Rod Thomson

If United States Senators need mandatory sexual harassment training every two years, we have the wrong people in the Senate.

“Making harassment training mandatory in the Senate sends a clear message: harassment of any kind is not and will not be tolerated in Congress. Period,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, said in a statement.

That resolution co-sponsored by leaders in both parties just passed the Senate — unanimously. Let’s just be honest: This resolution and particularly the unanimity is mostly a result of craven political pandering, not an actual conviction of the heart for wrongdoing. Who would vote against cleaning up sexual harassment? (Certainly not those who do it.)

This is a simple case of a dramatic retreat from traditional Judeo-Christian morals — something the founding fathers understood as a necessity to a free people and something that the Left, specifically but not exclusively, has been dragging us further from for more than a half century. From the sexual revolution of the 1960s and all the “free sex” to endless television shows and to movies and pop icons that portray this sort of accountability-free sex any time two people want it — we now live in a sex-drenched culture.

Look at movies. There must be 20 times more sex scenes between unmarried as married couples. How many movie scenes have we seen where the hot woman struggles at first against the hot man after the dramatic lead-up of sexual tension, only to give in to her supposed animal lusts and we get another obligatory sex scene? And almost every movie has to have some obligatory sex scene, whether it is in any way necessary to the plot or not.

Or look at leading female pop singers today: Katy Perry, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Pink, Arianna Grande, Rihanna, even of late Taylor Swift. Virtually every top pop singer with the notable exception of Adele is hyper-sexualized, showing body parts that would have been considered indecent and unacceptable 60 years ago. This says nothing of the frequently hyper-sexualized lyrics. Then look at their concert-goers. A lot of girls and young women idolizing them. What’s the message there?

The female pop stars of today have been trained that to get ahead you have to bare almost everything. The message seems to be that women are objects. Is it any wonder that Hollywood is chock full of men who think of women as sex objects? Guaranteed this goes on in the music industry also. And it ripples throughout the culture.

Or look at some of the biggest TV sitcoms of the past 20 years, shows that make an impact on the culture. The Big Bang Theory, 30 Rock, Friends, Seinfeld are or were full of talented writers and actors. And they all were just ripe with sex jokes and endless sexual promiscuity. Friends was known for all of the characters sleeping with one another at one point during the run. There were no debates about whether it was morally right or wrong to have one-night stands. Everyone does it! Everyone wants it! Get lucky tonight! Score! The most insipid message is that it is just accepted as what everyone does.

Or look at standup comedians. The vulgarities and crotch-grabbing sex jokes make most of them impossible to watch. So maybe don’t look.

Or look at how Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was just lauded at his death as a trailblazer who empowered women. Why? Because he ran the first major magazine with glossy pictures of naked women. He lived in the Playboy Mansion and married women 50 years younger than him. Celebrities by the truckload went to good ol’ Hugh’s mansion or appeared in the magazine in some form. He made it by essentially paying young women to take their clothes off so his photographers could take pictures. And he is lauded. What does that say? Is it any wonder that such a disgusting man as Harvey Weinstein thrived for decades in this environment?

The decline of Christianity and rise of the sex revolution

This ongoing desensitization of the American culture, both men and women but particularly men who are biologically driven much more by visuals, makes all of the sexual harassment we are seeing more likely and more common. It’s as predictable as math. Totally wrong and immoral, but predictable based on unconstrained human nature. It’s why virtually all nude magazines are of women and most pornography is consumed by men. It’s why women are largely those objectified by men, not vice-versa.

Men and women are different. Hence the appeal of Playboy magazine and now endless online porn.

Hefner played on that and launched the cultural mainstreaming of objectifying women’s bodies. We’re now beginning to fully reap the fruits of this folly of jettisoning Christianity and basic, cultural Judeo-Christian morals.

Naturally, all of this sexuality sends a big green light to men who are not grounded in any moral base — which almost always requires religion.

When the culture rested on Judeo-Christian moral norms, none of these things that are considered normal now were acceptable. Of course they still happened. But they were much less common because the culture broadly disapproved. Men were supposed to protect women, not prey on them. That protection sentiment is now considered sexist and patriarchal by the same worldview that has pushed this culture from the sexual revolution onward.

Religion constrained women from publicly flaunting intimate body parts to further their careers, and religion constrained men from seeing every woman as little more than a sex object and possible one-night stand. Human nature requires restraints.

It’s actually the type of freedom our founders expounded on.

“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” John Adams “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” George Washington “The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.” Noah Webster “Whereas true religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness . . . it is hereby earnestly recommended to the several States to take the most effectual measures for the encouragement thereof.” Continental Congress, 1778

Perhaps morality can be accomplished in a culture outside of religion. There’s just not much evidence of that. And we’re seeing that reality play out.

Rod Thomson is an author, TV talking head and former journalist, and is Founder of The Revolutionary Act.