Sex and the Religious-Left

[Iwannaplato]

One reason to ask the questions I asked and Harbal asked is to see what is actually going on. I have forgotten whether you or Wizard or both asserted that it had to do with sex being for procreation.

That is not quite right. In all fairness, Harbal asks questions for reasons of seeking entertainment, or passing the time, or for the sake of argument, or perhaps because he is bored and seeking stimulation.

I have a feeling those were in fact serious questions, if also entertaining for him, but if we're going to get fussy, I said one reason to ask the questions we asked. Not one reason he asked them. His motivation isn't in my justification for them.

There is another possibility for how those who participate in a forum like this might employ these discussions: as a way to get clear about their own values, about the philosophical hills that they are willing to die on; but really about who and what in the present day they will support and defend and encourage, and who they will not. These are topical, current-event type conversations but the ideal is that they be handled in a becoming, philosophical way.

I don't know who is willing to die for their values. Do Wizard and you do more than complain in online forums? I have no idea. Perhaps you go and protest at Pride parades. Perhaps you don't. I have no indication either of you are even engaged in any kind of activism, let alone dangerous activism, for example.

Can you really say that *Harbal wants to see what is going on?* (in our culture, outside and beyond his village, outside and beyond his local community, outside and beyond his nation? etc.) I do not think that you can. And that is why I have taken, and will continue to take the tack I do in relation to him: because what I say is true. He does not actually care.

So, far you're focused mainly on Harbal.

We must realize that until very very recently sexual activity would likely have the result of pregnancy. Up till very recently no one could engage in intercourse without the realization that a pregnancy, and a child, would result. I am sure that you are aware that the contraceptive pill changed everything. But we do have to start from the historical proposition that sex is for procreation. Although now sexuality has been liberated from the obligations of pregnancy, birth and child-rearing.

I don't think the phrase 'the historical proposition that sex if for procreation' makes sense. You can make the proposition that in history (or, really, some parts of history in certain cultures) sex was for procreation.
Under the monotheisms that was often what it was supposed to be about, only, but in pagan cultures, no. And then even under the domination of monotheistic cultures there were people who did not accept being that way, subcultures, not just individuals. Then there's the Kama Sutra. Then there's the acceptance of homo-and bi-sexual activities in many cultures and subcultures: iow where pregnancy was not a possibility and this is the context we are bringing up 'the purpose of sex'. And when we speak of cultures that did not view sex as necessarily about procreation we have civilizations included, like the Greek and Roman ones.

And yes, contraception changed things. Our technologies changed all sorts of things and we do things in ways we did not and for different purposes than before.

My view, or my position, is not (I suspect) quite what you think it is. My general position, my interest if you will, is in seeking out and trying to see how it is that our present has come to be and taken its shape. I am one of those, like many today, who is concerned and critical of what is going on generally in my own culture.

Sure, I am also, in a wide range of areas.

In the simplest of terms I would describe that as social decay.

I think the monotheisms brought in certain kinds of antilife decay, with their huge focus on guilt and shame, tendencies to stifle emotional expression, their distaste for bodies, there ingeniously horrible threats about what happens when you don't follow the rules. I see the Enlightenment as also causing social decay. I dont' think this is all they did, but I see important decay in both these changes in tradition. Corporatism also. For some odd reason so much that gets blamed on the Left in terms of decadence is actually byproducts of corporate behavior.

Do I have to spell all this out to you? Surely you are aware enough of topical issues to understand what is being debated and argued today among those different, often opposed factions. You know: the Culture Wars

No, you don't have to spell it out for me.

If this is the foundational value here, they it seems like our questions will get answers where there are other family patterns that are tolerated and perhaps should be suppressed.

I would say that as it pertains to the Culture Wars in the US today (my primary interest) that sexuality is one among a wide set of topics that is under examination. And since my interest is in *seeing* these social and ideological struggles in the fullest light, I will say that the sexuality question is one part of a larger issue and dynamic.

Sure.

A TV show about an older couple who chose to never have children should be suppressed, for example, it would seem.

I do not think you are focusing on the right thing. The *right thing* in my view is a wider and more general ethics.

It's a thread about sex and the religious-left. I responded, there, to your points, but wanted to see if they held and how they held.

What I will say is that in our own time, and in our own nations, there are civil conflicts that are developing. In the US for example the term *civil war* has come up. Meaning I guess irreconcilable differences about what sort of polity differing groups want to live in.

Yes, and who benefits from that war?

