CHAPTER TWO

THE BOMB GOES OFF

It began as a fairly ordinary day in Japan, considering there was a war on. The date, 6th August 1945. The place, Hiroshima, a large city of military importance. High in the sky flew an American aeroplane. Then without warning more than 12 square kilometres in the centre of the city erupted in a spreading mushroom cloud of fire, deadly dust and ash. More than 90,000 people died or went missing that day. Others died later from the effects of radiation.

It begun as a fairly ordinary decade in the western world, considering this is a planet earth. It was the 1960's and some catch crys began to echo around our culture. "Free love!" "Make love, not war!" "Peace, brother, peace." "All you need is love." "The old standards are out" said many young people, "new ones are in".

Dropping moral standards wasn't new of course, just as bombs weren't new to the Japanese. What devastated Hiroshima was the extent of the damage, and what was significant about the sixties is that T.V. and the rest of the mass media enabled the message of sexual revolution to spread around the world within weeks. The trend continues now. Heroes on T.V. are into sex. Movies and videos show it. Magazines promote it. Advertising exploits it. Music seems obsessed with it. Strip clubs flaunt it. It features frequently in the conversation of the school grounds or the workplace lunchroom. The sexual revolution has exploded over society like a bomb. Three decades later the radiation level is still high and continues is widespread effect.

CHECKING THE FALL OUT

Let's start on a positive note. Sex is important. There is now a more open attitude to such an important part of life and in many ways this is healthy. Young people are able to understand their bodies in a way which was sometimes kept from them by embarrassed parents. Information about how our bodies function is more readily available. The birds and bees have had their day.

BUT

Inappropriate sexual activity which was once considered shameful, is not blatantly portrayed as normal under the guise of sexual freedom. And the result? Shattered families, aborted babies, rampant venereal diseases, fatherless children, rape, child prostitution, incest, almost whole populations dying of aids, perverted sex, suicide, child pornography… and the list goes on. Sexual freedom without responsibility has proved disastrous. A nuclear bomb can reduce a city to ruins. The fall-out from the sex explosion has eaten away at the foundations of almost every nation in the modern world.

FREEDOM COME, FREEDOM GO

Does this new freedom bring greater enjoyment and fulfilment in sex? Apparently not. A recent report noted that the greatest amount of sexually explicit material is bought by men. How strange that with all the sexual freedom, men aren't satisfied and try to get some thrills through pornography.

On the other hand, most Mills and Boon romance novels are bought by women. Could it be that with all the sexual freedom women are still starved of romance in their lives and try to find it through fiction in novels or soap operas.

To discover why so many people are unfulfilled in this area of their being we need to discover the purpose of sex. Before exploring why we were designed this way, it may be helpful to remind ourselves of how the reproductive system functions.

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