What caused the 'sexual revolution?'

[edwest2]

There have been people like that throughout history. If the general population hadn’t been open to the ideas, it would have died a quick death.

Lies are spread. Look at Nazi Germany. Remember, the primary enemy, the Bolsheviks, were in the East, so Germany attacked Russia. At first, the people did not know or couldn’t believe what was to come. Now, the Federal Government in the US is doing its best to destroy the family and force Christians to act against their own conscience.

Peace,
Ed

 

[manualman]

Lies are spread. Look at Nazi Germany. Remember, the primary enemy, the Bolsheviks, were in the East, so Germany attacked Russia. At first, the people did not know or couldn’t believe what was to come. Now, the Federal Government in the US is doing its best to destroy the family and force Christians to act against their own conscience.

Ed, I need help following your reasoning here. Can you elaborate? Usually I can follow you, even if I don’t agree. Not this time. Help!

Forum rule #1. Anytime you bring Hitler into the argument, you better be bringing your A game. Most people shut down the moment Nazis are mentioned.

 

[Seeker1961]

It’s not about putting the sexual revolutionaries “in a good light.” It is about recognizing that they are human beings. Good, but fallen. Not so different than me and you. They didn’t spring, black and shriveled from the loins of Satan himself, they were produced in large numbers by a culture that was already terribly wounded.

I’m glad your parents pulled it off. It CAN be done with the help of Grace, of course. But an awful lot of WWII survivors never really healed. My grandfathers never really did. Both were alcoholics, one I’m pretty sure was unfaithful while in Europe and the marriage never recovered (forum anonymity allows this sort of frankness without it being gossip). No wonder of the 7 kids in that family every single one of them ended up rebelling (some held out a bit longer than the 60’s, actually). More than one of them ended up dead long before their time.

The other gradnfather personally seems to have held it together, but their circle of friends and close relatives sure had its fair share of affairs and adultery. Weekly churchgoers all of them: ushers and Knights of Columbus. Go figure.

People aren’t our enemies, Ed. The devil is the enemy. People embrace evil by being deceived. And the best lies always have at least a tiny element of truth in them. The sexual revolutionaries didn’t witness genuine purity and chastity and reject it. They fell for the devil’s lie that if they saw one person close to them who ‘said’ he believed in chastity, but didn’t live it, that the whole system was a sham and a lie. Who’s best at calling the truth lies? Man or the beast?

This makes the most sense of anything I’ve read on this thread. A lie is best hidden between two truths. People will fall for it most easily that way-and who would know that better than the Father of all Lies.

 

[edwest2]

Ed, I need help following your reasoning here. Can you elaborate? Usually I can follow you, even if I don’t agree. Not this time. Help!

Forum rule #1. Anytime you bring Hitler into the argument, you better be bringing your A game. Most people shut down the moment Nazis are mentioned.

I’m not concerned about most people in this case. Totalitarian regimes always start small and then they find a group they can bully, like Christians are today. The US Government is forcing people to buy a product and service that goes against their conscience. Do you get that? The hedonists are pushing their agenda to all politicians, and even getting our President to agree. We are slipping from a Democracy to a Totalitarian system run by a very small group of people.

Peace,
Ed

 

[SgtSchultz]

It was all carefully planned and financed by individuals who wanted to see the United States turn away from God and to a life of constant sexual immorality and general hedonism. They have names and still exist today.

I’ll say it for the umpteenth time, the sexual revolution was not something confined to the US. It was a cultural thing, a bad cultural thing cause by bad ideas that were going around for a long time. If it was all about you, why does it affect others? Why would some phantom group waste their time and effort if they were only interested in attacking you? It does not follow.

Now, the Federal Government in the US is doing its best to destroy the family and force Christians to act against their own conscience.

No, the US government is enacting policies that people elected them to enact. That’s how it works. Otherwise you’ll have to admit that your electoral system and form of government is a sham (which it kind of is compared to other first world countries).

We are slipping from a Democracy to a Totalitarian system run by a very small group of people.

Interesting. But I think I’ve heard this before. Oh yeah, that’s right! I’ve heard it from the left under Bush! Funny…how can both of them be bringing you towards totalitarianism? Really, these polemics aren’t even worth the time of day. I sure hope that you either don’t ever vote, or vote for a party other than Democrat or Republican, otherwise you’re creating a hell of your own choosing. Because it seems like they’re both just two steps away from goosestepping, forced collectivisation of farms, and calling each other comrade.

 

[Robert_Sock]

I’m not concerned about most people in this case. Totalitarian regimes always start small and then they find a group they can bully, like Christians are today. The US Government is forcing people to buy a product and service that goes against their conscience. Do you get that? The hedonists are pushing their agenda to all politicians, and even getting our President to agree. We are slipping from a Democracy to a Totalitarian system run by a very small group of people.

Peace,
Ed

There’s an invisible pendulum in our society that swings as it may, destroying everything in its path, including people. This is a very turbulent period in human history. Trying to stop this pendulum is like suicide. The pendulum is controlled by an upper world, unbeknown to us.

