True Love Revolution

TLR defends marriage in The Harvard Crimson

trueloverevolution — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:14:46 +0000

“Marriage is not merely a union of hearts and minds, nor is it only a romantic or sexual partnership. It is a comprehensive union that unites a husband and wife across all dimensions of the person.

These norms mean that marriage fosters a distinctive stability and provides an extraordinary opportunity for the flourishing of those who enter into it, both as individuals and as a unit. ”

Check out the entire piece on the Crimson website:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/10/25/marriage-divorce-stability/

Copies of “Pornography: A Neuroscience Perspective”

trueloverevolution — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:46:44 +0000

Thank you for attending “Pornography: A Neuroscience Perspective.” True Love Revolution now has a written transcript of Dr. Donald Hilton’s lecture – and lecture references – that we are able to pass out through email.

Please email trueloverevolution.wordpress.com and we will send you a copy of the lecture and references.

Pornographic Ethics

trueloverevolution — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:11:45 +0000

TLR’s Rachel Wagley writes for the Harvard Crimson, challenging people to take the discussion about pornography to a higher level. Read her article here.

Healthy sexuality combines emotional, social, intellectual, and physical elements, but pornography separates the mechanized components of intercourse from real sexuality itself. It leads to decreased sensitivity toward women and increased aggression. It also leads to a decreased ability to build healthy relationships or experience sexual satisfaction; users are increasingly unable to properly link emotional involvement with sex. Indeed, porn fosters incredibly unhealthy views about sexuality and human beings…

Perhaps the University avoids the porn issue in order to avoid moral or social controversy, but fear of stirring up debate does few favors for students who struggle with porn consumption. University of Chicago professor Jean Bethke Elshtain argues in The Social Costs of Pornography that we should not dismiss the “moral” in our avoidance of the “moralistic.” Elshtain maintains that in order to be responsible citizens, we must ask ourselves, “What sort of community is this? Is it reasonably decent and kind? Is it a fit place for human habitation, especially for the young? What happens to the most vulnerable among us? How do we ill-dignify the human body, and how do we forestall such affronts?”…

Over 100 Students Attend TLR’s Porn Discussion

trueloverevolution — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:04:54 +0000

Over 100 students packed out “Pornography: A Neuroscience Perspective” last night in Harvard Hall. We received a lot of positive feedback from those who enjoyed Dr. Hilton’s presentation on how pornography relates to masculinity, the human brain, and addiction. We’ll be posting some follow-up information later this week for those who requested to learn more about the intersection between porn and the brain.

Read the Harvard Crimson’s coverage here.

This Tuesday: Pornography: A Neuroscience Perspective

trueloverevolution — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:13:59 +0000

Pornography: A Neuroscience Perspective

Come hear Dr. Donald Hilton, neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Texas, discuss the relationship between porn, the human brain, addiction, and masculinity. We’re serving pizza!

Harvard Hall 102. Tuesday, March 29th at 7 pm. Open to the Community. Part of the White Ribbon Against Pornography Week.

Donald L. Hilton, Jr. M.D. graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Lamar University, and cum laude with a medical degree from the University of Texas, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He was trained as a neurosurgeon at the University of Tennessee, and is a clinical associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio. Dr. Hilton speaks nationally and internationally in the field of minimally invasive spinal surgery, and has published book chapters, peer-reviewed journal papers, and developed techniques widely used in this subspecialty. He is currently listed in Best Doctors in America, and as a Texas Super Doctor and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. He most recently published “Pornography Addiction: A Neuroscience Perspective” in Surgical Neurology International with Clark Watts, MD, JD. (Crouch/Hough)

This is the facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=160819357308797

Parenting in a Hypersexualized World

rpimms — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:14:55 +0000

The average age at which young people first have sex is 17 years old. This is usually before they even graduate high school. In our hyper-sexualized American society, kids are being exposed to objectification of sex and the body through a number of outlets, such as advertising, pop culture, and even the clothes and toys being marketed to young children. By the time they reach middle school, a lot of them are desensitized to the sexualization all around them. Kids who are still young enough to require parental permission to go on a school field trip are considering themselves old enough to have sex.

This whole scenario isn’t new, though. It didn’t pop up all of a sudden as the 21st century moved in. Rather, it is the result of gradual societal change over the last 50 years. In this article from The Wall Street Journal, writer Jennifer Moses looks at the way girls and young women dress as a reflection of larger social and moral values. Perhaps most interesting, though, is the way she discusses how this is all a product of the sexual revolution of the 1960′s and 1970′s. Parents who had the freedom to engage in what they considered to be sex without consequences are raising children who eagerly partake in that lifestyle, encouraged by their peers and the media. Even if parents regret their own choices, and want their children to be free from that suffering, feel they have no place to correct their kids and establish moral guidelines that they need. As a result, young privileged women who can have whatever they want are nonetheless growing up with the idea that their femininity and even their personhood only go so far as their sexuality.

