August 2010 – Sex is everywhere we look. It’s on magazine covers at grocery store checkout lanes and on the screen – small and big. The nation’s music is infused with it. On Madison Avenue sex sells everything from cars to chewing gum. Pornography is ubiquitous.

There are the Hollywood stars and other purveyors of pop culture, who seem to go out of their way to celebrate a sexual ethic unrestrained by even the flimsiest form of morality.

A perfect example was at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards in June, when girl-next-door actress Sandra Bullock, fresh off the humiliation of her husband’s very public infidelity, kissed another woman, actress Scarlett Johansson, on national television. It wasn’t the first time for Bullock to shill for perverse sexuality: She also kissed actress Meryl Streep at the 2010 Critics Choice Awards in January.

The message always seems to be the same: Sex is fun, it is free, and doing it – any way you choose to do it, as long as it is consensual – is normal. And by all means don’t let anyone tell you differently. Just make sure you wear a condom.

The pulsing beat of sexual energy seems to be the rhythm of an entire generation. Story after story revealing the sexual escapades of the glitterati hits cable news channels and Internet Web pages for a brief instant and then vanishes, soon to be replaced by another one. Lindsay Lohan. David Letterman. Tiger Woods. Larry King.

But perversion seems to be everywhere else, too, from the cloister to the classroom. The scandals of politicians – even those who name the name of Jesus Christ, such as South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) – also reveal the stench of moral decay.

Not too long ago Americans would have been horrified, offended, outraged or all three. Now they shrug their shoulders and click the remote or the mouse and move along to the next story. Caligula is simply the guy next door.

A ‘herpes nest’
Consequences don’t dally forever. Despite the mantra of Hollywood stars, sexual immorality is not free and the numbers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) prove it.

For example, earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest statistics for genital herpes: One in six Americans (16%) between the ages of 14 and 49 are infected with the incurable disease.

Some simply shrug off the herpes tsunami as a part of living la vida loca, the crazy life. For example, the MTV hit Jersey Shore, a reality show featuring eight young adults whiling away their time in search of sex, beer, sex, the perfect tan and, yes, more sex, has apparently run smack into true reality. In a Hollywood Reporter roundtable discussion with other reality show big wigs, Jersey Shore producer SallyAnn Salsano unashamedly let the diseased cat out of the bag.

To the youthful participants on Jersey Shore, Salsano said, she hands out the herpes medication Valtrex. “We hand it out like M&Ms! ‘Hey kids, it’s time for Valtrex!’ It’s like a herpes nest,” she said. “They’re all in there mixing it up.”

They obviously aren’t alone. There are more than 30 types of STDs, and the numbers of Americans infected just with genital herpes and HPV (human papillomavirus) numbers 70 million. That’s in a country with 300 million people.

Upon the government report’s release, Reuters noted, “The CDC estimates that there are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease infections every year in the United States, costing the health care system about $16 billion annually.”

Moral confusion?
If the central ethic of the sexual revolution is “if it feels good, do it,” then it would appear that the revolution has won, and that Americans have completely abandoned traditional morality and have embraced hedonism.

Not so fast. The statistical evidence may indicate a deeper problem at the heart of it all. For example, in Gallup’s 2008 Values and Beliefs poll, respondents said they believed premarital sex is moral (61%-36%) while adultery is not (91%-7%).

On the surface, this suggests a strange inconsistency in the American mind when it comes to sex. If the sexual revolution proclaims an individual’s right to sexual freedom, why should that freedom end once the marriage vows are uttered?

It could mean that the sexual revolution, while overthrowing the relationship between sex and marriage, has not been successful in destroying the sanctity of marriage itself. That might explain why homosexual activists have found little or no success in convincing voters to open the institution of marriage to gay couples. People don’t want marriage trifled with.

On the other hand, the inconsistency might not really exist after all. If people overwhelmingly oppose adultery, it might be because the sexual revolution is built not so much on sexual freedom as it is on selfishness. A morality based on hyper-individualism is one that states that whatever the individual desires is morally right. Thus, when a person wants to have sex, he should be allowed to have sex. However, since most people also want their spouse to remain faithful, the self-centered impulse takes over and wants to limit sexual activity – at least in this particular circumstance.

If such moral questions seem to confuse Americans, it would not surprise the researchers of the Barna Group, a polling firm that analyzes U.S. cultural and religious trends. Barna examined the issue of morality in a nationwide survey in 2006 and found a very muddled morality indeed.

“Most Americans say they are concerned about the moral condition of the country, and the vast majority of adults describe themselves as moral people,” said a Barna statement concerning the poll’s results. “But the nation’s residents have difficulty agreeing on what a ‘moral’ life should look like, much less how to make ethical decisions or how to define moral standards.”

This confusion has a very simple explanation. All morality is rooted in something outside itself – a philosophical worldview that often has religious overtones. Unfortunately, our culture cannot agree on what that foundational worldview should be.

That being obviously true about America, what, then, becomes the default position? For today’s culture, the default belief is moral relativism. The subsequent default behavior is perfectly described in the Bible by the statement, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Its more modern counterpart, of course, is “if it feels good, do it.”

‘Sexually unrestrained’
What makes the country’s moral confusion even worse, according to Barna, is that the morality of the so-called “Buster” generation – those in their 20s and 30s – is significantly less traditional and, from a Christian perspective, less moral, than those over the age of 40.

“Busters were twice as likely to have viewed sexually explicit movies or videos; two-and-a-half times more likely to report having had a sexual encounter outside marriage; and three times more likely to have viewed sexually graphic content online,” the Barna report stated.

“But many Busters also defy sexual convention in their attitudes. For instance, more than two-thirds of the generation said that cohabitation and sexual fantasies are morally acceptable behaviors, compared with half of older adults. Most young adults contended that engaging in sex outside marriage and viewing pornography are not morally problematic, while only one-third of pre-Busters agreed. Almost half of Busters believed that sexual relationships between people of the same sex are acceptable, compared with one-quarter of older adults.”

As might be expected, Buster beliefs about sex were anchored in moral relativism. Barna found that almost half of the older generation said they viewed moral truth as absolute, while only 30% of Busters agreed.

Two-thirds of older adults said God’s principles should guide human beliefs about right and wrong, while less than half of Busters did. Instead, Barna said “nearly half of Busters said that ethics and morals are based on ‘what is right for the person.’”

David Kinnaman, vice president of the Barna Group and the researcher who headed up the Barna survey, reported the results in a detailed study titled The Buster Report: A New Generation of Adults Describes Their Life and Spirituality. He said the gap between the generations was unusual.

“It is rare to see such large gaps between population segments and it confirms a major shift in the way Busters think and behave sexually,” Kinnaman said. “Sexual experimentation is not new. But it is striking to see sexual behaviors and attitudes that were uncommon now becoming part of the accepted, mainstream experience of young people.”

Projecting into the near future, Kinnaman painted a grim picture of a sexually promiscuous culture only getting more wanton.

He said, “We expect to see this mindset of sexual entitlement translate into increased appetites for pornography, unfiltered acceptance of sexual themes and content in media, and continued dissolution of marriages due to infidelity.”

Moreover, trends indicated that current events involving sexual dysfunction “are not mere aberrations, but symptoms of a sexually unrestrained society.”

This is a dismal picture indeed, and one that should set off an all-hands-on-deck alarm for the church. Not only does this hedonistic swamp threaten the eternity of countless millions in America – including, no doubt, many of the church’s own young people – but it may ultimately destroy the country itself.

As Randy Alcorn, best-selling author and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries, said, “We should not forget that in Sodom’s sexual revolution, God fired the last round.”