Facing the Adversary World of the Sexual Revolution

Earlier articles two years ago reviewed church historian and Grove City College professor Carl Trueman’s discussion of his incisive and popular book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. His most recent book, published earlier this year, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, covers the same ground, but in a more concise form.

The new book is focused on how traditional sexual morality, and the freedoms of religion and speech which protect it, have come to be understood by opinion leaders and much of society not only as mistaken, but as intolerable, and properly, illegal.

The Inward Directed Self

Key to explaining this, Trueman believes, is the changed notion of the self. While until the mid-twentieth century an individual was to be defined in a way that was outwardly directed, toward family, church, nation, and ultimately, God, a confluence of increasingly influential ideas has led to individuals being defined by their inner feelings and desires. Chief among these ideas is the replacement of a transcendent orientation, which explains life by reference to a sacred order – in Christian society, by reference to God and his ordering of creation – with an imminent frame of reference, which understands the world, at least as far as can be publicly known, as purposeless “stuff,” with no particular way things ought to be ordered. Since sexual desire is among our strongest impulses, securing its satisfaction has become for many the chief moral imperative.

The earliest ideas Trueman identifies come from the Romantic era in literature, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century France and England. Jean Jacques Rousseau is the key figure here. His thought begins with the rejection of belief in original sin. The problem people suffer from is not sin, he thought, but the restraints of social convention, which prevent people from being truly themselves, with emotions and desires attuned to the natural environment. Human nature is real and good, and the only corruption people have is that wrought by society. The ideal of the “noble savage” was advanced, in which people can freely express outwardly that which they are inwardly. This now goes by the common name “expressive individualism.”

The emphasis on nature was shared by an early English feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, who saw the contemplation of nature as key to ethical formation. Her husband, William Godwin, was a bitter opponent of Christian sexual morality, who held that its restriction of sexual intercourse to lifelong monogamy was oppressive and destructive of a good life. Their daughter, also named Mary, was the wife of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and author of the novel Frankenstein, which speculated on horrors that might result from an artificially constructed human-like creature.

German philosophy of the nineteenth century then dispensed with both the ideas of God and human nature, through the thought of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. Hegel argued that human consciousness, the awareness of the world in which we live, changes over time, while Marx denied a fixed human nature, holding that consciousness is entirely dependent on economic forces. Nietzsche emphasized that the idea of God is no longer plausible, and if it is not, there can be no eternal, absolute morality, nor any morality based on anything other than the preferences of those who have the power to impose their preferences as moral imperatives.

Sexual Desire as Central to Personal Identity

Since, as noted above, sex is one of the strongest biological drives, the liberation of sexual desire and behavior is a central, perhaps the central, objective of popular culture today. Under the influence of Sigmund Freud, sex is now assumed to be central to understanding human happiness, and central to understanding who a person is. One’s sexual proclivities and activity are no longer understood as an aspect of one’s life, but rather as one’s core identity. Freud realized that although the frustration of sexual desire necessarily means unhappiness, sexual desire must in some degree be frustrated to have a civilized existence. Sexual energy is diverted into cultural development, but because people cannot have everything that they really want, there must be a degree of unhappiness in the world. 

It is at this point that the stream of ideas coming from Freud was affected by Marxism. It holds that human consciousness is entirely dependent on historical circumstances. If all human desires cannot be satisfied in the world’s present condition, that does not mean that it is impossible. The sexual revolutionaries Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse sought to liberate Freud’s “pleasure principle” (of seeking please and avoiding pain) from his “reality principle” (of tailoring one’s life  to realities that frustrate one’s desires). When this is done, the authority of the family and traditional religion will be destroyed, and social engineers can re-engineer humanity using instrumental reason  with the power of rapidly developing technology. 

The re-engineering project involves turning morality on its head. In traditional religions and moralities, the focus is on the duty of the individual in light of some view of a reality with moral order. If on the other hand, moral order is lacking in nature, then gratification becomes the basis of morality, if not by necessary choice, at least gratification is popular, and can be made to seem the most reasonable choice. Problems with the new morality, such as disease resulting from promiscuity, are to be resolved technically, not by sexual restrictions. In traditional morality, it is sexual misbehavior that impairs personal dignity; in the new morality, it is sexual restrictions that impair personal dignity. It is now those still trying to live by moralities of duty and self-denial who are to be penalized. 

Cultural Collapse and the Threat to Freedoms of Religion and Speech

The result of rapid technological change, affluence, consumer culture, the waning power of traditional authorities (of family, church, and nation), and activist campaigns for different liberations has been cultural collapse. This is as yet not complete, but culture is giving way to a “liquid world” of constant change inhabited by “plastic people” who are constantly changing even their deepest ideas and behaviors in line with current fashion, or in some cases, state requirement.

It is in this world that the LGBTQ+ revolution has cultural dominance. Trueman shows that the components of this coalition, like the marriage of Marxism and Freudianism, is a “marriage of convenience.” He notes that “until the early 1980s, lesbians and gay men did not operate as a united coalition.” In particular, the former not uncommonly regarded the latter as still “enjoying male privilege.” It was the AIDS epidemic that enabled “a shared sense of victimhood.”  Yet there is also a commonality between these two components in the claim of a right to be outwardly what one is inwardly. That Romantic commitment has naturally led to the most radical component of the coalition, transgenderism.

