It's Better Naked

Young adults have come together to create an aesthetically pleasing, upfront, and truthful website detailing the health risks and social issues that stem from contraceptive use.  The exciting announcement came on my favorite blog, BadCatholic today.  I could not be more pumped up to tweet and share this information as it is disseminated by these awesome people.  

It all goes back to my last post on religious freedom.

 "It’s not popular to support the Church at times especially given today's secular culture. Follow the Pope's directive and become an informed and articulate member of the laity.  With knowledge and understanding, there is strength."

www.1flesh.org is full of videos, graphics, and stories highlighting not only scientific evidence against birth control, but personal stories of “seeing the light” and switching to a version of NFP.

 

Perhaps the most useful section provides counterarguments for many common themes we hear when combating the pervasive nature of the contraceptive mentality in our culture. 

This is what the conservative movement needed.  An infusion of youth, something that connects to people in my generation. Something that speaks the truth without the verbose nature of theology (which is really important, but not the easiest to understand). 

I can’t really paraphrase the genius that is apparent in the mission statement, so I provide it for you verbatim.

If anything can be said of our generation, it’s this: We want sexy back. Our parent’s generation, well, they lost it. They delivered to us a world with sky-high rates of divorce, abortion, and STDs; a world bored with sex and bored with romance; a world in which more and more people are turning to pornography to find sexual satisfaction; a world in which 1 in 5 women report being sexual assaulted, and the human body — the sexiest thing in the universe — is used to sell cars.

After extremely little consideration, we decided we don’t want that. We want awesome relationships and mind-blowing sex lives. We want women and men to be respected and loved for who they are, to the very depths of their being. We want sex free from fear, love free from use, and a world of people who love and respect their own bodies. In short, we want sexy back. In fact, we demand it.

So we got together — a group of college kids — to find the root of this mentality. (aka what the hell happened!?) Well, though any cultural change contains all sorts of contributing factors, we think we’ve narrowed all the wackness down to its primary cause: The widespread use of artificial contraception.

This is a dangerous idea. It’s dangerous because artificial contraception is heavily promoted by big pharmaceutical companies — like Bayer Corp. — and contraception providers — like Planned Parenthood. It’s dangerous because it’s not an idea supported by those in power. But most of all, it’s dangerous because it’s true.

We found, by looking at the best available analysis from sociology, medicine, philosophy and economics, that the widespread use of artificial contraception has failed to decrease STD prevalence, increased the global rate of HIV, seriously harmed the environment, screwed up relationships, and is strongly correlated with increased divorces, abortions, and unplanned pregnancies. We found that hormonal contraception significantly increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, heart disease, and may very well be lowering her sex drive. We found that the safety and effectiveness artificial contraception is often falsely advertised by pharmaceutical companies, and that the health benefits of hormonal contraception are totally exaggerated.

So we were all like,

Let’s start a revolution!
So here we are, revolting.

1Flesh means just that. One flesh. Total union. No wrapping men in rubber or pumping women with artificial hormones. No interrupting the act of making love. Once the sex act became something in which women were “controlled” and men were “restrained” everything seemed to fall apart. Suddenly “objectification” wasn’t such a hard thing to do. Instead of repeating the mistakes of our parents, we’re trying to spread words of rebellion; that sex should be awesome, that pregnancy can be justly avoided without harmful chemicals, and that love is worth fighting for.