[This is a response to the piece “On Women’s New ‘Right’ to Have ‘Sex Like Men, ” which Rahul Sur published in Fair Observer on December 17, 2023.] 

After more than half a century of the sexual revolution, are women happier with their lives? Are men happier? Has it brought them to where they want to be?

The responses to such questions depend on who answers. Does the individual have a “secular” worldview of no religious persuasion? Or does he or she have a “religious” worldview, belong to a faith persuasion, such as Christianity — which continues to be the dominant religion of the Western world even though some say we live in post-Christian times? Their answers will be different because devout Christians live by a radically different sexual morality than the secularly minded. This is a distinction often overlooked by commentators on the behavioral outcomes of the sexual revolution. 

Developments in the sexual revolution seem to be slowing down, even brought to a pause by women asking, “Where have all the good men gone?” The answer, again, depends on what kind of woman is asking and what her way of life or worldview is. This shapes what constitutes the “good” to her and whether she perceives this “good” in a man who might “interest” her as a future partner.

Christian ethics overthrew pagan ethics but were overthrown themselves

The sexual revolution we’re now experiencing seeks to overthrow the first, Christian revolution in sexual ethics, which Jesus’s disciples brought to the Roman Empire in the first centuries AD. It positioned itself as a second and secularizing revolution in sexual ethics. The first was a revolution in sexual ethics that immediately improved the lives of women, wives, children and even the empire’s slaves by reigning in the promiscuous sexual habits of men and directing them to “good” and noble ends as defined by Christian morality. 

Up until the 19th and 20th centuries, what broadly constituted the good and prudent in Western societies had been developed by appeals to man’s natural but God-given reason, as guided by Church tradition. Christianity, however, has not been without its enemies, even from within Western societies, over the centuries. Secular alternatives to the Church’s moral teachings arose in the Age of Reason (roughly 1650–1850) among philosophical rationalists.

Later, romanticists and atheistic socialists, notably Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, intensified this opposition. In their writings, Marx and Engels targeted numerous “bourgeois” institutions for abolition in their future communist Utopia, particularly the elimination of marriage, the nuclear family, religion (namely Christianity), and private property (which makes the others possible).

Even though the organization of Russian life according to Marx’s dialectical materialism proved disastrous over the first half of the 20th century, his intellectual disciples, who had become entrenched in university faculties across the Western world, remained undeterred. They believed that the above institutions must be abolished to emancipate men and women from “bourgeois” Christian oppression, which leaves them feeling alienated and un-self-actualized. Marx’s disciples, having become critical theorists, turned his socio-economic revolution into a sexual revolution, armed with the contraceptive pill and abortion, and rolled these out into the lives of unsuspecting Christian families in the 1960s. The descent from the universities of these new sexual ideas was radically incompatible with the Christian worldview of the times, and they continue to be incompatible with Christianity today.

Although Western citizens live in the shadow of this revolution, secular voices are publicly expressing skepticism on whether the sexually liberated society we’ve evolved into is making us better. Is it good for us? Are women and men happier with their lives? Are our ideals being realized? Let us consider some research findings to help estimate whether we’re better off and happier. I will draw from information published by Cardus of Canada (a non-partisan think tank) from the document “The Canadian Marriage Map.”

The phenomenon of divorce

The rise in the phenomenon of divorce tells a damaging story. In 1960, the Canadian divorce rate hovered around 5%. By 2000, that number ballooned to over 40%. That’s a 700% increase in 40 years. As of 2019, the percentage of children aged one to 17 who have experienced the divorce or separation of their parents stood at around 18% in Canada. What these numbers indicate is that many are living with the destruction of the nuclear family, which sociologists say is society’s foundational unit. Is this dismantling of the family good for society? Is it making people happier? Or is it, instead, a victory for the disciples of the sexual revolution? 

So, what do Christian morals say about divorce? Let us consider Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 19):

³ The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

⁴ And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He [God] who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’ ⁶ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

⁷ They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”

⁸ He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹ And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

¹⁰ His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

In a sense, the disciples’ response is essentially what current advocates of domestic partnerships think: If divorce is a problem, then we simply need to get rid of marriage. Individuals will then be free to enter and leave sexual relationships at will, with minimal encumbrances. Note, however, that Jesus didn’t say to the Pharisees that divorce is the problem, but rather their “hardness of hearts,” their unwillingness to love the women they’re joined to in marriage. This is significant because such hardness“wasn’t “from the beginning,” as God had intended when he created the world. 

The opposite of such hardness is expressed in the following passage on love, often read at weddings, from the first letter of Paul the Apostle to the church of Corinth (chapter 13):

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Jesus speaks to the Pharisees about love, not divorce or marriage, which even his disciples couldn’t understand until later. 

Decline of the institution of marriage

Statistics on marriage tell us much about how the sexual revolution has impacted society. Consider some numbers on marriage as a family structure from “The Canadian Marriage Map.” 

