No, I have not forgotten that the forces of social conservatism and sexual repression are hard at work as ever, tilting their swords at such diverse sexual windmills as pornography, abortion, public funding of erotic art, homosexuality, sex-positive education in schools, and anything that has to do with celebrating and enhancing the body's capacity for physical pleasure. But the hysterical urgency of these reactionary campaigns is really a testament to how rapidly sexual issues are moving in progressive directions, rather than an indication that American sexual mores are about to return to the wasteland of the 50's. So many new and intriguing sexual genies have been popping out of one tight-fitting bottle after another that the poor traditionalists who want to return to the antisexual past are right to be in such a tizzy. The social and sexual fabric of Norman Rockwell America is in shreds, just as the most dire prophets of the Right say it is. Sex is good.
Pleasure is good.
Calvin was wrong. Renunciation of pleasure does not lead to the good life. There is just too much evidence that self-imposed misery only breeds more misery for that basic truth to be unacknowledged. Awareness and public acknowledgment of homosexuality as a pervasive and increasingly normalized social fact of life is growing with all the power of historical inevitability, even though virulent homophobia and violence against gays is as prevalent as ever. Too many gay people are out and too many het people have put personal faces on the once-dispersonal notion of homosexuality for many people to still believe that homosexuals are inhuman monsters.