As Ms. Moses points out, this doesn’t signal a call to restore antiquated standards of femininity or to make sex taboo. Rather, it should signal a call to parents, and all those who are hoping to become parents, to break this cycle of the hook-up culture. They have the responsibility to guard their children, especially their daughters, from the mindset that women are only worth as much as their body. Parents have the ability to instill in their children a sense of self-confidence and self-worth, starting at a young age. By providing a strong alternative to mainstream values of sexuality and forming a network of support as their children grow up, they have the chance to create a change in the way society values sex.

Pornland – Event at the Kennedy School Tomorrow

trueloverevolution — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 04:29:09 +0000

Check it out, there’s an event tomorrow sponsored by the Carr Center’s Program on Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery, and features Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.

Event Details:

“Gail Dines: “Intersection Between Human Trafficking and Pornography””
Monday, February 28, 2011
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Perkins Room (Rubenstein Building, Floor 4) Harvard Kennedy School of Government

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/isht/events/2011/month_02/GailDines_28.php

Fox News on the Love and Fidelity Network

trueloverevolution — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:07:45 +0000

“…It’s this type of lifestyle the Love and Fidelity Network is targeting this Valentine’s Day with half-page ads in the campus newspapers of 18 mainly Ivy League colleges and universities, including Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth and Princeton.‬‪..

The ads, co-sponsored by the Let’s Strengthen Marriage organization, will run in connection with National Marriage Week, which ends on Valentine’s Day.

There are two different ads. One shows a heart-shaped puzzle with a few pieces missing. The caption reads: “There’s more to sex and relationships than campus culture suggests. We’re filling in the missing pieces. Join us.”‬‪

The other ad features a man holding a cardboard-shaped heart with the words “Will work for love,” on it. The caption is the same about “campus culture” except the tag line is, “And we’re doing something about it.”‬‪

Hough said she believes her organization is tapping into the heartfelt desires of young people today who want meaningful relationships.

She’s actually echoing a just-released poll of 13- to 18-year-olds by One Hope,‬‪ which reported that 82 percent of them believed God intended marriage to last a lifetime.‬‪

But there’s a big problem said Hough. “Young people growing up in a divorce culture have no understanding of how good marriages work.”‬‪ They’re inundated, she says, with sexual content in movies, magazines, and on TV like MTV’s explicit show “Skins.”

Then there’s the ever-present peer pressure on campuses to be carefree and casual in their attitudes about sex.‬‪..”

The sex trade and slavery

trueloverevolution — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:12:10 +0000

UT Sociologist Mark Regnerus, along with Ellyn Arevalo, write for Public Discourse on “Commercialized Sex and Human Bondage”. Their article argues that the American sex trade – strip clubs, prostitution, and the booming pornography business – feeds on and fuels modern-day slavery.

The article explores the themes of consent and coercion, which should be irrelevant in rescuing women from the sex trade:

“What if a woman wants to become a prostitute? In her book Prostitution, Power and Freedom, Nottingham University Sociology Professor Julia O’Connell explained that this phenomenon, known as “casual prostitution,” accounts for a mere one percent of women in the sex industry (University of Michigan Press, 1999). And in a recent study of trafficking and prostitution across nine countries, researchers found that out of 785 sex workers, “89 percent…wanted to escape prostitution but did not have other options for survival.”

Free choice here is largely a myth. Catherine MacKinnon, pioneer of the legal battle against sexual harassment in the workforce, argued that “If being a sex worker were truly a free choice, why is it that women with the fewest options are the ones most apt to “choose” it?” Closely related to the issue of choice is that of consent, or the idea that prostitution is innocuous if the prostituted woman gives her consent. But the condition of consent is an unfounded criterion. Melissa Farley, director of the organization Prostitution Research and Education, explains that “it is a clinical, as well as a statistical error, to assume that most women in prostitution consent to it. In prostitution, the conditions which make genuine consent possible are absent: physical safety, equal power with customers, and real alternatives.” While no doubt some women choose this line of work freely, they remain a very small minority.

When you operate within the framework of consent and choice-based rhetoric, there will still be women who meet the requirements for victim status but remain overlooked. This is one reason why the prevalence of sexual trafficking is underreported in the US. The TVPA law currently stipulates that in order to prosecute traffickers and receive aid themselves, victims must be either under 18 years of age, or prove that their entry into the commercial sex industry was the result of force, fraud, or coercion. But what happens to women who initially agreed to come to the United States to work in the commercial sex industry (migrant sex “workers”), but would never have given their consent had they known what slave-like and abusive conditions awaited them? These women technically qualify for benefits under the TVPA, but will have a very difficult time securing them since they can’t easily prove that coercion occurred as defined by the law.

If the United States wishes to combat modern slavery, it should make exploitation, rather than force, fraud, or coercion the main consideration in possible trafficking cases. The United Nations already does this, and considers “consent” to be irrelevant in determining trafficking victim status. If the United States were to shift its emphasis away from proving force, fraud, or coercion toward establishing whether persons were being exploited for commercial sexual services, then far fewer victims would fall through our legislative cracks and it would be easier for law enforcement to prosecute sexual trafficking.”

