Symposium: Reclaiming Integrity

This article is in response to “Why Hooking Up Is Letting You Down” by J. Budziszewski and is part of the symposium, “Sex and the Polis: Perspectives on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Ethics.”

The fallout from the sexual revolution pervades every facet of the postmodern West. As Dr. Budziszewski notes, more and more young people are beginning to feel that the 60s’ promises of freedom and happiness ring a little hollow. He draws a striking parallel with the inheritors of Marxist revolutions, who’ve received the ministration of People’s Liberation Armies at bayonet-point: “They still live like libertines, sometimes they still talk like libertines, but it’s getting old. They are beginning to sound like the children of third-generation Maoists.”

One very high-profile manifestation of sexual brokenness in our day is the regnant hookup culture on college campuses. Groups like the Love and Fidelity Network, with admirable scholars from Donna Freitas to Dawn Eden, are beginning to document the heartache that flows from normalizing sexual intimacy without commitment.

To me the overriding theme of contemporary sexual culture is fragmentation. We believe we can separate the heart and soul from physical acts that are meant to be charged with tenderness and love. We believe that the unitive and procreative purposes of sex can be dealt with individually, so cohabitation and surrogate motherhood are both ok. We believe that marriage need no longer be the cleaving together of male and female in one-flesh union—marriage is what individuals make of it.

Finding and living out sexual integrity will require a renewed understanding that everything we do sexually is intrinsically bound up with who we are. Identity and performance cannot be separated. The joy and beauty of mutual self-giving in love, looking forward to the gift of bearing and rearing children, is deeply congruent with who we long to be as men and women. And it requires orienting our whole lives towards that end.

To me the problem and the solution are symbolized by two paintings. Raphael’s Sistine Madonna is a testament to the sacred beauty of motherhood and womanhood, honored and blessed by the onlooking saints at the painting’s margins. Picasso’s Demoiselle D’Avignon is a voyeuristic, dehumanized, brutalized portrayal of sexuality as something utterly commodified, stripped of human tenderness.

If our generation is to know and love sexual integrity, we’re going to need more paintings like Raphael’s.