December 3, 2007
Jane Jimenez
Another writer has put her best words forward, trying to prove the obvious. The title of her book tells us what we already know: Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)
Unfortunately, though, knowing that we are a sex-obsessed culture and witnessing the damage it does to our children will not be enough to compel a cultural change. Politicians, academics and editors refuse to support education that helps teach and mentor children to remain sexually abstinent. What are they waiting for? Research, they say. Research and evidence.
Well, here in her book Prude they get what they want. Carol Platt Liebau is no dummy. Graduating from Princeton, she entered law school at Harvard and served as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her work as a law clerk for a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge launched an impressive succession of legal and policy positions spanning fifteen years.
Evidence? Politicians want research? Fine. Liebau gives them evidence…along with logical argument…she “puts all the facts at their fingertips,” detailing the radical sexual forces assaulting our children.
Kate O’Beirne, Washington editor of National Review can’t say enough about Prude. “All parents want their daughters to be healthy and happy. Smart parents will recruit Carol Platt Liebau to help rescue the girls they love from the destructive forces they face. Liebau sounds an alarm we dare not ignore in her brave, groundbreaking book.”
Groundbreaking? Hardly.
The books keep coming. Each year, one or more valiant writers pull together the facts and give voice to victims of the sexual revolution. Each book lays out the research and the evidence. It is never enough.
In 2000, at only twenty-three years of age, Wendy Shalit published A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. For her effort, she was mocked and ridiculed. Again, in 2007, she wrote Girls Gone Mild, drawing on 100 in-depth interviews and thousands of e-mail exchanges with women from ages twelve to twenty eight. Shalit documents how young women want a culture that affirms and promotes chastity.
In 2005, Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families hit bookstores. Author Pamela Paul investigated the “all pornography, all the time” mentality of many younger men and its ripple effect on the culture. Her in-depth interviews confirmed what much research shows. Pornography damages relationships, negatively impacts libido and is highly addictive.
In 2006, Dr. Miriam Grossman penned Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. Drawing on her ten years as a psychiatrist at the student health service at UCLA, she is armed with facts, evidence and research that disprove the tenets of the liberated sex mantra preached on college campuses. No wonder that Dr. Grossman feared professional retaliation and listed the official author as “Anonymous, M.D.”
Dr. Margaret Meeker, a pediatrician for more than twenty years specializing in treating adolescents, has written several titles on teens and sex. In Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing our Kids, she presents research on the physical and emotional consequences of teen sex and makes these facts come alive through stories about the teens she has treated.
These books, and many others, evidence a large body of scientific research documenting the destructive consequences of “liberated sex”. They support the need to restore sexual abstinence as an expected standard for our children and to set cultural norms affirming this goal. Research is available to show that effective abstinence education programs are doing just that.
But the facts, the research and the evidence are not enough to satisfy the demands of those defending our sexualized culture. The facts are never enough…for a very simple reason.
The sexual revolution in the 60s was not founded on facts, research and evidence. It was founded to give us what we wanted. Embracing birth control and abortion on demand, human sexual behaviors of all kinds were defined as positive and empowering. Sexual self-control was defined as negative and unnecessary.
These definitions are self-justifying. One cannot fight a definition by using research. A chair is defined as a place to sit, not because research proves it true. A chair is a chair…because I said so.
If a woman says sexual promiscuity harmed her, by the modern definition of liberated sex, she is simply repressed. She is immature…”because I said so.” By definition, sex is good. Liberated sex is better.
What about a research study of a thousand women who say sexual promiscuity harmed them? Well, they are all repressed…because we said so. The study “proves” these women need to be treated so that they will enjoy liberated sex.
The more we are pushed to gather evidence, the further we drift from the truth. We can pile up research, and we can write a book. Many will laud our efforts to restore common sense and save our young women. But, our book, if not mocked as a puritanical tract, will be ignored by those who hold the power to direct a cultural change.
You may have facts. Unfortunately, though, you will never have enough facts and research. Modern definitions have been chiseled in stone: liberated sex is good sex…and sexual restraint is bad. That’s just the way it is…”because I said so.”