Unconstrained Sexuality

At the cultural level one of the most revealing indexes of a civilization is the way it orders human sexuality.

When left to itself, human sexuality appears unconstrained and to the innocent mind shockingly polymorphous.  But the hallmark of a society in which all sexual constraints have been set aside is that finally it sanctions homosexuality as well.  This point is hotly disputed today, but is reflected in the wisdom of the ages.  Plutarch, the first-century Greek moralist, saw libertinism to be the third and next-to-last stage in the life-cycle of a free republic before its final descent into tyranny.  Edward Gibbon in eighteenth-century England understood this principle with respect to ancient Rome, but from a historian’s perspective.  Sigmund Freud emphasized the same principle with respect to many cultures in the West — although from a radically secular psychoanalytic perspective.  For him, universal sexual repression was the price of civilization.  Without constraints, civilization would lose its discipline and vitality.  And, of course, the Bible repeatedly shows the effects of unconstrained sexuality, such as its stories of the rise and fall of Sodom, Gomorrah, and indeed Israel itself. …

In sum, it is a simple and sobering fact that no society that has sanctioned unconstrained sexuality has long survived.


Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.17-18