Victims of the Revolution and the Moral Cost of Sexual Liberation with Dr. Nathanael Blake

In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram sit down with Dr. Nathanael Blake to discuss his new book, Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All. Blake argues that the sexual revolution—once heralded as a movement for personal freedom and fulfillment—has in fact left a legacy of loneliness, dissatisfaction, and moral confusion. He traces how the rejection of traditional Christian sexual ethics in favor of “liberation” has reshaped our social fabric, from family life and marriage to identity and faith.

The conversation moves through the promises and failures of the sexual revolution, the meaning of Christian “prudishness,” and the ways modern society’s views on sex and identity have altered relationships, institutions, and even the church. Blake discusses purity culture, the rise of the “sex recession,” and how pornography, delayed marriage, and technology have changed intimacy. The hosts challenge him on issues such as women’s rights, LGBTQ inclusion, and the role of government in defining marriage—leading to a candid and thought-provoking exchange about what it truly means to be human, embodied, and free.

Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781621647706

Guest Bio
Dr. Nathanael Blake is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) and a Senior Contributor to The Federalist. His research and writing focus on culture, politics, and faith, with a particular emphasis on the moral costs of modern liberalism and the legacy of the sexual revolution. In his new book, Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All (Ignatius Press, 2025), Blake argues that the pursuit of personal freedom in matters of sex and identity has eroded community, family stability, and true fulfillment. He holds a Ph.D. in political theory and has written widely on Christian ethics, social policy, and cultural renewal.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh? Hey, what's going on? Well, doing fine. And we are joined today by Nathaniel Blake. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He's known for his incisive commentary on culture, politics, and faith. Blake also explores the moral cost of modern liberalism and the legacy of the sexual revolution. And in his new book, Victims of the Revolution, How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All, he argues that the pursuit of personal freedom in matters of sex and identity has come at a profound social cost. And in our talk today, we're going to hear more about what Nathaniel has to say about that and what those social costs actually are. So welcome to the show, Nathaniel. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, and just to jump right in, um for those unfamiliar with your work, what motivated you to write the book Victims of the Revolution and why now? So I've gotten that question a lot and it's a little hard to answer because nobody really sets out in a career path to say, I'm going to be a professional prude. But I've been writing on these subjects for a while now in columns and things. And ultimately it turned into a book with the encouragement of my boss and colleagues at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And my argument is simply that the sexual revolution hasn't delivered on its promises. have the attorney Sorry, the Surgeon General, not the Attorney General, the Surgeon General of a Democratic administration taking to the New York Times to say there's a loneliness epidemic. And research keeps showing that Americans are lonelier, Americans are more isolated, they're more depressed, and they're even reporting having less sex and less satisfying sex. So something went wrong if a movement that was premised on personal fulfillment, personal happiness, and a lot of great sex is not delivering on any of those. And I argue that there are reasons for that, that a Christian can see, because the sexual revolution broke or violated or abandoned, however you want to say it, the natural God-given order of how we are meant to live, and consequently that Christianity provides a better way for us to live. Yeah, uh I really resonate with your argument. I was looking through one of the articles that you wrote that's very similar to the book, and then of course, looking at the argument of the book. And I really appreciate it. It's funny, because I was talking to my wife and I sending her like, hey, what do you think about this argument, essentially? And I got it boiled down into some premises. And then she was like, that makes a lot of to me. It's like yeah it makes a lot of sense to me too you know and I just appreciate your candor in this and I would love to kind of hear like an understanding of You know, one of the words that you have used is prude. And I would love you to kind of uh define that for us, help us understand what you mean when you say prude, and then how that helps us understand this category of person that you're talking about. it's a little self-deprecating in that the Christian moralists, know, the church ladies, whatever the church guys are, the ones, were the killjoys, were the scolds, were the ones, were the buzzkills coming in saying no more fun, nope, nope, nope. But it isn't real, so that's the reputation, that's the accusation, but I don't think it's accurate. based on what we're seeing in our culture, where it turns out, actually, marriage is good. Family life is good. It's not a guarantee. I'm not preaching a sort sexual prosperity gospel here, where just, you know, get married and go to church and everything will be perfect and you'll have a great sex life and it'll be wonderful. But it is, on average, better because it avoids the pitfalls of sin. The scriptural design for our lives is better for us, and it also provides comfort and consolation. and even an understanding of how our sorrows can be turned to sanctification. So the prude is really just me saying, well, here's what the world calls us, but it's not accurate. You can accuse us, but by your own standards, again, the sexual revolution promised great sex, and yet Americans aren't really having that. Hmm. Yeah. So when you say what the sexual revolution promise, can you better define that? um And I'm asking this question because I don't really know that much about the sexual revolution. So maybe you can first define what the sexual revolution is and then kind of what sort of was the broader promise that the movement offered. Sure, and uh you could take a very historical perspective, which