Appealing to base instincts, prurience and scandal will always find an audience.
It used to be that forcing sex on an unconsenting adult was considered rape. No longer. Now, personal, deviant and x-rated sex is quickly becoming commonplace in the public square.
In just the last week, this occupant of the "public square" has been treated to images best confined to the pages of porn magazines. Images and acts that are popping up regularly on billboards, television, the internet and pages of major publications.
Calvin Klein, in their latest breach of good taste, launched a huge billboard in SoHo showing four languid, half-dressed models engaging in group sex. That billboard managed to be more offensive than Calvin Klein's last campaign, which featured half-clad dead bodies. I guess porno and death sell jeans. Go figure.
Not to be outdone, Burger King just released their new 'Super 7 Incher' ad, equating burgers with acts that are best kept private. Absent from the ad was any hint of subtlety. Apparently Burger King believes that appealing to your sexual appetite will titillate you into buying their burgers. Or something.
Moving right along, this weekend San Francisco celebrated sexual 'diversity' with the 39th annual Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade & Festival. This fun festival includes a Dyke March and the annual Castro Street Dance hosted by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. If last year's Festival is any indicator, nudity and sex will be prominently featured. In the public square.
Ditto New York. Last weekend, New York played host to the Folsom-East Deviant Sex-Fest. Again, homosexual bondage, fisting and the casual swapping of bodily fluids played out in the public square. Lewdness laws were suspended for the duration. Just imagine the outcry if that were a terrorist receiving electro shock instead of an American citizen intent on displaying his sexual habits and his genitals in public.
These increasingly public displays of sex that many now claim as a right, portray sex as the mere indulgence of a fleeting impulse instead of an act that used to be associated with love. Sex, which is considered private and sacred by most Americans, is now being brought down to the level of a crude bathroom joke. And it's being done smack dab in the middle of the public square, where channel changers and radio dials are of no use.
Last week Apple decided to cash in on the sexual tsunami by supplying porn to Iphone users. Since we are still a capitalist country (for now, at least), this is Apple's right. Just as it is the right of consumers to choose not to download their porn. A choice that is increasingly being denied many Americans as smut, porn and casual sex become staples of more advertising campaigns. As more "gay pride" events take place in ever more public places. As more and more Americans ascribe to the notion that their sexuality belongs in the public domain instead of in the bedroom.
In today's public square, it has been decided that Christians have no right to foist their beliefs on others, but no such constraints shackle the gay activists, businesses and the old media who continue to thrust their demeaning view of sex into the face of every American.
Sex sells. Appealing to base instincts, prurience and scandal will always find an audience in those that need to see ugliness in others in order to feel better about themselves. The silver lining is, at least now we'll be able to identify those sad souls. They're the ones wearing Calivn Klein jeans and stuffing Burger King 7-inchers into their mouths.
Deviant expressions of moral acts is nothing new. Inscribed in the catacombs of Rome during the 1st century were symbols of decadence now being displayed live.
During the past three decades I have made many calls to sponsors of offensive and sexually explicit images for selling products for the public.
I was successful in all attempts to bring the offensive material to an end. Several local businesses in Seattle and several International Ad centers for international marketing. In two cases I was able to reach the manufacturer of the product advertised and the offensive nature of images used to lure the public into purchasing
So take your complaints into the air waves and be gracious to the manufacturer. Develope a presentation which appeals to the conscience.
Go for it and thanks for the admonition to be objectious to lurid, seedy, prurient material and exhibitionism.
Shalom
Dale
I will make only one other expression concering your article.
I have contacted local car dealerships, international car makers, radio stations, newspapers, leadership in international religious organizations, service managers, owners of businesses both small and large.
I have encouraged my friends to move into positions of influence in corporations and in businesses to impact the leadership with morality which stems from God.
I have stood against deviious people who were driving men of influence from their honored positions.
These all take time but the results are profound.
It really does work. Try the coffee cup solution if you can, or go on the phone to communcate your dismay. Walk into the business and ask for the President/Owner. Stop business leaders in the coffee shop and engage in an appeal to conscience.
Peace to you.
Dale
At some point in my lifetime (b. 1956), or perhaps, incrementally, most all of us have acquiesced to accepting a lower level of civilization. The threat of being considered “square,” “old-fashioned,” “prudish,” or “unsophisticated” has cowed us into tolerating mindless filth. I like Swanson’s idea.
One of the most unabashed opponents of vile entertainment was the comedian/musican/author/ Steve Allen who was BTW an atheist.
Not all racy entertainment/culture is mindless, of course: consider Shakespeare or Cole Porter. Censorship in Hollywood produced creative responses in the form of subtle references.
“Anything Goes.”
Part of the problem is that what shocks us (or doesn’t) is affected by what we are used to seeing day to day, though we can talk about fixed, non-negotiable moral standards till we’re blue in the face. I recall an article in Reader’s Digest some thirty years ago in which a parent complained when her young daughter picked up a tube of toothpaste in the drugstore and said “look Mommy! Sex appeal!”
