Eroticism

We have sexuality.

And so if we work really hard to not educate people, not talk about it, not give informed consent, Eroticism and energy don't disappear.

They just transmute.

So then I think we will see that energy and sexuality come out in different ways when we aren't creating the channels and the movements and the expressions of it because of the way in which religious shame and indoctrination is so infused into American culture.

MUSIC And apparently, I have to correct myself, it wasn't The God of Love.

The song title is not Encouragement to the God of Love, it's Encouragement to the God of Desire, Erotic Love, Attraction and Affection.

That covers just about all bases.

MUSIC Um, who was I going to say? Stuart in Cornwall.

The one flesh union of Genesis two, the mutual obligation of First Corinthians seven, the garden imagery of the Song of Songs, all of these locate sexuality within the framework of covenantal safety, mutual belonging, known and knowing.

The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in his essay Wonder, Eroticism, and Enigma, argued that sexuality in its fullest expression involves a quality of wonder, an astonishment at the otherness and mystery of the beloved that can only be sustained within a relationship of genuine commitment.

Transient or performative sex, he suggested, tends toward the elimination of that mystery, flattening the other person into an object of use.

The sex recession, from this vantage point, is not simply a public health problem or a sociological curiosity.