I don't do too much in my book, but it was ultimately based on the idea that with uh human developments of technology, of wealth, of uh mastery of our bodies, we didn't need the old constraints, and that consequently we would be happier, we would be more fulfilled, we would flourish more if we were freer to move in and out of relationships, in and out of marriages in and out of bed if we were sexually liberated. If all the old norms and taboos and constraints were effectively abolished and that would actually be what would we would be more fulfilled and happier both individually but then as a culture. And that movement I would say largely triumphed. That is the cultural zeitgeist. It is what conquered. It is the norm. It is the expectation now. I just don't think it is delivered on its promises. Whenever you talk about the success or failure of any movement, whether it's sex revolution, Black Lives Matter, whatever, uh there's this sense of uh winning and losing, or it's working or it's not working. Either way, it's based off a metric of some sort. How are you gauging um the success or failure um of the sexual revolution? Well, I would say that we would look to are people happier? And that can always be a challenge, but there is a lot of social science that at this point is reasonably well established, trying to judge how happy people are. We can look at are people reporting having more sex, right? If the idea was that marriage, it's a killjoy, you know, it's a ball and chain. get married and your sex life is going to end in a year or two, you disappear into a gray suburbia and never come back out. There's a lot of media that sold that image. those would, so yeah, happiness, sexual fulfillment, and the social science doesn't back that up. mean, the general social survey, it's not perfect, but it is a very large social scientific survey. And if you look at the rate at which Americans are reporting having sex within, the last week, the last year, whatever, it asks those questions. It's gone down dramatically since they started asking those questions. Something happened. And we also, again, places like the New York Times and the Atlantic and the New Yorker. The Atlantic kind of led the charge writing about this Gen Z and millennial sex recession. And New Yorker just had a piece on that uh weaker to before we're recording this. So. Yeah, no, I mean, I really resonate with what you're saying. I would love for you to unpack the idea of like the Christian moral framework a little bit more. know, basically, like it's guiding us, maybe like marriage guides us towards higher ends rather than like just self-discovery or something like that? I like, like essentially what are the driving forces behind fulfillment and happiness that we're talking about? Thinking from a Christian moral framework, like having these higher ends, like maybe what are those higher ends and how do they really help us em have a more fulfilling life rather than like... this drive to just self-discovery and self-identification. All right, well that's a big question. I'll try to go through it quickly. So first of all, there is the question of what fulfills us? And my argument is that we are not meant to be pleasure seeking, autonomous individuals looking out for ourselves and trying to have the most immediate sensory pleasure we can. Instead, what fulfills us ultimately, both in this life and then looking forward to the next, is relationships and love. And consequently, the Christian understanding of marriage is something that is God given. It is ordered through our nature, our ontology is male and female, and it is directed both to our fulfillment in this life to some extent, but it also points us, as you said, to something higher. So marriage in the Christian view is something that is both very fundamental and very pragmatic and practical. and also something that is much, that points us ultimately to our union with Christ, the church as the bride of Christ. So marriage is the basics of the continuation of the human race, diapers, dishes, raising children. It is also a union and intimacy with another person that is one of the deepest that is possible in this life. And then it finally directs us towards that. It's a sign, it's a symbol. of our ultimate eschatological fulfillment with God. So it encompasses a great deal, going from the very basic parts of life all the way up to finally seeking God in the beatific vision. uh I would probably say critics would say that this sexual freedom revolution, what have you, while produced negative results, kind of as in your telling, may have also expanded rights and protections for women, LGBTQ, so on and so forth. How would you respond to someone that makes that argument? So I would, well, I would have three things that I think I'd say because I think there are a few different issues raised here. First of all, I actually feel a little vindicated, which in something I wrote in the book, which is that it is now the Christian insistence that marriage is between a man and a woman that is more offensive to the culture than the Christian insistence that sex is meant for marriage. So it is the Christian objection to same-sex activity that's more, offensive to our culture than the Christian objection to fornication. And I think that is in fact where the criticisms are coming from. So to address those, you raise two things, uh women and LGBTQ plus. So with regard to women, I would say, and I will tie these two together, with regard to women, I would say that actually the sexual revolution has in many ways been anti-women. because it has regarded women as defective men, which is to say female fertility and the natural differences between men and women are treated as something that is detrimental to women. Women are expected to enter into the world as men and consequently they have to suppress their own femininity and I don't biologically and so on. Leia Labresco Sargent actually I know I'm talking about my book, but so she just has a great book. I've got an advanced copy of it. Just this wonderful argument about how the world is not shaped for women. And the argument I make, which is in some sense drawn from her previous writings, is that our understanding of the normative ideal of what it means to be human as an autonomous individual rather than an individual who is dependent or has dependencies. is ultimately a very male-centric one, and it is one that calls into question even the idea that women and children are fully human. If being human means being maximally free, if that is the normative ideal, then