The Effects of the Sexual Revolution
It’s hard to be an eyewitness to the rapid degeneration of our culture and not feel a certain nostalgia for the older, more loveable America. The area that it’s perhaps most obvious is in the sexualization of our public square. Over the last several decades, obscenity has not only become commonplace, it is often celebrated.
How did we reach this point?
To answer that question, we need to understand the intellectual architects of the 1960s sexual revolution. I see “sexual liberation” as one of the tragic causes of American decline, but radicals in the sixties like Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse celebrated it.
According to Dr. Slack, in “The American Left,” radicals promoted sexual liberation as part of their new understanding of freedom. They believed that the moral foundations of society were themselves oppressive. And that individuals could only be free if they learned to overturn all the traces of oppression that reached into their private lives and thoughts.
The radicals contended that modern man was one big reservoir of sexual repression. This repression may have been useful in primitive society because the family was the only way to ensure that individuals were provided the necessities of life. But it was no longer necessary in industrial society where our modern affluence could provide for everyone. Even worse, it was causing neurosis because life in an industrial society is too futile to give meaning to those individuals who were repressing their natural desires.
The cure for this ailment, according to the radicals, was for individuals to act on their formerly repressed sexual desires. It was not enough to acknowledge the existence of such desires and learn to deal with them. Radicals argued that these individuals should let these drives turn into deeds. Notice what this implies: individuals who engage indiscriminately in sexual activity are healthier than those who remain chaste—a total inversion of traditional morality and the teachings of the Bible.
The second argument advanced on behalf of sexual liberation is even more astonishing. Traditional sexual practices (i.e. sex solely within marriage), radicals argued, bred the “fascist personality.” Without sexual liberation, man’s repressed aggressive drives would be channeled towards authoritarian leaders and ultimately war. In other words, radicals genuinely believed that widespread promiscuous sexual activity was essential to preserving our democracy!
But radicals also contended that sexual liberation would help overthrow the oppressive system of capitalism, which required wage-earners to work degrading jobs. Dr. Slack explains,
Reich foresaw a new kind of society, which he called “work democracy.” What that meant was, once human beings were liberated from sexual repression, they would enjoy working. . . . He said that the ideal jobs would be the equivalent of a good orgasm in all aspects of life, and that people who were sexually liberated would refuse to work boring jobs that were monotonous.
Radicals championed sexual liberation because they believed it would cure neurosis, ward off fascism, and usher in a “work democracy” utopia that would overthrow capitalism. And now sexually explicit materials and ideas are celebrated in our public squares. Our political leaders—both Democrats and Republicans—refuse to push back on the sexual revolution. For example, could you imagine a contemporary politician doing something as simple as advocating the criminalization of pornography?
We’ve lost the older American understanding that in many ways took sex more seriously. As Dr. Thomas West explains in “The Real American Founding,” the Founders thought sex was a very important political concern. But they believed that the public square should encourage sex to be directed towards marriage and healthy families that promote morality.
