Sex Week is just around the corner here at UNF. We, students and faculty, have the opportunity to reflect on our views of sex. Questions like, “What is sex to me? Or where do I stand within the different connotations of the word sex?”

Looking at the word sex inspires the original definition of this word to be revisited. Sex in its truest form is the physical manifestation of the love two people share within the culmination of stability and commitment to each other by the bond of marriage, supported by our openness to the naturally occurring potential of creating new life.

Our society and this campus teaches us that “sex” is something to be wielded openly and freely. Society offers us a malnourished form of the word sex. Society teaches us that we are not called to shame or remorse when we have “sex” with whoever we want and under any arrangement. Society teaches us that “sex” can be non-committal and casual. We claim that “sex” is freedom of expression and should be performed without constraints. That “sex” is a statement. That “sex” is something separate from the production of life. That “sex” should be performed because it is fun and feels good.

When sex is viewed under the guise of an expression of freedom without commitment or without the potential for new life, it is not sex. Sex then has no more value than watching TV, gaming or eating a hamburger. Sex without commitment or the openness to new life is escapism from our sufferings. Sex then becomes the temporary fix to boredom, bad test grades or a hard day at work. Sex, in this way, is a hollow shell of its potential.

We must never forget the beauty and power of sex when operating within the confines of marriage (the only form of commitment and stability suitable to produce life) and the possibility to create life, which are both necessary in order to experience sex in its only authentic expression.

Healthy, pure and natural sex makes children, adults. The wounded, healed. The hopeless, hopeful. It can bring us to the metaphysical pinnacle of life as well as to one of the highest physical and spiritual apexes of our human existence (outside of the love shared between man and God), which is creating new life in the form of a child.

Sex in its truest form, not emaciated by society’s withered view, is life, commitment and the giving of self in love. We must never forget the roots of the word sex, and how it relates to our natural identity and the biological relationship it has with the human species and all facets of life on earth under one God.

-Kenneth Laybourn, UNF student

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