that disadvantages women and children in terms of our understanding of their humanity. So that brings us to abortion, which I think is what you're asking about. And I would say that you will not have solidarity. you will not have social justice if you set the interests of mother, father, and child against each other. If instead of a bond of love between this primeval union that continues the human race, you instead have a competing and violent battleground of selfish clashing interests, which is settled against the weakest. So then in terms of LGBTQ, and I know it's a long answer, it's a big question, I think there is the question, loving this by the way. I'm absolutely captivated by what you're saying. I'm serious. Keep going, please. so with regard to LGBTQ +, there's a question of, from a Christian perspective, what is our identity? Is our identity based upon our sexual desires, whatever they may be? Is our identity based on a sense of gender identity? And I've got a whole lot of things, but I'll skip over that. Or is our identity based on our growing sanctification and conformity to Christ? And so that's where there's a distinction, because I understand from a perspective that says, my identity is based on what I want, how it seems like Christians are actually erasing and attacking the very existence of people who identify as LGBTQ because, well, if that's the core of your identity and someone is saying, no, that is wrong or that is not what you should have or desire or you should not be able to act on that or whatever, that seems like an attack on their very core. But then from a Christian, traditional Christian perspective, no, this is simply that they have identified with the wrong thing instead of identifying with God's design, with God's outline for our life, we've identified with desire. And this extends far beyond sexual desire. Our entire culture encourages us to identify with what we want, to identify with what we consume. One thing I really love about your comment, because I mentioned this on the show just recently, how I'm a Christian, I'm also a progressive. I used to consider myself a progressive Christian, but I stopped saying that because I'm first and foremost a Christian. Like, I don't think that we should put a prefix before our identity in Christ. That's just my own personal belief. I'm a Christian first and everything else. preach. from that follows afterwards. So yeah, I do agree with you on that regards of like, just pick your priorities on how you want to identify. And if you're a Christian, you like you should identify as a Christian first. Sorry, go ahead, Josh. yeah, I I just, really love the argument. And I'm just curious, like, how, how do you like, well, I guess one thing I would love for you to define what, I mean, we've already talked about like what a prude is and those kinds of traditional values, but so what, what are the norms. If you could help me understand norms and even dig a little bit deeper into the norms of marriage, like what makes marriage what it is essentially in your view and then like and how is that like connected to the scriptures? I'd love to hear from you and then and I can remind you this again um but with that how sexual indulgence, which is a big part of the argument, what is that? Like, defined as anything outside of that, but maybe we can give it a little bit more definition as to what sexual indulgence is and why it's harmful as opposed to a good that someone would, you know, experiment or have multiple partners or polyamorous or any number of, right, the... I mean, almost the uh virtually infinite number of uh mutually agreeable relationships the human mind could conceive that would have a sexual component. Yeah, I would just love to hear your thoughts on that. Okay, so I'm gonna start with the latter part of the question, then hopefully remember the first part and get back to that. sure. But I think what I'm gonna start with here is that I would say that sexual righteousness is a social justice issue because one of the things that I think is very clear in our culture is that we, the sexual, self-control and in particular a return or perhaps a renewal might be a better way of saying it of marriage and family would be the best anti-crime program, the best educational program, the best anti-poverty program would be if fathers married the mothers of their children and stayed married to them. This would also almost entirely Eliminate abortion is an issue abortion is not an issue within marriage statistically speaking. It's well under 10 % of abortions happen when the woman is married so That issue largely goes away and if people are committed to each other Then they are going to love their children care for their children protect them and all of those things so I think it's very much a social justice issue and that's something that Usually we associate with the left as a term, but maybe if you get into Catholic thinkers, it becomes a little more bipartisan. But I would simply say that strong families, families that are biblically grounded, ultimately as Christians we would say, are the basis for a just society. So then talking about what is marriage? Well, you could probably go to the Anglican, what is it? Book of Common Prayer? Or maybe it's somewhere else in there. uh would need to check with my Anglican friends, you know, instituted by God for multiple purposes. it's, oh you know, as a remedy for sin to avoid fornic- I mean, it's at the end of Pride and Prejudice, that long BBC one. Anyway, but so yeah, it has multiple purposes, but what it comes down to is that it is rooted in the complementarity of male and female, and it is something that is designed, it is the vocation most of us are called to. and it is designed for our good. It brings us back to lifelong union. And part of that, why that is so important is that without commitment, there is no enduring intimacy. Without commitment, there is no ability to trust, to rely on the other person. I I mentioned earlier, we have this image of marriage as you disappear into gray suburbia, but the vows we make in marriage are incredible. They are something out of a romance, know, a fairy tale romance with the knight slaying the dragon or whatever, only there's something you do every day for better, for worse, for richer, for poor and sickness and health. That is powerful. That is a promise to hold to your word against the entire world. If it comes to that, that's an amazing vow that we make and it's increasingly, and we take it for granted. but it really is something deep and profound. And