The Radical Left, for example, has shown itself capable of burning cities if it believes it is not getting its demands met. What I mean is only that *violence* and *shunning* are part of political struggle.

This comment would make sense if I said the Right was bad because they will turn to violence and shunning while the Left doesn't do this. But if you read again what I wrote, I was responding to

My position is that once one has crossed an inner barrier -- from what I could call the established normative to the outrageous and alternative possibility, and here I am talking of sexual passion and obsession -- one is then captured by that desire which overrides *sound reasoning*.

Again, it is as if for you there is tradition (one tradition) and then the Left came and upended tradition. That keeps seeming like your idea of history. Implicit in this and perhaps explicit is that there is something bad about changing traditions. But if I look at what you both consider to be traditions, I see traditions that upended other traditions and the conservatives of the day would have has the same kind of abstract criticism of it. So, I see all sorts of problems with your sense of what is 'the' tradition and your sense that changing norms is per se problematic, when in fact you both are in strong support of what were radical even Leftist changes in tradition. So, telling me the Left are naughty to is utterly irrelevant to the point I was making.

I do not advocate for this, I only try to point out that when it comes to crucial questions of value that people in a given culture or nation will go to battle on different planes, not excluding those that involve violence.

Ibid.

Wizard is blunt and I actually think this is a plus in conversations like this.
With you, I am unsure if you will ever directly respond or respond to what I wrote.

You have mentioned a number of times, recently and in the past, that people will get aroused or say the same thing in other ways. People get aroused by ANY political position.

[Harbal]

Hairball, the Anglo-Puritan, needs some help with terminology:

Blowjob

Rimjob

"Harry Johnson"

"Mike Hawk"

A very considered and intelligent response, idiot.

[Harbal]

I'm aware that there are people who only have to hear the words "drag show" and "children" mentioned in the same sentence and their imaginations go into overdrive.

You have deliberately missed the point, because you are completely unfamiliar with the social debate and conflict going on.

The same for the issue of materials presented in state schools.

Unless you did devote time to a more expansive study you and I would have no basis for any conversation. And since you will not I suggest we close this particular conversation. You have made your points, I understand them.

I don't want a conversation with you, I was just expressing my opinion of your "ideas".

[Atla]

I'm aware that there are people who only have to hear the words "drag show" and "children" mentioned in the same sentence and their imaginations go into overdrive.

You have deliberately missed the point, because you are completely unfamiliar with the social debate and conflict going on.

The same for the issue of materials presented in state schools.

Unless you did devote time to a more expansive study you and I would have no basis for any conversation. And since you will not I suggest we close this particular conversation. You have made your points, I understand them.

Btw why were you trying to force Harbal to be serious when he just doesn't want to or can't be?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Btw why were you trying to force Harbal to be serious when he just doesn't want to or can't?

It was, and it is, an error on my part. I set myself to the task of self-correction …

If I go off-track again feel free to induce me back to the proper stance.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Again, it is as if for you there is tradition (one tradition) and then the Left came and upended tradition. That keeps seeming like your idea of history. Implicit in this and perhaps explicit is that there is something bad about changing traditions. But if I look at what you both consider to be traditions, I see traditions that upended other traditions and the conservatives of the day would have has the same kind of abstract criticism of it. So, I see all sorts of problems with your sense of what is 'the' tradition and your sense that changing norms is per se problematic, when in fact you both are in strong support of what were radical even Leftist changes in tradition. So, telling me the Left are naughty to is utterly irrelevant to the point I was making.

In response I'll say that in our present time, today and out there in the culture, various people, various groups, are struggling with the sense -- as they might say -- that radicals "marched through the institutions" and, through processes of asserting and claiming moral authority, and institutional power, brought about cultural changes that can be objectively described as negative and bad. They make those arguments and in my own case I agree with them in many areas. Therefore, the question arises: what could remediate the present?

The long march through the institutions (German: der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen) is a slogan coined by socialist student activist Rudi Dutschke around 1967 to describe his strategy to create radical change in government by becoming part of it. The phrase "long march" is a reference to the physical Long March of the Chinese communist army.

Another theorist who devised a similar type of praxis was Antonio Gramsci:

Gramsci argued that the war of manoeuvre as direct assault against the state, was no longer relevant for revolutionary strategy in the capitalist core. Instead, political strategy must take the form of a reconfiguration of the war of manoeuvre into a protracted political–cultural struggle against the hegemonic power of the ruling class which Gramsci likened to siege warfare.

