#MeToo – Sexual misconduct & Family Restoration

Thanks to Alabama's Roy Moore campaign, Harvey Weinstein and many brave women, a #MeToo social media campaign has brought sexual transgressions into the light.  A host of politicians, mediaites such as Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer, and big name Hollywood elites have been exposed for their long term and ongoing habits of sexual misconduct.  The goal of #MeToo has been simply to give people a sense of "the magnitude of the problem" by allowing women a forum to discuss their experiences of harassment and assault. 

How did we get here? Easy answers might include the proliferation of pornography, family breakdown, the sexual revolution, judicial opinions glorifying individual rights and sexual liberty.  Violated women are damaged, shamed, relegated to the shadows, and even blamed for their own victimization, while false charges, sometimes politically motivated, serve to only cheapen those very real harms that did in fact occur. Values-free education may be a factor as well, as in his book, The Abolition of Man, subtitled How Education Develops Man’s Sense of Morality, C.S. Lewis observes, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

Another question, however, may be what can be done to move forward? The family is the primary and best context for healthy and positive sexual behavior.  Respectful and appropriate sexual behavior begins at home, with parents – mom and dads, but especially dads - modeling positive protective sexual respect for their children, and discussing how standards of personal dignity in sexuality extend from self-respect to respect for one's neighbor.  Passing on those values to the next generation is never more important than in a culture of unilateral sexual liberty. 

In her article, Consent is Not Enough: Harvey Weinstein, Sex, and Human Flourishing, posted at The Witherspoon Institute's Public Discourse, Angela Franks insightfully observes, "We swim in a culture marked by what Helen Alvaré has called "sexualityism"—the conviction, springing from the sexual revolution, that any sex with anybody is probably a good thing. In this construct, non-procreative sexual expression is a simple necessity intrinsically tied to human fulfillment and personal identity (according to none other than the Supreme Court)."  In discussing the barrage of charges against Hollywood king Harvey Weinstein she adds, "Perhaps, because of the accumulated testimony to such horror, Hollywood's long-overdue moral reckoning has indeed come. Let us hope so. At the very least, let us not lose the opportunity to expose not only the brutal acts but also the ideology behind them."

Postmodern ideology has lured children into early sexuality (see e.g., Sex at Six: The Victimization of Innocence and Other Concerns over Children's "Rights," 36 Brandeis J. Fam. L. 361), told women and men that sexuality can be without consequence (see, e.g. The Rise and Fall of Women's Rights: Have Sexuality and Reproductive Freedom Forfeited Victory?),  and generally cheapened sexual experience and human life (see e.g. Prom Mom Killers: Distorted Statistics, Blame Shift, and Their Impact on Punishment for Neonaticide).  While marriage is the most safe and pleasing context for sexual expression, the family as an extension of that union offers the most suitable framework for developing healthy sexual attitudes and behavior.  #MeToo may just be the tool to wake up American culture to the consequences of an ideology that demands unilateral liberty.