it is precisely that power of commitment, that forsaking of potentiality in order to become something, giving up all the other options in order to truly and fully, as best as you can, commit to this one option and for the rest of your life, building that, that is something that is remarkable and amazing and beautiful. Sorry about that. I'm curious about your thoughts on purity culture. uh So it may come to a surprise to many of our audience that I was once a youth pastor. uh And I may have given my fair share of... at a conservative church no less. Assemblies of God. Yeah, go figure. I didn't have my Obama swag on at the time. So, you know, I was sort of like in sheep's clothing, if you will. ah But I'm pretty sure I've given my fair share of purity talks. And I love to kind of just get your sense of, ah like, was purity culture kind of a response to the sexual revolution? ah Is it completely disconnected? And then maybe the last is like... Is it helping accomplish uh the mission of the church in your view? So I would say yes, it was a response to the sexual revolution. I don't know exact. I think it's still active. I do think that the problem I have with purity culture is that it tended to and I don't want to pick on it too much because the church was responding to difficult circumstances where the entire sexual ethos. went from being at least nominally rooted in scripture, very imperfectly observed as it always is, but to something that was actively opposed to the traditional uh Christian understanding of sexuality. So they were in difficult circumstances, but I do think there tended to be two errors that caused problems and hurt people. was a lack of a positive vision insofar as it focused so much on stay a virgin, don't ever have, you know, don't have sex and it's a horrible thing if you fail in this and it's sinful. I would say that, but I feel like it tended to overemphasize this one particular sin and in particular this one particular instance of this sin. And that was, I think, harmful for people. um The other thing I would say is that to the extent it tried to present a positive vision, I think it was not always very realistic about what that would look like. And then finally, sort of tying some of this together, I think there could be a real failure to then consider, well, if Christians believe that sex is meant for marriage, what is that going to require from us culturally? Because there are things that make this very unrealistic. If Christians... follow the culture and now have an average age of first marriage around 30 years old, you're not going to have a lot of people holding out, you know, no matter how much purity culture you throw at them. so there are economic and cultural and educational trends that I think a lot of Christians ignored, you know, and a sort of an idea of, just get them through high school or for whatever, but that's not just the issue here. Yeah. I really appreciate your analysis of that. It's very thought-provoking. um for me, you know, so I mentioned that I had the argument, like I have like the argument from one of your uh Federalists. It was basically an article you wrote for the Federalist. have it and I have it in put it into premise like standard form. Can I read it to you and see if you're satisfied with it? if it accurately represents. So premise one is sexual satisfaction is most reliably achieved inside stable, faithful, lifelong marriages that ground intimacy and enduring love and vows. right. Premise two, prudish, i.e. traditional Christian sexual norms actively cultivate and protect such marriages by channeling desire towards self-giving commitment. Yes. Okay, the sexual liberation ethos undermines lasting pair bonds and normalizes harmful extreme practices, which I'd love for you to go into more. For example, porn-fueled choking that dampened desire and damage intimacy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. empirically the broader culture is in a sex recession while married, church-going Christians report the highest levels of sexual frequency and satisfaction. Therefore, only those who follow prudish Christian sexual ethics consistently experience good sex, whereas the promise of sexual liberation um fail even on their own terms. I would say I would qualify the last point with something like on average, because I wouldn't say it's single, right, it's not going to be every single case, but it is, and I'm relying a lot on Brad Wilcox's research here. He's a sociologist at University of Virginia, but yes, on average, those are the numbers. And it really does seem to be born out with this concern over the last half decade or so about the sex recession among the sexually liberated. And can you go into more depth on the sex recession? Like what are kind of some of the theories behind it that you're aware of and what is it really? I mean, I know we've been talking about it, but maybe give it a little bit more, yeah, just defined, make it a little bit more defined. And then the sex recession, and then what are the causes? Like what are people out there saying is the cause? of this and like compared to your view and in your view. think it's complicated, like a lot of things, but I think that we're looking at a phenomenon that has several causes and which Christians are not going to wholeheartedly cheer all of it nor wholeheartedly condemn all of it. Because there is that problem of, from a Christian perspective, there's less fornication. Hooray! wait, it's because everyone's just looking at porn on their phone. Well, that's... I'm not sure that's a huge win for us, you know, we traditionalists, but I would say that empirically, as far as we can tell in, it seems well established. Yeah, there's been a large drop off in basically frequency of sex, especially among younger people. So there's a few things. One, uh later marriage. Again, the average age of first marriage keeps going up. So that means that people are not in that stable relationship as much now. Of course, you'll have long-term live-in boyfriends, girlfriends, know, fiancees who are fiancees for a half decade or whatever before they get married. But still, overall, people are not, if you're not in a long-term relationship, you are less likely to have a regular sex partner. That's just common sense. Because let's face it, most of us, and this is especially true if you get older, are not going to be able to just go out there and find someone new whenever you want. um Few, you know, rich or charismatic people, maybe. Most of us, not a chance. So that's what's happening. There's also