Monday, July 16, 2012

How the White House's Promotion of Sexual Expressionism Hurts Women

Helen Alvaré argues in this new piece for Public Discourse that the White House's promotion of an ideology she calls sexualityism - an inelegant neologism to which I prefer the term she also uses, sexual expressionism - not only tramples on religious liberty.  It also - and this is the burden of the essay - is contrary to women's interests and contributes to their immiseration.  
The White House and Sexualityism
by Helen Alvaré
July 16, 2012
Against what social science tells us about human happiness, the government is promoting sexualityism—a commitment to uncommitted, unencumbered, inconsequential sex—as the answer.

Professor Gerry Bradley made a spot-on observation here at Public Discourse that one of the underlying forces driving the HHS abortion, contraception, and sterilization mandate is the current federal ideology of “equal sexual liberty,” embracing the notion that “women will and should have lots more sexual intercourse than they have interest in conceiving children. … [that] sexual license should never impede a woman’s lifestyle, at least no more than it does a man’s.” Elsewhere, I have identified such a position as “sexual expressionism” or “sexualityism” and have defined it to include also the suggestion that sex should not only be free of the slightest reflection on its link with procreation, but also free of commitment, or even the real possibility of a relationship between the man and the woman involved.

In this essay, I propose to examine this ideology, not only from a woman’s perspective, but also from the best scientific evidence we can currently lay our hands on. I will suggest that the insidious “twofer” the White House is currently proposing—trampling religious freedom in order to promote sexualityism—is even worse than doing the latter alone.  READ THE WHOLE ESSAY AT PUBLIC DISCOURSE

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