So in the absence of adequate time or catchy titles I am going to toss out a few thoughts on the recent fracas over the Georgetown University gal and her concern about insured contraceptive pills.
Of course this is not about access -- access is everywhere. And it is not about a solid philosophical discussion of the matter -- that is virtually impossible. Speaking of, I heard a 'debate' on Hannity in which the dissenting voice, an M.D., was startlingly shrill and irrational. Beyond the pale.
There are many elephants in this room. G. K. Chesterton reveals the elephant in his splendid essay, A Piece of Chalk, in which the grandest truths are the ones we are built upon. In his essay, that truth is the grandeur of sexual purity.
Far truer to call this the 'dinosaur' in the room, for it is neglected as if irrelevant, passe'. But it is the beautiful alternative to what Ms. Fluke protests. No access to contraception?! No options? What of chastity -- a beautiful, old-fashioned way of life in which one saves sexual activity for marriage and then exclusively for one's spouse?
Happily, I was chaste when married and know many who, by the grace of God, supportive family/peer groups, and a this-is-possible-and-to-be-expected attitude, did the same. When a relative told her Dr. that she was a virgin he was stunned. "How does that happen?" Premarital intercourse is assumed.
Chesterton puts it thus: "Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing.... Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white."
The recent national discussion began by ignoring this vast possibility: that unmarried people would save the beauty of sex for marriage. Can we go there and talk about this as the most truly human alternative?
Marriage is the home for sex -- save it. Marriage is the home for children -- save it. Marriage is the home for families -- save it. Families are the foundation of society -- save them. The incredible allure of sex without boundaries will drag us down further and further until prophets like GKC and you and I insist that so-called 'free sex' is a misnomer that damns us. Virtue and sexual chastity are the grand choices that preserve beauty and truth and in the end, make wholesome families possible.
