Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Con, responds to this post by Damon Linker of The New Republic disputing Linker’s assertion that Dreher fixates on gays by pointing out that he has only placed 16 (now 17!) of 455 posts in the “homosexuality” category.  (h/t Hilzoy).  A quick read of his response, however, suggests that if Dreher doesn’t unecessarily worry himself over gays he does have something of a fixation with sex in a broader sense, and it has nothing to do with how many posts he writes on the subject.

First, however, a word about nihilism.  Dreher (and others)  seem to think that rejection of their preferred set of social norms makes one a nihilist.  This is, of course, far from the case: nihilists believe that no morals and values exist, not simply that morals and values do not come from God.  Rather, mankind’s various societies have built (for them) suitable normative infrastructures through development of shared understandings about the nature of the world and the other beings in it.  Those of us who approach life from a humanistic perspective have morals and values–we just don’t think they necessarily flow from the nature of man or his relationship with God.  The Bible, that is, establishes only one of many versions of “truth.”  This version is neither universal nor based on the nature of man; it is rather an invention of human beings who hold certain beliefs and think that these beliefs should guide human society. 

Because it does not fit his preferred normative structure with regard to sex, Dreher worries that legitimizing homosexuality “represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth,” and would ”lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality.”  Of course, the silliness begins with his ascribing a “goal” to the “sexual revolution,” as if this was an organized mass movement that executed an action plan based on a strategy for changing society, and not just a bunch of (mostly) young people who decided to reject the values and social roles of the time.  He get sillier when he worries that this would place human sexuality in a contractual context, as if the very argument that the only acceptable sexual activity takes place within marriage hasn’t taken care of that long ago.  And it’s not clear how anything could be both “contractual” and “nihilistic,’ given that even human sexuality that takes place within a contractual framework follows at least some norm about agreements.

But this is not how we can tell that Dreher has a sex fixation.  We know this because he blames sexual promiscuity for conditions in the inner city without discussing the institutional sources of poverty, or the normative structures left over from America’s history of racism, or the purely capitalist effort on the part of many of the people who live there to prosper by taking advantage of black markets in drugs, guns, and stolen items.  Dreher apparently thinks that if all these people would all just quit fucking, they could all get real jobs and move into a McMansion in the ‘burbs, like all good Americans.

Dreher also argues that “permissive sexual ethic is terrible for society” because syphilis broke out among some sexually active Rockdale County, Georgia (Atlanta suburb) teenagers in 1996.  But the prevailing “sexual ethic” in 1996 Rockdale County was not a permissive one.  Arguably, social shaming of sexual activity contributed to the problem by preventing an open and honest discussion of the potential consequences of sexual activity from these kids.  This means that many may not have known much about sexually transmitted diseases and how to prevent them.  These kids did not get sick just because they had sex, they got sick because they were not given adequate health education.  When they discovered the nature of the potential consequences, in fact, they adjusted their behavior.

Socially speaking, sexual promiscuity debases character, kills souls, and insults human dignity only because we say it does.  Character, human dignity, and even the soul exist only as human constructs, and nothing about the nature of man makes human sexuality, and sexual activity, shameful except our shared understandings about when sex is appropriate and between whom.  The high dudgeon Dreher gets into about the Rockdale situation makes the point: part of what got everyone wound up about this was the ages of some of the girls, but this reflects no universal natural law governing the proper age for sexual activities shared across time and societies.  Friar Laurence married Juliet to Romeo at 13, and even her own father only wanted her to wait two more years.  The tragic consequences of the union had nothing to do with their age, but with the parents’ efforts to manage the relationships of their children for political and economic reasons.  What we see as “correct” in these situations changes over time.  Dreher can claim that his way is best, but no empirical reason exists to privelege his normative preferences over that of others: what he says is “bad” only qualifies because…he says it’s “bad.”

I don’t know the guy, so I’ll resist the urge to suggest that Dreher’s real worry is that someone else is having more fun than he is.  He would be correct to point out that sex can bring pain to people’s lives, and that too much of even the most fulfilling activity can cause problems.  But it is unfair to paint less traditional norms about sex generally, and homosexuality more specifically, as scourges of human existence.  On the other hand, it is fair to say that if Rod Dreher thinks that people having more sex than he thinks they should will destroy society then he is fixated on sex.  Sex is only inappropriate, or sinful, or shameful, because a lot of people like Dreher say it is.  If they would all just stop thinking about it so much, many of these problems might go away.

Tags: Culture Wars, Homosexuality, Marriage, Religious Conservatives, Sex