Transgenderism, as Trueman notes, conflicts with the LGB identities, because they depend on the reality of sex. Yet transgenderism is dominate in Leftist thinking, because it can lay claim to the liberationist ideal of being outwardly what one is inwardly. This writer would add that it may be dominate as well because it is the most socially disruptive. As Trueman notes, prohibiting adverse judgment against homosexuality affects traditionally religious people (e.g., those who are bakers, florists, or photographers). But doing the same for transgenderism affects society at large, destroying privacy in public rest rooms, women’s sports, safety in women’s prisons or homeless shelters, and attacking parental rights (where a minor child demands that his or her sexual development be inhibited, or sexual anatomy mutilated).

Trueman then goes on to discuss what has become the legal manifesto of LGBT liberation, The Yogyakarta Principles. Formulated in 2006 by two non-governmental bodies in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, they define both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” on the basis of subjective feeling and desire, and external behavior based on such feeling and desire. The principles further claim that “each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is integral to their personality … dignity and freedom,” and “everyone has a right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.” Essentially, attacking homosexuality or transgenderism is an attack on what a person properly is, and acceptance of LGBT identities should be required by law.

Trueman correctly notes these demands are impossible to meet, because sexual orientation and gender identity are “plastic.” They are changeable (else people could be classed sexually against their will). Thus, the law cannot possibly accommodate the Yogyakarta Principles, consistently applied. They will be applied according to cultural taste. It also does not make the principles any more workable that this wild irrationality might seem to be confined to sex. With the advent of transgenderism, it is impossible to say what sex is, since it is in principle divorced from the body. He notes that anything would quality as an object of “sexual attraction” – “a woman, a frog, a cardboard box.” Self-assertion is now the basis for being a member of a “protected class,” immune from adverse public and private judgment based on the class’s defining characteristic, whatever that is.

But however inconsistent the principles behind sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws are, they are being used to make self-assertion a basis for requiring acceptance of sin and falsehood. Freedoms of religion and speech would protect against this requirement, and, Trueman shows, because of that, both freedoms are endangered. Sexual sin in general, and homosexuality and identification with the opposite sex (transgenderism) in particular, are considered to be among the gravest sins in Christianity, and in many other religions. But according to the ideology of the sexual revolution, self-defined sexual desires and behavior are essential to personal integrity. Similarly, free speech is intolerable because it presses on people ideas that many find a direct attack on their identity. Speech against liberationist doctrines only benefits a world of personal oppression. Free speech must be banned (and forced speech at times required) either because liberationist ideology is assumed to be right, or because the pain of alleged victims establishes that it is right.

Christian Response

This brings Trueman to his final consideration, which is how are Christians to respond to a world dominated by an adversary philosophy in which their faith is either not understood or held to be evil. His basic answer is in line with the writings of Rod Dreher: a strong Christian community. Like Dreher, he points out the degree to which today’s traditional Christians have absorbed the ideas of personal choice and fulfillment of the adversary popular culture. Choice of one’s church may be made on the basis of what suits the life of the individual or family (e.g., it has a good youth program), the prosperity gospel has been popular with a segment of the world coming out of Evangelicalism, and, this writer would add, there seems to be an increasingly broad Biblical basis discerned for divorce and remarriage, if indeed one exists.

Cultural engagement has been one theme struck in response to a secularizing and debased culture. But this writer would add that neither accommodation nor debate seems to have worked very well; indeed, accommodation runs the risk of compromising Christian faith. As a point of reference from the past, Trueman suggests that neither the High Middle Ages nor the Reformation is a good choice in responding to the adversary world in which Christians now live. He proposes the Second Century A.D. instead. Like Christians in that century, today’s Christians are faced with a world which greets their faith with incomprehension and/or hostility. As testimony against and engagement of this, both the New Testament, and the early post-apostolic writings emphasize church life.

Such a community will 1) teach the whole counsel of God, indeed currently controversial issues, but not just “hot button” issues, 2) shape intuitions through Biblical worship (for many, intuitions are now being shaped by a popular culture of gratification), and 3) emphasize natural law and the theology of the body (sexual ethics appealing to the physical reality of who we are, not our wishes and inclinations). To this list should be added the determination not to comply with sinful requirements, regardless of the penalty, legal or social. Without this, Christianity will be absorbed into the new pagan world.

In summary, it is worth considering what has been accomplished by the sexual revolution. It is not entirely surprising, since it began with the rejection of original sin. The revolutionaries are right that sex and sexual sin are deeply embedded in human beings, but wrong to think that this makes sin righteous. As this writer observed several years ago, the sexual revolution has made sins into rights. Essentially, what is proposed is an inverted morality, based on self-assertion rather than duty. The triumph of transgenderism in the overculture of the academy, the news media, entertainment, the corporate world, and now the executive branch of the federal government signals that what is crucially important is self-will set against restraint, even when earlier liberations (e.g., those of women and the earlier LGB alliance) are cast aside by the latest repudiation of authority. But it is the nature of revolutions following the radical ideas of the French Revolution to destroy their children. Nothing else can be expected where authority, tradition, science and reason are cast aside in the interest of self will.

It is, indeed, a strange new world. But one in which Christians must live and engage with faith in God, using Scripture, reason, and the testimony of holy lives.