Over a 40-year period (1981-2021), family structure has moved significantly away from the “nuclear” form.

The married couple as the ideal family structure dropped by 22% in 40 years. And then, the tenuous form of the common-law couple grew a staggering 217%. The one-parent family nearly doubled at 45%. So, are these changes in family structure good for society? Are they making people happier? Is this a victory for sexual revolutionaries? 

Let us now examine what’s happened in the recent 25-year period regarding the typical marrying cohort of adults aged 20 to 34. 

In just 25 years, the number of married Canadians in this age cohort plummeted by 40%, while common-law marriages mushroomed by 35%. This means that, in 2021, only one out of five in this age cohort were married or living in common-law relationships, and nearly two out of three remained unattached. It should be surprising that Canada’s fertility rate, like many other Western nations, has dropped to a critically low level. 

The following question was put to two different age cohorts of Canadians in 2016: 

The overwhelming majority said that marriage positively contributes to family life, whereas the older cohort holds marriage in slightly lower regard than the younger. Interestingly, nearly one out of four adults of both cohorts don’t know what value marriage contributes to family life. Has the Canadian experience of high divorce rates contributed to this neutrality or ambiguity? In 2002 and 2016, the following question was put to Canadian adults: 

Again, while the majority consider marriage a relevant institution, it was significantly diminished by 2016. In a mere 14-year period, the value of marriage dropped by 23%. The staggering 156% increase in “neutral/unsure” indicates that nearly one out of four adults don’t know what marriage is. The inability of so many to answer the question is deeply disturbing, since good marriages and happy families are the building blocks of a healthy society, as sociologists have found. In our highly post-secondary educated population, how can these findings not be common knowledge? Is ignorance of this a victory for proponents of the sexual revolution? 

In 2018, Canadians were asked to respond to the following statement on the difference between marriage and common-law unions.

The percentages show clear polarization in responses to this proposition, leaving few undecided. The Yeas, however, did outnumber the Nays by a significant margin. Nevertheless, from both a personal and sociological perspective, it is hard to believe that formally exchanging vows of commitment in a public ceremony before family and friends is not to be viewed as a more genuine form of commitment than not doing so by 39% of respondents. Is the high divorce rate causing many to have a diminished view of the nuptial bond? Even in light of this, 57% agreed” that married unions keep trending lower, while tenuous common-law relationships trend higher. Are these trends good for society? Are they making people happier? 

Development over the past half-century of the sexual revolution is how the average age of first marriages has changed. In 1971, it was 24 for men and 22 for women, and by 2008, it had increased to 31 for men and 30 for women, which is much later in their fertile years. Many young people admit they have no plans to marry or have children. Are these victories for the sexual revolution? 

The statistics bear out the significance of having so few children. Canada’s fertility rate has dropped below 1.3 children per woman, which is well below the critical fertility rate of 2.1 children needed as the natural replacement of a population. Canada has been at this rate since the early 1970s. This means her population growth from 22.2 million in 1972 to 38.5 million in 2022 has been through importing people, not birthing children. The country needs this level of immigration to sustain its material prosperity. How many other Western countries are in the same position? Was this a foreseen outcome by sexual revolutionaries? 

Along with the declining fertility rate, the statistics on “social decline” in the lives of many are sobering to study in terms of increased social isolation (physical), loneliness (psychological), the precipitous rise in mental illnesses, and many forms of addictions. 

The above survey of statistical data helps frame “where” the decades of the sexual revolution have brought Canada and other Western societies. Indeed, where have all the “good” men and “happy” women gone? Was not the Revolution supposed to have cultivated these as it rolled out its social reforms across everyday life? Answers to these questions very much depend on the worldview one embraces.

What role does Christianity play?

Church attendance in predominantly Christian Canada peaked in the 1960s and has been trending downward since. Social researchers find that devout Christians live by sexual norms radically different from nominal Christians, whose ethics are quite similar to those of secular persons. The ethics of a man or woman seeking sexual pleasure as an end in itself is a decidedly secular worldview, which Church authorities say is incompatible with Christ’s teachings. The Judeo-Christian view on sexual ethics was normative for Canadian and Western societies until sexual revolutionaries of the 1960s started directing public life down alternative paths. 

What do these Christian norms look like that sexual revolutionaries continually agitate to overthrow and remove from public discourse? Their goal is to make Christian norms unknown, thus, no threat to their “alternative” prescriptions.

