Properly basic standards used to be socially upheld in all kinds of ways. There was a collective taboo against certain kinds of relationships and certain kinds of behaviors.

When social standards collapse, personal judgment becomes one way of expressing support for those vulnerable standards--and sometimes the only practical way of doing so.

If we were still living in an age where books like 50 Shades were only sold in porn stores, and no one would want his or her real name associated with it, there would be very little complaint about the book on Ricochet or on other mainstream conservative venues.

To be human and to possess a human body is necessarily to be limited in certain ways; there are acts and relationships that are within and without the boundaries of human sexual dignity.

These boundaries are not subject to the whims of men or women.

Mutuality of consent and mutuality of using each other for self-gratification does not make intrinsically demeaning relationships or acts any less demeaning. There are certain ways of behaving that cannot be cleansed by mutuality.

When it gets treated like a piece of candy to be consumed.

Also, when the activities or relationships that are being glorified or celebrated are intrinsically demeaning to one or more of the partners--such as treating one of them as a "dungeon slave."

There's lots of stuff to chew on here, and maybe what I am going to say is just a different way of saying something that has already been said.

The people called "liberals" in the modern American context despise their western heritage as inadequate, unenlightened, and un-evolved. They believe it to be unworthy of themselves. After all, it is people who have an uncomplicated confidence in traditional ideas and practices who are the primary obstacles to them getting their way.

They are always looking to praise "the other" and to humiliate and deprecate all these un-evolved people who surround them, particularly people they regard as naively or perversely loyal to traditional ideas and practices.

One need look no further than resentment of and ingratitude toward a heritage that does not flatter the liberal's glorified image of himself.

As long as what we are talking about is just the physical sex act, sure.

Could be--depending on what's being inserted into or pressed against what.

Sexual deviance and the degree to which modern American society indulges it is a topic that gets me fired up and I sometimes come across more aggressively than I mean to.

I don't hate people for being different, and I don't believe in persecuting, hectoring, bullying, or harassing them about it. I don't even dislike them, really. But I think society is severely mistaken in having abandoned traditional social standards of sexual conduct and identity. I think we're wrong to approve of and cooperate with it.

Indulging transsexuality and transgenderism is devastatingly socially disruptive--especially to family members and close acquaintances of the person who rejects his or her actual sex--even if the person doesn't go all the way to reassignment surgery.

Sex seems to be the one area of modern life where as much indulgence as possible has become the rule. I don't think it serves us well at all.

There are some things that are proper for men and some things that are proper for women.

Desiring to penetrate a man with a real, functioning penis is deviant because that is not a proper or form-honoring function of a penis and, arguably, because it is demeaning to the man on the receiving end.

"Androgynous" as applied to clothing is largely meaningless. There are many kinds of clothes that are suitable for persons of either sex or come in versions tailored for either sex.

When a transsexual (or transgendered person) wears the other sex's clothing, he or she does it to acquire, express, or "put on" the other sex's sexual characteristics in a primary and serious sense--not as a means of utility, or to tease, or to be provocative, or for mere amusement. That's what I find deviant: a person of one sex trying to be the other sex.

I failed to make it as explicit as I could have. I apologize for any resulting confusion.

And I am saying that they aren't distinct in the way that it is popular to believe they are, because one is an extension of the other.

The cause of sexual desire and feeling is the fact that we are sexed creatures. If we were not male and female, we would not have sexual feelings, or desires, or beliefs--or a sense of ourselves as gendered--because there would be no reason for such things, regardless of whether one believes in creation or evolution.

If gender is not an internal representation of sex, what is it?

My argument can be summed up thus: totalitarian takeovers are so intrinsically evil and so detrimental to society that, when they become realistic threats, the unjustness of many means reasonable men would normally consider unacceptable is no longer obvious.

I don't disagree, although I see how my earlier comment could be read that way. What I meant was that it would be nice if the other charges are not just thrown in for effect.

Actually, I criticize communists for murder and totalitarianism. The fact that their ideological goals are intrinsically evil is significant to me.

I love a story with a happy ending.

Most likely to show a very Lutheran (see, e.g., Dietrich Boenhoeffer) discomfort with everything that is out there (for which I adore her): Mollie Hemingway.

Dear Fred,

I agree with (almost) every word of your post. And thanks for writing it.

My one quibble--only some lawyers behave like parasites some or most of the time.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean we should keep electing lawyers to the Presidency or other high offices.