Dr Kerrie Allen, research officer for the Australian Family Association, has a rather warped view of recent Australian history. According to her recent News Weekly feature article ‘Whatever has gone wrong with sex?’ (4 Feb. 2006):

‘Sex’ has been redefined almost out of recognition during the past 20 years.

She emphasises elsewhere that ‘a massive shifting of attitudes about sex in Australia’ has taken place during ‘the past 20 years’, but never enlightens us as to what took place in the mid-1980s to bring about this radical change. She knows and disapproves of the ‘1960s cultural revolution’ but never tells us why on earth we should focus on some sort of take-off point occurring about 20 years later. She continues:

… [T]he sexualising [sic] of the human person, which is increasingly evident today, is not something that recognises the value and procreative potential of the person, but instead proclaims that it is sex which defines the person and is the person. Sex becomes something without which one supposedly cannot live and, moreover, something which cannot be restrained.

As you can see, subtle argumentation is not really Allen’s forte. She proceeds to give some examples of how sex and love have been ‘redefined’ over the last two decades:

Sex is seen not as something to be controlled and safeguarded, but rather something to be unleashed and used - a mere fulfilment of an animal instinct … [C]ontemporary society values quantity not quality of sexual expressions, so that the one-night stand and a multitude of sexual partners become life’s norm … [T]he adult gaze which often falls upon a child is no longer one of simple delight and innocence, but one that is a sexualised gaze.

Allen’s article goes on in this vein for some time, noting darkly that ‘non-authoritarian parenting has been found to be associated with non-virginity in youth’. And in the unlikely event that you’re interested in her references, don’t bother looking here: they are only ‘available on request’.

After wading through this farrago of nonsensical hyperbole, how refreshing it is to come across an editorial by Helen Woodall, editor of the evangelical weekly New Life (2 Feb. 2006). Woodall’s Religious Right credentials are at least as strong as Allen’s - she regularly figured in unBelief’s ‘Out of their own mouths’ column last year- but at least some of her writing shows that she retains a healthy measure of common sense:

I am really getting tired of people my age and older going on and on about how Australians were pure as the driven snow in their childhood but now are corrupt and immoral …

I remember a now 90-year-old pastor telling how strongly his church preached against young people going to the movies - and how the moment TV came to Australia these same church leaders all rushed out and bought one and watched the same movies the teens were banned from viewing … Really nothing has changed.

Woodall then revisits her schooldays, pointing out that ‘teenage pregnancy … is not a new phenomenon’, that there were plenty of paedophiles about in the 1950s and 1960s, and then tells this story about a primary school friend:

[S]he often had to stay home from school for days or weeks to do the housework because her mum was ’sick’ … My friend’s dad was a big wheel in his church and everyone knew he had a ’short fuse’. The mum always had a hat with a veil covering her face and her skin was always totally covered by clothing even in the hottest weather. She went to hospital from time to time too because she had ‘fallen over’ and broken a bone or two. Every adult in that church must have guessed he beat her - but no-one ever tried to counsel the dad and modify his behaviour.

Helen Woodall concludes by telling her evangelical readers ‘to [keep] at least one foot firmly on the ground’, advice that might well be heeded by Kerrie Allen - and often, it must be added, by Woodall herself. Still, I’m eternally grateful to Helen for one piece of counselling she dished out to New Life readers during the Harry Potter ’satanic panic’ back in 2003:

… [P]lease stop sending me emails like the one I got two days before the [fifth] book was released (so the person who wrote it had not even read the book!) saying, ‘The destiny of a whole generation is at stake’.

No it isn’t … It is totally over the top statements like that by people who haven’t even read the book that cause Christians to lose all credibility out in the world. (New Life editorial, 3 Jul. 2003)

Well spoken, Helen. I couldn’t agree more.

Filed in: Evangelicals, Family Values, People, Sexuality