America has a porn problem, but acknowledging it also means admitting that Christian conservatives have been right. So America will likely continue to have a porn problem.
Christine Emba laid out this conundrum in a recent piece for The New York Times, whose average reader would probably prefer passing kidney stones to admitting that conservative Christians were right about anything, let alone something about sex. As she put it, “Despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn. Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool.” Apparently, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for self-styled progressives to fear seeming uncool.
It is not as if they are actually averse to being judgmental. These are the same people who gave us cancel culture and endless DEI struggle sessions over “microaggressions” and pronouns. The mantra of “don’t judge” is, for left-liberals, only valid for sex. And some of them are realizing that this is untenable, but they are not ready to admit it.
For example, last year, The New York Times published an alarming piece on the porn-fueled rise of sexual strangulation (a trend Emba has also covered) only for the writer to — after laying out the many evils and harms of this practice — hastily assure readers, “I’m not here to kink-shame (or anything-shame).” Well, why not? A society that cared about women and social justice would shame men who strangle women for sexual sport and ban the violent pornography that teaches them to take pleasure in this depraved practice.
But to say this is to sound like, well, a Christian conservative, which means automatic dismissal by the left. As Emba put it, “Most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious and so are instantly discounted — often by being disparaged as such.” She sees some indicators that this may change — that The New York Times published this piece is itself a hopeful sign.
Indeed, at this point, it requires willful blindness not to notice many of the evils of our relational and sexual culture. But noticing is not enough to envision a better way of life, or even to turn away from current evils. There is a reluctance to start pulling at the threads, however damaged and ruined, of the sexual revolution, for fear that the whole thing will unravel.
This hesitance is apparent in Emba’s book. Though Rethinking Sex chronicled the sexual and relational wasteland left by the sexual revolution, she was reluctant to condemn it wholesale, let alone urge readers to embrace the alternative of Christian sexual morality. Instead, Emba settled on a sort of moralist therapeutic Thomism that still affirmed sexual liberalism but just asked people to be kinder and gentler about it. She insisted we ought to will the good of the other person but refused to offer much in the way of moral norms or guidance about what that means when it comes to our sexual behavior.
These impotent half-measures illuminate the dead end of the sexual revolution and its claim that the liberation of desire was the key to individual authenticity and happiness, and thereafter to social harmony. This liberationist mindset meant it never provided a positive vision of what it is to be human or how we are to relate to each other — why bother articulating norms when you believe that the repression and resentment caused by social norms around sex are the root of the problem? Thus, other than warnings to respect the rules of consent, the sexual revolution had nothing to offer when its promised paradise failed to appear. Instead, it offered only further indulgence and rebellion against norms and nature, leading to more failure and misery.
Liberals may critique the worst aspects of the sexual revolution, but criticism is not a foundation for a better way of life. That requires an understanding of human nature, of what it means to be embodied as male and female, of what our sexuality is meant for, and other such questions of normative anthropology. And that brings us back to religious conservatives, because religious conservatives are the only people to have retained a functioning normative anthropology that can both explain why the sexual revolution went so wrong and provide guidance on a better way to live.
Of course, the likes of The New York Times would prefer not to honor Christian conservatives’ prophetic insights about the sexual revolution. And Christian conservatives are largely OK with that; they do not hold their convictions to win the good opinion of The New York Times. The evils of the sexual revolution will not be defeated by squabbling over who gets the credit. But they also won’t be defeated if left-liberals remain paralyzed by the prospect of admitting conservative Christians were right.
