Shannon Ethridge's Blog

Since we’ve been talking about teens and the sexual pressures they face due to the technological world we live in, we obviously can’t overlook how television has shaped the sexual views of so many young people (and adults as well).  So I wanted to share this article written by Janice Shaw Crouse, which appeared in the Washington Times on November 8, 2011.

I encourage you to read all the way to the last line, which is a priceless manta for us to instill in our teens!

Fox’s ‘Glee’ wrong to promote teen sex

If you put stock in the media hype, the hit TV show, “Glee,” is breaking new ground this week.

The game-changer in the controversial episode consists of two parallel sexual initiations – one a heterosexual teen couple and the other a homosexual teen couple. This may be new in the sense of it being even more corrupting than previous episodes or containing even more indecent material shoved in our faces, but it’s certainly not a positive new development. Such media promotion of early sexual activity – not to mention the promotion of gay behavior – flies in the face of what is best for teenagers and bucks the current, more positive trends that show teen sexual activity, teen abortions and teen births declining.

Anyone familiar with social-science research knows that abstinence is healthiest for teenagers. Teenage sexual activity routinely leads to emotional turmoil and psychological distress. Rather than increasing a teen’s self-confidence, engaging in sexual activity leads to empty relationships, feelings of self-contempt and a sense of worthlessness – typical precursors to depression. In fact, sexually active teens are more likely than those who are abstinent to attempt suicide (15 percent to 5 percent for girls, 6 percent to 1 percent for boys). Only 1/3 of girls who had early sexual activity describe themselves as “happy” as compared with more than half of those who waited. But the most telling fact is that the majority of teenagers who have engaged in sexual activity express regret over experimenting sexually and wish they had waited longer to have sex – 72 percent of girls and 55 percent of boys. The bottom line is that more than two-thirds of teens who become sexually active admit they wish they could go back to sexual innocence again and wish they had waited.

Concerned Women for America released a major study on sexually transmitted diseases in July that describes some 49 types of STDs, some curable, others not. Twenty percent of all AIDS cases are among college-aged young people. Having three or more sexual partners in a lifetime multiplies by 15 a woman’s odds of contracting cervical cancer. The shocking facts about the extent of STDs among young people are documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – 19 million new cases a year, with half of those cases among 15- to 24-year-olds. These STDs are hidden by the glossy advertisements in the media that make them appear to be an insignificant health threat and suggest that all are cured or controlled without difficulty or complications (as anyone who has seen the TV ads for herpes medications can attest). Sadly, most of the young people with STDs will be dealing with the symptoms and consequences for the rest of their lives. In the United States, new cases of STDs are triple what they were just six years ago. Many of the STDs are incurable and others have persistent, significant symptoms requiring bothersome, expensive, lifelong treatment.

We have begun making headway with teen births. The latest birth data for 2009 show that the teenage birth rate fell 6 percent to 39.1 per 1000 women. In addition, the number and rate of births to unmarried women declined, but the percentage of nonmarital births increased to 41 percent. These numbers indicate a glimmer of hope that some truths about sexual realities are breaking through in contemporary culture. The bottom line is this: The radical rhetoric of the past 40 years is not quite as in vogue as it used to be, but its ethic of sexual experimentation is widespread and firmly rooted in the popular culture – as evidenced by “Glee.”

The media have saturated our culture with the myth of sexual freedom and public schools, along with Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, have implicitly condoned, if not actually promoted, sexual permissiveness via “comprehensive” sex education which sells the idea that casual, recreational sex is acceptable for singles as long as the persons involved are “responsible,” defined as using a condom.

But that isn’t true, particularly for teens. Early sexual activity means more sexual partners. If a girl begins sexual activity in her early teens, she is, on average, likely to have more than a dozen partners over her lifetime, and the “turnover” rate of partners is more than four times as high among those who begin sexual activity in their early 20s. Such girls are also more than twice as likely to become infected with STDs. And about 40 percent of teens who are sexually active eventually become pregnant out-of-wedlock.

