The Age of Polymorphous Perversity
The sexual issues now confronting our nation–from the breakdown of the family to same-sex marriage–are really pieces of a much larger puzzle. In order to understand what is happening, one must look carefully at the entire picture, the entire trajectory of Western civilization over the past century. What we face today are not merely individual, isolated issues, but rather a massive social transformation which has not happened by accident and which will not break apart on its own.
In 1930, the esteemed historian Christopher Dawson wrote this: “Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis, which is essentially different from everything that has previously been experienced. Other societies in the past have changes their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced a prospect of a fundamental alteration in the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social life rests.”
From the vantage point of 1930, Dawson looked forward to the rest of the 20th century, and he understood what was happening. He was a prophet.
In order to understand the shift that Dawson foresaw and that ultimately took place, it is necessary to look back to 1909, when Sigmund Freud released his understanding of human sexuality. Trying to understand something as powerful as sex, Freud turned to what he called the “infantile” stage of human development, and identified the leading characteristic of infantile sexuality as polymorphous perversity. Freud explained: “What makes an infant characteristically different from every other stage of human life is that the child is polymorphously perverse, is ready to demonstrate any kind of sexual behavior, with any kind of pleasure, without any kind of restraint.” He then explained how “civilization” emerges only after this innate, polymorphous perversity is restrained by psychological repression, social form, and custom. Such restraint, Freud felt, was inevitable and indeed necessary, for procreation is necessary for the continuation of the race, and therefore heterosexual coupling was absolutely essential for civilization itself.
Even if we finally reject Freud’s theory, it is crucial that we understand its influence. Freud is no doubt one of the ideological horsemen of the twentieth-century apocalypse, but even he was outdone by those who came after him.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Herbert Marcuse revisited Freud in his book Eros and Civilization, mixing his theories with those of Marx in order to develop a theory of sexuality as liberation. The whole problem, Marcuse thought, was the very restraint that Freud believed was inevitable and necessary, the repression that Freud saw leading to civilization itself. According to Marcuse, the only way to achieve liberation is to undo that repression, to reverse that restraint, and thus to unleash in society itself that infantile stage of pure sexuality–of polymorphous perversity.
When Eros and Civilization appeared in the 1960’s, it received much attention on college campuses–where such ideas are always met with an enthusiastic audience–but the rest of the culture remained largely unaware of, and untroubled by, the assault that had begun to take place upon the very foundations of civilization itself. Now, in the year 2005, it has become obvious that this ideology of polymorphous perversity is inch by inch–if not yard by yard–gaining ground. Read the daily newspaper, or just review the events of a typical week. Even something as basic as the heterosexual nature of marriage is now very much under assault. The very idea of normality, or of fixed institutions, is being subverted by the culture and marginalized by cultural elites.
What we now face is the subversion of humanity’s most basic categories and institutions–gender, marriage, and family. In the eyes of all too many in our culture, gender is merely a plastic social construct. Indeed, in the postmodern world, all realities are plastic and all principles are liquid. Everything can be changed. Nothing is fixed. All truth is relative, all truth is socially constructed, and anything which is constructed can also be deconstructed in order to liberate.
We are now told that even gender should be seen as a continuum. This means that human beings are no longer categorized as male and female, but as any number of chosen gender options. Furthermore, gender is flexible–at least according to the postmodern prophets of liberation. You can always change your gender if you do not like the gender you were assigned at birth. Interestingly, some surgeons are now even reversing gender transformation surgeries they had earlier performed.
All this represents a denial of gender as a part of the goodness of God’s creation. According to the biblical account of creation, human beings were created as male and female, and these categories establish the very basis for human order. This is now dismissed as inherently oppressive and intolerant.
For years, the ideological elites have believed that marriage is repressive and inhibiting. It is, they say, merely a product of social evolution, an institution that developed because civilization needed a way to protect children and to encourage child rearing. But of course, that which has evolved can always evolve further, and the next step, we are told, is to move beyond marriage altogether. This was the goal of the cultural elites in the latter half of the 20th century, and we must admit that they have made great strides toward accomplishing this objective.