We had no idea what we were in for. The author of that Reader’s Digest article expressed the exact same sentiment as does Nancy Morgan.
Apparently the constitution only hurts us on this issue. But wait a minute, could it not be argued that the pursuit of happiness is an untenable goal in a depraved environment?
Mostly I am a cogitator. Thanks.
Spent a considerable time chewing the cud and thought another concept in this issue of dispicable behavior and seedy advertising.
Corruption and defilement are both nouns and verbs. Nouns being the state of destruction which you mentioned in your article. Verbs are actions which produce decadence.
In Rome, Greece, Ephesus, Colosse and other cities during pre-zero A.D and post A.D there was corruption both active and as a state of being. Christianity walked the Light into the Darkness and spoke Truth. Check the annals of Alexander in his military campaigns to see who traveled with the soldiers.
Rome – the gov’t – was furious with the Christians who refused to acknowledge Caesar as a god. The gov’t of Rome was pretty unique but was brutal as a grizzly sow. Decadence broadened in the last 300 years of Rome. Simple, ordinary people walked into the market place with a message of Transformation and Liberation from Evil.
The temples were corrupt in sexual exploits and religious prostitution. The NT speaks clearly as to the depth of corruption which drags a person into debauchery. The message was clear. The results were profound. Liberty and Freedom from enslavement to decadence. Those liberated were filled with a sense of delight not known before but clearly evident in transformed character.
Here is my point: I have been commissioned to Walk the Light into the Darkness and I have watched as Salt and Light have impacted local communities.
May I take liberty here in this Intellectual Communique. At one point two ladies were searching for a relative. They knocked on a door of a close friend of mine. Invited into the home for “talk”, they developed a friendship with Sue.
In the following year all of us in our local fellowship got acquainted with the whole clan.
Slowly in the following two years 100 of the friends and clan came to the Light. We all became close friends. Violence and slobbering drunkness came to an end. 20 years later on a trip to that community I met the woman – in her 90′s who prayed for years for the family/clan which lived in darkness.
The whole of the culture was transformed. The tavern watering hole was closed for lack of business and 30 years later I met men and women who were translated from the darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son.
As a result, the clan spread over 100 miles became flaming expressions of deliverance into Light. Violence between cultures came to an end. I sat at dinner with an honorary chief and the perpetrator (sp) of violence toward the native culture. Their friendship is/was deep and the hate has disappeared.
Men from the clan are taking the light into a prison and the results are astounding. They open their lives and homes to the released and become mentors to the recently liberated. High risk but eternal reward with exquisite delight in this life.
I have opened the lid to the sewer of decadence and walked into the habitat of the lost. Some of the lost are at the top of the social pile and some are what what we would call the dregs. Then mostly with what would be, good citizens bound in Darkness.
The story above has been part of my pilgrimage for 55 years. The impact upon cultures has in truth been transforming and not destructive to the culture. – Sorry Hemingway and Ayn Rand and of course, Mitchner.
Out time is an incredible time in History to be alive. In the 60′s we saw the collapse of the Christian Consensus (Fran. Schaeffer) with the destructive impact of Existentialilsm and the growth of Humanism (outward expressions).
I have watched the ugliness and horror of unspeakable crimes come to an end. Prostitues, drunks, rape victims, abuse victims, adult violence against children, incest victims, druggies, ruling elite, intellectually arrogant, sexual deviants, criminal types, disintegrated homes, selfishly wealthy, shattered marriages and shattered relationships – all come to freedom and in many cases reconcilitation. I have watched the extension of forgiveness on an eternal level and on a human level start the transformation process.
And “me” being on the sidelines watching this, the fuel on my fire continues to blaze on into my later years. And the Darkness is never static, but all pervasive and incredibly active. Read – Christmas Story by David Mains.
America was transformed by the explosion of Light – 3 x’s – during the 1700′s and in the 1800′s several more times. As with Wilberforce, we need to rattle the chains in the Halls of Parliament until the Slavery of the human soul comes to an end. Read Edwards’, Whitefield’s accounts – absolutely astounding. Almost otherworldly but in reality very earthy.
The unite Reason and Faith in one of the most profound movements in America.
Did you know the Book of Romans was used in one or more of the most prestigious U’s for learning how to argue legal ideas with great persuasion – do your research ::grins::
(1800′s)
Those who live in the intellectual world of ideas and legal wrangling will think this is a step into Walden’s Pond but nothing could be further from the Truth.
So, IC’s, rattle the chains while speaking and writing with power. Truth, Light, Freedom, Liberty! Salt and Light!
I remain, out in the streets!
Dale
Some of the same things that the Muslims hate about Western culture are some of the same things that many of us also hate about our culture.
Interesting story: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/25/saudi.sex.bragger.arrested/