What is it with conservatives? Nearly every day, some bloviating rightist or other publishes a pseudo-scientific essay intended to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all aspects of contemporary love and sex are utterly unnatural and a threat to civilization as we know it -- except the stuff right-wingers do. The latest such essay (the first of a two-parter!) appears at National Review Online today. Jennifer Roback Morse writes (emphasis mine):

So, what is the meaning of human sexuality anyhow? Sexual activity has two natural, organic purposes: procreation and spousal unity...

Spousal unity is the feature of human sexuality that makes it distinct from purely animal sexuality.... Males and females who attach themselves to each other, have a better chance of seeing their offspring survive long enough to produce grandchildren. Science can now tell us how the hormones released during sex help to create emotional bonds between the partners....

But for many people in modern America, sex has little or nothing to do with building community of any kind. Sex is a purely private matter, in the narrowest sense of private....

Instead of being something that draws us out of ourselves and into relationship with others, our sexual activity focuses us inward, on ourselves and our own desires. A sexual partner is not a person to whom I am irrevocably connected by bonds of love. Rather, the sexual partner has become an object that satisfies me more or less well.

This difference in worldview is at the heart of the culture wars. One side believes the meaning of human sexuality is primarily individual. Sex is a private activity whose purpose is individual pleasure and satisfaction. The alternative view is that sex is primarily a social activity. Sex builds up community, starting with the spousal relationship and adding on from there.

"For many people in modern America"? Try "for Strom Thurmond when he was 22."