New Man magazine is a new publication aimed at Christian men. I perused their web site and saw that the current print edition has an article titled, There’s a Hooters In My Town! It’s not available online, but there is an excerpt:
There’s a Hooters in my town, and I struggle each time I pass by. I can hardly see in. It’s at a busy corner at the entrance of town and so unless I slow down to a crawl, I can’t really distinguish much except the colors of the football uniforms on the big screen televisions hanging above the bar. I can’t see much detail, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s the thought that counts. Every guy that’s ever passed a billboard with one of those girls on it will have a hard time forgetting them. For the Hooters girls are proof that Satan works feverishly not just to tempt our eyes but to infiltrate and control our imaginations.
There’s another article posted on the web site, this one in its entirety: Tell Your Daughter, Quit Tempting My Son!
I don’t disagree with everything these authors are saying. Hooters and strip joints and girlie magazines/web sites all objectify women in way that mostly ain’t good for them or us. And I don’t think it’s a good idea to allow our teenaged daughters to dress provocatively everywhere they go.
But to cast sexual desire as the temptation of the devil, to label horniness as negative, and worst of all, to say that the girls should quit tempting the boys (which implies that the girls are the devil’s conduit) — is just goofy.
Why not treat horniness — lust — as a gift from God, no different than the hunger for food? It’s there for a reason. The challenge with both is how to satisfy the hunger in a way that causes no harm to you or another… and because, like food, it can be good for you in ways that go far beyond the pleasure of the activity. And that means you need to teach your kids that masturbation is a darned good way of satisfying their sexual hunger so that they don’t rush into sexual involvement before it’s appropriate.
What?!!! Teach our kids to whack off? Yep. Just like we do. You haven’t forgotten, have you? 😉
[I added this line on 4/4 at 10:10 am: …and because, like food, it can be good for you in ways that go far beyond the pleasure of the activity.]