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Planned Parenthood recently distributed flyers at Stewart Middle School in Tacoma, Washington. The flyers targeted eleven-year-olds, informing them that they could have sex with anyone under the age of thirteen, and that their parents were not entitled to determine whether they took birth control or were tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The kids could make up their own minds.
Flyers and sex-ed programs preaching sexual freedom are leading edges of a revolution that has been gaining power over the West's moral imagination for more than two generations. Liberals, feminists, and gay activists press it forward.
Dishonest catchphrases of "choice" and "freedom" are used to promote the revolution. But when it comes to marriage, sex, family, and sex roles, the notion that choice governs is always an illusion. Every society has a sexual constitution. With the tools of honor and shame, the sexual constitution shapes desire, guiding it toward certain experiences and expressions and away from others. It teaches citizens what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. It determines the rank of marriage, sex, and child-rearing among the goods that people pursue.
Two ideologies shape the reigning sexual constitution: feminism and sexual liberation. Feminist ideologues seek a world "beyond gender," in Judith Butler's words. This means formulating laws and enforcing taboos so that differences between men and women evaporate and socialization toward distinct gender roles is prohibited. Feminists seek a society in which women achieve emotional and economic independence from domestic duties and family life. In the pursuit of female independence, sexual taboos that encourage enduring and monogamous marriage are themselves made taboo.
Sexual liberationists want a society "beyond repression." Boundaries must give way to enlightened, expressive sexuality until "repression" vanishes and people are free to pursue sex as they wish. Love is love. New taboos stigmatize as "haters" those who perpetuate traditional sexual mores.
New obstacles arise as progressive mores are adopted. Effort is redoubled. Eleven-year-olds must be taught to masturbate and to question their identities. Four-year-olds must sit on the laps of gay men dressed as sexualized women, who read picture books to them. Strictures against adult sex with children must be "problematized"-and eventually overcome. Monogamy is ridiculed, called oppressive, and replaced with polyamory. The revolution...