The Sexual State

"How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along"

Jennifer Roback Morse

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781505112467
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Sexual Revolution—and the breakdown of the Family—has brought misery to millions. In The Sexual State Jennifer Roback Morse shows that the Sexual Revolution did not just "happen" like a force of nature. Rather, it was deliberately created by "elites, " harnessing the power of the State, allowing them inflict three false and calamitous ideologies—contraception, divorce, and gender—that have led to widespread and profound unhappiness, and worse.

The ideas of the Sexual Revolution did not emerge from the lived experiences of ordinary people, the government has been imposing the morality of an out-of-touch elite class on the rest of us for decades.

The Sexual State turns the conventional wisdom on its head to reveal how:

• The Sexual Revolution is and always has been a creation of the State
• Social issues are unified and can be understood as the outgrowth of a few simple (but gravely flawed) principles.
• The Sexual Revolution hides its totalitarian objectives behind seemingly modest demands.
• Children have and relational rights with respect to their parents…and how the Sexual State denies children these rights

Social conservative ideas and traditional Catholic morality are getting clobbered. And the dirty secret that no one wants to acknowledge—until now!—is that the progressive social elites have rigged the system. Most people don't love abortion, or divorce, or single-parent families! Thankfully, Dr. Morse, and the Catholic have the answer. It is vital that those who would change the culture understand how we got there, otherwise, the countering tactics will remain impotent.

In this masterful take-down of the Sexual Revolution and its promoters, Morse calls for a widespread adherence to the principles of the Church. Only then will our society recover from the misrule of the "elites" and the "managerial class."

PART ONE

The Sexual State

CHAPTER 1

The Misery of Modern Life

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.

—Saint Teresa of Calcutta, A Simple Path

This book is about the ideology of the Sexual Revolution, the havoc it has created in the lives of its victims, and why we have been unable to make the connection between the two up until now. Once you see the connections, you’ll never be the same.

Let me introduce you to a few people who have been harmed by the Sexual Revolution. Elise is an actual little girl. Todd and Annette are composites of many people I have known. Perhaps you know similar people.

Elise is a six-year-old who lives with her grandmother and whose mother had a baby with someone other than Elise’s father.

“I hate Thanksgiving. I hate it when my mom comes with her new baby and her new boyfriend. I don’t feel like eating. Why do I have to live with my grandma? How come they are all fussing over the stupid new baby? Why doesn’t my mom love me? Why does that dumb new baby get to live with her and I don’t?

“I hate Christmas. I could just bust up this idiotic Christmas tree. Why can’t I go home with my mom? Why does that loser baby get to live with her mom and dad and I don’t? I don’t even have a dad, I guess. I hate all this ‘Baby’s First Christmas’ crap. I don’t care about any of the stupid presents. Where is my dad? Why doesn’t he love me? Why doesn’t my mom love me? Why doesn’t anybody want me?

“My grandma is nice, I guess, but I want my mom. I’m mad at my mom, but she isn’t here. She went back to her house with her boyfriend and their baby. Grandma is here. I’m going to make life hell for Grandma. I think I’ll break something. Maybe scream. Maybe throw stuff. Maybe Grandma will tell my mom to come and get me and take me back to her house to live with her where I belong.”

Elise can’t put all this into words of course. She expresses herself with her actions precisely because she cannot express her feelings with words. Her grandma (who is an acquaintance of mine) tells me that Elise is angry and acts out after every family holiday get together. For about a week after family holidays, she wets her bed every night, every time.

Todd is a thirty-something pipe fitter whose wife moved out and left him with three small children to care for.

“I love my kids. I’d do anything for them. My wife left the family without a word, without any warning, four years ago. I had no idea where she was and did not hear anything from her. Now she has come back. She says she has ‘found herself.’ She also ‘found’ a new boyfriend who has a better job than I do. The kids are happy to see her, but they don’t trust her love. They want to believe she will be there for them, but how can they believe it?

“She took me to court over custody. I worked up a whole detailed statement for the court. I explained why I should continue to keep the kids, stating that I am willing to give her reasonable visitation, explaining that we had no contact with her at all for four years. No birthday cards, no phone calls, nothing. The judge took five minutes to decide that the mother should have custody and I should get visitation. I have to pay child support. My ex-wife is not marrying the new boyfriend, because she doesn’t want his income counted, but she is living with him.

