Parents, are you concerned that your son or daughter will be drawn into the hook-up culture at university – or is already involved? Counselors and youth pastors, do you wonder if your discussions with teens at school or church will be enough to enable them to resist this culture? Or maybe you are unaware of the sexual culture on campuses today.
In many parts of the world, you need to be concerned. Ryan Anderson and Caitlin La Ruffa are recent graduates of Princeton University (USA) and leaders of the Love and Fidelity Network, and they want parents to know what is happening. In their talks, they tell parents that most high school graduates arrive at universities in the western world unaware of the pressures awaiting them. They will be expected to take part in the hook-up culture, a culture in which all you need to have sex with anyone is “consent” and a condom. Campus officials and professors, shockingly, encourage participation in this culture. In whatever part of the world you live, you need to be aware of what your teens will face at university and prepare them to resist the pressures to conform.
The Love and Fidelity Network provides help and support for students who arrive on campus wanting (and intending) to save sex for marriage. At dozens of universities in the United States, chapters of this network help these students find and support each other and gives them rational arguments for valuing premarital abstinence from sexual intimacy, marriage between a man and a woman, and the complementarity of male and female. These arguments expose the intellectual weaknesses of the liberal view of human sexuality, marriage, and motherhood. They also catch the attention of students coming to the university with liberal views of sex. L&F’s seventh annual conference, “Sexuality, Integrity, and the University,” will be held October 30-31 at Princeton University. Maybe some of your students could consider attending. They can also watch videos from last year’s conference.
