Last week Shaun White won a snowboarding gold medal, only to have the spotlight shift toward a 2016 lawsuit against White by a female drummer in his band. She was suing White for sexual harassment, which included forcing her to watch porn of two people have sex on a bear, and several other unsavory allegations.
This made me look at White a lot differently. It made me not want to cheer for him.
So today I’m listening to the Jim Rome sports radio show to learn that 110,000 condoms were distributed in the Pyeongchang Olympic Village. That’s 37 condoms per Olympian.
450,000 condoms were given out in the 2016 Rio Olympic Village. 41 per athlete.
Tinder, a dating app where people hookup for sex, has had its usage increase by 348 percent since the start of the games in the Pyeongchang Olympic Village.
Decorated US swimmer Ryan Lochte told ESPN he estimated 70-75% of the Olympians are sexually active with one another during the games. Random hookups with people from around the world.
Athletes talk about those who would have sex out in the open on the Olympic Village lawn.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, US javelin thrower Breaux Greer, tells ESPN how he had 3 women visit his room every day for sex, hours apart.
Of course having a roommate and getting free condoms out of a public vending machine can put a damper on such an “intimate” act. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, US target shooter Josh Lakatos talks about how his no-roomate house (because they’d all went home already) turned into an all hours sex romping ground. It had a duffle bag overflowing with condoms in it. Lakatos told ESPN, “I’m running a friggin’ brothel in the Olympic Village! I’ve never witnessed so much debauchery in my entire life.”
This sounds more like Sodom and Gomorrah than a hotbed for role models and culturally-adored celebrities.
There is also an 85% spike of use on Pornhub in the Olympic Village in Pyeongchang, with “threesome” being the most searched for word by Olympians.
One anonymous male Pyeongchang Olympic athlete told USA Today’s Martin Rogers, “Before competing, it is online stuff. Afterwards is when it’s time for the real thing.”
I’m speechless.
I’m speechless that our culture celebrates and accepts sex so far from God’s design of a man and a woman within marriage. Speechless that human sex is meant to be more than animal sex. That we aren’t meant to turn one another into objects to be consumed and discarded. That we’ve taken the most intimate act and shed it of all of its intimacy. And all this is normal.
Yet we are shocked and appalled when Shaun White makes a woman watch porn?
Or that men continue to sexually harass women over and over again?
His actions certainly aren’t justifiable, but what the heck do we think is going to happen in a culture like ours? Why do we consistently think that we can have unlimited sex with unlimited numbers of people and watch unlimited porn and somehow think we’ll be able to just switch it off when we need to? That someone hooked on porn and obsessed with hooking up on Tinder will know when someone isn’t interested in what they’re dishing out? Or that a marriage has any chance of lasting in this world when people have been spoon-fed this type of sexual debauchery their whole lives. That our sexual selfishness is the top priority over the idea of a child actually growing up with a mom and a dad who love one another and are faithful to one another.
We live in a terrifying world.
A terrifying world I’ve brought three daughters into. Praise God for his commands, praise God for his design for sex, and praise God for the Church, for those in the Church who are obedient to God’s design for sex. Who treat humans as humans, not as objects. Who are safe to be around without fear of being taken advantage of. Who are a light to a dark world.
Someone needs to be the light, because the Olympics certainly aren’t.
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He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
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