"SEX IN CRISIS"

By MAGGIE GALLAGHER

Loading new images...

Last updated: 2:17 am
July 6, 2008
Posted: 2:00 am
July 6, 2008

Pity poor Dagmar Herzog.

"This book was an agony to write," she tells us. Dutifully, as part of her high calling as a sexual historian and professor of same at New York University, she forced herself to inhabit "the psychic and sexual universe of the Religious Right." Reading evangelical chastity manuals like "Every Man's Battle" with their potent combination of semipornographic lustful conversion narratives and cheerleading for marital sexual gratification was an experience she found "disturbing" and "exceptionally disorienting," leaving the poor woman "unnerved" and "shaken in ways I could not shrug off."

The daughter of a pastor, Herzog remembers the Bible belt of her youth as "a sensual and beautiful place." The rare Sunday school teacher who spoke about premarital sex "either advocated premarital sex as unproblematic or shared the opinion there was lots of other fun things to do besides intercourse."

That world, she says, has vanished, to be replaced by an insidious conspiracy of powerful evangelicals who have succeeded - succeeded! - in rolling back the sexual revolution and are personally responsible for the sexual anxieties of an entire nation.

Herzog's endlessly repeated premise is that the Religious Right has taken over the sexual culture of the entire country. "In 15 years of steady effort, it managed to undo the most important achievements of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s," Herzog writes.

Really?

Herzog offers just two tiny tidbits of evidence for such astonishing hyperbole. First, even liberals pretend to value abstinence for teens. "The success of the Religious Right is most evidenced in the way many self-defined sexual liberals now rush to concede that a delay in sexual debut is desirable" she laments. "Even those who advocate for comprehensive sex education feel the need to insist that 'abstinence is a laudable goal.' "

Her second proof is visible, she argues, in the eyes of her students. In 1992, Herzog's students at Michigan State University were "remarkably comfortable and forthright, sassy and self-confident, knowledgeable and open-minded." But by the time she left in 2005, students there were "far more hesitant and insecure" with an "astonishing lack of self-ownership" over their sexuality.

All of it is Jerry Falwell's fault. "Over the last 15 years we have experienced a fundamental shift in how we think about sex. The Religious Right succeeded in setting the terms of the conversations about sex in the United States."

To which the only appropriate response is: Huh?

In Herzog's alternate universe, the key date is the advent of Viagra in 1998, which fundamentally changed the sexual culture in some way I still can't figure out, as well as (more plausibly, but still without the additional benefit of a single shred of evidence) the sudden abundance of Internet porn.

It is a shame because Herzog begins by asking some key questions. For example: "Why are people so desperate to be desired - and so dissatisfied with the love they do have?" she inquires. It's a good question. Moreover, there is a serious discussion and critique to be had about abstinence education as well as comprehensive sexuality education in school, AIDS strategy in Africa and gay marriage - not to mention the nature and purpose of human sexuality itself. But none is to be found in Herzog's book.

Maggie Gallagher is president of the National Organization for Marriage (www.nationformarriage.org)

Sex in Crisis