Epstein and Weinstein: The Fruit of the Sexual Revolution

Epstein and Weinstein: The Fruit of the Sexual Revolution July 19, 2019

[I wrote this in November 2017, as the Weinstein controversy was in full gear. Now, given the horrendous charges against financier Jeffrey Epstein, his name gets to be added to the “dishonor roll” too]

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Casting couch sexual coercion is presently causing big shock and surprise in our sex-saturated society. The perfectly obvious is now becoming perfectly obvious. I guess that’s progress.

At least society isn’t pretending anymore that rich white male, middle-aged Hollywood moguls abusing, exploiting, groping, and even raping women doesn’t routinely happen: and in supposedly “progressive” / “enlightened” and “feminist” and “pro-woman” liberal circles.

The bottom line is that all this stems from a rejection of traditional Judaeo-Christian morality (especially in sexual matters). The Christian view informs us that we are all fallen and subject to sin and its harmful effects. In other words, it’s a “fallen human race” and “sin” and “rejection of God and Christianity” thing.

This always harms women a lot more than men, because they are the ones being (willingly or not) abused and exploited and treated as mere objects to please men’s lustful desires.

If we want the sexual revolution; think it’s wonderful, we get Weinstein [and Epstein], too, as part of the package, along with abortion, broken homes, shattered lives, pornography, sexual assault, sexual blackmail, battered wives, and all the rest that flows from it.

If we want true respect for women, we have to go back to traditional Christianity, or at least sexual mores in and from other religions or cultures, that are consistent with it (sex ought to be confined to a man and woman in a marriage that is essentially lifelong: at the very least, as a goal or ideal).

It’s really as simple as that, in the final analysis.

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And of course the same dynamic applies to the Catholic Church and those in it as well. It was tragic widespread laxity on sexual matters among bishops and priests (and parishioners following their lead) that led to sexual mischief and abuse among both priests and bishops (and things like nuns becoming sexually active and leaving in droves). The acceptance of the puerile views of the prominent strain of radically secularized social psychology led them to believe that serial abuse was a curable “disease.” This led to their shuffling around abusing priests, rather than defrocking them.

Likewise, naivete regarding the usual promiscuous practices of many young homosexual males led to massive compromises in the seminaries, as Michael Rose documented in his book, Goodbye, Good Men. Long story short: the sexual scandals in the Church directly stemmed (sociologically speaking) from acceptance of various false premises of the sexual revolution. Now we are seeing the fruit of this folly as well, and those who knew and “winked” at it remain accountable before God (some, no doubt, having a hot place reserved for them in hell).

But what remains fundamentally different in Catholicism is the fact that we retain the never-changing apostolic teachings that proclaim all these immoral activities to be wrong, whereas Hollywood and other secularized, post-Christian bastions today (to generalize, but even so . . .) collectively wink at these crimes. Thousands in Hollywood knew about Weinstein’s wickedness (it was even joked about at the Academy Awards), and many many people likely knew about Epstein as well (just as many in the Church knew about the wickedness going on).

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Related Reading:

Dialogue: Is Premarital Sex Wrong? [3-18-00]

Tragic Results of the Sexual Revolution [8-6-01]

Sociological Data Favoring Christian Moral / Sexual Views (Discussions About Christian Sexual Morality and Marriage With Atheists) [12-8-06]

Paul Sanctions Premarital Sex (1 Corinthians 7:36)? [11-21-09]

Bestiality: Anti-Christian Morals Reductio? [12-21-15]

Catholic Sexuality: A “Nutshell” Explanation [12-29-15]

Catholic Sexuality: Dialogue with an Agnostic [12-30-15]

Dialogues on the Sexual Revolution & Weinstein’s Victims [10-14-17]

I Condemned Society-Wide Sexual Coercion in 2007 [11-17-17]

Sex and Catholics: Our Views Briefly Explained [National Catholic Register, 2-2-18]

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(originally 11-4-17 on Facebook; introduction and section at the end added on 7-19-19)

Photo credit: Mug shot of Jeffrey Epstein made available by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department, taken following his indictment for soliciting a prostitute (7-27-06) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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