Free Republic

How do you take over an empire? That is a question that I used as a title for a lecture I gave each year in my Ancient Christianity class. The answer is simple to state but somewhat more difficult to achieve in practice: You simply need to control time and space.

Despite all the social developments that have made sex easier (the sexual revolution, dating apps, yassified contraceptives), we still haven’t moved the dial on better. Bad sex has endured. And when I say “bad sex,” I am referring to sex that is quite simply unpleasurable, unsatisfying, or even demoralizing. While older generations are up against many of the same barriers to sexual wellbeing (like purity culture and the enduring impact of inadequate sex education), young people have been uniquely inundated with toxic messaging surrounding sex that has actually disrupted our abilities to feel pleasure. Resource-sharing on platforms like TikTok and...

The debate about abortion isn’t merely about abortion. It is way bigger. It is about the fate of the sexual revolution. Abortion is a necessary part of sexual revolution. While mothers whose lives are endangered/rape and molestation cases are often cited, it is abortion as birth control that account for almost all abortions. Those who made billions, if not trillions, over the last several decades pimping the sexual revolution will throw every ounce of money they can to keep the march and the gravy train going forward. Those who support the sexual revolution, which has returned humanity’s sense of the...

Travesti parties, Vladimir Lenin advocating sexual freedom, nudist anarchists aboard trams, a nude beach near the cathedral of Christ the Savior… such was Russian life at the beginning of the Soviet state. What could possibly go wrong?“Stark naked people wearing armbands reading “Down With Shame!” have recently appeared in Moscow. A group was seen boarding a tram. The tram stopped, the public was outraged,” Mikhail Bulgakov, the famous Russian writer, wrote in his diary in 1924. Just 15 years prior to that, women could not think of going out in a knee-long dress. But did these changes happen overnight?Pre-revolutionary Russian...

Gonorrhea and syphilis cases reached record levels during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data released Tuesday from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The latest figures — part of an ongoing upward trend — follow Congress’ decision last month to provide far less funding to sexual health clinics that provide free and subsidized testing for sexually transmitted diseases, education, contraception and other services than providers say is needed to reverse the current course Gonorrhea cases increased 10 percent in 2020, and syphilis infections were up 7 percent. Congenital syphilis, which had all but disappeared in...

"Identity politics is born NOT out of liberation but out of desperation to find people and create a community in a world where communities were already weakening."

”The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” is back, consistent as ever, gorgeous and immersive, clever and provocative. The show looks and feels as fresh as its first season, which hardly doubles as a critique given how great it was right out of the gate. “Maisel” last aired on Dec. 6, 2019. It was, for me, the final binge before The Great Binge. As Midge moved into the ’60s, America moved into the ’20s. As Midge moved into the sexual revolution, America started questioning it. Watching “Maisel” now feels oddly discordant, like being asked to celebrate the take-off of a plane you know...

There can be no compromise with those whose political program requires erasing American citizens' constitutionally guaranteed rights to freely speak and freely worship. On May 15, Fox News reported that three Republican senators would like to write caveats into the Equality Act that might give them the political cover to vote for the bill to criminalize free speech and Christianity in the United States.“Representatives from the offices of Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Susan Collins, R-Maine, met with groups including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council and American...

Each chapter of the sexual revolution has featured an updated version of the same myth: “Don’t worry, the kids will be fine.” Sex with anyone anywhere? The kids will be fine. Separate marriage from procreation? The kids will be fine. No-fault divorce? The kids will be fine. Graphic sex education in schools beginning in kindergarten? The kids will be fine. Same-sex marriages eliminating either a mom or a dad from the picture? The kids will be fine. They weren’t.Growing up in families without married parents, their well-being sacrificed for the sake of adult happiness, the kids have been the primary...

