Intimate Truths

David Quinn of the Irish Catholic discusses the meaning of sex. He illuminates the precious illusions that drove the sexual revolutionaries. He compassionately demonstrates the consequences of their folly. Most important of all, he bears witness to what sex is all about.

Take a closer look:

What has not been discussed in any of this is the all-important, decisive topic of what sex is about. What is it directed towards? Why does it exist at all? If we don’t answer these questions correctly then we cannot hope to come up with a theory of what true sexual fulfilment is. If we don’t even ask these questions, then we can’t even hope to begin the debate.

To put it another way, what is missing from practically all talk about sex in Ireland is whether or not sex has a purpose. So, does it?

Before proceeding, however, let’s remind ourselves of the promises made by the sexual revolution. The theorists of the sex revolution began with an extremely reductive and naïve view of human nature, namely that sex is our fundamental and most basic impulse, and that this impulse is directed chiefly towards pleasure.

They imagined our sex drive as a kind of raging river that had to be let run its course or else the consequences would be dire. They imagined that anything which thwarted our sex drive acted as a kind of dam. The water would build up behind this dam and sooner or later something would have to give. Either we would start to act out in all kinds of sexually inappropriate ways, for example, paedophilia, or else we would be condemned to radically unhappy, neurotic and repressed lives which would often express themselves in terrible, burning rage.

The sex revolutionists said the only answer to this was to allow the sex drive run its natural course by not seeking to thwart it in any way.

Theories of ‘free love’ grew out of this. Love was conflated with sex, and the supposed freedom of ‘free love’ lay in the belief that sex could be consequence-free. The Pill added tremendous impetus to this belief. For the first time in history you could have sex and be almost 100pc sure that no pregnancy would result. And if it did, there would always be the fall-back option of abortion. Furthermore, there would be no need to commit to your sexual partner. You would only stay with him or her until such time as your sex drive took you somewhere else.

In fact, ‘free-love’ wasn’t free at all. So-called free love can only come by suppressing other parts of human nature, parts that are in fact intimately and inextricably linked with sex itself. Free love is only ‘free’ if we suppress our desire for children and, in the ultimate irony, if we suppress our desire for love.

The brute fact of life that the sex revolutionaries completely lost sight of is that sex creates in us an instinct to bond emotionally as well as physically with the person we have sex with and if we suppress this instinct it can only be at huge cost to ourselves. Just ask Robert Hughes.

Sex is an act of communion between a man and a woman that have literally bet their lives on each other. They committed the very best of themselves to each other. Sex celebrates that commitment and reinforces it. It also expresses their love for each other in truly existential terms.

Sex is also the way in which couples can truly participate as co-creators of life. In spite of science's best effort, the primary way that the human race propagates itself is through sexual intercourse.

Sex is the expression of union and procreation that belongs to a couple united in Matrimony. Mr. Quinn courageously defends this truth, which must appear utter nonsense to the foaming absolute individualists that worship the One Thing that Matters.

Mouth-foaming does not produce truth. That exists on its own. May more Mr. Quinns arise to give testimony to the Truth. And soon!