column on the subject<\/a>, Cal Thomas cited one of Weinstein\u2019s excuses:\u00a0 \u201cLisa Bloom, who resigned last Saturday as an adviser to Weinstein, made the laughable claim that he is a \u2018dinosaur\u2019 who came of age at a time when such behavior was more acceptable.\u201d\u00a0 As an excuse, the \u201cdinosaur\u201d defense is indeed laughable.\u00a0 But it is still telling.<\/p>\nThe Sexual Revolution overthrew all moral teachings and cultural attitudes that put limits on sexual behavior.\u00a0 As a result, in the 1960\u2019s, 1970\u2019s, and 1980\u2019s, it was commonplace to hear that \u201csex is no big deal.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, in the pop Freudianism of the day, freely having sex with no restraints was seen as a good thing, a healthy expression of one\u2019s inner drives.\u00a0 Not<\/em> wanting to have sex, on the other hand, was seen as bad.\u00a0 Being \u201crepressed,\u201d \u201cinhibited,\u201d having \u201changups\u201d was\u00a0like a sort of mental illness in need of cure.<\/p>\nMen used that kind of rhetoric to try to talk women into having sex with them.\u00a0 When they succeeded, or when they failed but imposed themselves on women anyway, they could justify what they did by rationalizing that they were performing a sort of liberation.\u00a0 I suspect that when Bill Cosby\u00a0covertly drugged a woman with Quaaludes, he thought that the pills would help \u201cloosen her inhibitions.\u201d He was doing her a favor.<\/p>\n
Now the women who were used and abused very likely did feel violated afterwards.\u00a0 But they too had been taught that sex was not supposed to be a \u201cbig deal.\u201d\u00a0 To complain would reflect unfavorably on them<\/em>.\u00a0 They very likely blamed their \u201changups,\u201d so that they<\/em> felt the shame, rather than the men who shamelessly assaulted them.<\/p>\nOf course sex is a big deal.\u00a0 How could it not be?\u00a0 Sex\u00a0generates new life!\u00a0 By attracting men and women into marriage and enabling parenthood, sex creates families!\u00a0 And families are the foundation of all culture!\u00a0 Sex is tied up with our\u00a0personhood and our most intimate relationships.<\/p>\n
Sexual desire is so powerful that it must be restrained, controlled, and channeled.\u00a0 Thus, all\u00a0true cultures have their sexual taboos and social norms.\u00a0 Even Freud, the patron saint of the sexual revolution whom the revolutionaries got laughably wrong, taught that the sexual desire must<\/em> be controlled; otherwise, civilization would come apart and individuals would descend into primitive violence and self-destruction.<\/p>\nSexual self-discipline is rightly a key moral principle.\u00a0 To abandon all sexual restraints is to destroy the family, violate one\u2019s neighbor, and defile oneself.\u00a0 \u00a0Sexual sins are especially harmful because they lead to other sins, causing others to sin (the person seduced into \u201cconsent\u201d; the prostitute; the porn model) and potentially\u00a0culminating in\u00a0child murder, when an \u201cunwanted\u201d child is aborted.<\/p>\n
So, yes, sex is a big deal.<\/p>\n
It is good that the decades of pretending otherwise have resulted in a backlash today.\u00a0 Women who have been sexually abused are coming forward today, to the\u00a0ruin of the Weinsteins of the world.\u00a0 \u00a0Sexual restraint is coming back in vogue.<\/p>\n
But sex is still a bigger deal than much of our contemporary culture is willing to admit.\u00a0 How can sexual restraint\u2013which is now recognized as necessary for social life and the well-being of women and men\u2013be cultivated when sex is still seen as recreational, separated from procreation, and unmoored to marriage and family?\u00a0 How can we expect men shaped by pornography to treat women?<\/p>\n
Bringing back sexual restraint requires rebuilding the infrastructure of sexual morality.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo of Harvey Weinstein by David Shankbone (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sexual Revolution overthrew all moral teachings and cultural attitudes that put limits on sexual behavior. In the 1960\u2019s, 1970\u2019s, and 1980\u2019s, it was commonplace to hear that \u201csex is no big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":29716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,16,41],"tags":[305,5817,5816,2012,2795],"class_list":["post-29699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-family","category-sex","tag-bill-cosby","tag-harvey-weinstein","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sexual-morality","tag-sexual-revolution"],"yoast_head":"\n
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