I remember as a twenty-two-year-old being excited when I saw a new book called the The Mists of Avalon by an author called Marion Zimmer Bradley. Mists was presented as the retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women of Camelot, which I thought was a thrilling idea. However, I found the book heavy on paganism and morbid, explicit sex scenes, but light on romance, heroism, chivalry, mystery, faith and all the qualities I had come to love in the Camelot stories. I never read any of the author's other books and did not care...

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote and catapulted them out of the shadows of dependence into the full sunlight of long-awaited civic freedoms. The right to vote was only the beginning of a long list of goals achieved by the early women’s right movement. It also gained for us the right to control our property, to defend ourselves and our children from abusive husbands, to earn advanced degrees, and join professions reserved for men. But one right the early feminists did not fight for was the right to...

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week released its annual report on sexually transmitted disease (STD) reports for 2018, showing that STDs rose for the fifth consecutive year, reaching an all-time high. In particular, men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately affected by the syphilis and gonorrhea epidemics. Over half of the more serious syphilis cases in 2018 were among MSM, even though they represent a tiny fraction (perhaps 4%) of the U.S. population. Every one of the 2.4 million people diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) in 2018 is a victim of the...

Three major sexually-transmitted diseases reached a historic high in infection cases in 2018, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The combined number of cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis have continued to increase, reaching what the CDC described as “an all-time high in the United States in 2018.” According to a report released Tuesday, the CDC found that from 2017 to 2018, chlamydia cases increased 3 percent to more than 1.7 million cases, the highest number of such cases ever reported to the CDC. Gonorrhea cases increased 5 percent to more than 580,000,...

Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks the fiftieth anniversary of the era-defining event. Some have called for celebrating with another concert. The occasion is hardly a cause for celebration—so many of the cultural changes after Woodstock had catastrophic consequences. Most do not know that the concert was a disaster—even from an organizational point of...

Just as its loudest opponents feared, granting same-sex couples access to marriage has further aligned the hoary institution with sexual choice, helping sever the link between sex and diapers—at just the moment when abortion rights face their greatest test in a generation. If you want to understand the sexual revolution in a nutshell, read Nathaniel Frank’s Washington Post column from a few days ago. He argues that the gay rights movement has been at the forefront of decoupling sex from procreation and of establishing sexual liberation as a driving norm. Frank writes:

Male reproductive health has been in decline since the 1960’s. Once considered a global problem by the 1992 study “Evidence for decreasing quality of semen during past 50 years,”[i] it has been shown that the decline in semen quality is largely limited to Western countries.[ii] Specific studies, largely carried out in the 90′s, showed falling sperm counts: - in Belgium— where the “percentage of candidate donors with sperm characteristics below the 5th percentile cut-off value of a normal fertile population increased from 13 to 54% during the [19 year] observation period.”[iii] - in Canada — where overall sperm quality showed...

The number of U.S. adults not having sex has reached a record high, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the General Social Survey. Twenty-three percent of respondents, or nearly 1 in 4, reported having no sex in the past year, according to the Post. More than 30 percent of adults reported having monthly sex and nearly 40 percent reported having sex weekly or more. Young men between 18 and 30 years of age saw one of the biggest declines in sexual activity, with 28 percent saying they had no sex over the last year. The same data...

Tomorrow is Ayn Rand’s birthday. A lot of people read and become taken with Rand as teenagers. In polls, her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are routinely near the top of “most influential” lists, and organizations like the Ayn Rand Institute, the Atlas Society, and others study and promote her ideas with missionary zeal. What gives? Why? In some circles, she is loved. In many others, she is hated. After all, she led what looks like a pretty miserable life punctuated by a long and bizarre affair with her protege Nathaniel Branden. As Bryan Caplan put it, many of...

About a year ago I saw a feminist program which talked about how virginity wasn't such a big deal and how girls should feel free to experience their sexuality so long as pills, creams, condoms, and legal consent forms were involved. Through the course of the program the act of sex was reduced to little more than a routine biological function akin to going to the bathroom or eating. Ironically, as the program sought to warn girls about being objectified it also managed to reduce men into support systems for penises. And the sole purpose of the penis was clearly...