 

[FaithBuild18]

Prior decades. Unless you can show women speaking openly about their sexuality in print, media and home life in the 1940s and 50s. Squashing tends to lead to repression. Psychology 101.

History 101. Women were no more repressed during the 40s and 50s than they were in the thousands of years of human history leading up to that era. Your argument about sexual repression causing an outburst of sexuality is immature, unfounded, and fantastical. Perfectly dreamt up by the post-modern radical left-wing feminist.

The guy who said WWII was an important factor was correct, as is the guy who said it was the realization of women, after they had to work in factories, that they could exist without the dependency on men. The sexual revolution and feminism cannot be separated. When you get down to it, the sexual revolution was a choice made by humans to reject the Lord and embrace the self, commandeered exclusively by women and those who sympathized with their false liberation. The sexual revolution was simply the sexual component of women’s rebellion against the standards of the time, and man’s choice to go along with it. It is exactly parallel to the garden of Eden. What tempted them? A taste of the forbidden fruit of independence.

 

[bri89]

The “sexual revolution” is primarily an anglo phenomenon, U.S and U.K. It was a reaction against anglo-prudery, repression and the puritanical view that sex is filthy. We still have maintained the view that sex is filthy except now we revel in the filthiness; porn ads are often filled with words like “filthy, naughty, dirty” which are the same descriptions the Puritans would have probably used. In America, we have never really had a healthy attitude to sex, we’re either too prudish or too pornographic.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

With due respect for the opinions expressed here, none of the respondants have expressed the historical antecedants of the current societal phenomena of “Sexual Freedom”.
If we look back to our earliest English Colonial Period, the 1600’s, there were no females in the initial Jamestown settlement of 1607. They came later and family life prospered. However, by the mid to late
1600’s, sexual morals became much more lax largely because of the immigration of the lower classes to Virginia. Morals in New England were different because it was settled by religious families.
Around 1700, the sexual pendulum swung the other way, and there was a period of morality. Then in the late 1700’s about the time of the American Revolution, sexual attitudes were quite loose. It is known today that many of our Founding Fathers were horrendous womanizers.
Then, about the time Victoria ascended the throne in England, the infamous Victorian Era began. There was a brief loosening up during the American Civil War, where over 30% of both the Union and Confederate armies were inactivated because of severe venerial disease. In the aftermath of the CW, things tightened up a bit, but it was only outward. from about the 1880’s until women got the right to vote in 1920, there wasn’t a town in the US that didn’t have a wide open brothel. In fact, the brothels were the gentlemens clubs of that era. It was only after the women could vote that officials closed down the brothels.
Prohibition led the way for Americans to flaunt the law and convention. This, plus the wide spread ownership of automobiles led to the so-called sexual revolution. The only thing that kept traditional sexual morality in check was the fear of pregnancy. That ended with the invention and wide spread use of “the pill”.
Today, I think we are on the verge of having the moral pendulum swing the other way. A huge portion of the American people have had it with the moral excesses of the past 40 years. This particularly evident in the attitudes of young people under 35 and a large number of States have moved to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
Church attendance of all faiths have dramatically increased in the past few years, and the anti-Catholicism of the Obama administration can well be the trigger to spark a full fledged return to sexual morality. When this happens, “homosexual marriage”, will have become a thing of the past-a fad, as it were. And, as far as public homosexuality, the gays will not return to the closet, they will be under its floor… wishful thinking? Just look at history!
When this happens

 

[Dawnia]

Today, I think we are on the verge of having the moral pendulum swing the other way. A huge portion of the American people have had it with the moral excesses of the past 40 years. This particularly evident in the attitudes of young people under 35 and a large number of States have moved to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
Church attendance of all faiths have dramatically increased in the past few years, and the anti-Catholicism of the Obama administration can well be the trigger to spark a full fledged return to sexual morality. When this happens, “homosexual marriage”, will have become a thing of the past-a fad, as it were. And, as far as public homosexuality, the gays will not return to the closet, they will be under its floor… wishful thinking? Just look at history!
When this happens

Do you really think that it will swing back the other way so soon? Just in the last 10 years it seems the pendulum has split in two and we have two completely polar opposite ideals. I could see a confrontation between the two factions before I see a shift in attitudes.

 

[SgtSchultz]

History 101. Women were no more repressed during the 40s and 50s than they were in the thousands of years of human history leading up to that era. Your argument about sexual repression causing an outburst of sexuality is immature, unfounded, and fantastical. Perfectly dreamt up by the post-modern radical left-wing feminist.

The guy who said WWII was an important factor was correct, as is the guy who said it was the realization of women, after they had to work in factories, that they could exist without the dependency on men. The sexual revolution and feminism cannot be separated. When you get down to it, the sexual revolution was a choice made by humans to reject the Lord and embrace the self, commandeered exclusively by women and those who sympathized with their false liberation. The sexual revolution was simply the sexual component of women’s rebellion against the standards of the time, and man’s choice to go along with it. It is exactly parallel to the garden of Eden. What tempted them? A taste of the forbidden fruit of independence.

