[maryz]

What are the "two meanings of sex" he is talking about?

One meaning I'm sure you're familiar with (unless you've lived alone in a cave all your life); the other has to do with having babies.

I agree that he could have said it better (if that's not heresy in discussing Steyn, whom I love as much as anyone here does!).

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Thoughtful atheists ought to be able to recognise that, whatever one's tastes in these areas, the Pope was on to something - that abortion et al, in separating the "two meanings" of sex and leaving us free to indulge in one while ignoring the other, have severed us almost entirely and possibly irreparably from traditional impulses, such as societal survival. John Paul II championed the "splendour of truth" not because he was rigid and inflexible, but because he understood the alternative was a dead end in every sense.

How VERY true. And so many broken young women who have learned this the hard way.