The words “Puritanical” and “Victorian” are often deployed by libertarians, sex-positive people, and even right-liberals to cast attempts at what I’ll call sexual protectionism in a negative light. Any attempt to hint that our sexual culture should be more constrained, and might benefit women if it were, meets with these terms, and they are often spat out the way one might discard of chewing tobacco, or some other distasteful thing one is ready to dismiss. I have reacted this way, too. I have recoiled at suggestions that the license to sexual libertinism is better off curtailed, the way the Marquis de Sade might have viciously objected to someone taking away his last piece of parchment.
But the natural progression of my spiritual life, my Christian unfolding, has obliged me to admit that I was wrong, and that the other side has a point. I find myself agreeing more and more these days with people I once found repugnant.
A few days ago I revisited one of my favorite panel discussions of all time. Filmed in 1994 on Charlie Rose (himself since felled by #MeToo), it features Christopher Hitchens, Katie Roiphe (one of my heroines), Naomi Wolf (a person I once found repugnant), activist Rebecca Walker, and then-Esquire writer Tad Friend.