Georgetown U. funds “sex positive week”
I’ve been blogging long enough and have witnessed enough scandals that it’s pretty hard to take my breath away anymore.
Well, “Sex Positive Week” at (Jesuit-founded, Catholic) Georgetown University did.
Folks, looking at what activities this week included, it’s pretty clear we’re not even on planet earth anymore. I can’t write about what they talked about, because I don’t want Google to blacklist my blog as pornographic.
Last year (yes, they’ve done it before) coincided with the first week of Lent. One of the organizers speaks:
Taormino, an [deviant-]sex adviser and the director of award-winning lesbian erotica, [said]. “I think we need to stop pitting religion and sex against each other, and I think Catholics do this the best of anyone,” Taormino said. “We’ve seen how this has failed people on several levels.”
More windows into the twisted, deeply anti-human world-view of the organizers:
“… the leading figures of Sex Positive Week didn’t shy away from pushing the boundaries of what they see as a largely sex-negative campus community. The events not sponsored by the university—Guerilla Sex Theatre in Red Square, guerilla queer bar at the Tombs, [I had to delete this activity], [I had to delete this activity too]—are meant to challenge what they see as static and limited conceptions of sex at Georgetown.”
Other organizers run the gambit of serious sexual depravity.
Looking through the notes of the meeting where the Student Activities Group approved (by large majorities) these organizers’ requests for university funds, after some objection was raised, it was dismissed with the following argument: “…keep in mind that the Access to Benefits policy exists specifically for this purpose: that not everything is in keeping with the Catholic identity, and they are empowered to voice their ideas.”
As you can see, the institutional guidelines that govern the university provide all the cover these other individuals need to have their agendas funded by the administration.
Catholic News Agency notes that similar events are taking place at (Jesuit) Loyala University of Chicago and (Jesuit) Seattle University.
I think it’s almost pointless to call these institutions “Catholic”. It’s a grossly misleading adjective when applied here. They are, I would say, schools originally founded by Catholic religious orders, in which you can find (often) a disproportionate number of Catholics, and which may still have some trappings (mascots, Mass on campus or a stray chapel) that comport with Catholic identity.
But when an institution cannot summon the conviction or courage to stop these sorts of events, the game is up. Free speech is one thing, but endorsing “seminars” which promote things that gravely wound the physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological and spiritual state of students (in other words, things which hurt the human person), you’ve sunk beneath what even the School of Athens aspired to impart.
Ph/t: Crunchy Con.
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Agreed – Ruth Institute is *the* best organization to learn more about creating an authentically “sex positive” campus, in accord with human dignity.
Georgetown alumni, we at the Ruth Institute are here to help address this exact sort of problem. We try to help students who want to present a counter-cultural witness to the kind of things American Papist is talking about here. Check us out at http://www.ruthinstitute.org
I’d be surprised but they civered up their identity long before Obama visited, Sad.
I’m fine with Georgetown should definitely sponsoring some sort of Sexuality Awareneness week. The problem is that this week ought to include Theology of the Body, how to chastely express your sexuality as a single person, how to prepare yourself for a holy marriage, how priests and religious experience sexuality, etc. The Catholic Church has TONS of good stuff to say about sexuality, and that stuff should be broadcast far and wide. There’s plenty of pornographic material floating around in secular life already, the last thing that’s needed is a supposedly Catholic institution encouraging and improper understanding of sexuality.
I highly doubt, Mike, that the serious and sustained discourse envisioned in 1789 included pornography and sex outside marriage. And why is it having Georgetown “think for them?” You mean to say that a Catholic University MUST sponsor every grotesquerie (and where does it end? Why not seminars on bestiality? Why not sponsor the North American Man-Boy Love Association?) to avoid being told they are “thinking for” others? That is completely irrational.
Sorry, Mike. A similar “sex week” held at Yale recently was full of things that were blatantly pornographic. Pornography doesn’t qualify as “sustained discouse” to “promote intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.”
The emperor has no clothes.
“Established in 1789 in the spirit of the new republic, the University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.” If all they did was push Catholic teachings, they would be betraying their own mission statement and they would quickly lose the ability to attract a student body.
Don’t you think there were any Catholic students who challenged that group? Don’t you think they’re better off learning how to deal with that themselves instead of having Georgetown officials think for them?
Aren’t we all worse off if we’re too squeamish to discuss aspects of sexuality as you were in your post? I’ll paraphrase to go along with the tone you set, but since when are female “climax” workshops “anti-human”?
It’s sad that so many pin the Catholic Church as being anti sex or having repressed views about sex. Usually the same people who don’t fully understand or appreciate the depths to which an intimate union a man & woman can have together both spiritually and physically.
I’m so ashamed to be an alum. When I found out about their policy granting insurance benefits to unmarried cohabitants – whether heterosexual or not – I decided they were not getting any more of our money nor would our children be allowed to even consider GU as a potential college. This just reinforces my decision to indefinitely withhold financial support from them. If you figure out to whom I may submit my diploma to request a refund, please let me know. 
I agree.. I looked into Georgetown as an option for graduate studies and was turned off by a number of things but the biggest was the misrepresentation of it being a True Catholic following institution.
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