Today’s Obsessives

     It’s not that long ago – the fabled “Sexual Revolution” years of the late Sixties and early Seventies – that those who favored uninhibited sexuality uber alles and the steady attenuation of the mores against it liked to style their opponents as “obsessed with sex:”

• If you favored decency in public dress, you were a prude.
• If you advocated premarital chastity, you were Puritanical.
• If you advocated marital fidelity, you were a religious bigot.
• If you deplored homosexuality, you were in the closet.

     Other bits of demotic rhetoric were applied as well, but the hour being what it is, the above are the ones that come to mind. Nothing that followed – NAMBLA; the herpes and AIDS epidemics; the explosion of both abortions and illegitimate births; the demise of the family – sufficed to get the “sexual emissionaries” (Arthur Herzog) to reconsider their positions. And of course nothing could persuade them that those who differed with them were anything but stupid, evil, or both.

     Well, tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Sexual restraint and fidelity have largely disappeared from the West. Indeed, to be in favor of them marks one as “out of step.” (Ask Tim Tebow what that feels like.) The abovementioned consequences are things we’ve sort of learned to live with, though not comfortably. But there are other consequences that remain capable of disturbing even the “liberated” mind.

     Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch will be aware of the explosion of accusations of sexual assault on American college and university campuses. The usual treatment of such accusations is as true beyond refutation, even when they can be disproved by the available evidence. Moreover, the vector points in one direction only: if she claims she’s been assaulted, then it’s unquestionably true. His accusation, if he dares to make one, doesn’t get the same sort of preferential treatment.

     The college campus has become a place where young men hardly dare to tread. (Frankly, I’d counsel an angel against it – a male angel, at least.) But at least we can say with some assurance that while nearly every sort of sexual indulgence has been destigmatized, rape and other forms of sexual assault retain their power to outrage us.

     Have they?

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     Recently there was a debate of sorts over the tide of immigration, particularly Islamic immigration, to the West. Arguing in favor of that tide – the “pro” side – were former UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour and historian Simon Schama. Arguing against it – the “con” side – were UKIP luminary Nigel Farage and columnist Mark Steyn. The entire debate is available on video.

     The part I want to highlight is captured in the snippet below:

     For those who “don’t do video,” here’s the pith of it from Barbara Kay of the National Post:

     To some audience members (not to me, but for example to my furiously tweeting companion, a young colleague who happens to bear the same last name as me), Steyn dwelt excessively on the sexual crimes we’ve all read about in Cologne, Hamburg, Malmö and elsewhere. So it apparently seemed to Arbour and Schama, because they mocked Steyn for it in their rebuttals. Arbour sneered at both Steyn and Farage as “newborn feminists” (she got a laugh), while Schama disgraced himself with “I’m just struck by how obsessed with sex these two guys are, actually. It’s a bit sad, really.” (That got a very big laugh.) I took one look at Steyn’s glowering face after that remark — Schama will regret having said it to his dying day, I know it — and I kind of felt sorry for those two liberals, because I knew what was coming.

     Steyn slowly rose and riposted, in a tone of withering contempt, “I wasn’t going to do funny stuff. I was going to be deadly serious. (But) I’m slightly amazed at Simon’s ability to get big laughs on gang rape.” Vigorous applause. He went on, “Mme Arbour scoffs at the ‘newfound feminists.’ I’m not much of a feminist, but I draw the line at a three year old … and a seven year old getting raped.” Vigorous applause.

     So to the Left, endlessly willing to welcome the destroyers of Western civilization into its bosom, concern about the epidemic of rapes and sexual assaults – in public, at that – being committed by Muslim immigrants with no legitimate claim to “refugee” status constitutes “being obsessed with sex.”

     Who are the obsessives here?

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     There are many attitudes, some subtle and some less so, that one can take to the changes in sexual mores these past fifty years. Mine is complex, flavored by both my religious creed and my overall love of freedom. My own attitudes to the side, it seems clear that some aspects of “sexual liberation” have been negative, both for the societies that have accommodated it and for the individuals that have indulged in it.

     But rape is not “sexual liberation.” Neither is outrage over a torrent of rapes, including public rapes, gang rapes, and rapes of minor children, at all related to one’s personal convictions about sex. That nominally intelligent persons such as Louise Arbour and Simon Schama could characterize such outrage as “obsession with sex” says one and only one thing: They have subordinated all considerations of justice to their politics.

     The anti-Western attitude beneath it all is what matters most. Islam is hostile to Western civilization and its principles. Therefore, he who is virulently opposed to that civilization and those principles will welcome Islam into the West, to aid in its destruction.

     Sex has nothing to do with it.
     “Refugee status” has nothing to do with it.
     “Human rights” have nothing to do with it.

     It’s entirely about winning the day for the Left’s vicious anti-Western, anti-Christian-Enlightenment crusade. If gaining victory requires that they ridicule persons outraged about the Muslim rape epidemic as “obsessed with sex,” they will do so...even as they would condemn the “epidemic of sexual assaults” supposedly occurring on college campuses.

     Islamic nations don’t have a problem with “campus rape,” of course; women aren’t allowed to attend educational institutions. So perhaps there’s some element of consistency there...if you’re a demented Leftist lunatic willing to overlook any and every atrocity in pursuit of your goals. Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, right? Right?

     You are looking directly and squarely at the essence of evil, Gentle Reader. Even those of us inclined to purge our societies of Muslims and Islam at gunpoint would still do so while saying “May God have mercy on their souls.” At the moment I cannot find it in me to wish such Divine mercy on Louise Arbour and Simon Schama.