Well, there's a surprise. A new survey carried out by The Daily Mail into the sex lives of teenage boys reveals that 40% regularly watch porn, with 48% further admitting that they'd taken part in a reenactment of what they'd seen online.
Small wonder that Ofsted have reported an alarming rise in sexual harassment and abuse – and small wonder perhaps that droves of girls are now daily going onto the Everyone's Invited website to post their experiences of groping, derogatory name-calling, online abuse, harassment and rape.
But the report doesn't stop there. The article continues that 48% of boys who have had sex report that they have had anal sex, with a staggering 17% saying that they were under 16 when they had it for the first time. And yet, these sexually desensitised and exploitative young men apparently don't like kissing - because it's "too intimate". Sex is just sex, it appears – the satisfaction of carnal desire, devoid of any idea of relationship, tenderness, commitment, or affection.
The only real surprise in all of this, however, is that the Government, and especially the Department for Education, still steadfastly maintain that the only way to combat this spiralling culture of dystopic sensuality is to give young people even more sex ed, focusing especially on how to differentiate between 'good' and 'bad' pornography, the importance of 'consent', and the need of respect for all. Even girls!
Are they mad? Have our educational luminaries not yet realised that it's teaching children the mechanics of sex from age 5 – in ever increasing detail, and without any kind of moral frame – that's actually causing all these problems? And don't they know that, far from keeping children safe and protecting them, the much hyped non-judgemental emphasis on supposed 'tolerance, diversity and inclusivity' is pushing them into behaviours they can't even begin to understand and that, if indulged, will destroy their lives, crippling their ability to form meaningful, healthy, and sustained relationships – robbing them of all chance of a stable and happy family.
As a society, we are failing our children, grooming them for sexual experimentation and promiscuity, telling them lies that they can be and do whatever they want, regardless of the views of others, or even biology.
When sex education was first formally introduced into the UK under the Education Act 1993, it was in direct response to the increasing number of teenage pregnancies, which were at the time spiralling out of control, and to the threat of AIDS, seen at the time as something akin to the Black Death. It was explicitly said that children had to be taught about the dangers of premature sex, so that they (and, by implication, the rest of society) could be kept safe.
But in recent years that focus has shifted, becoming not safety, but rather the promotion and normalisation of adult lifestyle choices and behaviours, many of which only a short while ago were classified as illegal, or seen as a symptom of mental illness. The aim, in short, would appear to be not child protection, but rather the normalisation and embedding of 'Britain's new values', to which we are all increasingly required to subscribe, regardless of faith, conviction, ethnicity, or even science.
For the protection and wellbeing of the nation's young, it is surely time to call a halt to this permissive style of teaching and for those in authority to wake up – before we lose not just the next generation, but fatally jeopardise the continuance of mankind. What we are witnessing is a straight battle of ideologies, with secular libertarianism pitted against Christian morality and belief. It's actually the same battle that was fought in Eden at the dawn of creation, when the devil first challenged God for control. And the aims of evil, then as now, remain the same: to pollute and destroy, hijacking the worship that rightfully belongs to God and that operates to keep chaos at bay.
In recent years, the chaos monster has grown strong – sated by our mindless sacrifice of the unborn, and by our worship of Self, which claims the right to do whatever we want, whenever, wherever, and with whomsoever we choose. Yes, the data reported by the Daily Mail is truly shocking, but infinitely worse surely is society's careless exploitation of young minds, implanting the message that men and women are defined purely by sex, which desires must not be subject to restraint.
Our children deserve better. They need to be taught that they are each and every one of them special, and that they mustn't waste the precious gift of sex which, used properly, will bind a man and woman together, in love, for life. They need to learn about faithfulness and commitment and – boys especially – that they need not be slaves to their hormones.
The attitudes reflected in the Daily Mail's survey are clearly wrong, but who is really to blame? The boys, given information but no guidance, or society in its attempts to rebrand morality?
Rev Lynda Rose is founder of Voice for Justice UK, a group which works to uphold the moral values of the Bible in society.
