Our Friend Duffy has a terrific post up at Patheos today in response to Pope Francis’ recent comments on the healing power of shame.
There were no particularly Christian reasons to feel shame at that time in my upbringing. We slept in on most Sunday mornings of my early childhood, and no one had inferred to me in any way that sex was bad. But looking through the magazines was something Marcy and I definitely did under cover of darkness, regardless of how boldly they had been left in our path. We both knew that there was something inherently wrong with two little girls looking at grown-up naked women.
Read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, American Life League attempted to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times and the Washington Post that displays images used by Planned Parenthood in public school sex education courses. The ad was rejected because the images were considered “too graphic” for the newspapers’ readership.
I can understand the newspapers’ reasoning, honestly – I assume they would say the same about an image of the human reproductive system from, say, a ninth grade biology textbook. Right? I’m a little confused about this detail from the story:
Likewise, the New York Times offered to run the ad only if ALL would agree to blur the pictures. Its staff suggested that they could run a disclaimer saying, “Image too shocking for the New York Times audience. To see actual image and for more information, please visit: http://www.all.org/pdf/PP_HookingKids.pdf.“
That actually seems like a good compromise – I’m unclear as to who suggested it; the NYT or ALL? As a parent, I’m not crazy about the idea of a newspaper that my child might read including these graphic images in a full-page advertisement.
Because the images themselves are so explicit – I don’t understand how something like this even gets designed. I don’t understand how you have a staff meeting to look over the mockups, share feedback around the table, decide to go with the image of the young girl bent double with a mirror, exposing her genitals to the viewer so that they can be properly labeled. That’s the one. That’s what we want to send to the printers, distribute to the students, talk about with the kids, emphasizing there’s nothing to be embarrassed about and we just want you to be comfortable with your bodies so we can all be sex-positive. And let’s couple that with the image of the young boy masturbating.
Aren’t you ashamed?
Additional Supplementation
The situation seems to be looking up for the holidays.