Fundamentalist Bizarreness

While listening to talk radio for blogging fodder last night, I tuned to the Focus on the Family show. This organization is so diametrically opposed to my worldview, that I usually listen in stunned amazement, much in the same way one rubbernecks a trainwreck.

When I tuned in, they were interviewing this woman who made the assertion that if a couple was not ready to have children, then they shouldn't get married, either. She said that they should wait until they are ready for children or to call off the marriage altogether.

Where to begin?

For one thing, the vast majority of people, even Christians, do not wait until their wedding nights to first have sex, especially considering that most people don't get married until a decade and more beyond when they go through puberty. They need to wake up and acknowledge reality.

Secondly, there IS such a thing as birth control. And this applies to the few that wait until marriage to have sex as well. A woman who waits until her wedding night can get herself on the pill a month or two before her wedding day, so there's no excuse for getting pregnant before you are ready. Similarly, men can use condoms.

Married or single, there's no reason for anyone to have children before they are ready.

Thirdly, many people don't want to have kids at all, but they do want to get married for whatever reason. To say that people should not get married until they're ready to have children is to say that marriage and, by extension, sex is only for the purposes of procreation.

Conversely, there are also people who want kids, but don't want to be married.

Focus on the Family has other similar, bizarre ideas about marriage and sex on their website. For instance, one article says it's a good idea to get married just so that you can have sex:

Sexual sin is serious business, resulting in severe spiritual, physical, emotional and relational consequences. God's best antidote is marriage. Just because our culture seems to think it's fine to wait until you're nearly thirty years old to take this step doesn't mean you should ignore what you know is obvious: God designed you for sexual relations; God limits all sexual activity to marriage; and if you're finding it difficult to control yourself sexually, He gives clear advice: Find somebody to marry.

I don't know about you, but I think getting married just so you can get laid is a pretty poor reason and a recipe for later divorce.

I think it's much more sensible to engage in safe sex either with one partner at a time or a variety of partners when you're single, so that when and if you are ready to marry, you will do so for the right reasons and not just because you're so horny you're about to burst.

Thoughts?