just the concern with the whole dating culture has changed. And I'm old enough that I avoided this, but it's now very much apparently seen as kind of weird to ask people out in person among a lot of Gen Z types. And I'm hearing that. I'm seeing people write about that. So that makes it harder. Instead, you're looking on the app and the apps I think can be paralyzing because you have an endless buffet of choices. But, you know, it's that, gosh, there's, you know, 50 brands of deodorant on the shelf before me. What do I pick? It's the relational equivalent of that. You're paralyzed by so many options. So those are some factors. There's also pornography. which we mentioned, and so one that can sort of be a substitute for a lot of men in terms of it doles the need to go out and try to find an actual woman, whether for a long-term relationship or, you know, even just a fling. And then there is the fact that to the extent that men's sexual practices are being influenced by this, and this is where we start getting to those pieces in the New York Times and the Guardian, I like why is sexual strangulation suddenly a thing? And it's due to pornography. That's not normal, except now it is normal. So those are some of the factors. It's not single causal. And then I think the biggest thing that ties a lot of this together and adds its own dimension is simply the internet. We have screens now. You can just sit and watch whatever you want. can scroll whatever you want. It's comfortable. And getting out in person doesn't seem as attractive as it has for practically all of human history. The indoors is now very comfortable and you can have an endless array of entertainment on your phone. You can have an endless array of interactions. We now have, you know, Elon Musk just launched his chat bots or whatever. And those are going to be horrible because they're going to be digital crack for lonely people. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So I met my wife online. I actually met her on MySpace, of all places, if for those that remember that. And I met her traveling in South Korea. It's a whole story. Like maybe one day I'll spend an episode on it. But it's like technology can be great. And we've been married for like 17 years. So technology can be great. to help connect people, but also it can be very detrimental to your point of like making people just a bunch of, you know, hermits and like home bodies like I am. But I am curious though, like, what do you think the effect of the sexual revolution... had on religious institutions, churches. uh seems like, you know, most of everything that we've talked about so far is like individual lives, like how they think about marriage or how they think about sex. But like, what about like theology or, you know, oh faith leaders in the country? Like, how did the sexual revolution really affect those institutions? The big questions keep coming, but I'm so I think that it did a few things. One, there's a definite divide between theological liberals and theological conservatives, and you see that both between denominations and then within denominations and then of course denominational splits. So PC USA PCA among Presbyterians, for instance, where one has gone in a very liberal direction. and other has stayed much more conservative. So there's a divide there and we've seen a general religious decline in the West, secularization that happened in America. It may be stabilizing. Brian Burge has a great sub stack on religion and he's one of the people exploring this and there may be stabilization, but I don't think it's reversed yet. You know, the whole Gen Z revival thing, maybe, but it hasn't it would just be starting statistically. So part of that is that there is that tension that always exists between what we profess to believe, what we profess to claim is good and how we actually live, which is why, you know, there's confession, whether in the Catholic, you know, very um institutionalized form or then just Protestants where there should still be regular corporate and private confession. But it can also, instead of confessing, we can then say, actually, either I don't believe this anymore, I don't think it's true, that the tension pushes you the other way, or there's in that effort, alternatively, to create a new synthesis of, well, I think the traditional understanding is wrong. And that has, I would say this on that last point. So the mainline denominations that have most embraced that, have seen their membership drop the sharpest. But there are an awful lot of sort of uh evangelical churches that don't really fit into that mainline conservative framework, and a lot of believers who then find themselves still, who've basically embraced that to one degree or another. They don't, they haven't officially as a church maybe put out something like the Episcopal Church has or the. United Methodists did recently and then started splitting all over the place. But there's still a lot of people who are effectively believing that. And then there are a lot of contradictions even in some of the conservative churches and denominations. So one thing that really stands out to me there is Jesus said some pretty stern things about divorce in Matthew 19. And yet I've seen an awful lot of evangelical churches that would otherwise uh claim to be very Bible-centric, very conservative on uh issues of sexuality, really not have much to say about that or not enforce that. When someone has an affair, gets divorced, gets remarried, again, Jesus said that's adultery, but these people, these churches just seem to ignore that and overlook that, and I think that is something that really does undermine their witness. you're trying to teach purity culture. We talked about that earlier, but you're overlooking what these adults did. Yeah, I again, I really appreciate your analysis. Like it's making me have all sorts of questions and things that I want to like, you know, just dig into more and understand. I would love to hear your thoughts on the place of LGBTQ in the sexual revolution in the way that, you know, this thing that... you know, started in the 60s. um And then, but now, you know, we have gotten to a place where, you know, categories that were probably unthinkable 20 years ago um are now like commonplace, um like non-binary, um you know. maybe I should say 30 years ago in 1995, right? 