The vast majority of young people – 92 percent – think marriage would make them happy and want to be married some day; most also want to have kids. The assault on teens – telling them casual sex is “no big deal” and has “no consequences” – will not be neutralized until those who know better find their voices and convince today’s “Glee” generation that only discipline and restraint will open the gateway to achieving dreams and ambitions. Our culture must change to cultivate the attitude that says, “I won’t mess up my tomorrows by fooling around today.”

Janice Shaw Crouse, author of “Children at Risk” (Transaction, 2010), is director of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC.

Fox News featured a great article on:

Celebrities Who Saved Themselves for Marriage

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/entertainment/2011/07/21/celebrities-who-saved-themselves-for-marriage/#ixzz1TJuSy3DB

Just to highlight a few…

Lisa Kudrow

The “Friends” star swore off sex until she tied the knot. The actress got married to husband Michael Stern in 1995 when she was 32.

“I don’t know if you’d characterize me as uptight, but I understood what it is to be so afraid of sex, of your sexuality… for me it was just ,”No, I’m saving myself. Because I have to make myself worthy of the kind of man I have in mind.”

Source: AP

Kevin Jonas

Much to the disappointment of their female fans, all three Jonas brothers sport purity rings, promising to save themselves for marriage.

The eldest JoBro got hitched to hairdresser Danielle Deleasa in December 2009, beating his younger brothers to the altar (and the bedroom).

Source: Reuters

Hey Ryan Seacrest – you can look, but you can’t touch.

Although the singer scored high on “Dancing With The Stars,” one place she doesn’t score is in the bedroom.

“I want to be with that special person,” Hough told CosmoGIRL!. “I think [the choice] to have sex before marriage is an individual one, but if you’re just with one person, it’s only for one good reason, and [waiting to have sex] will strengthen that relationship.”

Source: Reuters

The “American Idol” winner brings her grandma along when she travels to make sure she doesn’t lose her virginity. Nothing works like granny panties to ward off the boys!

Source: Reuters

The country singer and “American Idol” winner told Slate magazine back in 2007 that she was saving herself for her wedding night.

Now a married woman, Carrie tied the knot with hockey player, Mike Fisher in July of 2010.

Source: Reuters

Thanks to Focus on the Family for calling this video to the public’s attention.  I was shocked and appalled, and I’m sure you will be too…

If you have any influence on teens or young adults whatsoever, as a parent, youth pastor, teacher, friend, etc., PLEASE make sure they know that they have caring adults they can talk to if they become sexually active prior to marriage.  Let’s NOT leave them under the impression that Planned Parenthood is the only “safe place” they can go for birth control, STD screenings, and unplanned pregnancy counseling.  While we certainly don’t want them to become sexually active in the first place, we don’t want things to go from bad to worse if they do.  Who/where young people go to for guidance could mean all the difference in their future choices, so be an ASKABLE, APPROACHABLE adult!

Because we do have so many young people who visit this website, I’m going to dedicate the next several blogs to creating a “series” for young adults — how to make the best choices regarding healthy sexuality, relationships, etc.

Specifically, what topics would YOU like to see discussed in this forum?

The True Test of an Aspiring Speaker:

Walking in My Shoes for a Week

I’m sipping a Starbuck’s vanilla chai latte at the Houston International Airport after a wonderful conference weekend in Guanajuato, Mexico.  The weather in the mountainside city was cool, the hospitality warm, and the spiritual climate hot, hot, hot!  (or caliente, caliente, caliente!)

One of the many things that made this trip unique was that I had a new traveling companion.  Suze Stirling has been participating in the online BLAST mentorship program (Building Leaders, Authors, Speakers & Teachers) since September.  She chose to accompany me on this trip, raising her own financial support to cover the cost of her airfare.  I was impressed with her commitment, and blessed by her presence, both behind the book table and behind the scenes.  And I also enjoyed watching reality hit this aspiring speaker as she got an intimate look at the life of a traveling speaker.