If any one institution in human life was most subverted in the 20th century, it was without doubt the institution of marriage. Assaulted by divorce, by lifestyle, by media, by law, by politics, and by custom, marriage was undermined in its very essence. Of course, the attack also necessarily took its toll on the family as well. The very idea of the family as a fixed unit–a husband and wife and their children, together with their extended family–is now seen as an archaic, antiquarian, and intolerant institution, one which must be undone in order that humanity may be liberated from oppression.
The subversion of marriage and the family has extended to law and morality, to authority and to custom. The very habits of human life–the customs and traditions on which civilization is grounded–are now being reversed, marginalized, and discarded in an effort to eliminate all norms by normalizing the abnormal. For those whose agenda is to undermine Judeo-Christian morality and to disconnect Western civilization from biblical norms, there is no better strategy than to subvert marriage, family, and sexuality, and unleash on society an age and culture of polymorphous perversity.
For the last half century, the goal of America’s cultural elites has been to disconnect Western society from Judeo-Christian morality. By subverting the prevailing norms of marriage, the family, and sexuality, they hoped to establish a new age and culture of polymorphous perversity. The massive social transformation that is now taking place in America–the jettisoning of tradition, the overthrowing of fixed institutions, the normalizing of the abnormal–has not come about by accident. It is the result of a comprehensive strategy intended to change the way people think at every conceivable level.
First, there is a psychological strategy. We live in a therapeutic age in which every movement must be presented within a psychological framework. The strategy of those who push the agenda of polymorphous perversity has been to define sexuality as merely a matter of self-conscious orientation. When the question is changed from what individuals do to what individuals are as a psychological construct, the moral equation is absolutely transformed. The idea that personal autonomy is at the very core of what it means to be human is now ubiquitous in the therapeutic culture, and thus the most important realities here have become autonomy, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Anything that represses the uninhibited demonstration of the inner yearnings of the self is considered unhealthy and repressive, and should therefore be illegal and even immoral, marginalized and eradicated.
Second, there is a medical strategy. Anything that can be “psychologized” can also be “medicalized.” In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the organization’s official list of mental illnesses. In other words, one day homosexuality was considered to be a mental disorder, the next day it was not. But of course this is medicine based on ideology, rather than on science. The decision by the APA to normalize homosexuality did not come as a result of unquestioned scientific studies, nor because someone in a laboratory suddenly discovered that homosexuality was in fact normal. To the contrary, the APA’s decision came because special interest groups forced the change upon them, and the physicians willingly surrendered.
Do not underestimate the significance of that decision. It is not merely that homosexuality was considered aberrant in one moment and normal in the next. It is that believing homosexuality to be wrong and aberrant was normal and acceptable in one moment, but a symptom of mental illness and bigotry in the next. This was a complete moral revolution, and yet it went unnoticed by most Americans.
We now face a new concept of normal that has been foisted upon society by medical authorities, and which has brought about a great reversal in moral thinking. The belief that heterosexuality is normative–once a given of healthy and stable moral thinking–is now seen to be unhealthy and repressive. On the other hand, homosexuality–once considered unhealthy and wrong–is accepted as a perfectly legitimate “alternative lifestyle.”
Not only is there a psychological strategy and a medical strategy, but there is also a political strategy. The late 20th century saw the development of special interest politics, in which every group with a special agenda formed itself into an organization, hired lobbyists, and went at the political process with gusto. Protest was the first step, and political action was its aftermath.
When we think about this political strategy, we must raise an interesting question–just how successful has it been? Amazingly, of all of the strategies we will discuss, this political strategy has actually been the least effective for the homosexual movement–and for the age of polymorphous perversity as a whole. Why? Because the American people simply are not buying it. Americans are often asleep as fundamental changes are taking place, but when they face an actual choice at the ballot box, overwhelmingly they tend to choose to normalize the normal, rather than the abnormal. Think about the eleven different constitutional amendments passed by various states on November 2, 2004, identifying marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and you will begin to understand why the proponents of polymorphous perversity have been so frustrated in the political realm.
