Chan Lowe | Sun-Sentinel Blogs

The latest hot pastime is for kids to send sexually-oriented text messages and nude pictures of themselves to each other on their cell phones as a way of "flirting." Whatever happened to offering to carry somebody's books home?

I was having a discussion about this at work with a friend, who happens to be the mother of two teenagers. "Kids these days have nothing on Sodom and Gomorrah," she said authoritatively. "Read your Bible. You shoulda seen the things they were doing back then. And while Moses was up on the mountain, they were down there making all kinds of stuff out of gold and silver!"

My friend may have conflated a couple of stories, but her point is well taken. Young people have done everything they could to challenge the mores of their societies since "time in memoriam," as one of my old Oklahoma associates would say. Idol worship, dancing the waltz, glue sniffing, psychedelic drugs, love-ins, listening to Elvis Presley records. Now it's body piercings, something called "embedding" that I won't even go into, and "sexting."

All parents can do is shrug and try to stay a step ahead in the arms race.

A word about Sodom and Gomorrah: I was under the impression that the Sodomites (Why is it that they get all the credit? Is it because it looks awkward to add a "y" to "Gomorrah" when you're writing a state morality statute?) were condemned not for their imaginative sexual proclivities, but for being inhospitable to strangers.

I don't purport to be a scriptural scholar, so I'll leave that to the sages to argue. Besides, it could be a subject for another cartoon.

Comments

Sexting. As for being inhospitable to strangers, it was a bit more than that. In the story the townspeople wanted to rape the angels that were in Lot's house.

Posted by: Logan | February 23, 2009 8:49 PM

God designed a Human Being to be born into this world NUDE; and with shame Christians HIDE & deny that fact daily. Sex SELLS, like an American devil. Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond. ...but don't do it on an american cell phone.

Posted by: anon | March 28, 2009 12:26 PM

Omg! That's just going a little too far. Seriously, guys out there, if you wanna impress a girl, bring her a flower or something- don't send a naked picture of yourself- that's gay.

Posted by: omg | April 2, 2009 6:14 PM

omg is gay, and also probably a bit retarded, flame on guys! Flowers are lame, a picture of me is obviously what girls want.

Posted by: Gay | April 29, 2009 9:38 PM

Whatever happened to just carrying someone's books? Well, this big ball in time square dropped a few dozen times and it stopped being 1950. That's what.

Sexting is no different than anything past generations have done, it's just more convienent. I don't want to hear the generation of the great "nude love-ins" tell me about modesty.

There's something in the bible that I love, it talks about taking the log out of your own eye before b****ing at your neighbor for the splinter in his eye.

I'm not saying I'll be a proud papa when my kids are doing it, but you can't honestly be so arrogant as to think you were any more holesome or pure (generationally speaking) than the 16yr olds of today when you were their age.

Posted by: Alexander | May 18, 2009 1:40 AM

listen why do adults get there panties in a bunch if sexting is going on. come on now like you were so pure when you were a teenager. at least whoever is sexting has someone to that with. everyone who complains is just made theyre lonely.

Posted by: Anonymous | October 17, 2009 10:14 AM