Several years ago, I saw an article about the fact that Europe was headed to cultural suicide. The article focused on the fact that cities like Berlin were importing many Moslems who were rather hostile, to say the least, to sexual freedom and other aspects of European life. Many Moslems were very offended by the public nature of sexuality and the public images of sexuality.
The author interviewed a fifty-year old gay man who loved his life style, although he recognized that it would probably not last. He was just hoping that it could last as long as he was active, and didn't really care after that.
He ended the article by saying that he had enjoyed his freedom so much that he never really bothered to learn how to fight to keep it.
As to the original posters fear of the Tea Party taking over and prohibiting jerking off in the privacy of our own bathroom, talk about paranoid. The social and cultural issues are so far off the Tea Party agenda, they are rarely, if ever, mentioned. The Tea Party and Ilk are more concerned with the expansion of the federal government, the deficit, and taxes. They will have a lot of their primary issues to handle before they get to the "No Jerk Off Act."
Posted By: johngaltnh
Those countries with the most "sexual freedom and openness" are those with the lowest rates of sub-replacement childbirth.
Because our social systems in the Western world are based on Ponzi schemes and depend upon increasing population to avoid financial collapse; those nations that cannot muster at least replacement level childbirth from their native populations are constrained to import replacement populations so that the aging "sexually free" people have someone to pay their bills and empty their bedpans.
(Note: it is possible to set up social safety nets without such dependencies; and working with an economy that does not need infinite expansion. But it would require questioning fundamental premises that are of too much use to people empowered by the status quo.)
Those new populations often bring new social mores and substantial cultural change. Just google "sharia law" and "germany" to see what's coming.
Not that I care much. All cultures are identically valid ... right? If I were to state that the cultures soon to be displaced by Sharia law were in any way preferable, that would be very racist and bigoted of me. Clearly, the people of Germany have chosen to "eat drink and be merry" while leaving no offspring to burden them; so that their culture and people will be properly displaced by other cultures and people. Who am I to argue with such a decision?
One should carefully consider that the reasons for previously existing social mores might not simply have been the satisfaction of mean people who wanted to keep everyone from having fun. Social mores that stayed with us for hundreds if not thousands of years were developed as part of a cultural feedback loop in order to support that culture's wellbeing. Replacing them willy-nilly can have unintended consequences. Notice I said "unintended" not "unfavorable." Most certainly, ladies in Germany 50 years from now will fully appreciate the inner wisdom of why they get stoned as a penalty for being raped.
Any culture can withstand some subset of its population choosing not to be held by prevailing social norms. For example, we have a long-established social norm against murder; yet the amount of murder that goes on doesn't threaten our viability as a culture because we have instituted methods of controlling it. But what if we failed to enforce such controls? How long would our culture stand before degenerating back into primordial ooze?
Our culture can also withstand a certain amount of "sexual freedom and openness" so long as it remains relatively fringe and rare. Once it becomes widespread; we too will join Italy and Germany among the ranks of nations importing replacement populations and switching our culture.
Oh, wait -- it's already happening.
It's kind of like abortion. As long as it is safe, legal and RARE it is not an issue. But what if 95% of all fetuses were aborted? It would be self-genocide. These departures from social norms can be tolerated to a degree without substantive damage; but when they go too far it can result in social destruction at a macroscopic scale.
I want you to notice a pattern. Widespread sexual libertinism creates an environment in which cultures with far stricter views of gender roles and far more restrictive views of sexual freedom will displace the original culture. That's because cultures with a sense of shared destiny tend to be stronger in many ways than those enmeshed in hedonism.
Individual liberty, incidentally, is not the same thing as hedonism. Cultures based on individual liberty are stronger than those with totalitarian tendencies. For examples, read Carnage and Culture.
It's all very interesting to watch.
And, like I said, I am not being critical of other cultures. The fact that I don't understand or appreciate the inner wisdom of female circumcision and would never allow it on my own offspring doesn't mean it might not be superior to my own narrow-minded views.