Raising Christian Kids in a Sex-Filled Culture

In a recent article, Catholic dad and blogger Raylan Alleman lists reason after reason "to NOT send your daughter to college." As a way to counter the evils of feminism that have invaded our society, Alleman advocates forbidding our daughters from attending college, and instead encourages them to learn through libraries and the Internet.

"We are NOT saying that sending a girl to college or women working is a sin," he writes. "But after looking at the issues we raise, we would challenge anyone to convince us that college for girls is not a near occasion of sin."

It's easy to poke holes in his myopic position; plenty have. For the record, I thoroughly disagree with him. I'd like to consider his argument that college is a dangerous place for young women because of its "near occasion of sin," particularly sexual sin.

Surely Jesus put himself and his disciples in a "near occasion of sin" when hanging out with prostitutes and sinners. Sending our daughters out the door at all, and even welcoming others into our home, is potentially placing them in "a near occasion" to sexual sin and the effects of sexual sin all prior to college.

While I can leverage a modicum of control over what my girls see and hear in our home, I cannot control what other children are exposed to or the images that will shape their brains and behavior. Children can recite hyper-sexualized song lyrics, rehearse sexually explicit film dialogue, and even swap porn back and forth like trading cards via social media and their smart phones.

Christians aren't the only ones who are deeply concerned about the hyper-sexualized milieu in which our children find themselves. Martin Daubney, an ex-editor of a racy magazine, used to be an advocate of porn, justifying it with the argument that "it'll enhance a couple's sex life."

However, he had a change of heart once his son was born. Daubney, the host of a British documentary entitled "Porn on the Brain", recently wrote about the experience he had visiting a sex education class. In his article, "Experiment that convinced me online porn is the most pernicious threat facing children today," he writes:

The children's extensive knowledge of porn terms was not only startling, it superseded that of every adult in the room - including the sex education consultant himself…. The adults in attendance were incredulous at the thought that not only did this kind of porn exist, but that a 14-year-old boy may have actually watched it.