Her previous impressions may have been something like, “Wow!  That looks like a sweet deal!  Fame, fortune, and fun as she travels to interesting places, meets new people, soaks up the spotlight, signs autographs, poses for group photos, and pockets the profits from a plethora of book sales!”  (Actually, I know this Moody Bible Institute grad to be much deeper than that, but I’m pretty sure that’s what a lot of others likely assume.)  But here’s just a few of the things we encountered that’s most likely given Suze a much more balanced view of what’s required of a speaker…

• 5 days prior to departure my laptop crashed, along with all of my Spanish powerpoint slides (which aren’t easily reproduced since I don’t speak Spanish).  After four days and almost $400 paid to the Geek Squad, I managed to retrieve the files and get them updated just hours before heading to the airport.
• The weekend before the conference I realized that the power cord to my credit card machine was missing.  I must have left it in Miami last month.  My husband plays the hero and finds a replacement online.  We pay a small fortune to have it expedited just in time for this event.
• During this same “week-from-hell” we realize we are running low on our Spanish book inventory, so I place a rush order with my publisher and pay a pretty penny for expedited shipping.  (Yes, authors have to buy their own books, just like bookstore owners do.)  It arrived after sundown the night before our departure, so we spent a considerable amount of time in the cold garage counting, packing, and weighing 200 pounds of books, re-distributing them numerous times before we came up with 4 neatly packed 50-lb. bundles to satisfy airline requirements.
• As the clock ticked on that night, I’m crunching numbers on my calculator, auditing and adjusting the publisher’s invoices, preparing the declaration forms, and calculating the import taxes due upon arrival.  The last thing we need after all of this trouble would be for us to get our books confiscated by the Mexican Customs Department.
• We arrive at the airport and are informed by American Airlines that they do not accept “embargo” at this time.  In other words, all of our carefully packed bins and boxes can’t fly.  They have to be in suitcases.  We bat our eyelashes and hope for mercy.  No luck.  We’re 2 hours away from home with less than 2 hours until flight time, so a friend makes a mad dash to Wal-Mart for the cheapest duffle bags made, while we sweat bullets wondering if she’s going to make it back in time to allow us (and our books) to make our flight.  Victory, with only seconds to spare before we get left behind.
• We arrive in Mexico to a warm welcome, and a hefty tax of 16% on all books.  This tax must be paid whether the books sell or not, so it’s always a gamble as to whether or not we brought just the right amount of books – not too many, nor too few.
• So here we are in Mexico with 4 huge suitcases of books and 2 personal suitcases, and two sweet, tiny women arrive to transport us to the hotel… in a Ford Fiesta.  We tip a guy $50 pesos to help us cram 6 suitcases and 4 women into a car built to hold half of that.  Suze and I hold two 50-lb. suitcases in our laps in the back seat.  Ah, making memories together!
• We are taken to a nice Holiday Inn Express.  During our 10 p.m. dinner I offer a praise report to Suze that I’ve NEVER had to miss a speaking event because of sickness.  Not in 15 years.  Suze is amazed and knocks on wood.  Then I awake at 1:50 a.m. feeling sicker than a dying dog.  Nauseous stomach.  Splitting headache.  Watery eyes, cotton mouth.  Room spinning.  Altitude sickness, I deduce.  I drink my weight in water (in spite of all the “Don’t drink the water!” warnings running through my memory bank from previous trips to foreign countries).  I lay there for 3 hours wondering how to say “Do you have any aspirin?” in Spanish before I finally wake Suze up and ask if she knows.  Fortunately she packed ibuprofen.  60 minutes later the alarm sounds, and I feel recuperated enough to shower up and face the world with a dazzling smile (for those of you who remember that expression from the toothpaste commercial).
• We arrive at the conference lugging our 200 pounds of books (in high heels up cobblestone pathways), ready to sell to the 2,000 women in attendance.  Then we discover that our credit card machine won’t work in a foreign country.  Great.  Rushed that danged power cord delivery for nothing.  But with some ingenuity, we manage to process payments online using my laptop.  A borrowed internet stick saves the day.
• Back at the hotel that night, we count pesos.  $24,696.  Sounds like a lot, huh?  Translated into U.S. dollars, it’s $2,002.  Then we calculate credit card payments of around $400, for a total of $2,402.   Then we add together the total amount paid to the publisher for the book inventory, the shipping charges, the baggage fees, the additional suitcases expense, and the taxes paid at customs.  It comes to $2,200, for a net profit of a whopping $202.  Suze is shocked, and I suspect her “fame and fortune” bubble has just been popped.  But we celebrate the fact that we at least “broke even.”