I can say that my impression is and has been that certainly in the second half of the 20th century and now into the 21st, that what we are seeing is a sort of flowering of the efforts of activists working with *caustic ideas* of that sort Gramsci defined. By that I mean ideas intended to break apart those hierarchies we refer to from time to time.

I go further from this point (an observation) and note that people and groups, taking the present situation into account, are seeking ways to stop the advance of these forms of radicalism and to reestablish what they might call "sane grounds" within the social sphere. Personally, I take a stand with people operating from this basis in ideas.

I do not have to deny that some conservative ideals may involve what we might call innovations. I do not have to deny either that some ideas and practices of the left are soundly conservative. Take for example the former Left notion that illegal immigration was bad because it undermined labor. And hurt the family and community.

Implicit in this and perhaps explicit is that there is something bad about changing traditions.

First, the word *tradition* is problematic. It does not quite get to the core. If we were to completely upend the *tradition* of the family -- in its traditional sense -- what would restrain us from taking our new definition to any point or extreme? I argue that nothing would. And it wouldn't because there is not enough of a strong, defined and determined set of ideals that grounds the reality of the family in concrete ethics. And as you know I would refer to these ideals as *metaphysically* grounded. Such as for example the Catholic social teaching. Or some other traditional religion.

The question, obviously, is on what set of principles or on what foundation one constructs the platform of one's ethics.

But if I look at what you both consider to be traditions, I see traditions that upended other traditions and the conservatives of the day would have has the same kind of abstract criticism of it.

You have made this point numerous times and I do understand it. You are making an abstract point though. And my recent arguments have been in relation to concrete issues being debated today. For one example: how institutions radicalize children sexually by introducing the materials I refer to into curricula. You have not defined a position in regard to this question. My assertion is that you will have to, and we all have to.

One can identify with and propound what we might refer to as Traditionalism, but we could also identify with and propound a Radicalism that is quite comfortable breaking down all former and traditional categories of value. I think we have to employ this binary language even through we might see all sort of ground for compromise.

But in the end it does come down to what values one defines and how one grounds them.

[Alexis Jacobi]

With you, I am unsure if you will ever directly respond or respond to what I wrote.

What is it that you wish me to respond to?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I'm aware that there are people who only have to hear the words "drag show" and "children" mentioned in the same sentence and their imaginations go into overdrive. Most of these people probably don't have a clue what is actually happening; they've just been fired up by Sky News and shady Youtube videos.

There is a documentary on the topic. I’ve not seen it but I’ve read some reviews.

(That is the trailer for the movie.)

[Harbal]

I'm aware that there are people who only have to hear the words "drag show" and "children" mentioned in the same sentence and their imaginations go into overdrive. Most of these people probably don't have a clue what is actually happening; they've just been fired up by Sky News and shady Youtube videos.

There is a documentary on the topic. I’ve not seen it but I’ve read some reviews.

(That is the trailer for the movie.)

It looks alarming, somebody needs to stop these "they" people.

[Iwannaplato]

With you, I am unsure if you will ever directly respond or respond to what I wrote.

What is it that you wish me to respond to?

Sigh. It's fine. I can see my responses to your posts as a kind of commentary. There's only so much I'll repeat myself here or in other threads.

[Wizard22]

There is a documentary on the topic. I’ve not seen it but I’ve read some reviews.

(That is the trailer for the movie.)

Now we can begin to understand how Catholicism originally began in the Roman Empire, when this exact same type of Hedonism, Decadence, Perversion, and Pedophilia became pandemic to the Romans. The populace, plebeian, proletariat needed a strong, powerful institution of Morality, to protect them from these Satanic and Evil forces. And from these Catholic institutions, a new class of 'Holy' and 'Purified' individuals arose who could not be smeared or slandered politically. Baptism, became a method of 'Sanctifying' the Ruling Class.

History may repeat exactly, in this perverse American Empire.

[Alexis Jacobi]

With you, I am unsure if you will ever directly respond or respond to what I wrote.

What is it that you wish me to respond to?

Sigh. It's fine. I can see my responses to your posts as a kind of commentary. There's only so much I'll repeat myself here or in other threads.

Don’t get too despondent. I’ll examine your post and see if, through tremendous strain, I can figure out what I missed ….

Have faith.

Must be something in this?

