Sane Sex

The Truth About Men & Women

by Terrell Clemmons

"Those people are disgusting," Harris blurted out, revolted. The class had been discussing Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the sci-fi dystopia in which the purpose of life is nothing more than the pursuit of pleasure, and meaningless sexual trysts are a regular form of pleasurable amusement.

Encouraged, Dr. J. Budziszewski quickly moved to affirm what he thought his student was getting at. "Sex ought to mean something," he said.

"No," Harris corrected him. "Sex doesn't always have to mean something."

Puzzled, the professor asked him what, then, had provoked the outburst. "The way they make babies—in factories, without parents," Harris replied. "The whole thing about 'decanting' them from glass bottles. That's what's disgusting."

And with that, class was over, Harris went on his way, and Dr. Budziszewski was left to mull over what had just happened.

Sexual Schizophrenia Observed

Yes, decanting children in glass bottles is disgusting; Harris's revulsion was well placed. But it didn't seem to register with him that his back-to-back expressions—"Sex doesn't always have to mean something" and "Producing babies in factories without parents is disgusting"—stood at direct odds with one another. For while the first asserts that it is okay for baby-making activity to be meaningless, the second palpably betrayed a primal loathing of meaningless baby-making. "Apparently," the astute teacher observed, "sex means something to us even if we don't admit to ourselves that it does."

Indeed.

Read More at Salvo Magazine.