“My twelve-year-old son is old enough that he can remember when his mom used to live with us. He said, ‘Dad, I hate it that mom is in bed with another man. You should be in bed with her.’

“My eight-year-old daughter has lost her appetite and is losing weight. My younger son is angry at school. The teacher called me and said he is acting up at school. I told him I couldn’t do much about it: he is living with his mother now. I tried to talk to my wife—I guess I should say his mother; she isn’t exactly my wife anymore is she? Anyhow, I tried to talk to her. She said not to worry. He will get over it. He will adjust. And he will be going to a new school soon anyhow, and everyone will forget all about him punching other kids and breaking stuff at the old school.

“I know ‘real men’ aren’t supposed to cry. But I am heartbroken and just plain broke, financially and otherwise.”

Lynette is a fifty-something unmarried childless lawyer.

“I thought I could ‘have it all.’ After all, the men get to be fathers and have careers. I poured myself into my career. I always thought I would get married and have children. But I wanted to pay off my law school debt and make partner at the firm first.

“By the time I did all that, I realized I was almost forty. So I tried to focus more on dating and finding a husband. I really didn’t want to be a single mother. And I really didn’t want to go through life alone. So I created a six-month plan for finding a husband. But it didn’t work out. I couldn’t really find a suitable guy. I don’t know why.

“When I was forty, I decided to do IVF (in vitro fertilization) with donor sperm. No one told me how unlikely a pregnancy is if you are over forty. After multiple cycles, and two miscarriages, I finally gave up when I was forty-three. Only then did I find a study that said that women aged forty-one to forty-two, using their own fresh eggs, have only a 5.8 percent chance of having a live baby and that women aged forty-three to forty-four have a 2.7 percent chance per initiated cycle. The IVF clinic gave me higher numbers.¹ Only after I read that study did I realize that their ‘success rates’ were pregnancies, not live births. My two miscarriages counted as ‘successes’ in their eyes.

“No one told me I would want a baby so much. It seems so unfair. Some of the men in my firm are fathering children, even when they are my age. And the ones who aren’t having kids don’t seem to care. I looked at the childless men in my firm and concluded that having kids was an optional add-on to a successful life. I had no idea that being a childless woman would feel so different to me than being a childless man seems to feel to the guys.

“I’m seeing my sisters with kids who are pretty much grown up now. I see my younger relatives getting married and starting families. I used to look down on them because they were not ambitious about their careers or education. Maybe the joke is on me. My career is great, and I should be happy. But I feel empty.”

It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. Despite all our technological and medical success, life in the modern world is lonely, trying, and long. For example, an article called “The Age of Anxiety? Birth Cohort changes in Anxiety and Neuroticism, 1952-1993” shows that children’s anxiety and neuroticism have increased between 1952 and 1993. The average child in the 1980s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. A study called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” shows that women’s happiness declined both absolutely and relative to men between the 1970s and the turn of the century.²

Let me tell you about a few more people I know. I imagine you know people like these.

Ben

Ben is married and has three children. When Ben was thirty-five, his father decided to divorce his mother for another woman. His father began spending holidays with his new wife and her children and grandchildren. He lost interest in Ben and his siblings and their children. Ben tells me, “My mom lost her husband. I lost my father. My children lost their grandfather.”

But Ben’s father is free.

Bethany and Joe

Bethany’s husband, Joe, is a pornography addict. He lost interest in her and their children. He divorced her. He moved in with another woman. Their children visit him and his live-in girlfriend. He no longer has any respect for the religion in which he and Bethany had their children baptized.

Bethany told me, “Raising my children with the values I thought their father and I shared has become a constant struggle. When Joe and I married, I never expected that I would be sending our children to stay with a man who is a constant pornography user and who is living with a girlfriend. The Joe I married would not have stood for such a thing. And now he has become that thing.

“Earning a living and supporting and caring for the kids is tough. I’m living a day-to-day grind at the time of my life when I thought I would be most enjoying my children. I don’t know what I would do without the moral and practical support of my parents. They moved closer so they could help me.”

But Joe is free.

Katrina and Michael

Katrina is a good Catholic woman with three children. Her husband, Michael, divorced her when their youngest was in high school. The boy began acting out in rages and breaking things, not unusual for children of divorce.