2005, probably in the West Coast and certain areas, right? but just it became so mainstream, right? And transgender became, I never even, I probably heard that term two or three times when I was in high school. And I grew up in Fairfax County. uh you know what mean, Northern Virginia where you are. So I, it was a liberal place, Fairfax County is a pretty progressive school system. And of course I heard about homosexual, never heard about transgender. Like I just, I didn't even think of it, or same sex marriage. That was never talked about. Nobody talked about that. And now the pace of change has been... breathtaking it feels like you know whether you think it's good or bad the pace of change is seems has been breathtaking but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that what do you what's going on with that Well, it has been breathtaking. mean, just 10 years ago, were, know, Obergefell comes down, same-sex marriage is institutionalized across the country. And then there was this immediate pivot to transgenderism as the next thing that I think took a lot of normies by surprise. People were not expecting that. They weren't expecting the speed of that. But even, I think we've just lost Will. um Okay, I'll keep going. But even with that, I you could go back from the gap from 2005 to 2015, if you want to keep taking it in decades, from same-sex marriage coming onto the scene in Massachusetts and the backlash against that to then, and of course then you go 2005 to 95, and it was back then, yeah, not a thing, as you mentioned. So it's been remarkable. Now it didn't start with that. And I would say that What it started, it started with the straights, you know, for lack of a better term. It started with normal people who thought that they could um just loosen the rules a little bit. And they thought that we could get away with that. had better technology. We had penicillin. So things like syphilis were no longer such a horrifying concern. We had the pill now. So it seemed like unintended, unwanted pregnancy wouldn't be such a problem. still is it didn't work out that way. But there was a lot of optimism that sexual liberation was something that was feasible in a way that it wasn't in an age that was poor, was less technologically adept and so on. so, yeah, liberalization of divorce, uh increasing loss of the norm of chastity and so on, which again, always imperfectly followed. Humans are sinful and I don't I don't want to pretend that there was this perfect, Edenic situation just, you know, 75 years ago or a hundred years ago or something where everybody was, you know, happily married and so on. It was not that way. But there really was a norm shift where we went from people breaking the rules to people overthrowing the rules might be a way of putting it. And that was done not on behalf of LGBTQ plus it was done on behalf of ordinary people. who wanted to engage in ornication, to have an easy divorce, and so on. And once that was normalized, the logic was very hard to resist. Because if marriage no longer means for life, if marriage is no longer intimately connected with procreation, if sexuality is no longer bound up with lifelong union and marriage and so on. If all of these things are separated out, then they are, then it's all fair game. And that is the logic. I mean, I think Andrew Sullivan, who was one of the early pioneers for same-sex marriage, had an article, and I don't remember the title exactly, but it was arresting, but it was based, it was something like, all homosexuals now. And his argument, of course, was not that everyone is actively going out and doing this, but that everyone's understanding of sex And relationships is now much closer to that. There isn't that same stark divide between this is marriage and it's male, female, and that's ordered to children and it's a lifelong union and so on. Instead, was more sex is pleasurable. It's meant for whatever relationship or relationships here. And at this time, children are an optional extra that you can have with whomever you want through the aid of reproductive technologies and so on. So once we separated all of these things out that had been connected together in Christian marriage, then there was no logical reason not to extend things and to say, if uh mothers and fathers are optional in straight unions because of easy divorce, well, why can't we substitute an extra dad instead of mom or the other way around? So the logic was laid long before we really got to the tipping points. I'm curious on your take on whether or not there's any common ground for those that care about sexual freedom. I I'm getting close to 50, so my views on sexuality have changed quite a bit over the years. And I do tend to take more of the libertarian probably standpoint of like, guys just do what you want to do. don't hurt me, you know, and we can all live a happy life. But I'm curious about your thoughts on where are the places of agreement that those that want to live a promiscuous life uh and those that want to have a more biblically based version of marriage. Like, where's the middle ground? So I think that what we're seeing is it's hard to find that middle ground in part because of the underlying divisions uh ultimately about what it means to be human. So it's one thing I think to embrace sort of a libertarian live and let live idea. And in theory, some of that can work, but then you still run into the thorny practical questions that we're seeing of Ultimately, the state is going to have a view of what it means to be human, what it is to be, what is good, what is evil. And it is increasingly, right, education is an obvious example of that. There will be a curriculum. It will have values in it. And these values will instantiate one side or one faction's view of the good. And those will be opposed to another faction's view of the good. So that gets really difficult right now. I think that where I would go for common ground among Christians would be, first of all, submission to the authority of scripture. uh Second of all, I would say that where we can find perhaps not common ground in terms of policy or what is immediately right, wrong, but in terms of an understanding of humanity is to recognize that male and female matter, the creation order of male and female matters. And I also think that we could hopefully then even with people who are not Christians recognize that humans want to be happy. I that's Aristotle. We desire to know we desire happiness. And there is a natural law argument to be made. A lot of what I'm doing in my book is a natural law argument, not a scripturally based one simply in there is something about how we are made. There is a normativity to human nature. and what we are meant for and when we walk away from that, when we violate