When drag shows replace debate and pornography replaces college culture

A place of prayer and reverence is turning into a stage where school administrators approve programs that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago. The story of Amherst College is a reminder for the entire West.

The illustrative photograph was created using artificial intelligence. Photo: Štandard/Midjourney

The illustrative photograph was created using artificial intelligence. Photo: Štandard/Midjourney

Amherst College in Massachusetts was founded more than two centuries ago with a clear goal: to educate young men in the Christian faith and prepare them for service that would improve society.

Today, this historical foundation has not only been forgotten, but is also openly denied.

Johnson Chapel—a space designated for worship, prayer, and serious academic gatherings—is now the site of administratively approved sexual performances, simulations of sexual acts, and programs that glorify promiscuity, drugs, and identity experimentation.

This is not just a cultural shift. It is a civilizational break.

We must realize that a chapel is not just an ordinary auditorium. In the Christian tradition, it is a space reserved for God, a place of reverence, silence, and humility.

When simulations of oral sex, masturbation, group sex, and drug use are performed there, it is not an "artistic performance." It is desecration. It is a deliberate reversal of the order in which spirituality has supremacy over physicality and truth over instinct.

In the presbytery, where the Scriptures were once read and the sacraments administered, students now act out grotesque scenes of sexual decadence. This is neither neutrality nor inclusion. It is ideological provocation, blasphemy to Christians.

Curator of moral decline

What is striking is not only what is happening, but who is approving it. The school administration not only tolerates these events, but also finances them, approves the scripts, and makes it mandatory for first-year students to attend. Students have no real option to refuse to participate without social or disciplinary consequences. In the name of "well-being," they are being forced to accept a culture that disgusts and traumatizes many.

The administration claims that the programs are not "graphic." This is an insult to intelligence. If simulated sexual acts, moaning under a blanket, throwing condoms instead of confetti, and publicly discussing sexual fantasies in the dark are not graphic, then words have lost their meaning.

Amherst College's programs reduce sexuality to a technique, a "skill" to be trained, and an identity that can be constructed at will. However, sexuality separated from marriage, love, and responsibility becomes a tool for selfishness and abuse.

Polyamory, "relationship anarchy," fetching, drag shows, and pornographic aesthetics are not the path to maturity. They are symptoms of a culture that has lost the ability to distinguish good from evil and freedom from chaos.

Respect for the academic environment is a thing of the past

The university should be a place for seeking truth and cultivating reason and character. When orientation programs turn into sexual theater and "sex in the dark" is presented as education, academic dignity crumbles. Students who come with expectations of serious study are drawn into a world where exhibitionism and vulgarity are the norm.

No wonder many feel uncomfortable, isolated, and forced to hide their views. In an environment that prides itself on tolerance, there is no place for those who believe in marriage, moderation, and moral order.

The silence of the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life is particularly telling. A multi-religious offering without a Christian chaplain in an institution with Christian roots speaks for itself. When a chapel is used for obscene performances and clergy remain silent, it is not a matter of neutrality, but of resignation from the truth.

Christianity is tolerated here only as folklore, not as a living moral authority that could ask uncomfortable questions.

Wellbeing as an ideological weapon

The language of "wellbeing" (often referred to as a state of personal well-being) obscures reality. Students are exposed to content that unsettles them, overwhelms them, and normalizes behavior with which they do not internally identify. Respect should also mean respect for those who do not want to be part of sexual exhibitionism.

When mandatory programs focus exclusively on extremes and "sexual outsiders," a false norm is created. Those who live modestly, faithfully, and in accordance with traditional values are portrayed as backward or "repressed."

The irony is that this is one of the most expensive colleges in the US. Parents pay astronomical sums in the hope of a quality education. Instead, their children receive ideological indoctrination and cultural decadence.

The surplus of administrative staff who constantly produce new sexual programs is a symptom of a system that has strayed from its original mission.

The voice of conscience

The testimonies of the students who spoke out (about 35 percent of them) are positive news. They are not fanatical moralists, but young people who feel that something is fundamentally wrong.

Amherst College is not an isolated case. It is symbolic of a broader trend in which elites are replacing moral formation with ideological experimentation. However, it is important to name evil and fight against it.

You cannot walk with God and run with the devil at the same time.

Chapels are meant for prayer, universities for truth, and sexuality is meant to be lived in the truth about man. Without these foundations, freedom turns into the tyranny of instincts and education into a farce.

If the academic world is to have a future, it must remember that not everything that is possible is permissible—and that respect is not a relic of the past, but a condition of civilization.