It would be easy for someone to say, “All of those headaches, hoops to jump through, and overhead expenses — It’s simply not worth it!”  Well, if you’re thinking of becoming a speaker or author for the money, you are absolutely right.  It’s not worth it.  You’d do about as well selling corny dogs at the State Fair, or selling junk on E-bay.  But selling corny dogs or junk won’t reap the kinds of rewards that we reap on a weekend such as this.  For example…

• We fell in love with our hosts, Judith Almanza and family!  Amazing how you can spend 48 hours with a total stranger and leave there feeling as if you were surely twins separated at birth.
• I took great joy sharing from the stage about how God has so gently and graciously taught me about sexual integrity, sexual intimacy in marriage, and spiritual intimacy with Him.  The crowd is incredibly responsive, laughing when I hoped they would, and crying more than they probably thought they would when they left home that morning.
• We witnessed a room of over 300 teenagers submit dozens of anonymous questions about healthy sexuality and how to save sex until marriage.  Their hunger for truth and guidance makes us feel as if we’re doing the most important work in the world.
• Through a translator we listen to story after story… from the women who have already read one of the Every Woman’s Battle books, and how they believe it has saved their marriage… or those that have been sexually abused in the past and wonder if Every Woman’s Marriage could really help them overcome the sexual inhibitions that have driven their husbands away… or the ladies who also lived a promiscuous lifestyle in the past, and are wondering if their emotional needs could really be met by the God they’ve perceived as being so distant.  What a joy to watch HOPE birthed in their eyes!!!
• Although we could freely communicate with less than 10% of the women (those who were bi-lingual), we realized that the spirit of God transcends language barriers!  We received hundreds of smiles, hugs, cheek kisses, and teary-eyed declarations of “Gracias!” and “Dios te bendiga!” (“Thank you!” and “God bless you!”)
• Suze snaps photos during our closing ceremony as a “sea of white” unfurls before our eyes.  Every woman in the convention center waves her “white flag of surrender” (a Kleenex) to her Heavenly bridegroom, declaring the acceptance of her role as the beloved bride of Christ!
• We stroll the streets of the stunningly beautiful Guanajuato that night, in awe of the amazing architecture and festive mood.  “Always a party!” Judith declares about her hometown, as a 10-man mariachi band and an 80-something-year-old dancing matriarch entertains us on the downtown square.   Makes us wish our American culture could only be as carefree.  Then we enjoy another late-night dinner at a family-favorite restaurant, and although we discover there’s a BIG difference between “authentic Mexican” and “Tex-Mex” food, we savor the local flavors and soak up the remaining minutes we have with our beloved host family.
• In spite of the rock-hard mattresses and all of the big restaurant meals we’ve ingested, we sleep like babies that night, knowing that we’ve done all we humanly could to advance God’s kingdom on that particular day.  We wonder how many women we’ll see in Heaven who’s read one of our books, or attended one of our conferences in her lifetime.  It puts a smile on our faces, and a deep sense of gratitude in our hearts.  I go to sleep praying, “Oh, God!  THANK YOU that this is how I get to spend my time on earth!”

So if God has put a message in your heart, and you’re entertaining thoughts of becoming a speaker or writer, I’d simply ask you this one question:

Is your goal to be a celebrity, or a servant?

If you answer the former, perhaps you should just consider doing something really outrageous to get your own reality TV show.  Fame and fortune will come much faster traveling that road.  But if your goal is to be a “prophet” rather than a “profiteer,” then look past the hard work, headaches, and overhead expenses and DO IT!

If you’re like me, someday you’ll be so glad you did.

P.S.  I just learned that my connecting flight home has been delayed by 2 hours.  I’ll miss the special dinner outing planned with visiting family members.  Headache #1,001 for this trip.  But who’s counting? 

