'Feelings' Should Not Rule Sexual Decision Making

By Mary Beth Bonacci
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 3/7/02)

Poor Mackenzie. She’s packed a lot of trauma into her 18 years. She was conceived in an ill-fated relationship. Her biological father wasn’t even told about the pregnancy. Her mother married an evil man, who threatened to molest Mackenzie when she was 14. So she ran away. Fortunately, while hiding in a homeless shelter, she discovered that one of her fellow shelter-dwellers was actually her wealthy paternal grandmother, Katherine Chancellor. (Long story.) Katherine moved her granddaughter into Chancellor Estate, where the young girl fell in love with Billy, the handsome teenaged son of Katherine’s arch-enemy, Jill. But now her relationship with Billy is threatened . . .

Of course, it’s tough to feel too sorry for Mackenzie. She is, after all, just a character in a soap opera. (She’s even been portrayed by two different actresses, which makes it doubly hard to take her seriously.) But I felt for her, and for all of the real teenagers like her, in the scene where she broke up with Billy. It’s fiction, but it represents a fact – the serious flaw in our society’s understanding of teens and sexual activity.

The issue, of course is sex. He feels "ready," she doesn’t. He’s been patient, but he’s tired of waiting for her to feel "ready." She doesn’t understand why her lack of "readiness" is such a big problem. The entire issue has revolved around "feelings."

The dialogue would’ve been laughable if the topic weren’t so serious. She apologized for not respecting his feelings. He said he wanted to make love to "express his feelings" of love to her. She said he wasn’t respecting her feeling of not being ready. He called her uptight and childish for feeling that way. She told him about the incredible feelings of love she has for him, but reminded him that it’s okay not to express those feelings sexually if she doesn’t feel ready.

It was enough to make a person break into a chorus of Feelings. And then get sick.

At one point, Billy argued that the whole situation just wasn’t fair. After all, he pointed out, he felt one way, Mackenzie felt a different way, and Mackenzie was the one who was getting what she wanted. Why couldn’t he get what he wanted?

Now that was a familiar line. I’d heard it myself, back when I was a "non-ready" Catholic teenager trying to defend my position (and my virtue). I was dumbfounded then, just as poor fictional Mackenzie is dumbfounded now. How does one respond? It really doesn’t seem fair. If he’s respecting my feelings, shouldn’t I respect his feelings as well?

The answer, quite simply, is to remove the entire discussion from the realm of feelings, and take it into the realm of fact. There are real, concrete concerns here that no one seems to be taking into account.

Poor Mackenzie. The writers have her fighting with her hands tied. I find myself screaming into the television screen, encouraging her to give him the real arguments. What if she got pregnant? What would that do to their idyllic little love? Isn’t that why her life became such a mess in the first place? And what about sexually transmitted diseases? After all, Billy spent the summer of 2001 sleeping with Brittany, who also slept with J.T., who slept with Rianna while cheating on her with every other willing girl at Walnut Grove Academy. God only knows what kind of bugs these people would be passing around in real life. And has Billy thought about the future? Does he really think sex will make their relationship better? He keeps telling Mackenzie that they’re "almost" adults, and should express their love in an adult way. But will they marry for sure? What if they don’t? What kind of heartbreak would he be setting up for her? And what would he be doing to her relationship with God?

He wants to do all of this because he loves her? Please.

Lest you believe this kind of "feelings-based" thinking is limited to teenagers, think again. On a recent episode of Will and Grace, Grace was invited to participate in a "threesome" with her boyfriend and another woman. She seriously considered it, but in the end declined – not because she saw anything morally objectionable in the act, but because she just didn’t feel "comfortable" with it.

Reducing sexual decision-making to feelings is very dangerous. If we respect someone’s right to abstain based only on feelings, then we’ve left ourselves with no defense against those who would use other people sexually based on their feelings. Extra-marital sex doesn’t respect the dignity of the human person. It places both participants at serious physical, emotional and spiritual risk. It’s not a loving act. And, if I wrote for The Young and the Restless, Mackenzie would tell Billy to stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Bonacci is a frequent lecturer on chastity.

Copyright ©2002 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.