it, and it's not just sexually in many ways, that is harmful to us and to others. And ultimately, then the point is that the rules that Christianity proclaims about marriage, about sexuality and so on, they're not arbitrary, they're not capricious. Instead, they are rooted in a understanding of what it means to be human and ultimately are meant to direct us towards our good and the good of those around us. Hopefully we could agree on that end at least that we seek the good of ourselves, our families, and of those around us. But I do think these divides over what it is to be human is stark. And this is a point where speaking to progressives, I would say you can't have solidarity if you embrace essentially Lockean premises of what it means to be human. Right? I've seen socialists suddenly start to talk like Ayn Rand acolytes. when we turn to abortion. And what happened about all of this concern about solidarity, love for the other, care for the weak and so on. I do think there are some, and this is not my area, there are some tweaks we can make. Family policy, one of my colleagues, Patrick Brown, does a lot of great work on that. So just exploring ways that the state can effectively support families and encourage families. think churches. can do things that will help support families. So meal trains being a very obvious example, just feed people when they've had a baby, right? You know, just bring them food, bring them diapers. So those are practical, a few small practical things, but I do think those underlying differences about what it means to be human are hard to bridge. Yeah, man, that's really insightful. You know, thinking about marriage and its role in society, does marriage need to be defined by the government? Or is it one of those things that it could be like, like does society have to have an agreed upon? Like I understand the Christians need that. em But do you, why would you, like I would love for you to articulate the reasoning behind why the government needs to define something um as opposed to people if they want some kind of government tax benefit, they enter into a contract. with one another or something like that? I mean, you know, or just, you know, some kind of agreement so that the state has the records it needs. Why does the state have to define it? Does it? Or what do you think? I think that as tempting as it can be to have that sort of libertarian-ish, you know, keep the state out of it. And that is the irony of the quest for same-sex marriage was get the government out of the bedrooms. Well, if the government is sanctioning this, no, the government is in the bedroom. You're getting the government in. So that is the irony there. But... In terms of why the government cares about marriage, well, the government cares about marriage because the government is ordered to the good of the community. It is responsible to uh protect and promote and preserve the common good of the community. And the community is not just a bunch of autonomous adult individuals wandering around who just need a few basic rules, you know, that the whole idea of sort of that liberal lock-in or Obesion, state of nature, we just need some rules to regulate trade and... But we're all basically adults who can look after ourselves and our own interests. That's just not true. That is not an accurate representation of human nature. Because human beings come into this world dependent, vulnerable, helpless. So really the government interest in marriage is rooted in the fact that the government, if it is concerned with the future of the polity, is concerned about children. And that's really where all of this libertarian, you know, let everyone do their own thing stuff breaks down is that no, if we have a responsibility to care for children, both individually and collectively, then the government has to care about the relationships about the families in which children are born and which they are raised. I mentioned before, if we want to talk about social justice, again, the best anti-poverty program, the best educational program, the best anti-crime program is strong families. That's pretty much very well established in the social science at this point, just the horrible effects that uh fathers being absent from the home has on young people and young men in particular. So there is that interest of the future of society depends on children and how those children are born, how they are raised, matters. Now, ideally, the government would not be interfering too much. It would only intervene in real situations of abuse and neglect, in breaking up or interfering with families. But yeah, you can't just ignore it. You have to recognize that children and their dependence and their vulnerability means that government has to be concerned with what it means to be a family and therefore with what marriage is. I mean, I find the argument compelling about marriage. that's part of why, you know, I've wrestled with this a lot, this idea of same-sex marriage. I have um a brother-in-law who's married to another man, and I love both of them pretty deeply, you and I... you know, but my traditional convictions and my convictions about what scripture says, one, and then that just the way you articulated that need that the government has to do, it has to, like, why else would we want the government in our relationships, regulating our relationships? Why would we want the government regulating our relationships unless there are some relationships so important? because the future of the nation depended on it. The future of the civilization depended on having uh good citizens, children raised with values, with whatever the values are of the place. It makes sense. That's the only reason I can wrap my mind around why the government needs to be involved in marriage is because children are involved. in marriage, quite naturally, right? They are the only natural way, right, for a man and a woman to produce a child. I know there are technologies that can do it otherwise, and that's only going to increase. But it makes a lot of sense to me. The whole argument, but I guess the tension I feel, and then this will be my last question, and then I'll give you a chance to kind of promote. And. like do we reverse Obergefell and like your opinion like um you know like Roe v Wade was it is it something that's like it like is that I guess like is that what where's the kind of predominant to your understanding conservative like feeling on this are we to reverse Obergefell and then what do we do with all these people who have been married like you know, legally. um