One of my consistent themes is that in the post-Christian West, sexual pleasure and hedonism have been elevated to the highest human good. Human beings are driven to ask, “What is the meaning of life,” and when God exits stage left, what usually replaces Him is “pleasure.”
That’s natural, of course, since pleasure by its nature is self-reinforcing. “If it feels good, do it” is hardly revolutionary, despite what the hippies said. Without religion, human beings struggle to come up with reasons to deny our darkest desires without appealing to moral standards that are generally rooted in religion, or at least have a religious foundation that has been hidden by the mists of time.
‘This Has Gone Way Too Far’: Videos Show Bizarre Sexual Ceremony That Elite Amherst College Pushes All First Year Students To Attend https://t.co/iats6QLnMJ
— Janie Johnson – America is Exceptional (@jjauthor) December 12, 2025
So I suppose that I shouldn’t be shocked that Amherst College, the elite of the elite Liberal Arts colleges, now promotes hedonism and sexual deviancy in its freshman orientation. While it was founded “for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry,” and, while non-denominational, its theology was deeply rooted in Calvinism, its freshman orientation and year-long “health and wellbeing” programs work mightily to promote sexual abandon in the most deviant ways possible.
Amherst College was founded over two centuries ago to prepare young Christian men for the ministry. Today, however, the prestigious college has become a hotbed of administratively sanctioned sex performances and “sexual skills” programs, with a focus on “queer” and transgender students and on free-sex practices such as polyamory. The graphic nature of school-sanctioned sex events has made many current Amherst students deeply uncomfortable, according to students who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
Calvinism, this is not. The Puritans would, I suspect, wonder why they bothered to emigrate from across the pond if they saw what their efforts spawned.
very year, first-year students are instructed, as a part of orientation, to attend an event—dubbed “Voices of the Class”—in which they are familiarized with Amherst’s “code of conduct” through a theatrical performance scripted using out-of-context excerpts from their own admissions essays. An entire section of the performance is dedicated just to sex.
The event takes place in Johnson Chapel, which Amherst calls its “most important building,” and is used for worship services, convocations, senior assemblies, and other significant gatherings. Johnson Chapel displays 36 portraits of the college’s most notable figures and alumni—including all 19 former presidents of the college, influential trustees, clergymen, civil rights leaders, poet Emily Dickinson, and former U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, who all likely would have looked on in horror if they saw the event on August 31st, 2025.
On the chapel’s chancel, students performed mock sex acts including oral sex, masturbation, and group sex. A young woman bent over while another student pretended to penetrate her from behind. Others pretended to do drugs and shared their “high thoughts.”
Every first-year was urged to attend the performance by their orientation leader. The administration advertises the event as a “lighthearted tradition” to “celebrate the humor, creativity, and individuality of your class.” The school funds the performance, and Amherst administrators work closely with the student performers, offering feedback and approving the script.
“‘Voices of Amherst’ has been part of New Student Orientation since 2007 and is coordinated by New Student and Family Programs in Student Affairs. Each year, the script is newly written by junior and senior students using excerpts from the incoming class’s admissions essays,” the Office of Student Affairs told the Free Beacon. “The final script is reviewed and approved by staff before the performance. Funding for production comes from the Orientation budget; student performers are not paid, and Johnson Chapel serves as the traditional venue.”
It is perfectly normal for students, away from home for the first time and still raging with sexual hormones, to let their freak flags fly. And colleges, where they are concentrated together with near-total freedom, are unsurprisingly more than a little hedonistic. While I frowned on some of the more explicit displays and discussions about deviant sexual practices while in school, I was hardly scandalized.
But it’s one thing for students to get all jiggy; it’s another for the administration to actively propagandize for hedonistic abandon. It’s the opposite of promoting reason and maturity; it’s denying the importance of reason and elevating Dionysian frenzy to the heights of human achievement.
Amherst’s staff also encourages students to explore unconventional sexual lifestyles such as polyamory, where people in a group—often living together—have multiple sexual relationships simultaneously with the consent of everyone in the group. The convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried is perhaps the most famous practitioner of polyamory. He lived in a luxury penthouse with several colleagues in an arrangement described as a “polycule.”
At “Beyond Monogamy,” organized by the Residential Engagement and Wellbeing Center and Queer Resource Center, students were encouraged to speak with three licensed therapists who “specialize in polyamory and ethical non-monogamy” about “building healthy non-monogamous relationships in college and beyond.”
Materials promoted by the Queer Resource Center aimed to teach students different types of healthy non-monogamous relationships, listing sexual scenarios such as “open relationships,” “threesomes,” and “swinging,” as well as newer sex concepts like “relationship anarchy,” and “polyfidelity.” The Amherst communication office categorized “Beyond Monogamy” as part of its sexual health education programming.
The materials reassure students that it is “normal to experience positive and negative emotions in all types of relationships.”
“Jealousy happens—that’s why communication and honesty are essential,” a poster added.
Send your kids to college so they can learn how to do polycules right.
This is what $93,000+ a year buys you, parents.
I don’t bring this up just because it is ridiculous or outrageous. I have a deeper point: the abandonment of Christianity and the propaganda against it requires providing an alternative answer to the “meaning of life” question. It is notable that the “The Center for Religious and Spiritual life—which has a Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and interfaith and humanist chaplain—declined to comment on the use of Johnson Chapel for the performance. Amherst does not have a Christian chaplain.” The whole point is to divorce students from their Christian faith (the majority of students entering have a Christian background) because that is a necessary condition before replacing the Christian morality with the hedonistic version of humanism.
I would wager that even the Muslim chaplain leans toward the “Queers for Palestine” version, and the Buddhist is not preaching denial of self.
Even if you are not bothered by the particular sexual practices being promoted, you should still be worried about the question of “when?” Teens are still developing their moral sense and ability to substitute reason for pleasure-seeking, and it is impossible to make mature decisions about sexuality until one is mature enough to use reason as well as passion when deciding whether to indulge.
Maturing is the development of the capacity and will to substitute reason for impulse, and encouraging kids to “explore their sexuality” before they learn to control it is the worst idea possible. Telling a teen “If it feels good, do it” is exactly the wrong thing.
Want to do drugs? Go for it, and share your “high thoughts.” Interested in orgies? Here are some condoms!
Yet this is what our most elite schools are doing, and they are proud of it.
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