Renew Sex Series

On July 20, 1969, as commander of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon. His first words after stepping on the moon, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” were televised to Earth and heard by millions. Urban legend has it that just before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark: “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky.” Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the “Good luck Mr. Gorsky” statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled. On 5 July, 1995, in Tampa Bay, Florida, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question. In 1938 when he was a kid in a small Midwest town, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in his neighbor's yard by the bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs.Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. “Sex! You want sex?! You’ll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!”

Why does the idea of sex get so much of our attention? Some want to say it’s because as a culture we have repressed our feelings and have made it more interesting than it should be. Doug Whitmore wrote in the Think Big blog recently, “Sex is only controversial because it is intellectually ignored as a basic human instinct, during a human early development….early humans did not avoid the subject, as there is no sound "reason" for doing so. Yet somewhere in social evolution, concepts and groups made decisions about what was acceptable to be spoken about, taught and reflected upon. Only things that are not equally and/or properly understood are controversial. For lacking equal and proper understanding.”

So let’s review some facts about sex in America as relayed back in 2009:

“Did you know, for example, that in 1960 there were about 439,000 unmarried couples living together in the United States, but by 1998 the number had risen to 4,200,000 couples? Couples who cohabit prior to marriage have a 46-50% higher divorce rate than the rest of the married population (whose divorce rate is 40-50% anyway). And yet the ministers I talk to acknowledge that most of the couples they marry are already living together; that’s just the way things are today. We Christians seem to have forgotten Hebrews 13:4, where it says “let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous.” Did you realize that the divorce rate among Christians is as high or higher than the general population? The church should do more than offer a safe place for those who are divorced, though that’s important; it should also be ministering to strengthen and save marriages.

Are you aware that in 1960 single women accounted for just over 5% of the babies born in the United States, but by 1985 the rate had grown to 36.8%, and by 2005, 70% of African-American, 46% of Asian-American, and 25% of white infants were born to single women? All the studies agree that single mothers are likely to have a lifetime of lower incomes and less education; that their children are more apt to live in poverty, have less education, become sexually active at a younger age, and are at risk for delinquency and gang involvement.

According to Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute, there are over 800,000 abortions in the United States every year. At 2014 abortion rates, about one in four (24%) women will have an abortion by age 45.4

*More than half of all U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were in their 20s: Patients aged 20–24 obtained 34% of all abortions, and patients aged 25–29 obtained 27%.5

*Adolescents made up 12% of abortion patients in 2014: Those aged 18–19 accounted for 8% of all abortions, 15–17-year-old for 3% and those younger than 15 for 0.2%.5

*White patients accounted for 39% of abortion procedures in 2014, black patients for 28%, Hispanic patients for 25%, and patients of other races and ethnicity for 9%.5

*17%of abortion patients in 2014 identified themselves as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic, while 38% reported no religious affiliation and the remaining 8% reported some other affiliation.5

*The vast majority (94%) of abortion patients in 2014 identified as heterosexual or straight. Four percent of patients said they were bisexual; 0.3% identified as homosexual, gay or lesbian; and 1% identified as “something else.”5