Sound and Fury of the Sexual Revolt
I wonder at the concept of sex being the new god, the new absolute for the modern age, the one thing that justifies and sanctifies any sin and crime, natural or unnatural. The one exception to our sex and pornography drenched culture is found when it comes to children. Child pornography and pederasty is still disdained, even abhorred. It is almost as if our society retains some dim hunch that innocence is a good thing, and so we seek to remove children from the sweat-stained meat locker of anything-goes orgiastic sex-selling that constitutes our modern culture.
Of course, unborn children are murdered by the millions, far outnumbering the Jews killed in the Holocaust, or human sacrifices killed by Aztecs or Carthaginians, and killed, not by Nazis and enemies, but by their own mothers. It considered butchery, not murder, because of a legal absurdity that holds children of humans are not human: this, from a culture that smugly regards itself both as enlightened and scientific.
I also wonder at the savage, insane, crude and stupid ferocity with which modern men, especially those of the Left, close ranks around sexual perverts to protect, laud, support, and elevate them. At first I was convinced by their rhetoric that they were merely concerned with simple justice, that no man should be treated unfairly merely because of his indulgence in sexual impulses that are abnormal or disoriented. Again, at first I was convinced, because they said and screamed the message over and over again, that the modern men, especially of the Left, regarded sexual deviants as another race of man, like Blacks, and who had been subject, like Blacks, to a long and shameful history of oppression, scorn, and degradation, and merited a corresponding legal and social regiment of protection to elevate them back to the place of their natural equality with the Anglo-Saxon Protestant race.
But this did not explain their zeal in defending perfectly quotidian deviations from the sexual norm, as when the defenders of President Clinton’s adultery closed ranks to guard him, shrieking and wailing and bellowing that to criticize an adulterer for his lack of honesty and character (not to mention lying under oath) was some new thoughtcrime called “sexual McCarthyism.” As if on cue, the Left fell to the ground sweating and panting in pretended paroxysms of terror, worried that jackbooted thugs were poised to kick in their doors at midnight, and arrest adulterers without warrant, for transhipment to a Gulag in Ohio.
The play-pretend of righteous indignation and quaking terror was made all the more ridiculous and disgusting since, at about that same time in history, reviews of the Soviet spymaster pay slips showed that McCarthy had been right, that everyone he accused of being a spy in the pay of the Soviets had in fact been a spy in the pay of the Soviets, and that the news and the liberal establishment to this very day had been and continue to be not just wrong, but outrageously wrong on the topic. That a man whose every accusation turned out to be correct should yet to this day have his name be the by-word for a false accusation or hysterical witch-hunt is an outrage. (That the false witchhuntishly hysterical accusation against Bill Clinton should turn out to be also correct we can pass over in silence. The contemplation of too much hypocrisy is bad for the digestion.)
The self-assessment that the Left defends and promotes sexual abnormality out of a charitable concern for those poor souls suffering a sexual abnormality is also contradicted by seeing who in life really is more charitable to those who suffer, who really seeks their best good, as opposed to who is merely using the identity group as a faction to seek political power or smug self-righteousness. The gays will no doubt be thrown under the bus, abandoned, betrayed, and silenced by the political Left, or at least by the Ruling Class, when the Shariah Law in the West is powerful enough to claim the totality of Ruling Class loyalty. We have already seen signs of the feminists being thrown under the bus in the name of multicultural love of Shariah Law.
One would think that a Liberal or Libertarian who preached sexual liberation would be just as ferociously insistent that society punish breaches of contract in sexual matters as any breach of contract, or any dishonorable or hurtful behavior, where the innocent are oppressed or defrauded.
One would think that the proud supporters of individual liberties and individual rights in all things would also support sanctions against those who trod upon the rights of others–and if adultery does not tread upon the rights and sexual freedom of the betrayed partner, I cannot imagine what would.
One would think the argument would always be toward a utopia where any kind of marriage, between any number of sex partners (perhaps with certain honorary marriages extended toward those animals involved in human-beast sexual congress) would be defended absolutely, but that unchaste behavior outside the strict limits of what consenting adults consented to, would be scorned and hated.
But no. We see instead quite the opposite. We see vocal advocacy in favor of gay marriage, but also in favor of gay no-fault divorce. No mention, at least none that has come to my ears, has been made of the legal penalties to be affixed to a gay man leaving his husband to sleep with a woman. No mention is made of the chastity which is the essential core of marriage. Are gay marriages meant to be unchaste marriages, marriages in name only, not in reality?
Well, we cannot look to the world of the heterosexuals for an answer, because half of their marriages are marriages in name only, not permanent, not chaste, and apparently not meant to be taken seriously. No culture that took marriage seriously would allow for no fault divorce. My fellow Christians who fret that gay marriage will demean marriage have nothing to fear: for we have done a perfect job of demeaning marriage ourselves.
As I said, one would think a logically consistent libertarian or liberal would support laws and morals that allowed for any combination or orientation of permanent or temporary sexual partners, but would insist on draconian penalties for anyone breaking the consensual agreement.
