The Struggle to Know What We Can’t Not Know

Today at Public Discourse , Carson Holloway finds a glimmer of hope for the remnants of conscience, and the recognition of what is naturally right and good, in the use of the word “slut” by a California high-school ” Fantasy Slut League ” that has made the news recently.

I’ll admit that it’s hard to find much to be optimistic about in the colleges these boys will wind up attending, when one reads Rutgers sociologist Jackson Toby’s ” Majoring in Fun .” Or when one reads this local story , of a 19-year-old sophomore at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) who has begun a business called CondAm (short for “condom ambulance”), promising the on-call delivery of condoms to his fellow students in the dormitories, when they find themselves about to have “unprotected sex” in the happy-go-lucky hook-up culture. This was a front-page story in the Times of Trenton, and was treated throughout as a clever business idea, not just impossible to imagine anyone objecting to, but clearly a force for good on campus. In a world in which it is perfectly normal, even positively good, for sexual relations to be treated as altogether casual and commitment-free, with no thought of any connection to marriage, family, and childbearing, then of course young Mr. CondAm is a hero of social justice. The only moral norms in the hook-up culture are consent, and “protection” against disease and pregnancy. Of course these norms are not, shall we say, perfectly observed, nor can we expect they ever will be in a culture that hears the word “chastity” and laughs. About disease alone, one might consult Dr. Miriam Grossman and learn a great deal of truth that is uninteresting to the elites in our culture.

It was not too long ago that no college, public or private, would tolerate the shenanigans of our young TCNJ “entrepreneur,” and no high school principal (like the one in California) would blithely say, of the young sexual predators in his charge, that “off-campus activities are not subject to school discipline.” The revival of conscience, and the recognition of the law written on our hearts, seems to grow increasingly difficult. But with my friend Carson Holloway, I cling to hope.