Again, it is as if for you there is tradition (one tradition) and then the Left came and upended tradition. That keeps seeming like your idea of history. Implicit in this and perhaps explicit is that there is something bad about changing traditions. But if I look at what you both consider to be traditions, I see traditions that upended other traditions and the conservatives of the day would have has the same kind of abstract criticism of it. So, I see all sorts of problems with your sense of what is 'the' tradition and your sense that changing norms is per se problematic, when in fact you both are in strong support of what were radical even Leftist changes in tradition. So, telling me the Left are naughty to is utterly irrelevant to the point I was making.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It looks alarming, somebody needs to stop these "they" people.

By NANCY FLORY
March 19, 2024

The War on Children, a new documentary by filmmakers Robby and Landon Starbuck, reveals the left’s not-so-hidden agenda to sexualize kids through exposure to sexually deviant behavior produced online, through social media, drag queen performances, schools, advertising, and elsewhere.

At nearly two and a half hours of run time, the film may be long, but it’s worth the time, especially for parents. The War on Children may be seen at thewaronchildren.com, rumble, MoviesPlus, and X.

Controlling Your Kids’ Minds

Robby and Landon Starbuck interview experts about the sexualization of America’s kids on everything from advertising to social media to library books. The left’s efforts to control kids’ minds on LGBTQ+ issues are absolutely everywhere. Brett Craig, formerly chief creative officer with Duetsch, said the left is intentionally trying to sexualize children. “I think they’re trying to introduce radical gender theory, radical gender ideology, to your child,” he said. “They’re using commercials and merchandise and what they’re selling to get your kid to believe that.”

Craig suggests parents use their money as a way to cast a vote. If a company or a business invests in wokeness or supports trans ideology, do not shop there. “If we don’t speak up, it’s over real fast from here,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to take long now.”

Social Contagion

That is true, especially with what the Starbucks call “social contagion.” According to the National Library of Medicine, social contagion is defined as “the spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through crowds and other types of social aggregates from one member to another. Adolescents are prone to social contagion because they may be especially susceptible to peer influence and social media.” The normalization of transgender and LGBTQ+ ideology has been spread through social contagion via social media, say the Starbucks. And the damage is vast: 25% of American high school students now identify themselves as something other than “straight.” And in a recent Gallup poll, over 28% of Gen Z women say they are lesbian. The agenda to normalize the sexualization of children is well underway.

The Starbucks talked with a detransitioner — a young woman who identified as a male and had surgery, then later began living as a female again. She told them she’d first heard about “transitioning” through social media. It had a profound impact on her, and she pursued the surgery. Although those on the left claim that minors are not getting surgery to “transition,” that statement is not true. The young woman had surgery a month after her thirteenth birthday.

Another woman whose daughter identified as a male tearfully told her story to the Starbucks. Her daughter was a minor when she decided to begin living life as a male. Her school got involved and called Children’s Protective Services on the girl’s mother because she did not want her daughter to identify as male. Eventually, the daughter was taken away from her home and sent to foster care, but her gender dysphoria and depression did not go away. She still suffered, and one day stepped in front of a moving train to end her pain. Her mother still does not understand why her daughter’s school got involved.

Although the Starbucks tried to interview those with differing opinions, the potential interviewees who advocate for transitioning children either declined up front or walked out during the interview.

Speak Up, Parents!

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) sat down with the Starbucks to discuss the unnecessary surgeries being done on minors with gender dysphoria. “We’re leaning towards an absurd and horrific time,” he said. “[T]his is leading to a time in which there’s going to be war between families, there’s war in our culture. This is a bad time and I never thought we’d get there in our lifetime. This is where we’ve come.”

After all the interviews about the sexualization of America’s children, the Starbucks came to one conclusion: American parents have to speak up.

“The conversations are going to be uncomfortable,” said Robby. “You may lose a friend or a client, but speaking up is how this ends. Some may even ask you, ‘Why do you care? These aren’t your kids. Let them do what they want.’ But this line of thinking ignores the reality that our kids are going to have to grow up alongside these issues and sometimes inside a locker room with them.”

Nancy Flory, Ph.D., is a senior editor at The Stream. You can follow her @NancyFlory3, and follow The Stream @Streamdotorg.

[Harbal]

It looks alarming, somebody needs to stop these "they" people.

By NANCY FLORY
March 19, 2024

The War on Children, a new documentary by filmmakers Robby and Landon Starbuck, reveals the left’s not-so-hidden agenda to sexualize kids through exposure to sexually deviant behavior produced online, through social media, drag queen performances, schools, advertising, and elsewhere...........................................