The Moralism of the Culture Wars

trueloverevolution — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:11:46 +0000

True Love Revolution President Rachel Wagley publishes “Old War, New Weapons” in the Harvard Crimson today. Her article examines the moralistic rhetoric utilized by the traditional and progressive camps of the culture war.

February 07, 2011

Old War, New Weapons

In cultural debates, both sides use moral rhetoric

By Rachel L. Wagley

“I’m Barbara Bush, and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality,” declares George W. Bush’s daughter on last week’s Human Rights Campaign video. Unsurprisingly, critics are up in arms. Some, like a writer on “Dispatches from the Culture Wars,” insinuate that Daddy Bush’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment was mere political pandering “to bigots.” Others, like a writer on the “Republican Redefined” blog, solemnly suggest that this video is the end of the beginning of the road toward legalization of gay marriage. These predictions are all well and good—God forbid journalists fail to exaggerate the impact of the younger, more progressive Bush’s opinion—but far more fascinating are the moralistic claims about the nature of marriage that this video inspires.

Moral rhetoric is the culture war’s current weapon of choice, but the culture war’s real meat lies in the orthodoxies that compel the moral intensity at the front lines. We cannot adequately understand how the culture wars evoke such moralistic passion until we recognize the authority of these orthodoxies. Effectively, two camps wage the culture war: the secular orthodoxy, composed of those who identify with the medley of feminism, pluralism, liberationism, and multiculturalism, and the traditional orthodoxy, wed to Judeo-Christian values. As the incessant unrest over Roe v. Wade illustrates, the intrinsic disparities between these orthodoxies render them philosophically incompatible.

Both orthodoxies utilize moral rhetoric and indeed must utilize moral rhetoric in order to gain public approval on the three major battlefields: religion in the public sphere, issues of human life, and sexuality. On the sexual battlefield, the secular approach to sexual morality is as fiercely moralistic as the traditional approach to sexual morality. A Harvard “contraceptive justice” event this fall advertised Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards as “a leader in the reproductive justice movement” and perfectly illustrates the self-righteous rhetoric of justice wielded by secularists. This social justice rhetoric is particularly persuasive to our generation, which is programmed to stop, drop, and roll whenever we hear the words “equality” and “fairness.”

But the secularists’ use of moral rhetoric should not be taken for granted. Secular morality owes its origin to a conscientious shift in language resulting from centuries of philosophical debate. This is the shift away from moral relativism and toward the rationalist, objectivist approach of traditionalists.

Traditionalists maintain that reason must reign over emotion and passion. Intellect must master appetite for the common and personal good, and desires must never seek their own fulfillment. The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle also came to view reason as the master of passion: Plato spoke of the rightly ordered soul in which virtues lead to happiness, and Aristotle saw moderation as the divine virtue. The traditional view of morality presupposes intrinsic goods that humans must affirm to enable human flourishing. The belief that all human life, regardless of age or “quality,” has intrinsic value serves as a good example of this view of morality.

In contrast, classic secularist thought revolved around the idea that reason is the instrument of emotion. As one of the first secular philosophers, David Hume, wrote in “A Treatise on Human Nature”: “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and may never pretend to any office other than to serve and obey them.” Reason itself is thus utilitarian, existing to manipulate, rather than to discover the rational.

In “A Clash of Orthodoxies,” Princeton Professor Robert P. George gives credit to 20th century liberal philosopher Joel Feinberg for pointing out the dangers of relativism, which denies the validity of moral judgments. Feinberg once reminded his own secularist camp that those waving its flag “must beware of [using] relativism—or, at least, of a sweeping relativism—lest they be hoist on their own petard.” Both George and Feinberg wondered where we acquire fundamental rights if reason is instrumental. What is the foundation for freedom of religion? Speech? Equality? This became immensely problematic for Hume-influenced secularists as they defended their beliefs. In a cultural theater judged by public opinion, relativism is futile, and moralism is persuasive.

Many modern secularists found that relativism did not serve their own purposes. For instance, the right to abortion is a moral claim and can exist only if we deny holistic relativism. In one of the greatest recent philosophical shifts, the secular orthodoxy awoke from its moral neutrality; secularists are now as moralistic as the traditionalists.

The secular orthodoxy has taken a page out of the traditional book (no Biblical illusion intended). While the competing orthodoxies have irreconcilable philosophies on life, community, and happiness, shared rhetoric is a rare point of accord. But does our mutual moralism compel us toward common understanding or simply drive us further apart under the fire of name-calling and assumptions that “the other side” is morally reprehensible? The American cultural landscape currently suggests the latter. After all, as British politician Tony N.W. Benn once observed, we would die for our faith, but we would kill for our doctrines.

Rachel L. Wagley ’11 is a sociology concentrator in Quincy House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.