WAR ON SEX: No Dancing: The Right Aims to Take Down Sexual Liberation by Amanda Marcotte
There can be no doubt now: this is a war on sex.
More than most campaign seasons in the past couple of decades, this most recent election serves as a reminder that the gap between sexually progressive and reactionary pockets of America persists. If anything, it’s growing, with progressives forging ahead and reactionaries making increasingly stringent demands for laws and policies that punish and control sexuality, especially queer and female sexuality.
In these past two years, both the left and the right made bold moves that helped pull the issue of sexual liberation out of the margins and put the debate right into the mainstream.Peek under the sheets of the specifics — attacks on abortion, contraception, gay marriage, singles, women — and what you see is an obsession with repressing sexual freedom.
That battle over who gets to define the sexual standards in America has been churning since the 60s, but it was usually fought through proxy battles, such as “choice vs. life” or “gay rights vs. traditional marriage.” The years 2011 and 2012 will end up going down in history as the years we stopped pretending this fight was about something else, and started to talk more boldly about whether or not we’re a nation that supports sexual liberation or opposes it.