Jane Jimenez
March 7, 2005
Every once in a while, a rare moment of complete honesty is so refreshing that, even when it jars our sensibilities, we are glad of it.
An event at Harvard last week has much to teach us about where we are headed in a culture increasingly offended by creation. The Harvard Crimson reports that the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance is up in arms. Harvard, they protest, lacks “sensitivity towards issues of sexuality.”
So what happened? Some brutal attack against a gay person? Some poisoned insult? Perhaps an instance of employment discrimination, a professor fired because of his sexual orientation? Nope. It’s worse than all of this…much worse.
Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, spoke at Harvard, and what she had to say has offended the BGLTSA community. Darling of popular culture, married to Will, and black and beautiful on movie posters, Jada was selected as Artist of the Year. If she had only been the quiet submissive type to accept her award and bat a few lashes at the camera, all would have been well.
But she couldn’t leave it at that. Nope. She had to offend the sensibilities of the Harvard intellectual elite by doing the unthinkable…embracing her creation as woman. She told the audience, “Women, you can have it all – a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.”
Whoa, Jada. It’s all right for Hollywood to exploit woman, baring all and filming the union of man and woman from every possible camera angle. It will even earn stars coveted awards and invitations to speak at Harvard. But let’s not affirm Creation’s sexual design between man and woman as something to be desired. Let’s not be “heteronormative!”
Can we appreciate the irony of Jada’s insults? Our intellect has perfected the use of Creation’s gift of heterosexual love to offend families and children with unending pornography…at the same time that our intellect is offended by speaking of heterosexual love as a natural gift of Creation.
This particular irony is more than humorous. It is an irony that brings clarity.
The current wars about what we should teach our children about sex are enflamed by the same debate burning around Jada’s comments at Harvard. It’s just that few have been willing to speak boldly and honestly about the great offense of abstinence.
Several years ago, I asked a critic of abstinence education, “What is wrong with teaching children the value of abstaining from sex?”
She sputtered and shook her head from side to side. “Have you seen what they are teaching?” I had. “It’s so homophobic!”
If one didn’t know better, you would think she meant it teaches children to hate gays. But to those who lead the re-engineering of human sexuality, it’s all the same thing. In their minds, affirming heterosexuality is equivalent to hating homosexuality.
Abstinence educators are actually charged with teaching that, “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.” As we ponder the offense of affirming heterosexuality and marriage, we have to wonder what the Harvard intelligentsia would recommend as the antidote to unwed teen pregnancy? Abortion? Contraception? GLTB sex?
Abstinence education offends because it has the audacity to teach, “You can have it all – a loving man, a devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.” It offends when it teaches students that babies are a natural design of creation coming from sex between a man and a woman. It is “heteronormative” when it suggests that our children can have it all…sex, pleasure, babies, and marriage…if they can succeed in abstaining from sex until marriage.
Sensitive Harvard Politico Correctos don’t want Jada, the darling of Hollywood to say it. And they don’t want our teachers to say it.
Men and women were created for each other, but don’t dare say it out loud.
April 23, 2004: m…m…m…Married?
September 24, 2004: End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person
See Archives for past editorials.