Instead we have the odd situation of the Left favoring nearly anything that erodes marriage, changes the definition of marriage, discourages marriage, no matter what its source or what its consequences.
The Leftish self-assessment is that they merely seek to free the members of the sexually differently-orient race that happens to live among the heteroes from hetero race-oppression, and the adulterers from the dark fascist midnight of sexual McCarthyism. This self assessment is false. Let us propose a simpler and more cynical, albeit more accurate, assessment:
I propose that the Left supports and defends sexual deviancy, both natural and unnatural, because any hint that the sexual impulse was not paramount, i.e. legally and morally allowed to trump and trample all other considerations, would shatter their entire world view.
Sex is the modern god. It excuses and encourages both abortion and no-fault divorce, as well as pornography in deluges deeper than the flood of Noah and Deucalion combined, as well as any belief in an objective moral order.
Oh, you did not think that moral relativism and multiculturalism and all that relativistic claptrap that no one actually believes has anything to do with respect for other cultures, do you? Don’t be silly. The sophomores despise other cultures as backward and primitive, except where the primitive other is breaking some Church teaching against unchastity or intoxication, whereupon the primitives are suddenly enlightened and Edenic.
The only point of moral relativism is to rob moral authority from the rules against unchaste behavior. No one uses the argument to excuse or condone fraud, trespass, breech of contract, lying, battery, theft or burglary. All that “When in Rome, do as the Romans” of the moral relativists is just gas: they do not expect a Jew when visiting a society where Jews are legally inferior to act inferior. All they want to do is be let off the hook when they visit their mistresses or, in this modern age, their internet porn sites.
Sex is godlike because it is the earthly equivalent of the spiritual ecstasy the Left no longer sees it as palatable to seek in Christianity. Sex is godlike because is overwhelming: Eros promises true and lasting happiness to anyone blinded with infatuation.
To behave without honor and without self-command is the paramount value of Leftist philosophy, which is, at its root, a rebellion not only against God, but against Nature and Reality.
Well, the sexual impulse is so strong within the human frame, and so forgiving, that it excuses the worse of violations of self-command, the most savage betrayals, the bestial tearing and clawing at unwanted or worn out sexual partners that surely leaves them, and you, emotionally scarred for life.
Since sex excuses everything from child-murder to adultery to treason against one’s true love, it can be used as an excuse for every lesser violation of morals and right conduct. Cross-dressing or appearing in public in bondage leather can be excused as a necessary adjunct of self-expression and self-authenticity. Pornography is protected by the divine and sacred First Amendment (even though campaign contributions and political speech on matters of public import, for the sake of cleaning up corruption, are not protected).
But the idea that sex excuses all and forgives all and makes all crimes against spouse and child, self and community, perfectly justified, the idea that sex is the source and summit of self-esteem (which is what modern agnostics have instead of blessedness, joy, peace or grace) is not limited to relativists. Objectivist atheists believe sex forgives adultery, and Christians believe it forgives divorce, all except for that wee, small fraction who both call themselves Catholics, and believe what one must believe to call oneself a Catholic truthfully.
If the Left admitted any, any, any principle as superior to sex, then that principle, whatever it is, could also be used to halt the indulgence in everything from child-murder to adultery. It could be used, if only in one small matter, to halt the rebellion against reality; and the rebellion against reality is the core of the Leftist world view. It is their greatest good and their highest idol. Even to admit of one exception would be to admit that something greater than oneself exists, some stubborn fact one cannot change by changing the words used to point to it, and this might damage the arrogance of Lucifer which they call ‘high self-esteem’, and undermine the faith in their verbal magic and weasel-wordishness that the is the sum and center of their semantic magic they call Political Correctness. Any hint that there is an objective reality that cannot be changed by magic words and verbal formulas would cast doubt on the whole scheme of self-hypnosis called Political Correctness.
If you wonder why men, or unmarried women, are so devout in their protection of abortion even to the point of fighting, as if it were a last ditch effort, even the most mild restrictions or regulations on the abominable practice, such as partial part abortions where the live baby is halfway out of its mother’s womb before the scissors are driving into it small and fragile skull, if you ever wondered why the ACLU sued a township that found a large mass of dead baby bodies and wanted to give them all decent Christian burials, or if you wondered why they lie and lie about the side effects of abortion, particularly on the mother’s psyche, or if you wondered why they oppose even showing the mother an ultrasound of the allegedly nonhuman person growing in her womb, well, wonder no more. If any principle, such as simple justice, a love of motherhood, a desire to avoid human pain, a desire for truth, or the sanctity of human life, if any principle whatsoever could be raised to oppose even the most outrageous and inhumane of abortion practices, that principle would destroy the entire world-view of the Left, because that world view requires as an axiom that reality is fluid and plastic, shaped by the human will, and that facts are not stubborn, and that all principles are relative, and truth is tame.
In sum, if those in rebellion against reality, logic, nature, and God Almighty admitted that reality had some claim on their actions, or some authority in their philosophy, their philosophy of eternal rebellion would be shattered, because they would have admitted something, some principle of logic or fact of reality, some sliver of humanity, against which rebellion was not allowed.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
