Hook Ups

I was reading this blog post (I'm not a big fan of the whole commercialised blogs thing) on SMH today about Hooking Up. It's the idea that you have a friend who you sleep with regularly but you don't have any great commitment to. You don't have any of the relationship, not the phone calls or the dates or the need to meet the parents, just all the sex. It's like Super Pash-Pals.

I read about it a few months ago Cosmo too (I was waiting in the Check-out line, that's all, honest!) I found it disconcerting. What's kinda disconcerting is not that it's happening, because it was obvious that it was happening before they were writing about it in mainstream publications, but that it's so accepted that it is written about in mainstream publications without a trace of questioning that there might be anything wrong with it.

The assessment that I'm currently procrastinating from is about the passage in 1 Corinthians about people going to prostitutes. I've been reading about Corinth as a result. Corinth was a city that loved its sex. They had prostitutes at their temple and the way you worshiped was by having sex with prostitutes (I reckon that's probably an easy way to boost church attendance). Wives were encouraged not to be worried if their husbands were sleeping around because that was the natural way of things. Just like the stomach is designed for food, so our sexual organs are designed for sex. Everyone seemed to be happy to have sex with everyone.

It strikes me (as it seems to have struck many people) that Sydney, and much of the western world, is just like this. Sex isn't special, it just feels good. Sex is natural so everyone should feel free to do it. A hook-up is just the convenient way to keep yourself satisfied when you're too busy to commit to a relationship.

Nothing is new in all this, perhaps societies just go through cycles. They get less conservative, then there's a moral revolution, and things get more conservative. Human nature doesn't change, just our public acceptances of our sexual behaviour does.

I was thinking the other day, that if it was scandalous for a bikini to be worn 60 years ago (incidentally this year is the 60th anniversary of the modern bikini, I suspect there'll be world wide UN endorsed celebrations), then what will be scandalous for people to wearing (or not wearing) in 60 years time? Or will the moral revolution have come by then?

Anyway, I've been distracted by women's swim wear. I guess all this reminds me that, as a Christian, the more this happens the more I get alienated from society by my sexual morals. I've talked to people about it before and we seem to have come to the conclusion that it's our views on sex rather than anything else that most obviously defines us against general society. It should be our love, but in reality it's our lack of free-love. While I'm sure this will always be the case as long as we're going against one of our society's most worshipped past-times, I guess I wish we could be known for something different.

In the mean time I'll join my Muslim friends in being a prudish abstainer till marriage. I know it's un-cool, but I was never all that cool anyway.