morality

Pepsi’s Score

I don’t know what it is.

But I say they’ve hit a new low with their latest effort to amp up the debasement of the culture:

Amp, an energy drink made by Pepsi, has an application (app, for short) for the iPhone called “Before You Score.” It’s billed as a “roadmap to success with your favorite kinds of women—24, in all.” Choose your type and get suggestions on how to “score.”

Here’s a boast from the online commercial for it: “If you’re anticipating a successful night, the Before You Score app gives you up-to-the minute information, feeds, lines, and much more to help you amp up and talk to 24 different types of ladies.” By “lines” they mean pick-up lines. As for “types,” you can choose from “businesswoman,” “foreign exchange student,” “sorority girl,” “rebound girl,” “nerd,” “treehugger,” “cougar,” “twins,” even “married.”

Have they no shame?

Have they no decency?

Apparently not:

Pepsi issued an apology via Twitter that said, in part: “We apologize if it’s in bad taste.”

You’ve got to be kidding me! 🙄

Well, read the rest of Marcia Segelstein’s post over at WorldMagBlog.

Handy Pornography!

Way back in 1994, I wrote for our school and church a piece I called Handy Pornography! Here’s an excerpt from early in the article:

Why this increasing freedom of exposure? Well, facts are facts, you know. The news must be reported; stuff must be advertised and sold; anthropological discoveries must be made known; technological advances must be demonstrated. Do any or all or these explain or justify the increasing indecency? Hardly!

Is there news value in having a woman in ice skating attire flinging her leg way up toward the reader? No, the issue is not news. Did Scientific American need to use a picture of Marilyn Monroe with her dress flying up overlaid on a picture of President Abraham Lincoln? No, the issue is not advanced computer technology. Do bikinied women actually make a car or radio controlled airplane more attractive, or a soap more effective? No, the issue is not advertising and commerce. Do pictures of third-world, partially-nude women help us understand their cultures better than simply telling the reader they don’t cover themselves from the waist on up? No, the issue is not anthropology.

Folks, we have been snookered and taken in by a “conspiracy” of the enemy of our souls! Can you see how he is successfully wearing down our resistance to immorality? We still stand against Playboy, but will our children? If we allow in our homes what our grandparents called pornography, will our grandchildren allow in their homes what we call pornography? If we don’t bat an eye about these things which would have jolted our grandparents, will the things that still jolt us have any effect on our children’s children? Remember, what parents excuse in moderation, children justify in excess.

I urge you to read the entire article. Despite the title (Handy Pornography!) and the URL (www.anabaptists.org/writings/softporn.html), it is not pornography. Not even so-called soft porn.

Heavenly Minded

A day or two ago I was leafing through a homeschooling magazine we got in the mail.

Eventually I got to a page on the left with this at the top:

Raising heavenly minded children
Raising Heavenly Minded Children

Very good!

Then I glanced to the page on the right and saw this:

less than heavenly minded photo
Is this photo conducive to being heavenly minded?

As a man looking at that, I admit to being momentarily distracted from that whole heavenly minded business.

Yes, I flattened out the scanned image above. I couldn’t in good conscience and Christian purity leave the photo as it was.

Did the magazine editors not think about the contradiction between the article and its accompanying photo?

I don’t know.

Was the woman being heavenly minded by dressing that way and then offering that view to the camera?

Obviously I don’t know that either.

I’m simply appealing to Christian women to consider whether or not the decadent culture in which we live has caused you to inadvertently lower the decency bar too far.

It seems to me that Christian purity requires modesty in dress. Actually, purity also produces such modesty.

So allow me a play on words in closing:

Heavenly minded — how much does it cover?

PSA to Cows: Eat Grass

Strange and dumb are reasonably mild terms to apply to this:

The British government is sending out a different message: Sex can be fun and healthy, for young and old alike.

In two new leaflets, the National Health Service advises elderly patients that it’s “never too late to experiment” and tells teenagers that sex every day “keeps the doctor away.”

“Urging them to enjoy their own bodies is a bit like encouraging cows to eat grass or birds to fly,” said the Independent newspaper.

Those excerpts come from this WaPo story.

You want my take? No? Then quit reading here.

So you’re still reading. OK, thanks.

Urging them to sin against their own bodies is like encouraging cows to eat tansy or birds to fry…only worse. Much, much worse.

“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Instead of keeping the doctor away, I thought it brought on the doctors…for treating STDs and for “treating” pregnancy and for delivering babies. But, hey — maybe it doesn’t work in the Mother Country like it does here in the Colonies.

If you think that’s my Victorian morality showing through, that’s OK. I just as well have it (as long as it’s first Christian morality) since Victoria’s offspring seem to have sprung free of it.

Look, I know they’re not legislating anything (yet), but I’ve got a question. If you “can’t legislate morality,” can you legislate immorality?

HT: Emily Belz — “Forget abstinence education!”

Faked Cover Girls

The women in the pictures don’t even look like that.
—Norman Jameson

That quote is preceded by this short paragraph:

Air brush artists create more beautiful cover girls than all the diets, shampoos, make up, hair coloring and gyms in America. Yet, our daughters are emotionally bombarded, bullied and belittled by bold, bare images that bellow, “This is how you must look.”

So what do the cover girls show me? Something less than real. And what do those pictures of women announce? The same thing. Gals (and guys), remember that!

Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book in question. I haven’t read any books by Vicky Courtney. So I am in no way endorsing it or her, nor am I suggesting you buy or even read the book. But if you must purchase it, here’s a link that should generate a bit of profit for me: Five Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter

On the other hand, maybe this book from Rod & Staff Publishers would interest you: Dear Princess.

HT: Thanks to Chas, prolific commenter at WorldMagBlog, for calling my attention to the above quotes!

The Meaning of Is

Here’s part of the story:

Flirting goes high-tech with racy photos shared on cellphones, Web

Passing a flirtatious note to get someone’s attention is so yesterday. These days, young people use technology instead.

About a third of young adults 20-26 and 20% of teens say they’ve sent or posted naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves, mostly to be “fun or flirtatious,” a survey finds.

A third of teen boys and 40% of young men say they’ve seen nude or semi-nude images sent to someone else; about a quarter of teen girls and young adult women have.

[…]

Most of those surveyed (73%) said they knew sending sexually suggestive content “can have serious negative consequences,” yet 22% said it’s “no big deal.”

Adrift.

And so the moral decline continues.

Above all, love God!