What Price Free Love?

Since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s (yes, I know, it is more complex than that, but as a shorthand, let that suffice...) we have seen an extraordinary change in attitudes towards human sexuality.

Even the more extreme and completely unscientific idiocies we see around us (gender theory, and 'different models of family' for example) are being normalised and imposed on our children by the school system - and Catholic schools seem to be falling obediently into line on this. 

The only morality seems to be consent, and an over-simplified view of consent, at that; one which views sex as no more significant (or complex) a human activity than offering someone a cup of tea.

But the price that has to be paid is enormous. 

The liberation of women (as it has been styled) has led to the expectation that they should take regular hormonal pills. This is not just bad for them, (both physically and in terms of their ability to sustain relationships) but is having dangerous effects on the environment.

Moreover, as these pills, and other contraceptive practices, are prone to failure, abortion is required as a back-up, as Ann Furedi has made clear: 

'The 200,000 abortions that taken place in Britain every year are evidence of what you get when you raise women’s expectations of birth control, and provide both a range of contraceptive methods and safe legal abortion. ' (from this article).

And on top of this terrible price - 200,000 children a year sacrificed on the altar of Free Love - there is the societal cost. The destruction of stable family life, and the crisis of masculinity, precipitated by the collapse of committed marriage as the normative model for the raising of children, is having devastating effects, particularly on children. We should be greatly concerned about the ever-increasing number of children who are presenting with mental or psychological problems.

But it is unthinkable that any policy maker or politician will raise the question: Should we re-consider whether our approach to sex, as a society, is a contributory factor? Instead, we inculcate the young with a broken model to assuage our own guilt.

And yet, I remain convinced that sexual discipline is essential to civilisation. And that the current fashion for self-indulgence and self-justification is essentially selfish and the antithesis of love.

As Henry, in Stoppard's The Real Thing remarked: "What free love is free of is love."