Sherman: I don’t know that that’s necessarily a fair characterization of either the left or the right. I do think that on the right — the right often gets painted as being anti-sex, and generally speaking, they’re not. There is a rich tradition within evangelical communities, for example, of promoting sex within marriage.
Emba: You have to have the right kind of sex. And at the right time, but you should be having it.
Sherman: Married, heterosexual, possibly procreative sex. That is the push among those on the right, and evangelicals have written a ton of very famous sex guides to that point.
And I think the left — yes, there is this sort of feeling that they’re not really pushing for sex, really, but these are also the people who are pushing for Pride parades. These are the people who are pushing for a more expansive view of gender and sexuality, and I think what often the left is really pushing is, let’s just not have strictures around what kind of sex is correct. Let’s take those away, and let’s make it more possible for more people to have the kind of sex that they want, and if that includes not having sex, then so be it.
I do think it is a major problem in our politics, and in our life, how much emphasis we place on sex as being a separate activity, as being something that is apart from the rest of our lives, and I just think that we all know that’s not true. When I come home from work and it’s been a bad day, it’s not like I can just go and have sex. My sex life does not exist in a parenthetical from the rest of my life, and I think we know that as individuals, and yet we seem to be unable to grasp that as a political concept.
Emba: I think for some on the further right end of the spectrum — with which I do not identify, frankly — some of the kind of Heritage Foundation-esque, Project 2025-ish characters, some of the motivation behind worrying about young people not having sex is more about the right kind of young people, wink wink, are not making enough babies and soon will be outvoted, and so they need to get to it so that we can continue to have political power.