Well, the term “feminism” has changed so much since it was first coined. In the days of Pankhurst and Anthony, it meant equal respect and the right to vote. It was anti-abortion and anti-licence. It was not misandrist. It was pro-feminity. If the original feminists were alive today, they’d refuse association with the term.

Today, I think we are on the verge of having the moral pendulum swing the other way. A huge portion of the American people have had it with the moral excesses of the past 40 years. This particularly evident in the attitudes of young people under 35 and a large number of States have moved to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Church attendance of all faiths have dramatically increased in the past few years, and the anti-Catholicism of the Obama administration can well be the trigger to spark a full fledged return to sexual morality. When this happens, “homosexual marriage”, will have become a thing of the past-a fad, as it were. And, as far as public homosexuality, the gays will not return to the closet, they will be under its floor… wishful thinking? Just look at history!
When this happens

I pray you’re right! I also hope it doesn’t swing back to Victorian times, but back to a reasonable centre ground.

Also, there are examples of the pendulum going back well before the 1600s. The 4th century was also a time of excess.

Do you really think that it will swing back the other way so soon? Just in the last 10 years it seems the pendulum has split in two and we have two completely polar opposite ideals. I could see a confrontation between the two factions before I see a shift in attitudes.

Well, you have to have opposite ideas for something to change. If no ideas change, mores don’t change. There were polar opposite ideals back when it was swinging to the excesses of today as well.

 

[Robert_Sock]

I believe that the sexual revolution was planned in an upper world and then implemented here in our lowly world.

 

[Dawnia]

Well, you have to have opposite ideas for something to change. If no ideas change, mores don’t change. There were polar opposite ideals back when it was swinging to the excesses of today as well.

But will those changes occur without violence?

 

[FaithBuild18]

If the original feminists were alive today, they’d refuse association with the term.

Amen, amen! Indeed my friend, you are right.

 

[didymus]

The “sexual revolution” came about due to easy access to the birth control pill in the '60’s.

You have to go a lot farther back:

The Protestant Revolution: no Pope → everybody is his own Pope → do your own thing.

The “Enlightenment” the displace faith with reason, abolish tradition in all spheres of life and, possibly worse, the rise of the modern nation-state.

The rise of capitalism which while unsurpassed for creating wealth wreaked havoc on the social fabric and destroyed the ways people related to each other. It has finally led to our consumer culture in which children are no longer a blessing but a liability to be avoided (ABC, abortion) or consumer goods to be bought (IVF, &c).

 

[SgtSchultz]

I believe that the sexual revolution was planned in an upper world and then implemented here in our lowly world.

Definitely the Illuminati or the Masons.

But will those changes occur without violence?

The people who support the culture of lasciviousness we see today aren’t the kind who are willing to fight for much. They might camp out in a park and not bathe, but fight? Nah.

The Victorian era embraced change without violence. We might see (indeed we are seeing) information wars, propaganda campaigns, lawfare, and the like. But physical violence? I doubt it.

The “Enlightenment” the displace faith with reason, abolish tradition in all spheres of life and, possibly worse, the rise of the modern nation-state.

Aye, the Enlightenment. Did nothing good come of it though? And the nation-state definitely did play a big role. What did Chesterton say about rabid nationalism? “My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying My mother, drunk or sober.”

The rise of capitalism which while unsurpassed for creating wealth wreaked havoc on the social fabric and destroyed the ways people related to each other. It has finally led to our consumer culture in which children are no longer a blessing but a liability to be avoided (ABC, abortion) or consumer goods to be bought (IVF, &c).

I’d say parts are due to capitalism in the vague sense, but specifically I’d point the blame at modern consumerism and materialism (both the philosophical ideology and the capitalist version).

 

[lerapt78]

OP, most of the responses I thought of have already been addressed by other posters. To your original question, I’ll add:

The discovery of penicillen (which cured or at least minimized the effects of many STDs)

Wilhelm Reich (Note his famous book, aptly titled: The Sexual Revolution

 

[Captain_America]

Personally, I think we’d all be better off if no one spoke openly about their sexuality, especially in media. That kind of thing is something that should be private, maybe among your mates at the pub, but definitely in a setting no more public than that.

I’m tired of hearing about people feeling the need to announce their sexual proclivities to the world. They act like it’s their God given right to do so and to demand that others listen. It’s cheap, tawdry, and tasteless. Such people are not right in the head and feel the need to get confirmation of their self-worth from others. It’s quite sad.

Good post. I think, too, that there used to be a thrill to sex, and that this thrill is generally declining among people. McDonaldization of sex leads to cheap burgers and less satisfaction.

Affluence in America helped dissolve family ties and community ties. Much more individualism suggests individual “life styles”, and the existence of a mass market meant, for cultural producers, the avoidance of any moral criticism of their market: why turn off customers by opposing nasty stuff? Instead, seek the lowest common denominator, located just below the belly button.

 

[Captain_America]

re: “repressed women”. . . don’t forget the repressed men.

 

[lerapt78]

re: “repressed women”. . . don’t forget the repressed men.

Errrrr. Not quite the same.