Sexed Messages

The True Meaning of Sexuality Consists of Father, Mother & Child
by Pete Jermann

"That doesn't speak to me." Such was the reaction to my assertion that sexuality is necessarily defined by three words: father, mother, and child. In a time when we expect art and literature to "speak to us," we might expect definitions to do likewise. That is not usually the case, however. For example, if I define the word "nail" as a small metal spike used to fasten pieces of wood together, my listener might agree or might suggest that my definition is wrong or inadequate. But he would never respond by saying, "That definition doesn't speak to me."

Yet people do insist that the definitions of certain words "speak to us." These tend to be words that suggest moral values we would prefer to ignore. In our time, these words are often related to our sexuality. Because sexual words are critical to who we are as persons, we do not want their definitions to tell us what we should be, but what we want to be. Since time-honored definitions regarding human sexuality do not quite allow many of us that latitude, those definitions must be obscured and replaced by ones that tell us what we want to hear.

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