Of course, with the failure of the political strategy to deliver a satisfactory outcome, the age of polymorphous perversity has leaned largely upon a legal strategy. This was made possible by the judicial usurpation of politics. As former Judge Robert Bork has so prophetically stated, we now face a tyranny of judges with an ideology of judicial activism, who treat the law as a playground for social innovation, social revolution, and ideological subversion.
As Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon has also very insightfully noted, most of the Left’s language in the legal arena now comes in terms of what she identifies as “rights talk.” Everything is about rights. Right and wrong no longer have any meaning as categories in the law. According to the critical legal theory now being taught in law schools, there is no right or wrong, but only competing rights. And of course, many of these rights competing in the legal arena are invented rights, supposedly discovered in the penumbras and emanations of the United States Constitution.
This legal strategy has been extremely effective, of course. From the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to the Lawrence v. Texas decision of 2003, the Supreme Court has been a willing accomplice of the Left in bringing about social and moral revolution. In his scathing dissent from the majority’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision amounted to nothing less than the end of all morals legislation in the United States of America. Given the specific arguments Justice Anthony Kennedy made in the majority opinion, no legislation based on morality would ever pass constitutional muster again. In one decision in the year 2003, the United States Supreme Court swept morality off the table of America’s public life.
These psychological, medical, political, and legal strategies have all played their parts in furthering the culture of polymorphous perversity. By redefining homosexuality as normal in psychological and medical terms, and by undermining all morals legislation, cultural revolutionaries have gained great political momentum. However, these four strategies do not exhaust the tactical arsenal at the disposal of these revolutionaries. Education and theology have also been conscripted into their service.
The transformation now taking place in Western culture has been fueled by a multi-pronged, comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining the traditional foundations of Western civilization. In psychology, medicine, politics, and law, cultural revolutionaries have gone on the offensive. Their assault has not been confined to those fronts alone. The postmodern prophets of polymorphous perversity have also conscripted education and even theology into their service.
Besides the psychological, medical, political, and legal strategies, there is also an educational strategy directed at the schools and at the young. The goal here is to reach the young and ultimately to separate them from their parents, freeing them from parental authority and parental teaching. Earlier in the 20th century, it was John Dewey who first argued that society ought to act decisively to free children from the repressive prejudices of their parents. His philosophy largely won the day, and that is where we now stand. Elementary schools have essentially become laboratories of social engineering. In fact, groups like the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) have mobilized to influence the curriculum of the schools with the goal of changing young minds. By introducing their programs, literature, and media into elementary school classrooms, they hope and intend to infect the next generation with this ideology of polymorphous perversity.
Take a look at the artwork now found in elementary school textbooks. Look at who is holding hands. Look at who is embracing. The nuclear family–Mom, Dad, Dick, and Jane–is no longer to be taken for granted. If the agents of polymorphous perversity have their way, Dick and Jane will now be raised with two moms, or two dads, or any other conceivable “family arrangement.” The important thing is for children to be disabused of the notion–brought on by their parents’ irrational prejudices–that marriage and family are somehow normatively heterosexual.
This strategy is only accelerated in middle and high schools. There, the ideological induction is radically increased with mechanisms such as comprehensive sex education. Comprehensive, of course, does not refer to a deeper understanding of the nature of human sexuality. Nor does it point to a deeper comprehension of the moral issues at stake. Sex education is comprehensive only in the sense that nothing is deemed out of bounds, including sexual technique and contraceptive advice. Morally, anything goes–so long as it is personally fulfilling.
School-based clinics are another tool of the age of polymorphous perversity. Once again, children are separated from the authority and teaching of their parents, and shuffled off to clinics where they are offered all manner of “assistance”–from sexual counseling to contraceptives. Often this happens without any parental knowledge at all, much less parental notification or permission.
Other special programs are directed to middle and high school students in such a way that most parents have no idea what their children are actually learning. Rarely do these events have the word “sex” in them, and only by mistake are they ever packaged in such a way as to trigger parents’ concern. Instead, they are advertised as “special emphasis weeks” focusing on diversity, tolerance, and difference. Of course, anything labeled “difference week” will undoubtedly be much more “different” than you think different can be!
