Byproducts of Relativity
So I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about this stepfather who has been charged with indecent behavior and some other offense. Apparently, the stepfather was playing a game of truth or dare with his stepdaughter and some of her friends, and through the course of the game the stepdaughter and her friends shed their clothes. A neighbor who apparently somehow saw this through a window or somesuch said that the girls were making sexual gestures/motions and the stepfather had a passionate kiss with his stepdaughter . A potentially key piece of information that I was unable to discover was how old the stepdaughter and friends were. Let's assume for sake of discussion that they were 16 (as a sidenote, it's somewhat amusing that it seems like 16 is a lot more acceptable for this type of behavior than 15).
First off, let me state that I am not condoning this type of behavior or saying that it is right by any means - my opinions on social matters are almost all strictly conservative. That being said, I find it somewhat puzzling to understand why those without religious propensities would find this distasteful, or even surprising. From quite an early age, and especially when people reach high school at the age of 14-15, teenagers are bombarded with images of sex - sex ed, magazines that give sex tips, movies laced with sex or sexual tension, music that talks about sex, billboards of people in provocative poses, and the list goes on and on. How is it surprising that young teenagers are drawn to sex or sexual acts when it is so hyped by our culture?
So maybe the objection you have with the incident is that it was a stepfather cavorting with his stepdaughter. The common perception (as far as I know) about this is one of "ickiness," that a father figure, one who is supposed to be imparting words of wholesome wisdom to his children would do such a dastardly thing. Well, first off, they weren't biologically related, if that changes your sense of "ickiness" at all. Second of all, what if the father was 25 and the stepdaughter was 19? What if the father decided that being open with all things sexual was the best way to raise his daughter as a sexual being? How do we arrive at making laws that tell parents how to act with their kids anyways? He wasn't beating her, he wasn't sexually abusing her. In fact, for all we know, the daughter could have been encouraging the sexual byplay. So how was the father harming his daughter? Some may point out that the daughter may have been too young to correctly make decisions of a sexual manner and that the father may have been using his position to influence the daughter into certain choices - but I find it somewhat hypocritical that society would frown on that and then market sex to the teenagers as the holy grail of their existence.
I think the primary thing that I take from this incident is how vastly people's sense of morality can differ. With people left to formulate their own sense of right and wrong, it's easy to understand how some people can do certain things thinking they are entirely right or without feeling any sense of wrong. Is this good? Is this bad? How can a government hope to cope with such varying viewpoints? One person believes that aborting a fetus is a horrendous act. Another person believes that taking away a woman's right to abort that fetus is unconscionable. Given a sense of morality that is tied to the ever-changing winds of society, it's no wonder that we get fathers dancing around with nude stepdaughters.
First off, let me state that I am not condoning this type of behavior or saying that it is right by any means - my opinions on social matters are almost all strictly conservative. That being said, I find it somewhat puzzling to understand why those without religious propensities would find this distasteful, or even surprising. From quite an early age, and especially when people reach high school at the age of 14-15, teenagers are bombarded with images of sex - sex ed, magazines that give sex tips, movies laced with sex or sexual tension, music that talks about sex, billboards of people in provocative poses, and the list goes on and on. How is it surprising that young teenagers are drawn to sex or sexual acts when it is so hyped by our culture?
So maybe the objection you have with the incident is that it was a stepfather cavorting with his stepdaughter. The common perception (as far as I know) about this is one of "ickiness," that a father figure, one who is supposed to be imparting words of wholesome wisdom to his children would do such a dastardly thing. Well, first off, they weren't biologically related, if that changes your sense of "ickiness" at all. Second of all, what if the father was 25 and the stepdaughter was 19? What if the father decided that being open with all things sexual was the best way to raise his daughter as a sexual being? How do we arrive at making laws that tell parents how to act with their kids anyways? He wasn't beating her, he wasn't sexually abusing her. In fact, for all we know, the daughter could have been encouraging the sexual byplay. So how was the father harming his daughter? Some may point out that the daughter may have been too young to correctly make decisions of a sexual manner and that the father may have been using his position to influence the daughter into certain choices - but I find it somewhat hypocritical that society would frown on that and then market sex to the teenagers as the holy grail of their existence.
I think the primary thing that I take from this incident is how vastly people's sense of morality can differ. With people left to formulate their own sense of right and wrong, it's easy to understand how some people can do certain things thinking they are entirely right or without feeling any sense of wrong. Is this good? Is this bad? How can a government hope to cope with such varying viewpoints? One person believes that aborting a fetus is a horrendous act. Another person believes that taking away a woman's right to abort that fetus is unconscionable. Given a sense of morality that is tied to the ever-changing winds of society, it's no wonder that we get fathers dancing around with nude stepdaughters.