PERMANENT REVOLUTION.
Hey, guys, am I wrong or was the "Sexual Revolution" back in the 1960s? Wikipedia says it went "from the 1960s to the 1980s," which seems a bit long; I think once birth control pills came out, that was pretty much the whole ballgame.
Reason I'm asking is, conservatives have been using the term a lot lately and speak of it as something that's still going on. Here's Rod Dreher when the Texas abortion decision came down:
The bottom line, it seems to me, is that the Supreme Court will never let any state restriction stand meaningfully in the way of the Sexual Revolution. Ever. No federalism, no democracy, not when it comes to defending the Sexual Revolution.
Now, we all know Dreher is crazy, but he's far from the only wingnut talking about the Sexual Revolution as a live issue. When SCOTUS refused to hear the case of the pharmacist who wouldn't dispense Plan B, National Review's David French seethed, "to anti-Christian bigots, it is intolerable that Christian professionals exist unless they bow the knee to the Baal of the sexual revolution..." Also at National Review, we have Mary Eberstadt, who says liberal women's reactions to the Texas decision ("quasi-religious euphoria, a gnostic rave... intoxicated as maenads in the Bacchae") proves "secularist progressivism" is now "a religious faith grounded in theology about the sexual revolution," in the service of which we liberals gather regularly to celebrate abortions like Masses or Quaker Meetings:
The cold-blooded, untoward jubilation over yesterday’s Supreme Court decision is one more proof that in the matter of abortion, as in all else pertaining to the perceived prerogatives of the sexual revolution these days, the secularist-progressive alliance does not wage politics as usual. It instead orchestrates a bloodless religious war — bloodless, that is, apart from its central sacrament.
Elsewhere: "The Sexual Revolution, Like All Revolutions, Leaves A Wasteland Behind" (Brett Stevens); "virtually all of the opposition to Christianity and to religious liberty today derives from Christianity’s opposition to the sexual revolution" (Gene Veith at Pantheos); at Commentary, B. Richardson and J. Shields suggests campus rape is "the necessary price of the sexual revolution"; "Total destruction of everyone and everything that stands in the way of final annihilation of Western Christian foundations is the goal of the sexual revolutionaries," says some doofus at American Thinker. Etc.
What's behind it? I guess some of the more forward-thinking ones want to make sex look dull by associating it with revolutionary practice, like rifle cleaning and awful Chinese opera, and hence undesirable. But mainly I think it's because, as this blog continually shows, they can't help but fantasize political motives in every area of life, no matter how inappropriate, where they feel themselves at a disadvantage, such as culture and consumer choices. If only they could create an affirmative-action equivalent of sex, the way they come up with oddities like "The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" to make themselves feel better about art!
Alas, even if they're married and keep the lights off, any time they feel like fucking but don't really want to make a baby, or are tempted to stray from the kind of strict genital protocols of which Robert P. George could approve, they know they're living the sexual revolution. And the more society tells them it's no big deal, the bigger a deal it becomes for them.
No wonder they're so crabby.