Even textbooks reflect these changes. The agents of polymorphous perversity have made public school curricula the object of their strategic concern, and it is increasingly common for teenagers and even younger children to read books categorized under “young adult literature.” Many of these books are nothing less than pornographic. They are worldview evangelism for the age of polymorphous perversity, and they have found their way even onto the shelves of many school libraries.
The college and university level, for its part, is now a circus of sexual revolution. Considering this, author Paul Berman once said: “It is now forbidden anymore to forbid.” But the revolution is not strictly from the bottom up. It is also being pressed from the top down, with increasing numbers of colleges and universities even offering programs in gay and lesbian studies. All this is an ideological engine for placing within the university structure, within the faculty, and within the curriculum, a seed of sexual revolution that will ultimately normalize the abnormal and abnormalize the normal. Furthermore, anyone who is not “with it,” is not only sick and pitiable, but is in fact dangerous to the body politic–backward, ignorant, and repressive.
This has led in many university cultures to a specific targeting of Christian organizations. At places like Tufts University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and some Ivy League institutions, there have been cases in which Christian organizations have been told that they must allow practicing homosexuals to be officers in their organization, or they will be barred from campus and removed from recognition as an official student group. In other words, a Christian organization may remain on campus only so long as it forfeits Christian morality–all in the name of diversity and tolerance.
There is also a cultural strategy focused on the elite centers of American culture. The media industry, the entertainment industry, music, and even advertising have essentially become the bulletin board dissemination service for the age of polymorphous perversity. Many Christians would be shocked to see how some companies who carefully manage their wholesome image, advertise to the homosexual community. Many of these are corporations whose names we know and whose products we buy, but they present an entirely different face when extending themselves to the culture of polymorphous perversity.
It is no exaggeration to note that Hollywood, with very rare exceptions, is simply given over to this culture. In fact, Hollywood’s movies have become the principal means whereby the culture of polymorphous perversity is mainstreamed to the entire nation. So even though it might appear from electoral maps that this polymorphous perversity is confined to the coasts and a few other urban areas, the reality is that this philosophy of liberation reaches into every community and into every home by means of entertainment, music, movies, and advertising.
Finally, there is a theological strategy. The single greatest obstacle to the victory of the culture of polymorphous perversity is the Judeo-Christian heritage. The greatest obstacle to the normalization of homosexuality is the Bible. Therefore, the cultural revolutionaries have implemented a strategy to completely transform the understanding of sexuality as handed down in the scriptures and as understood by the Christian church throughout the centuries. What has emerged from this subversion of theology is two rival traditions, two religions, each claiming to be Christian. One of these “Christianities” is no longer based upon biblical authority, no longer committed to the great doctrines of the faith, and no longer committed to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Yet it continues to bear the name Christian and continues to claim that its adherents have not in fact abandoned the authority of scripture.
The sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, they claim, was not homosexuality, but inhospitality. This, however, is a recklessly subversive argument. It simply ignores the clear import of the story in favor of advancing a cause. What about those passages in Leviticus which condemn homosexual acts? What they suggest, according to the cultural revolutionaries, is that homosexual acts are sinful only insofar as they are specifically committed by persons who are heterosexual. A similar argument is made about Paul’s reasoning in Romans 1. Paul had no understanding of our modern idea of sexual orientation, the argument goes. Nevertheless, his teachings are still useful because they remind us that a person should follow his or her orientation: To violate one’s sexual orientation would be a sin against nature–not nature itself, but one’s own nature.
Yet it seems clear from Romans 1 that the apostle Paul had a pretty good idea of sexual orientation. In fact, Paul very clearly indicts sinful sexual orientation, for he deals not only with sexual activity, but with the passions that lead to such activity. “Men with men,” he says, “leaving the natural use of the woman and burning with desire one for the other.” The Bible simply leaves no room for equivocation.
