Though Not Victorious, The Christian Right’s Consistent Resistance To Child Sexualization Has Been Vindicated

The American ruling class and its apparatchiks are increasingly post-Christian. This is bad in all kinds of ways, but it does highlight the differences between Christianity and the ethos of our exploitative and incompetent elites. A telling example was recently provided by Kat Tenbarge, a tech and culture reporter for NBC News, who opened a rambling Twitter thread by declaring:

Kids frequently go to concerts with female pop stars who wear sexy outfits, perform suggestive dances, and sing lyrics about sex — the kids sing along, wear their merch, and copy their mannerisms. This is never seen as a problem but equivalent drag performances are. … The problem has never been kids exposed to sex or suggestiveness. Kids have always been welcome to watch movies with their parents that have sexual innuendo, dine at Hooters, watch cheerleaders, and pass by magazine racks that include Playboy. Have you seen some movie posters?

This “culture reporter” has apparently never met a social conservative. Despite Tenbarge’s (perhaps feigned) ignorance, millions of us object to all of this sexualization of children, and we work hard to shield our children from it. But the decades the left spent denouncing us as scolding, prudish killjoys were memory-holed as soon as this history inconvenienced the latest talking point.

In contrast to the conservative Christians who have consistently opposed sexualizing children, Tenbarge is only concerned with ensuring that the sexuality children are exposed to is rainbow-infused. This view is increasingly normal, and it is the result of social conservatives having lost repeatedly for decades. This is the world liberalism created. The many victories won by the sexual and cultural revolutionaries are the reason we are now trying to hold the line against child drag shows and sterilizing children.

Of course, there are some people who eagerly signed up for the toboggan ride down the slippery slope and are only now wondering why there aren’t any brakes. These people persuaded themselves that the cultural and sexual revolutions would go just as far as they were comfortable with, and not any further. But the real, consistent resistance to those revolutions has always been from people and communities providing a comprehensive critique against — and a lived alternative to — them.

The people trying to hold the line now are mostly the same people who have been doing so for decades, and though they have rarely been victorious, they have often been vindicated. The abolition of long-standing sexual mores and obligations was supposed to make people freer and happier. But sexual liberation has brought misery, along with continued inequality and exploitation. The sexual revolution gave us less bliss and far more loneliness, suffering, and fatherlessness than promised. Even liberal feminists such as Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times are acknowledging the problems the sexual revolution has created, especially for women.

Leftists don’t have a solution for this loneliness and exploitation, except for doubling down on the sexual revolution and hoping that even less sexual restraint somehow makes things better. Thus,

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