Sex in Crisis

In the 1960s and 1970s, the sexual revolution took America – and the world – by storm. Sex became an act of empowerment, liberation, and personal choice.

Sex historian Dagmar Herzog says those advances have been reversed in recent decades. She argues that the religious Right has taken advantage of our anxieties about sex and redirected the national conversation about sex with messages of shame, abstinence, and monogamous, heterosexual relationships as the norm.

Liberals played their part too, standing by silently as the rhetoric of sexual choice is co-opted by political rhetoric.

Herzog's new book is "Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics." She has taught the history of sexuality for more than a decade, but she tells Word of Mouth that reading right-wing evangelical pronouncements on sex written since the mid-90s left her profoundly shaken.