The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

immoral and opp...

the normalization of pornography in mainstream culture is deeply connected to the mainstream culture’s rejection of any kind of sacred order.

marks the death of traditional culture and the advent of the anticulture.

on sacred order, and the rise of a third world, built on the rejection of any sacred order whatsoever. It is not

Pornography seeks to make the very concept of modesty a laughable, unrealistic notion in its entirety. Whether

whom the idea is simply a tool used by killjoys to stop others having

fun and being who they want to be, the result is the same: modesty is immoral, and modest people are repressed, incomplete, and less fulfilled than they could or should be.

deepest level. Sex is identity,

sex is politics, sex is culture. And

ce...

to this thinking is the notion that traditional sexual codes that value celibacy and chastity actually militate against authenticity, something that is now intuitive. I noted in the introduction that nobody has to have seen the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin to know that it is a com...

reach forty without being sexually active is indicative of a failed life. That

Where sex is reduced to nothing more than a pleasant biological

function, a recreational activity with no intrinsic significance beyond the

immediate pleasure it involves, and is restricted by nothing more than the often-nebulous...

mutual consent, then human beings are them...

biggest sex educator of young men today is pornography, which is increasingly violent and dehumanizing, and it changes the way men view women.”

Glory to man in the highest! For Man is the master of things.

2015 majority ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a right to gay marriage in the Constitution. This decision captures the spirit of our age in numerous ways, given that it reflects changing attitudes to sex and marriage. Yet the ruling did not arise in a vacuum but represented the culmination of

statement about personal freedom and self-definition that it contained has since become infamous for the way it effectively gives legal status to a subjective and plastic notion of what it means to be a human. Poiesis here triumphs decisively over mimesis.

the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

Serial

killers and child molesters still (thankfully) do not have the right to “define their own concept of existence” in twenty-first-century America. Their right to define

precedent of Roe v. Wade should be upheld because if the Supreme Court allowed its decision to be affected by widespread popular opposition to its decisions, then it would lose its

legitimacy.

belief that certain sexual behavior is immoral and unacceptable—has been basic to the legal regulation of sexual morality since ancient times.

that earlier ruling and the approach in Lawrence v. Texas would seem to indicate the kind of pragmatic approach to legal decisions that a culture of psychologized selfhood and an ethics based on personal happiness would engender.

therapeutic result that needs to be achieved by any plausible means necessary. If society needs abortion rights to keep women happy, then

society requires the affirmation of certain sexual activities and identities to affirm certain classes of individuals, then the law must be made to yield those results—even if the methods used to achieve these two results are inconsistent with each other and perhaps even antithetical.

excluded same-sex partnerships from the federal definition of marriage.

Edith Windsor married her same-sex partner, Thea Spyer, in Ontario, Canada.

Justice Department announced that it would not seek to defend DOMA.

The Supreme Court ruled, by a five-four majority, that section 3 was unconstitutional and thereby effectively overturned the central principle of DOMA, that marriage was to be exclusively defined as being between one man and one woman.

technical legal terms, the court is here claiming that the motivation behind DOMA was unconstitutional animus.

What is striking about this claim is that it effectively denies that there is any rational basis for defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

supporters of traditional marriage have numerous arguments that they would consider rational—for example, the overwhelming consensus of tradition regarding marriage as between one man and one woman and the role of procreation and family life.

latter is highly unlikely; the former requires an act of cultural hubris whereby the elites of contemporary culture have an apparent monopoly on what can be declared rational.

This in itself is an argument that rests on interesting shifts in the notion of what human beings and marriage are for. Under DOMA, every individual enjoyed the same rights and labored under the same restrictions as everyone else.

which equality is defined as the ability of every individual to redefine marriage in the manner in which he or she chooses.

Why can marriage not be between one man and two or more women?

Why should marriage be restricted to a relationship that is exclusively human?

The court essentially affirmed expressive individualism in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, revealed through its flip-flop in the use of legal precedent in Lawrence v. Texas that the principles guiding its rulings were profoundly shaped by the therapeutic outcomes desired by the wider culture,

and demonstrated by an act of willful cultural amnesia in United States v. Windsor

connected both to procreation and to its being a lifelong bond,

traditionally been a two-person union between people of the opposite

When tradition runs counter to the exigencies of contemporary taste—for example, when it defines marriage as between a man and a woman—it is to be dismissed as having no rational basis, as motivated by animus, as perpetuating inequality, as an affront to the dignity of the gay and lesbian community, and as denying fundamental freedoms essential to what it means to be a human.

the extent that marriage has been a keystone of the social order, it has been marriage defined in a particular way, as a lifelong bond between a man and woman until death parts them or

some extreme cause—adultery or abuse—provides grounds for dissolution. It is therefore illegitim...

marriage into something unprecedented and then claim that tradition indicates that this has proved s...

Those parts of tradition that support contemporary tastes are proof positive of the correctness of the opinion; those that are not useful to supporting the desired conclusion or that