millennia to walk a tightrope between sexual morality and sexualnmores, in America went head over heels into a direct confrontation—andnthe end result is our current chaos in whichnsome American churches opt for modish permissive progressivismnjust to keep their flock in the pews, while others use obsoletendialectics to combat a permissiveness which they cannotncomprehend. Actually, what Victorian arrangements in sexualnmanners did to America was to sublimate sexual satisfactions,nwhich made their emotional texture different from, but probablynmore rewarding than, that of other cultures.nWhat the 60’s did to American sexuality was to engender ansudden quantification, mass-popularization and trivializationnof accepted practices. Revolution means qualitative change,nthe introducuon oi something—the birth of an idea, a technologicalnbreakthrough, a new concept of interrelationshipsnbetween people—but nothing of this sort occurred. No newnreality was invented. What happened was a recrafting of sexualnpostures which were well known from other junctures ofnhistory. Human sexual conduct (so it was said) needed nonnorms of any kind; an increased volume of sexual activity is annindication of personal freedom which reforms the social order;nmen and women should reject criteria of sexual etiquette innorder to become better, more human; a life improved is a life innwhich sexual casualness mercilessly evicts reverence for and exceptionalitynof the sexual experience; mass-produced values fornsexual acts advance social progress; perfunctory sexual engagementsndetermine a higher consciousness; scientists, writers andnsocial pundits (the consciences of our time) have full license toninject normlessness into society at their convenience.nThere was nothing new in this concept of sexuality—whatnPlayboy announced as novel had been practiced by Eve in thenfirst version of the Club Mediterrannee, a much more lush renditionnthan any subsequent one. What the puny commercialnhustlers pushed in America as a sexual revolution was old hat inn• THE MYTH OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION <nnnSodom. However, there was one new factor—the mass medianand the entertainment industry, which thrived on presentingnthese worn-out notions as dizzying revelations. The news thatn”everything goes,” for adults and juveniles alike, was,’for thenpeddlers of pop culture and “lifestyles,” similar to the Californiangold msh. The way they plugged into that boom turnednthe quantity coefficient into a herd instinct. Universal permissionnfor the young to plunge into sexual activity, sanctioned bynthe media’s quotidian omnipresence in all channels of thenculmral spectrum, brought about a monstrous increase in thenoverall volume of fornication. Unprejudiced students werenalways aware of the fact that the volume was a varying matter:npeople always did it rather profusely; what was changing wasnthe attitude toward information about those practices—the intensitynand frequency of their widespread visibility. Periods ofnhecticality, passivity and constraint have alternated throughoutnhistory, modified by religions, moral climates, socioeconomicnpreoccupations, mythologies. One thing is observable:nalthough those who argued for the relaxation of sexual moresnand for blunt openness about them claimed to foster society’snhealth and happy stability, mankind always seemed to flourishnmost—socially and culturally—during eras of pmdery, hypocrisynand regimentation. Empires and wealth were built on sexualnconventions, and their demise was always signaled by then”wholesome” abolition of those conventions and the acceptedndissolution of sexual comportment.nThe journalists’ ignorant hype—the scourge of our epochnand the yeast of the liberal press’s omnipotence—proclaimed anrevolution that never took place. The daily-communicationnracket has stmctured a reality in which new taboos, idols, mentalnconstructs and habits are fabricated. The tone of journalisticnenunciations on things sexual in the New York Times, Timenmagazine and on CBS is, in essence, the same coinage of clichesnas the medieval obscurantist preacheries about the interactionnbetween the devil and carnality—in a diametrically oppositensense, of course. When a silver-haired obstetrician who representsnPlanned Parenthood argues on television for juvenile accessnto contraceptives and abortion without parental consentnand who predicts that to refuse these adolescent “civH rights”nwill result in an America engulfed by a cataclysm of teen-agenpregnancies, we have a surrealistic inversion of the free-willnprinciple—namely that human sexual destiny does not belongnto a person, his or her individual qualities, existential priorities,nemotions, ties, bonds, etc., but to a bureaucratized, allegedlynscientific “Providence” whose supreme ontological force—ncalled “research”—holds ultimate sway over human fate.nWh hat has the introduction of the term “sexual revolution,”nand all the social symptoms connected to it, done toneveryday life?nThose segments of society which accepted that philosophy—ncontinued on page 51nOnMay/June 198Sn