"Sex-drenched"

Thus reads another missive from our underground correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, sent yet again by carrier pigeon from God-knows-where. Unfolded and spread on the table, it read:

Ding ding ding! Read this (but kids, please be safe…)

Rod Dreher, "Cheap Sex = Dying Christianity" (American Conservative, September 5, 2017), who quotes Mark Regnerus, "Christians are part of the same dating pool as everyone else. That's bad for the church." (Washington Post, September 5, 2017):

Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses. It’s able to poke holes in the “sacred canopy” over the erotic instinct, to borrow the late Peter Berger’s term. Perhaps the increasing lack of religious affiliation among young adults is partly a consequence of widening trends in nonmarital sexual behavior among young Americans, in the wake of the expansion of pornography and other tech-enhanced sexual behaviors.

Cohabitation has prompted plenty of soul searching over the purpose, definition and hallmarks of marriage. But we haven’t reflected enough on how cohabitation erodes religious belief.

We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.

About which, Noir noted that decades ago Frank Sheed also wrote on sex, as one finds here in this beautifully arranged post entitled "Let's Talk about Sex" (September 9, 2017).

In answer to which, sent back to Noir via carrier pigeon the following reply, folded up in a paper:

This is good stuff from Sheed. As always. I've run into several things on the topic lately, and one thing I'm gathering is that (ironically) the actual practice of sexual intercourse has dropped off precipitously since the advent of pornography. In Japan they're apparently no longer interested in getting married. It seems that actual relationships with real human beings are too much trouble. People are too busy having sex with themselves to trouble themselves with having it with others.

Sad.