Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 03:1 (Spring 2021)
Article: The Recovery Of Family Life: Exposing The Limits Of Modern Ideologies
Author: Scott Corbin

Eikon 3.1 (Spring 2021) p. 162

The Recovery Of Family Life: Exposing The Limits Of Modern Ideologies

REVIEWED BY

Scott Corbin

Scott Corbin lives in Fort Worth, Texas with his wife, Jessi, and their four kids.

Scott Yenor. The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020.

One of the perennial temptations for social conservatives, it is often said, is the desire to “legislate morality.” This trope was especially on the rise when Supreme Court cases like Obergefell v. Hodges and United States v. Windsor were top of mind. In the eyes of social conservatism’s critics, what could possibly account for the opposition to arrangements like same-sex marriage except for personal animus or sectarian dogma? As same-sex marriage became the law of the land, swearing not to legislate morality was a way for religious and social conservatives to surrender with dignity. After all, who are they to judge?

Eikon 3.1 (Spring 2021) p. 163

The problem with such an approach toward public policy specifically, and the effects of the sexual revolution more generally, is that when it comes to legislation surrounding sex and the family, the action of the political community is, ipso facto, to legislate morality. The pretension toward refraining from legislating morality is simply to raise the white flag while the sexual revolution rolls on.

In Scott Yenor’s important new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies, Yenor examines what a new sexual regime might look like if the sexual revolution continues to ramble on unabated. Yenor defines the sexual revolution as a rolling revolution, a revolution whose “principles and premises point to a never-ending revolution in marriage and family life . . . this seemingly irresistible revolution continues to advance amidst the ruins of what it has destroyed” (x).

It would seem to be an empirical fact that the sexual revolution of the 1960’s has largely failed. Instead of the promises of fully liberated libidos and deeper, more passionate relations, Western culture faces a steadily declining birthrate, the collapse of marriage as a formative institution, and the disappearance of mores and wisdom that would help to civilize men and women in previous times. Often the communities facing the sting of the new sexual regime are mostly poor and disenfranchised, whereas the prophets of the rolling revolution more often than not “talk Left and act Right,” in Mary Eberstadt’s clever formulation. In the absence of the Old Wisdom, which has been effectively dismantled by the sexual re...