This year, RBC is running a series of articles in the Beacon examining books that might be especially helpful to the life of the Church. We hope you will benefit from these book descriptions and suggestions.
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution
by Louise Perry
My family was zipping down the road, headed to New York City in a minivan. I scrolled through my Kindle to The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, a book I had come across in a podcast. I was intrigued by the author, a non-professing Christian, who came out with some very conservative Christian-sounding statements about marriage and motherhood.
I find myself drawn to books by nonbelievers who state my beliefs in more scientific and statistical ways. Why? Because I believe all truth is God’s truth no matter how we arrive at it, and I love to be surprised where I find it.
As we traveled, I read quietly to myself, at times reading excerpts to my husband, Keith, who was driving. I was drawn in, reading more and more until I ended up reading the whole book out loud to him on our 10-hour journey. My four boys, ages 11-17, catching bits and snatches of the book, were slightly scandalized, suggesting that I need to expand my vocabulary outside the realm of “sex.” The book is probably not the best family read-aloud, but it was too good for me to put down!
We are other than each other.
I was pulled in by Perry in her comparison between the lives of movie star Marilyn Monroe and Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. “The course of these two lives shows us in perfect vignette the nature of the sexual revolution’s impact on men and women” (16). Hefner lived a long, decedent life seemingly never paying for his excesses, while Monroe’s life was cut short by misery and substance abuse.
Perry shows us how the “liberating” of women that happened during the last 50 years was anything but freeing: “The story of the sexual revolution isn’t only a story of women freed from the burdens of chastity and motherhood, although it is that. It is also a story of the triumph of the playboy—a figure who is too often both forgotten and forgiven, despite his central role in this still recent history” (20).
Why do so many women desire a kind of freedom that so obviously serves male interests? What do we lose when we prioritize freedom above all else?
Perry treads boldly where others have feared to go. Just glance down through her chapter headings: “Men and Women are Different,” “Some Desires are Bad,” … and finally, “Marriage is Good.”
I believe that men and women are different, and yet, as we breathe the air of the contemporary sexual revolution, it’s all too easy to think that men and women are the same—or at least should be valued in the same way. When we married in 1994, I believed that I could do almost anything a man could do, but I still wanted my husband to do “male” jobs like taking out the trash. We competed over who should drive, who should change the light bulbs, and who should cook. The list went on. We were a liberated couple, trying to equally divvy out the family tasks, making sure that we were free from stereotypical roles and seeming inequalities. It was a wearisome task.
During this time, Keith gave a talk to the youth group we were leading. He compared a milk jug to a wine glass and talked about treating women as the “weaker vessel” (I Peter 3:7). I never liked being the “weaker vessel.” I wanted to be strong, yet as I heard him talk about treating the wine glass with care and dignity, I began to feel valued as other than, not the same as.
Perry has a chilling quote, “…almost all men can kill almost all women with their bare hands” (50). Men and women are different at a cellular, biological level.
I believe that we find freedom when we explore the nuances of these differences. We are other than each other. We are male and female created in the image of the triune God.
I have chosen to live under God’s commands—in a free, yet not-free state of being. I try to choose His ways. Perry’s book affirmed the sacrifices I have made as a woman and a mother. She writes, “The logic of individualism collapses upon contact with motherhood” (231).
My journey in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution strangely led me to a deeper understanding of the triune God in all His complexity and mystery. In Perry, I found a sister-in-truth, if not yet in faith. She led me to see a fuller and more complete picture of who God is.
Give it a read and let me know what you think!
One Response
Rhoda, outstanding piece, all the more so because of your transparency. I heard someone say a long time ago in reference to human rebellion, “In the end, we don’t really break God’s commands — they break us.”