A place to weather the storm

A University center supporting the chaste lifestyle would be an important addition to our campus community. The University has recognized that sexual minorities require institutional support when it established the LGBT Center. On the same grounds, and to correct in fairness the imbalance introduced by the LGBT Center's ideological commitments, Princeton should establish a similar center for chastity.

The LGBT Center and a center for chastity need not be placed in opposition; they should be understood as two sides of the same coin. Each would be a part of the University's institutional assistance and support on matters of sexuality. By providing an LGBT center, the University lent institutional support to those LGBT students who need special assistance in navigating the difficult social waters of Princeton. Similarly, by establishing an official center for chastity, the University would offer necessary institutional support for those students - gay or straight - who wish to live their lives in conformity with traditional sexual ethical norms. A center for chastity would not logically open the door to University centers for every kind of student group; it would only make the University's current support for sexual minorities more consistent and evenhanded. The two on-campus sexuality centers would be, in a sense, complementary institutions serving different ideological demographics.

Now of course, not all ideological positions are legitimate and deserve to be provided with institutional support on campus. For example, we can all agree that racism is not reasonable. The tenets that would support such a notion are either bogus science or even worse philosophy. Therefore, we should not have a KKK center on campus, or have institutional support for a Neo-Nazi group. Such an idea would be unreasonable.

Yet traditional ethical norms are eminently reasonable, even though you may disagree with them. Within our common western tradition of morality, a line of reasoning about sexual ethics that has its source in ancient faiths - like Judaism - and ancient philosophies - like those of Plato and Aristotle - has proved dominant. This is why we use the term "traditional" to properly delineate such ethical mores. Today, many reasonable people - including traditional Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians - adhere to this ethical theory, which is judged by many to provide a sound guide to human flourishing.

One might argue that traditionally-minded students already have sufficient support and guidance on campus, found, for example, in campus chaplaincies and residential colleges. Perhaps the LGBT Center has some pamphlets on chastity on a table somewhere. And of course, there is always the token "chaste" character in the mandatory-for-freshmen "Sex on a Saturday Night" to assure chaste students that they belong. But as we all know, these are the exceptions that merely prove the rule. The LGBT Center's programming manifests so strong an ideological bent on issues like the definition of marriage and the morality of non-marital sex that it cannot be a credible resource for sexually traditional students. Nor, for similar reasons, could SHA. It is obvious to any reasonable observer which direction the prevailing winds of social and sexual norms are blowing at Princeton.

LGBT students similarly had some disparate sources of support prior to the advent of the LGBT Center. Yet the University has judged these peripheral methods insufficient to their needs. Right or wrong, the University determined that something more was needed. Now there is another sexual minority in need of similar institutional help.

What would a center for chastity provide on campus? In a nutshell, it would provide a "second opinion" on the matters of sexuality upon which reasonable people disagree. It would be a counterweight to the permissive sexual norms institutionalized - as at the LGBT Center - and supported - as by SHA - at Princeton. At a Princeton center for chastity, traditionally minded students would receive guidance and resources for living a chaste life in the midst of a rampant hookup culture. When faced with lingerie parties at Cottage Club, sex toy parties at Terrace Club, "CEO's and Corporate Hoes" at Colonial, condoms from SHA on Valentine's Day, "how-to" forums on gay sex at the LGBT Center co-sponsored by UHS, the Women's Center and SHARE, and "Sex Jeopardy" during frosh week, these students would finally have a place where they could grow and flourish in accordance with their reasonable but countercultural (and thus often dismissed) moral commitments. The University would - at long last - be responding to their needs.

Princetonians attempting to lead a chaste life deserve a "center" of their own - a visible, coherent and collective place to weather the storm.

 

Tom Haine can be reached at thaine@princeton.edu.