I work with teens at my church and lead a boys small group, so I often get the scoop on the goings on in the world of teens (especially teen boys). One of the boys in my group got his first girlfriend. He told me how they met (it was on a dare from another boy) and how the relationship progressed. Lots of texting was involved which made me feel old since there were not even cell phones, let alone texting, when I was in high school. Our form of texting was writing notes and passing them to each other in class (ahh the 80’s!!). Ok, back to 2012. So this boy was excited to take this girl to his Homecoming dance. She didn’t go to his school, so he was a bit nervous. Plus it was his first Homecoming. He told me that they a lot of fun, and that many of the guys from his school (several whom he didn’t even know) were very interested in the girl he brought to the dance (I’m sure it was because she was cute). That could have been the end of the story. Guy meets girl, they dance, the heavens open, the end.

But stories never are that simple. I was talking to him the other day, and he was upset. I knew it had to do with his new girlfriend and asked him what was going on. Remember all those guys that were so interested in the cute girl he brought to Homecoming? When he got back to school, some of them started peppering him with questions like “Did you have sex with her?”, “Did she suck your d**k?” and other overtly sexual questions. He was upset by their questions, and it got so bad he said he had to keep telling them to “Shut Up!”. Talk about growing up fast. You go from never having a girlfriend to having to defend her honor from a bunch of oversexed teen boys salivating at the latest piece of meat to pass by.

Unfortunately, I think that pornography, movies, TV shows and much of the music kids listen to today has placed guys’ minds and women in a place to be viewed like this. It has turned girls into meat, an inanimate object to be used to fulfill the sexual desires of men. Love is not part of the equation. Respect doesn’t even register. Lust is the primary emotion that needs to be fulfilled, and sexual conquest is the pathway to that fulfillment. But it doesn’t fulfill. It’s empty. But instead of thinking ‘maybe I got this whole sex thing wrong’, most think the next one will fulfill me, or the next one, or the next one. The trail of painful mistakes and emotional damage left in the wake of this fruitless pursuit is devastating teens and adults. “The sun always shines on TV,” says a song from the 80’s, but it’s all fake. Our teens are paying the price from the lies our culture is painting over the realities of sex.