The general issue of children's safety is not something I know much about, or have commented about. What I object to is the propagation of misinformation, particularly when it is designed to unfairly hurt specific groups or classes of people that the perpetrators do not happen to like or approve of. You and -to a far greater extent- your half-witted sidekick are trying to create a strong impression that homosexuality and transvestism are linked to paedophilia and child abuse, when there is no evidence that there is a connection. Furthermore, you are dishonestly trying to rope it all in with some sort of conspiracy of that mythical entity, "The Left". I know there are groups who sexually target children, and some may well have left leaning tendencies, but you are trying to present a situation that is dangerously false. What you are basically doing is hammering out the message that anyone who isn't an avid right wing conservative is condoning and enabling child abuse. I find your entire attitude and position far more perverse than any "sexual deviation" you have branded with that description.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Harbal wrote:

The general issue of children's safety is not something I know much about, or have commented about. What I object to is the propagation of misinformation, particularly when it is designed to unfairly hurt specific groups or classes of people that the perpetrators do not happen to like or approve of. You and -- to a far greater extent -- your half-witted sidekick are trying to create a strong impression that homosexuality and transvestism are linked to paedophilia and child abuse, when there is no evidence that there is a connection. Furthermore, you are dishonestly trying to rope it all in with some sort of conspiracy of that mythical entity, "The Left". I know there are groups who sexually target children, and some may well have left leaning tendencies, but you are trying to present a situation that is dangerously false. What you are basically doing is hammering out the message that anyone who isn't an avid right wing conservative is condoning and enabling child abuse. I find your entire attitude and position far more perverse than any "sexual deviation" you have branded with that description.

No, that is not right, because I am not in fact a rightwing conservative. What I am is a product of California Radicalism who, at a later date, and for reasons hard to pinpoint exactly, began a sort of ideological turnaround. That happened because I went against the grain of what I should have been reading and studying and read and studied people on the very opposite side of the spectrum of ideology, social stance, political orientation, value set, and all the rest of those pesky topics that are brought out here.

I have always tried to offer my best sense of *where I stand* and also *what I am doing (here)* so that there is as little confusion as possible. Every once in a while I make a statement so there is clarity.

I find your entire attitude and position far more perverse than any "sexual deviation" you have branded with that description.

Yes, I understand where you stand. It is not an incoherent position since, not so long ago, I'd have expressed it similarly.

I reflect back to you, and to the readership here obviously, that to define my position (which is rather mild in fact) as *perverse* when my position was the normal stance just a few short years back, indicates that your views have been produced through an enormous 'transvaluation of values'. In some sense I stop there and don't carry my critical analysis further. I simply note that a man of your generation (a product of the attitude-shifts of the 1960s period to all appearances) hold to a set of ideas and views about a range of things that, for a generation or generations past, were inconsiderable.

What interests me is to pursue the causal chain from a former ethic and morality, and through all sorts of social, political and cultural activism ("the long march through the institutions") that has produced no solely *you* but an enormous mass of people -- millions, even perhaps billions -- who carry these ideological positions and present them as *righteousness*. When you examine your sentence, quote just above, I suggest that you will see that it is laden with ideological assertions and presents itself, as I say, as *righteousness*.

There is a way to see it, and Wizard alludes to this (shotgun style) as a religiousness. It is, certainly, an effort to hold to a moral and ethical position (that my attitude is bad, perverse, evil and also Nazi-like) (I realize you do not use the Nazi-smear) which, if nothing does, indicates an absolutist stance within ethics. You, and millions of others, I think without realizing it, are the heirs of religious absolutism that has been transformed, modified and re-adapted to those causes of *social justice*.

You can consider that just an aside if you wish. But it is something that I think about: the nature of conviction, the force and power of it.

It is obvious, Harbal, that you cannot accept any part of my moralizing definition and reference to *sexual deviation*. That term, I gather, is one that is in fact an indicator of having an erroneous position. However, I am pretty certain that I could describe deviancies which would appall you. And I am sure that you would recognize them as such.

to create a strong impression that homosexuality and transvestism are linked to paedophilia and child abuse

Well, you've pegged me wrong because I am uncertain if the relaxation of condemnation and shunning of homosexuality in and of itself has a direct tie to the larger, and more pervasive, and more dangerous and also destructive, abuse of the sexual function today. But I must reveal that my view of sexuality, my ideology about it, is directly influenced by Catholic social doctrine as well as similar doctrines that originate in religious views and metaphysical systems. It would be dishonest if I did not reveal that. Note that I think that advocacy for a sane and balanced sexuality could be defined through non-religious Platonic terms, and I have alluded to this, but I have not tried to work that out (yet).

