Can We Be Liberated from Sexual “Freedom”?
In a recent editorial in The New York Times entitled, “The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness,” Christine Emba challenged the dogma that suggests anything goes in the bedroom as long as everybody consents. Emba, the author of the book Rethinking Sex, goes on to slam the feminist Left for being unable to admit that pornography has been terrible for society and promotes the objectification and violence against women. All this, in fact, even when everybody involved technically consents.
And yet, many feminists and progressives still indulge the fantasy that porn can be made and imbibed “ethically.” Emba thinks that’s because they are deeply afraid of sounding like religious killjoys:
Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded. There’s a dread of seeming prudish, boring, uncool . . .. Most recently, the only people who seem willing to openly criticize the widespread availability of pornography tend to be right-leaning or religious, and so are instantly discounted—often by being disparaged as such. But cracks are beginning to appear in the wall . . .
Emba’s critique of the sexual revolution is one of those cracks. Because she writes for a secular, left-leaning audience, her work has been a necessary challenge to our cultural delusions, including the myth that “porn can be harmless.”
In fact, a growing chorus of mainstream, non-religious voices, such as Nicholas Kristof and Louise Perry, are now arguing that much of what was called “sexual liberation” victimized the vulnerable and degraded our society. These critics are right as far as they go. However, they don’t go far enough.
Even the harshest critics of porn and sexual “freedom” seem unable or unwilling to say that sex belongs exclusively within marriage and that honoring this Divinely-blessed union is the one and only healthy sexual ethic. In her book, Emba proposed that partners should refuse to objectify each other and instead “will the good” of the other, drawing on Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love. Aquinas, of course, believed monogamous marriage is exclusively where this kind of love happens. As my Breakpoint This Week co-host Maria Baer observed in her review of Emba’s book, “Before we can will the good of another, we’ll have to know what ‘good’ means . . .. We don’t need a new sexual ethic. We need to recover a really, really old one.”
That recovery requires not only a clear and stable definition of “good,” but it also will require a new definition of “freedom.” After all, the rallying cry that brought us infinitely accessible and increasingly dangerous pornography, not to mention the hookup culture, rampant unwed births, the spread of STDs, the normalization of divorce and abortion, Harvey Weinstein, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and a generation burned out from all of it was the promise of “sexual freedom.”
Specifically, it was a cry that reduced freedom to only freedom from rules, responsibilities, and constraints. It was never a call to freedom for our purpose or anyone’s good. This is a deeply impoverished view of what freedom is, and one that dismisses the most important questions about sex: What is sex for? What are our bodies for? What are we for? We were told that the only answer to these questions is, “to do or be whatever I want!” But that type of freedom has proven to be profoundly dehumanizing and enslaving and has left uncountable victims.
Christians should never be embarrassed to speak to what is true about human nature and God’s design for us. We absolutely should stop listening to the many voices, especially the ones claiming to be Christian, who tell us to be less “obsessed” with sex and focus on social justice issues. Even secular writers are beginning to recognize that justice and sexual ethics are connected and rooted in our culture’s lies about sexual freedom.
We have every reason to be confident in our “really old” sexual ethics. The Bible was ahead of the curve on this, and the revolution was wrong. The only sexual ethic capable of protecting and enhancing the good of all involved is the covenantal view of marriage. In other words, we do not need an adjustment to our culture’s idea of sexual freedom. We need to be liberated from it.
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Bulat Silvia
Published Date: June 11, 2025
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