As the late Elizabeth Achtemeier of Union Theological Seminary once argued, if there is any one thing that is plainly revealed in Scripture, it is Scripture’s absolute condemnation of homosexuality in every form and in every context. There is no room for negotiation. If homosexuality is to be squared with biblical teaching, it will only be through subverting the entire authority of Scripture and by setting up a rival version of Christianity.
In all these areas–psychological, medical, legal, educational, cultural, and even theological–the age of polymorphous perversity has made great strides toward entrenching itself in the Western mind. The great question is whether our civilization can survive this assault. And the answer, of course, is no–not unless there is a fast recovery of the biblical worldview.
Revolutions are fueled by ideas. The cultural upheaval represented by the age of polymorphous perversity has been grounded primarily in the ideas of three individuals: Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, and Michel Foucault. To understand the force and speed with which this philosophy of polymorphous perversity has impacted and changed the culture, one must first understand the ideas which undergird it.
Margaret Mead is considered one of the founders of anthropology in America. After a research visit to the Pacific Islands, Mead wrote a book in 1928 entitled Coming of Age in Samoa. The book, which essentially launched Mead’s career as an anthropologist, argued that Samoan adolescence–unlike Western adolescence–was a time of smooth transition from childhood to adulthood because Samoans tended to enjoy casual sex for many years before they settled into marriage. The bottom line, according to Mead, was that promiscuity is healthy. History has proven, however, that Mead was a fraud. Her entire project was based on falsehood and misinformation. Five years after Mead’s death in 1978, Derek Freeman published a book entitled Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth in which he challenged and refuted every one of Mead’s major claims. Returning to Samoa to question the actual subjects of Mead’s research, he found that the young women to whom Mead had spoken had simply lied to her about their promiscuity. Even so, the book had an enormous influence on American culture and attitudes toward sex and marriage for more than fifty years.
Another intellectual engine of the age of polymorphous perversity is Alfred Kinsey. Quite frankly, Kinsey was one of the most influential sexual deviants of the 20th century. In fact, he stands as a symbol of everything that went wrong during that period. His book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, prompted a revolution by providing a pseudo-scientific cover to those who were pushing the age of polymorphous perversity. Kinsey simply pushed Margaret Mead’s conclusion one step further. If Mead taught that promiscuity is healthy, Kinsey argued that perversity itself is healthy. Sexual deviance is simply to be celebrated.
Finally, we turn to consider Michel Foucault. Probably the least well-known of this trio, Foucault was a dominant influence in the American academy–a French philosopher who died after being infected with AIDS in the gay bars of San Francisco, California. Foucault, one of the dominant figures in postmodern thought, taught that sex is everything and that the only way to be liberated is to sexualize every dimension of life in the direction of polymorphous perversity. In essence, Foucault argued that sexuality is itself a modern invention and that one of modern society’s central ambitions has been to institutionalize sexual repression. Though he died in 1984, Foucault is undoubtedly still one of the most influential persons on American college campuses today,
Fueled by the ideas of Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, and Michel Foucault, this age of polymorphous perversity is now upon us. Moral relativism is the order of the day, and it all begs the question, Can civilization survive? The answer is, quite simply, “no.” Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself. Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution–all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity.
Looking at the history of Western civilization, William and Ariel Durant argued that one of the first achievements necessary for the establishment of civilization is the restraint of sexuality. As they put it, sexuality is like a hot river that must be banked on both sides. Sadly, what we see in the latter half of the 20th century is the un-banking of that river.
Pitirim A. Sorokin, founder of the discipline of sociology at Harvard University, argued that “Heterosexual marriage is the one fundament of civilization itself.” You simply cannot build or maintain civilization without heterosexual marriage, and without heterosexual marriage being understood as the norm. Unless heterosexual marriage is protected by law, custom, and habit, to the exclusion of every other arrangement, civilization is impossible. Sorokin made this point more than fifty years ago. Even from such a distance, he saw this age of perversity arising, and he argued that this age of rebellion would destroy civilization. Yet he also held out the hope that civilization would wake up when the issue finally came down to the preservation of marriage. Was he right?
