Sexual morality is predicated upon the reality of sexual being, male and female. The morality is inseparable from the reality. If there is no such thing, really, as male and female, only some convenient organs for reproduction, then there is no reason why “a man should leave his mother and father, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.” We have to recover a strong sense of the beauty of each, and of their essence as being-for the other.; man is for woman, and woman is for man, and both are for God. That means we must cease the destructive chatter about “gender roles,” as if they were thoroughly arbitrary and not built upon nature. We must see past the factitious distinction between the natural and the social, because man is by nature a social being, and the societies he builds are predicated upon his nature. . . .
We raise boys and girls, we raise them at once in accord with the sexual nature they possess already and with the flourishing of that nature that we hope to see as they become husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We must always shave that aim in mind. They boyishness of the boy is to come to flowering in manhood and fatherhood. The girlishness of the girl is to come to flowering in womanhood and motherhood. That is what the sexes are for. We want to no longer deny reality. We want to work in harmony with it, shoring up its weakness, confirming its strength, and delighting in its beauty.
Anthony Esolen, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, pg. 95-96
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