I’m laughing at how many people have forwarded this article to me this week, so I guess I’ll share it with everyone else since I couldn’t agree more! THIS is why I wrote a book called “The Sexually Confident Wife” – so that Christian couples would “unspoil” sex!

Sex… Aug 30th by Jon at http://stuffchristianslike.net

The other day, pop princess Katy Perry said something interesting:

“I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen.”

I disagree.

Although that specific quote was about Lady Gaga, I think it’s indicative of something much bigger and much worse. Put simply, our culture has divorced God from sex.

I’ve long said that popular culture often acts as if God might have invented humanity and thus sex, but he was completely caught off guard that sex was an enjoyable activity. He was convinced it was a very clinical activity designed for baby making. But then Prince showed up and told us all that sex was in fact awesome. Upon hearing this, God was as shocked as I was the first time I used the Shazam app on my iPhone to automatically tell me the name of a song I was listening simply by me holding up my phone near the speaker. (I swear, that thing is voodoo.)

That’s what we’ve been told. That God and sex don’t go together. And if you say something enough times, people start to believe it’s true. Even pastor’s kids like Katy Perry will reinforce the barrier between God and sex. You can’t have both in the same bottle. They’re oil and water. Cats and dogs. Spencer and Heidi. They just don’t go together.

So what has our response been to this dynamic, to the idea that God and sex shouldn’t be in the same sentence?

I’d love to say Christianity has knocked it out of the park and ransomed the beauty of this gift from the world, but I’m not sure we have. In fact, I think we’ve caused our own damage in four ways:

1. Sometimes, we teach guilt, not abstinence.

I touched on this a little in the Stuff Christians Like book. Lots of our churches and youth groups teach kids for years that “Sex before marriage is bad.” And I agree with that message. I’ve seen the damages of pre-marital sex hundreds of times. The challenge though is that’s only half of the message. I wish when we taught abstinence we would say, “Sex before marriage is bad, but sex when you’re married is awesome.” Because what happens is that during your formative teenage years you hear over and over again about how bad sex before marriage is. And your head and heart shorthand that idea and just tell you that, “Sex is bad.” Then you get married, on your wedding night, you’re supposed to magically, instantly shed all your guilt and fear about sex. We’re taught guilt for years and then left on the doorsteps of our marriages to figure it all out by ourselves.

2. We have very few ways to discuss it.

Because of this site, people often send me links to Christian stuff they think is funny. Every now and then, I’ll get links to “Christian sex sites.” The sites are typically forums where Christians talk in an honest and holy way about their sex lives. Now for the majority of us, that last sentence was weird. Let’s be real, our sex lives are not something we collectively talk about a lot in Christian circles. Our finances, our parenting, our jobs, our in-laws, deep regrets from the past, we’ll touch on anything in a small group. But broach some sexual topic at your next small group and people will look at you like your F to the E to the R to the G to the I to the E. That’s off limits. It’s supposed to be beautiful and holy and loving. And yes the world is attacking it everyday in thousands of ways, but you’re supposed to discuss that on your own as a couple. Maybe you’ve had a different experience in small group but we were in one that didn’t touch on that subject for the first three years or so.

3. We write 10 books about lust for every one book about the gift of sex.

God Bless the stuff folks like xxxchurch.com are doing. Buy Breaking Free or the Samson Pirate book. I love both of those. I’m happy for all the work that’s being done to free people from the bondage of sexual addiction. But I wish that for every time I heard about the poison of lust, I heard about the perfection of love. I wish every time someone preached on the problem of sex, someone preached about the untamed awesomeness of sex. The conversation has become very one sided when it comes to Christians and sex.

4. We’ve made the crayon box pretty small.

Have you ever prayed before sex? Have you ever applied every ounce of God given creativity you have to it? Have you ever made a Christian songs sex tape? OK, that last one is impossible, Michael W. Smith just doesn’t make music like Sisqo. But seriously, I think to some degree we’ve bought the lie that the world gets to have wild, crazy sex and Christians, holy folks like us get to have black and white, two dimension sex. But what if that’s wrong? What if the God who overflows us with love and hope and mercy, wants that part of our lives to be as big and as colorful as two married people could possibly imagine?

