Historically, three sexual revolutions have influenced Catholics, Christians, and Non-believers ...and the story is not yet finished.
The Catholic revolution arose with the coming of Christianity into the Roman Empire, replacing a permissive male-dominated society based on social status, sexual desire, and easy divorce.
The Protestant revolution, while maintaining a strict sexual ethic, closed monasteries and convents, did away with priestly celibacy, and allowed for divorce in the case of adultery.
The great American sexual revolution commenced in the 1960s. Still going on today, its latest demand is that we should all recognize and endorse the exceedingly weird phenomenon called transgenderism; we should believe, that is to say, that a man/boy is a woman/girl if he feels that he is, and that a woman/girl is a man/boy if she feels that she is. Earlier in its career the sexual revolution demanded that we approve of fornication, unmarried sexual cohabitation, out-of-wedlock childbirth, pornography, no-fault divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage. The revolution has been relatively successful in its previous demands, which have been complied with not simply by huge sections of the general public but also by the US Supreme Court; and as a result the USA is, morally speaking, a very different country from what it was prior to the 1960s. Those on the cultural left will tell us that the USA is a much better country thanks to this sexual revolution; those on the cultural right (among whom is the author of this book) will tell us that the USA is much worse than it might have been.
David R. Carlin is a retired professor and retired politician. He and his wife Maureen live in Newport, Rhode Island. They have three adult children and four grandchildren.David was born and grew up in the old industrial city of Pawtucket R.I., sometimes called "the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution." He graduated from a Christian Brothers high school in Pawtucket and from Providence College (history), a Dominican college. He later received graduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame (philosophy) and the University of Rhode Island (sociology). He taught philosophy and/or sociology at the college level for more than fifty years, the last thirty-four of these at the Community College of Rhode Island, retiring in 2018.He spent twenty-four years in elective office, twelve years on the school board of Newport R.I. and twelve years as a Democratic member of the Rhode Island Senate, two of these as the Senate's majority leader. In 1992 he was the Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives in his district, losing to the pro-choice Republican incumbent. Carlin was a pro-life Democrat. Eventually, as he became convinced that the Democratic Party was evolving into an anti-Christianity party, he abandoned the party. He is now a political independent who usually votes Republican, even though he has little love for the Republican Party.Since the 1980s he has written hundred of opinion essays for a great variety of magazines, newspapers, and websites. These essays have had to do with politics, religion, and culture, and mostly (but not always) they have appeared in Catholic publications. For more than ten years he wrote a weekly column for Commonweal, and for the past half-dozen years he has written a biweekly column for the website The Catholic Thing.