That is the great question of our day–whether or not this civilization will indeed wake up once marriage is clearly understood to be the critical battleground and the primary target of attack.
Today, we face a cultural crisis that actually threatens to reverse civilization and to embrace barbarism. Can civilization survive under these circumstances? I would have to argue that it cannot. There is no example in the history of humankind of a civilization enduring for long when an age of polymorphous perversity is set loose.
Can we recover from this? Well, we certainly must hope and pray so. But any recovery will have to be based on a re-embrace of biblical truth. We simply will not find enough sociological capital to reverse the prevailing trends. We will not find enough legal conviction to withstand this assault from cultural revolutionaries. Nor will we find enough political momentum to halt this movement. In the end, there is only one thing that stands between this culture and absolute dissolution, and that is the fact that sex was not our idea. Human beings are creatures made by a sovereign Creator, who made us male and female for His glory, and who created the institution of marriage both for our health and for our happiness.
As J. R. R. Tolkien once said to his son Michael, “You must remember, son, that monogamy is a revealed ethic.” No one accidentally stumbles across monogamy, and this culture will not stumble onto recovery. It will have to submit itself to recovery. What is needed is a spiritual, theological and biblical recovery, one that sees gender not as some kind of evolutionary accident, but as God’s gift, part of the very goodness of God’s creation. We see God’s glory in the masculinity of the male and in the femininity of the woman. We understand gender to be a fixed category, not an accidental aberration in the evolutionary process of humanity. Given this, we must remind the culture that marriage is not merely a social contract between two (or more) people, but an arena in which the glory of God is displayed in the right ordering of one man and one woman who come together in the permanent, holy covenant of marriage.
We must refuse to separate the goods of marriage, and we must again point out that part of the essential function of marriage is procreation. Those who are able to have children must welcome children, because this is what God has instituted. Sex, procreation, marriage, and family must be woven together in a seamless garment that recognizes children as a divine gift. In this family–man, woman, and children–civilization is enriched and strengthened, and even more importantly, God’s glory is evident in the midst of His creation.
What then are we to do in order to work for recovery from this age of polymorphous perversity? First, we must fight on every front. We must fight on the legal front, the political front, the media front, the cultural front, the educational front, the psychological front, and the medical front. In each of these crucial arenas, we must bear witness to the truth. In doing so, we may be marginalized, we may be voted down, and we may be criticized, but we cannot simply surrender the field to the other side.
Second, we must bear witness to the truth. This means that we must be very careful not only to say the right things, but also to show the right things. In other words, we must make certain that our marriages and our families are a testimony to God’s intention, and that we live before the world declaring that even if insanity, irrationality, and sexual anarchy rule the world, it will not rule us. God’s glory will be shown in faithfulness wherever it is found, even in the tiny domestic picture of our seemingly insignificant families. The age of polymorphous perversity may one day become the rule of the land. The cultural revolutionaries may one day be successful beyond their wildest dreams. But so long as there remains one man and one woman united in holy marriage, receiving children as God’s gifts and ordering their family life by the Word of God, there will still be a witness–a powerful witness the world cannot ignore.
Third, we must create communities of faithful marriages and healthy families. Our churches must become communities that demonstrate the wonder of God’s glory in marriage and the health holiness of God’s intention in sex. We must band ourselves together so that we live this witness before the world and train our children to do the same.
Fourth, we must rescue the perishing and love the unlovely. What happens when those who give themselves to the culture of polymorphous perversity finally get sick or collapse in despair? The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is made up of sinners saved by grace–sinners who understand what sin is and who understand that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Thus, we must be about the task of rescuing the perishing and loving the unlovely, for so also, in our own way, were we.
Let us see this trend toward sexual anarchy answered with true resolve. Let us mount a movement, not consisting so much of placards, billboards, and advertising, but of couples and families, men and women who will not bend, will not bow, and will not surrender to the culture of polymorphous perversity.
Mohler, A. (19 – 22 September 2005), The Age of Polymorphous Perversity., from http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-09-19
http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-09-20
http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-09-21
http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-09-22