We can find out what Christian sexual norms look like from Paul’s letter to the church of Rome (chapter 1). Here, he makes plain what Christians are not supposed to be doing with their bodies, whether male or female. In the passage, Paul focuses on those who have become Christians but continue to refuse to live according to the sexual teachings of the Church, even during a time when many first-hand witnesses of what Jesus taught were still alive:

²⁴ Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. ²⁷ Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

²⁸ And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; ²⁹ being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, ³⁰ backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, ³¹undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; ³² who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

As you can see, Paul does not mince words. He’s emphatic about what Christians are not to be doing with their bodies or minds, which are things that sexual revolutionaries have persuaded many to take up. So, what are Christians supposed to be doing with their bodies, sexually speaking? Let’s look back to the beginnings, to a time that used to be well known to Western Christians through weekly church attendance and catechetical teachings, from before the second sexual revolution had taken place.   

From the book of Genesis (chapter 2), we have the following regarding human origins.

²¹ So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. ²³ The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” ²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

²⁵ Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

In the prehistoric age of Old Testament storytelling, people imagined life to be this way before the original sin. In our contemporary situation, people thought this was how life functioned between men and women before sexual revolutionaries reared their serpentine heads to fill minds with doubts and obfuscations. The “why” and “what” of marriage have become lost to many, along with many truths from Western culture’s sacred texts.

The following passage, again from Paul’s first letter to Corinth (chapter 7), is a refresher from the apostle Paul on the equality of sexual norms for men and women, radical notions in Greco-Roman society at the time:

¹ Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman. ² But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. ³ The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. ⁴ For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. ⁵ Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. ⁶ I say this by way of concession, not of command. ⁷ I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

⁸ To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. ⁹ But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

These words of Paul’s are things a secularly minded person likely struggles to comprehend. Yet, they were the norms of Canadian society only half a century ago, when most citizens were Christians of varying degrees. Likewise, the Christian-minded person struggles to comprehend the sexual liberation advocated by cultural Marxists, as indicated by Paul in another passage to Corinth. (chapter 6): 

¹² “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. ¹³ You say, “Food [sex] for the stomach [body] and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴ By his power God raised the Lord [Jesus] from the dead, and he will raise us also.

¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷ But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. ¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

People used to know these things and were reminded about them by attending Church on Sundays, which have been overturned by the revolutionaries. Sexual misuse of one’s body, the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” is most definitely proscribed for Christ’s disciples.  

Next, let us consider information on the differences between the sexual ethics of Christians and the secularly minded from a recent study published by the American Institute of Family Studies entitled “Putting Things in Order: Relationship Sequencing Preferences of American Women.”

Figure 1, “American Women’s Preferred Relationship Sequencing,” shows women’s “preferred” (that is, ideal) sequencing of relationship events once she has found a man of interest potentially worth marrying. The sequencing of events indicates that the thinking of the sexual revolution has profoundly persuaded American women. A woman first idealizes introducing her newfound man to her family. That seems appropriate. Then, she idealizes having sex with him. Followed by moving in with him. Then, she finally idealizes marrying him. After this, she buys a house with him. Lastly, she idealizes having a child. To the Christian or ordinary American before the sexual revolution, this “preferred” or “ideal” ordering of relationship events would have made no sense. Reckless and immoral behavior would have been condemned, as the Bible and reason counsel. For example, what is supposed to motivate a man to marry a woman who, after introducing him to her family, proceeds to give him all the sex he wants—inside or outside of living together? If he “prefers” (or idealizes) not asking for her hand in marriage, then this leaves her wondering, “Where have all the good men gone?” Her ideal of having children remains even further out of reach. 

Something strange in the study is Figure 2, in which American women gave the highest percentage weight (87%) to their want of “Marriage before Children.” This stood well above their want for premarital sex and cohabitation.  But, unfortunately, American women’s “preferred relationship sequencing” in Figure 1 essentially sabotages their desire for marriage above anything else. How can the presence of this contradiction not be seen as anything other than a victory for the sexual revolutionaries? 

Figure 3 of the study shows a substantial difference between religious and secular women’s “preferred relationship sequencing” regarding marriage and sex for the age range 18 to 44. Religious women (attending religious services monthly or more) idealize marrying before having sex at 65%. For secular women (who never attend religious services), this ideal dropped to 25%. 

What these percentages show is that after half a century of sexual liberation, a significant percentage of secular American women still prefer the conventional, Christian ordering of marriage before sex and children. But these percentages also show that 35% of religious woman put themselves in a moral predicament by engaging in premarital sex in opposition to what their religion or Christianity teaches. An exception to this would be what leaders of “progressive” or “liberal” Churches teach in their theologies and sexual ethics, which tend to align with ideas advanced by sexual revolutionaries. Such progressivism has become common among many Western Churches, but that’s another topic. 

After more than half a century of the sexual revolution, has it brought women and men closer or further from where they want to be in their lives? Are they happier? Answers to such questions are shaped by an individual’s worldview, especially regarding their degree of secularity or religiosity. This is a distinction social commentators would do well to remember when explicating the virtues and vices of the sexual revolution in people’s lives.

[Fair Observer encourages readers to send their thoughtful responses to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com and to the author at adchiarella@gmail.com.]