And I've built families, you know, adopted people and stuff like that. Like, totally understand the argument and I resonated with it. But the practical reality of what do I do with my brother-in-law, you know, and both brothers-in-law, that I would hate to see go through like deep pain. Like, that was just really, really hard, right? So... um And I'm not saying just because something is hard, isn't the right thing. But I just am curious as to what you think about that, what kind of the mainstream conservative thinking is on... Well, think... um Okay. I mean, I think my view is that... Well, let's start with the mainstream conservative view, which is we lost, whether reversing Obergefell is... You mentioned overturning Roe v. Wade. It would probably be a generational struggle like that. That doesn't mean that we don't do it. I think that we should because Obergefell is wrong. not just about what marriage is, it's wrong as a matter of constitutional law. But m that is a long-term project and there's a lot of people on the right who aren't interested in that. I don't think the Trump administration has any real interest in that, for instance. So we have to recognize where we're at. And I think what we should focus on is articulating the truth about human nature. And we men brought this up a few times and touched on it, but the truth is we are made male and female and for the Christian we are made male and female for each other and there is an entire uh cosmology that is bound up in this. It is not simply, oh we're made male and female, okay move on. No, this is God's creation order for us which he established. It is also important to understand that our bodies matter because Well, has a body. God had a body, God has a body. God will have a body, world without end. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, became incarnate for our, you know, I'm gonna start quoting Nicene Creed here, but you know, for our sake he became man, was crucified under Pontius Pilate. But the incarnation shows the centrality of the body to our understanding of what it is to be human. We are not souls that happen to have bodies, rather we are that union of body and soul. And therefore what we do with our bodies matters. It is because it is what we do with ourselves. And furthermore, it not only implicates incarnation, it implicates the resurrection. We believe we will have bodies, glorified resurrected bodies in the new heaven and the new earth. And we have only the tiniest glimpses of what that is. And we do know it means that we're We will move past marriage in that. Christ made that point. But we will still have our bodies. They will still be ourselves. So this understanding of the body, it's not something, right? That was the Gnostic heresies. Your body isn't who you really are. But Christian Orthodoxy says, no, your body is essential to who you are because we are body and soul. And therefore, what we do with our bodies matters. Our being is male or female. matters. Our union as male and female together in that one flesh union that unites the two halves of the human race and provides for its propagation matters. So from a Christian perspective all of that matters. That is a truth that we need to try to convince the world of all of these evil effects of the sexual revolution. I hope will make it easier for us to do that. I think they're an entry point. but ultimately we are presenting a view of what it is to be human. And we're presenting again, something that is a better way of life. Ultimately we are not meant, right, sexual, we've talked about sexual liberation in terms of the sexual revolution, but Christianity has another understanding of sexual liberation. Sexual liberation means the freedom of sanctification in which we are no longer governed by sin, no longer ruled by our passions, but instead, through God's grace and through our conformity to Christ rule over them. And we shed those sinful desires. And that is what we should desire for ourselves and it is what we should desire for those we love, is to no longer be defined by sexual passion, by sexual desire, but instead to be defined by love of God and a love for others that is rooted in a right understanding of who we are and what we are meant for. Because that I'm just concluding with marriage. That's what most of us are called to. It is our vocation in this life. And it is something that both fulfills us in many ways in this life and ultimately directs us towards our fulfillment with Christ in heaven. When we are united, the church is the bride of Christ. And then even when we suffer, even when there is sorrow, right? mean, even the best marriage ends in sorrow. Because one spouse is at the grave of the other, a wife is crying at her husband's deathbed. It is till death do us part, which means there's death. But even in those sorrows, there is still a hope and there is a recognition that our sufferings, our vulnerabilities, are just a reflection. They are small participation in the divine vulnerability that God took on in the person of Jesus Christ when he came, suffered, bled, and died for our sakes. So that is something that is hopeful and that is something that is an encouragement in the trials and tribulations of this life. There's a better way to live, but there is also comfort amidst deprivation, amidst struggle, amidst sorrow. Wow, I really appreciated that. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on that. How can people get a hold of the book? Obviously Amazon, but is there a preferred vendor that you have? And then how can they follow your work? And what do you have coming up? So they can go to Amazon as you mentioned, also Ignatius.com, so the publisher Ignatius Press, their website and they can get it there. As for my work, you can go to EPPC.org, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and they will, you know, I've got a scholar page there, my colleagues have their own pages, and so there's a lot of great work, and I'm glad to be part of it, but you can find me in articles or media recordings and so on there. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nathaniel, for coming on the show. It's been a real pleasure to have you and to hear your thoughts, really. Well thank you guys for having me. Absolutely, and to our viewers guys, thanks for joining us. This has been Nathaniel Blake and we want you to pick up his book and we're gonna put links to all of that in the show notes. You guys can go there and find it. And guys, until next time, keep your conversations that right or left, but up, thanks and God bless.