To see this presentation, with all it’s cool camera angles and everything, you can go here: http://prezi.com/v5s9to5wlwst/sexual-rights/ It’s hip with the youths.
We do two activities during the workshop. One is a Charter of Sexual Rights, Freedoms, and Responsibilities for their high school. They work in teams and have to come up with what they think should be the standards of expression. Something really interesting was that almost every group made a point of protecting the sexuality of a minority group often passed over: abstainers. Almost all the groups included a clause that said people should be able to be in school and not have overt sexualities of other thrust in their face, whether through what people wear, or do in the halls, or how others talk about it. I was really encouraged to see that. They said that one of the responsibilities of sexual expression was not to push it onto others.
It got me thinking about how most practicing Christians are in a sexual minority. Abstainers, including those who have had sex in the past, are underrepresented in media and pop culture. (The average age of first coitus in Canada is something like 16.5, so many high schoolers are actually "abstaining" and at the age I have them, haven't had penetrative sex at all.) And, just like homosexuals, their rights need to be protected. These are the guys whose peers are laughing at him because he's a virgin, or the girl whose friends exclude her because she has no firsthand knowledge. I hear about this pressure all the time, and it is as wrong as those who laugh at a male from liking other males or don't want to sit with someone in art class because she is a lesbian.
Christians have to give a wide berth to homosexual rights because of the prosecution that was borne out of the church. We shouldn't run around saying "we know what it is like to be a minority!" because in most cases, we don't. In so many situations organized Christianity has been a power player. But here, in sexual practices, we are deviating from the norm; or perhaps, the norm is deviating from the church. It is not unheard of for the social community to say that to NOT practice sex is unhealthy, that it is repression. It is a deviation from what is natural and good, from what is apparent in our nature. Where have we heard that before?
side note: by the standards of evolutionary science, do you know what else is 'unnatural'? brushing your teeth.
As the ecumenical community begins to accept sexuality as another part of life, a healthy, God given part of life, perhaps we can move sexual rights forward for all people. Perhaps that as we look around and say that we don't want media and peer pressure to dictate what is healthy sexuality, we'll be able to move forward the rights of homosexuals too. And, as a part of loving our neighbours, gays and all, protecting rights has to be seen as a practical application of love. Removing rights never showed anyone love and never stopped a person from believing what they believe.
Part of these sexual rights that we all have to move towards, though, include what all these students called "the right to non-obscurity: the right to not have the sexuality of others thrown in your face." It was a great encouragement to see these students really thinking about how their choices affected their peers.
