

            Attacks Against Biblical Commands

            Marx, Engels, and the abolition of the family.
            Author Richard Weikart explains the Marxist attack on the family.
            Succubus & Incubus Demons: Portraits, Origin & Children  

            Disturbing Content

            The trauma myth : the truth about the sexual abuse of children--and its aftermath : Clancy, Susan A
            Few would argue that the experience of sexual abuse is deeply traumatic for a child. But in this book, psychologist Susan Clancy reports on years of research and contends that it is not the abuse itself that causes trauma - but rather the narrative that is later imposed on the abuse experience.
            The sexual abuse of children : theory and research
            Includes chapters: 3 – The Argument for Adult-Child Sexual Contact: A Critical Appraisal and New Data 5 - Adult-Child Sexual Relations in Cross-Cultural Perspective 6 - Do We/Should We Behave Like Animals?
            Harmful to minors : the perils of protecting children from sex
            Levine proposes that children and adolescents have an innate right to information, a right to experience sexual pleasure and a right to engage in sexual activities with others.
            Pedophile, Child Lover, or Minor-Attracted Person? Attitudes Toward Labels Among People Who are Sexually Attracted to Children - PMC Humanizing Pedophilia as Stigma Reduction: A Large-Scale Intervention Study - PMC (PDF) Social Scientific Analysis of Human-Animal Sexual Interactions
            Sexual practices between humans and animals have been fundamentally analysed from a medical perspective, failing to consider the influence of cultural context.
            List of paraphilias
            Paraphilias are sexual interests in objects, situations, or individuals that are atypical. The American Psychiatric Association, in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM), draws a distinction between paraphilias (which it describes as atypical sexual interests) and paraphilic disorders (which additionally require the experience of distress, impairment in functioning, and/or the desire to act on them with a nonconsenting person).