The real question here is: What has happened that now, today, there is world-scale epidemic in pornography; a social phenomenon of gender-dysphoria; and a sort of general sexual madness that spreads like a contagion through the social body -- not only in our countries but on a world-scale. And then the additional question: What about the related and connected issue of the sexualization of children? It is inevitable, if all this material is available from any smartphone, that what adults view and obsess over will also be viewed and obsessed over by children. What we do, and what we allow, they do and allow.

So really, the issue, the question, the problem, is far larger. If you say *Oh it is not really a problem you exaggerate because you are an uptight religious zealot* (and most who are vocal in combatting what I call sexual deviation are, as you know, people operating out of religious platforms -- though that is not absolutely so) then the conversation stops right there. In order to appreciate the problem one has to be able to see it. But how one sees it, how one evaluates it, is obviously where our problem lies.

In order to influence a reader here, or you, I have to present sufficiently convincing arguments that there is an issue. But how can that be done when, and in fact, each of yous who resists these definitions show yourself totally closed to their examination? I do not expect you to answer that question, it is one I toss up into the air, but it is vital to my own project.

In my view you reject things, categorically, that you should examine with more care.

the propagation of misinformation

First, that is a real thing. And sorting through it is a maddenning, demanding effort. But once we have accepted that *disinformation* exists as a category, we will then be in a position to consider what is, and what is not, disinformation. We have to have a platform to be able to examine the questions. What shall that be? Here is a key: since we do not share a value-platform ... we will likely never agree! I don't mean just you and me but *polarized society*)

In addition to disinformation there are other categories. Mal-information and malicious information. What about *perverted information*? True, we will need a definition of what perversion in this context means. But I think you get my point that it is surely a possibility. Though for you *perversion* will mean *propogation of misinformation* (and this implies a platform of *real and true information*).

particularly when it is designed to unfairly hurt specific groups or classes of people that the perpetrators do not happen to like or approve of

For me the issue is less that and more how I will orient myself, philosophically and ideologically, in regard to these issues. I do not believe I could, or would, condemn a homosexual couple living up the street (or whatever). But I will and I do notice that once the sexual restraints are lifted, and it began with Stonewall and the liberation of gays, then it definitely proceeds from there to all categories. If Gays can be liberated then why not those of any particular orientation of their desire? Why not open up to *liberation* the category of child sexuality? What is wrong with a child's sexuality? And why are there such strict barriers between children and adults in this realm?

The point? There is no limit. But what gives sex and sexual passion such power? The question begs an answer. It is a vital, extremely fundamental, hard-wired desire. It can get hold of one and, as Augustine said, it can dominate and in that sense enslave one. I will suppose that you do not accept this *enslavement*, and that is your choice I guess, but I see this perverse sexuality operating like a social and cultural contagion.

And I try to link this with a general decline in -- what is it? -- social values? Defined values? Sane values? Or should it be *antique and outmoded values*?

I know there are groups who sexually target children, and some may well have left leaning tendencies, but you are trying to present a situation that is dangerously false.

It is wider in scope. Advertising and the selling of products availed itself of youth-sexualization. And when the cultural ethics were reengineered the ethical parameters were shifted. Culturally, it is all of a piece. Sixties radicalism, the quest for liberation, the resistance to *established moral authorities*, the turn against Puritanical values -- all of this is part of the larger, cultural shift.

You will have to show me an example of so-called Conservatives or say Christian Religious as advocating for the loosening of sexual mores and, even better, images of the sexualization of youth as a category. I think you will find that the larger sector of those who advocate for *sexual liberation* tend to be on the progressive scale. But I will admit that business in general is neither one nor the other necessarily, and therefore sexual imagery sells.

I must admit that one of the influential books I read -- a decade back -- was The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom. (The author is a Christian):

"Within the space of our lifetime, much of what Americans once almost universally abhorred has been packaged, perfumed, gift-wrapped, and sold to us as though it had great value. By skillfully playing on our deeply felt national values of fairness, generosity, and tolerance, these marketers have persuaded us to embrace as enlightened and noble that which every other generation has regarded as grossly self-destructive―in a word, evil.”

How shall we see and define marketers who don't really care what means of persuasion they use as long as they can sell their products? Is it possible to *sell perversion* in the sense of restructuring ethical and moral values so that these *products* will be bought?

This is not a minor issue, Harbal.