Those are the problems, or rather some of them, but what’s the solution? What’s the answer? What’s the fix? Those are fair questions, but there’s no way I could possibly solve the sex situation in a blog post. Here though is what I hope.

I hope that every time we say sex before marriage is harmful, we’ll say “sex after marriage is neon awesome.” I hope that some well-designed, honest Christian sex site will launch. (Feel free to use the variation, “Sexy Stuff Christians Like.”) I hope that Thomas Nelson and Zondervan and Baker and some other folks will release some wild books about the goodness of Christian sex.

Until then though, until all of those things happen, you should at least go download Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” the Sundays, “Wild Horses,” and Mazzy Star’s “Fade into You.” Those are all some pretty fantastic make out songs.

Your turn, what are your thoughts on this subject? Are we Christians getting it right or wrong when it comes to sex?

We first saw this video some time ago while speaking at a conference in Canada, and I have to say we’ve never forgotten it. It communicates a revealing and powerful message, providing a rare glimpse past the magazine covers and billboards of seemingly perfect women…to the small army of hair, makeup, lighting, and photoshop professionals who make those images possible. In other words ladies, those images aren’t REAL! Check it out!

What do you think? Are you shocked? Do you feel a little bit set free or encouraged? Or perhaps a little angry? We want to hear your thoughts!

In light of last weeks blog post concerning guarding your heart as well as our many ‘Twilight’-inspired discussions in recent weeks and months, this video is so appropriate. Take a minute to watch Mark Driscoll’s take on discernment, especially where our children are concerned.

What do you think about Driscoll’s comments? Did any of the ‘top’ book titles alarm you? How do you educate and guard your children when it comes to what books they’re reading?

For more on educating your children, check out www.shannonethridge.com/products

by Shannon

In a recent interview on The Oprah Show, Rielle Hunter (mistress and Baby Mama to ex-presidential hopeful John Edwards) claimed that “Johnny” should NOT have run for president because “he was not living a life of integrity… he was out of alignment with his personal truth.”

Not missing the chance to probe further, Oprah responded, “YOU are talking about integrity, yet YOU were the woman living with this big lie… this big contradiction… weren’t YOU failing to live with integrity? Weren’t YOU out of alignment with our own personal truth — having this affair with a married man, and going to such great lengths to hide this relationship and this baby from the entire country when they were considering electing him their president?”

Her response? Rielle Hunter replied, “No, believe it or not. I was just following my heart, and I felt that this was the right thing to do.”

No disrespect intended toward Ms. Hunter (funny how when I type her name, over and over I accidentally type HUNGER instead of HUNTER), but when I heard her response, I wanted to gag… or slap her… or slap her while gagging simultaneously.

But I appreciate the good blog fodder, for it reminded me of this fantastic video clip, highlighting the difference between FOLLOWING your heart, and GUARDING your heart…

Maybe Ms. Hunter will see this video clip someday, and FOLLOW her heart toward God and His absolute truth about sexual integrity and the sanctity of marriage. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, “Above all else, GUARD your HEART, for it is the wellspring of life!” (Proverbs 4:23)

posted by Terrica

The NY Daily News published the following article today.  Had to share:

Teenagers inspired by Twilight sink fangs into each other in new ‘biting’ trend, parents fear risks

Twilight fanatics are sinking their teeth into something new these days – each other.

Well ladies and gents, what do you think about this one? Alarmed? Freaked-out? Enraged? I’m sippin’ on a toxic emotional cocktail of all THREE…  Can’t wait to hear YOUR thoughts.

For parents in need of solid resources to help educate your children regarding sexuality, check out Preparing Your Daughter for Every Woman’s Battle (or Preparing Your Son for Every Man’s Battle) here:

http://www.shannonethridge.com/products.shtml

posted by Terrica

Couples who smooch just for the heck of it

have 8 times less stress and depression than those who pucker up

only when they have sex.

-Berman Center Study

Sooo…what more is there to say people???  Get to kissin’ already!