Michael traveled a lot for his job. While overseas, he met another woman with whom he became enamored. She was the reason for the divorce.

Katrina told me, “It turned out that Michael had a brain tumor. I took care of him when he was in the hospital and recovering. His new girlfriend was nowhere to be seen. He was not entirely in his right mind, but when he got out of the hospital, he was still adamant about the divorce. He bought me out of my half of our house and moved his new girlfriend and her family members into our family home. They got green cards out of the deal somehow. I’m now living with my in-laws. They are mortified by their son’s behavior. They are still very dear to me. And I’m still dear to them. That really means a lot to me.”

If Michael had made a will while he had a brain tumor, a disinherited relative could have challenged it in probate court in a heartbeat. Divorce is different. He wanted a divorce. He dissipated all the accumulated wealth of his marriage, broke up his family, broke his wife’s heart, and broke his son’s spirit. He got his divorce.

But Michael is free.

Tom and Genevieve

Tom’s mother was married and divorced twice. Neither of these men was Tom’s father. Tom has one half-sister. Neither of his mother’s husbands was her father either. Tom has never really had much of a relationship with his father.

Tom married a woman named Genevieve, whose mother’s first husband was sterile. So she and her husband adopted a child from a foreign country. Later, they decided to have another child through anonymous donor conception. That was Genevieve.

When Genevieve was eight, her mother and her husband divorced. The husband wanted shared custody of the adopted child but not of Genevieve. Genevieve’s mother remarried and had a son with her second husband.

Genevieve told me, “I wish I knew my father. I searched and found him. But he is dead. My mother has a hard time understanding why I want to know about my father. She feels that I should be grateful to be alive and stop worrying about my father. But he is half of who I am.”

Tom told me, “We want to have a large family. Neither Genevieve nor I have a relationship with a father. Neither of us has a full-blooded sibling. We want our children to have the experience of brotherhood and sisterhood.”

But their parents were free.

Here are a few more brief snapshots of people I know. Everyone in this first group has something in common.

•The depressed teenage girl who can’t figure out why she is unhappy over her hook-ups. The adults in her life taught her that having as much sex as she wants will make her feel empowered.

•The college woman jaded about her sex life. She doesn’t expect much in the way of attention or commitment. She only expects to be a “friend with benefits.” But she wonders why he gets the “benefits” and she doesn’t get much friendship.

•The young man who doesn’t want to be a “player.” He would like to have a relationship with a girl that isn’t based on sex. But the girls around him seem to expect sexual come-ons from him. And the guys around him are strutting. He knows he isn’t gay, but still, he quietly wonders if there is something wrong with him.

•The unmarried woman whose contraception fails. She would have preferred not to be a single mother. But the child’s father won’t commit or is not a suitable marriage partner. She doesn’t want an abortion: she wants her child. She was taught that as long as she used “protection,” she could have sex without negative consequences.

•The men who have sex with men, abbreviated in the medical literature as MSM. The normal public health protocols designed to protect people from the spread of sexually transmitted infections have never been applied to MSM. Standard public health measures for sexually transmitted infections usually include things like partner notification, mandatory testing, and public awareness campaigns to encourage people to have fewer sexual partners. Anal sex, a common sexual practice among MSM, is so dangerous that the US surgeon general declared it “simply too risky to practice.” This statement is seldom publicized. As a result of this pattern of neglect, MSM acquire STIs at substantially increased rates over other groups.³

•The cohabiting woman who spends years in a relationship with a boyfriend who won’t commit.

•The woman who had an abortion years ago. All the reasons she gave herself for exercising her “right to choose” have come to sound hollow to her. No one takes her and her regrets seriously: not her counselors, not her friends, not her boyfriends (who all too often become ex-boyfriends), and sometimes, not even her pastor.

•The woman who experiences side effects from her contraception. Headaches, weight gain, loss of libido, and irritability are among the more common complaints. The less common problems are more serious: increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, glaucoma, diabetes, and cancer. Some of these “acceptable risks” have been directly implicated in the deaths of several women. Yet no one in power seems interested in justice for these victims.

•The man who literally believes he is “entitled...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Timeliness of Data
• Part One: The Sexual State
• Part Two: The Contraceptive Ideology
• Part Three: The Divorce Ideology
• Part Four: The Gender Ideology
• Part Five: Conclusion
• Bibliography and Further Resources