No Safe Place

There are many sex sites on the Internet. This is a well-known fact. A lesser-known fact is that over a quarter of these sites are hosted in a tiny corner of northwestern Europe called the Netherlands: about 187 million, or eleven for every inhabitant. In this remarkable enterprise we are surpassed only by the United States, which, as all will agree, is no fair competition.

We seem to have taken somewhat of a fancy to libertinism. The theme of our film festival this year was ‘Nude’. It was on the journal.

Talking about journal: Facebook alerted me to something called the ‘SchoolTV weekly journal’, which seems to be a program aimed at children aged 10-12 and watched every week in many schools. They have added an element to it: an excited nurse lecturing children about sexuality. In the first four episodes, she has already given a demonstration of French kissing with a classroom skeleton, and declared anyone abnormal who does not consider homosexuality normal. When she did the latter, she seemed to be in quite a temper. So schoolchildren had better prepare to face the Authority’s outbursts of wrath if they have inherited ungood opinions.

Then there was the action taken by the environmental party’s youth movement (‘Dwars’, which can mean ‘Athwart’ or ‘Defiant’), not too long ago. They put up rather graphic and provocative billboards not only in some major cities, but also in some towns in our Bible belt. The billboards all bared bore the message ‘Sex is nice – Let’s talk about it.’ In an interview, the initiator explained that he specifically targeted the Christian towns because homosexuality was not accepted there and people avoided talking about sex generally, so he wanted to get the conversation going. It’s interesting to see how homosexuality is mentioned in connection with an apparently unrelated issue. Perhaps there is truth in R.R. Reno’s argument that it is the symbol of libertinism in general.

What does this all mean? And how do you protect children from this moral toxicity in the air? In a world where young ones at the threshold of puberty can browse YouTube and stumble on Miley Cyrus?

Once in a while there is a gleam of dawn. Mr. Van der Staaij, the surprisingly sympathetic leader of the Dutch Reformed party, has started a conversation of his own. He suggested that advertisements for the site Second Love, a dating site for people desirous of adulterous affairs, should be accompanied by a warning that cheating damages kids. And he walked into the lion’s mouth – a secular TV debate show – to defend it. With honour and integrity.

Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.