To be sure, the social background to these movements has changed enormously over the past century and a half. Yet repeatedly, Americans caught in bewildering times have made sense of things primarily with reference to alterations in sexual and family norms, and a perceived widespread sexual disorder. Some Americans have appeared to welcome such disorder, as a sign that ancient hierarchies and discriminations are about to dissolve at last; others have seen it as threatening, even ungodly—the overthrow of all that is natural, a desecration of their parents’ world, the root of all other forms of
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