China: Lust, HIV, Killing Womb Babies UP
By J. Grant Swank Jr. (12/12/05)
Even China is getting into the sex act a lot younger. And more often. And with dire consequences like HIV / AIDS increasing. And also the killing of womb babies. Not healthy. Not morally right. Not what a nation should want for its public.
Nevertheless, according to The Independent OnLine’s David Eimer in Beijing, China has come into its own independent mind at the grassroots. Those who do do. Those who want get. Those who advertise lust via the Internet come on strong with plenty in the audience.
"The new permissiveness means that being faithful to one's partner is no longer obligatory; a March 2005 survey revealed that a third of young people in urban areas believe extra-marital affairs should be tolerated."
With that permissiveness comes the dreaded disease, anguish related to abortion, and a cultural change that brings more negative than positive. Yet China is apparently joining the rest of the globe in doing what relativism beckons.
Christians who are biblically moored continue with the biblical ethic. If they stray, there is forgiveness through Christ for the truly repentant. That believing community will continue as the righteous remnant along with moralists of other categories who simply keep to the traditional decency regardless of societal changes.
"Professor Li, who teaches at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has spent 10 years researching the sex lives of the Chinese, and she believes China will ‘catch up’ with the West in terms of sexual practices within 20 years.
"But judging by the 50,000 people who flocked to last month's Sex and Culture festival in Guangzhou city in southern Guangdong Province to browse the latest in sex toys - 70 per cent of the world's total are made in the province - it may be sooner than that."
These trends tend to speed up. Just as in the West living together has become common so that persons state same without hesitation, so a situation can become staple as time moves along. It used to be that embarrassment was coupled with admitting that two persons were living together without being married. Now it is considered legitimate, no reason for raised eyebrows.
"’There used to be a whole layer of government involved in snooping into people's lives,’ Professor Li said. ‘People were fired for having affairs and punished for living with their boyfriends or girlfriends.’"
No longer.
"Unsurprisingly, this new-found sexual freedom has a negative side. The number of young single women having abortions has soared: 65 per cent of women terminating pregnancies in 2004 were single, compared to 25 per cent in 1999.
"Rates of HIV infections are growing quickest amongst the 15-to-24 age group, and the number of couples getting divorced in 2004 was 1.6 million, a 21 per cent rise on 2003. But now the genie is out of the bottle, it seems there is no turning back."
Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
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