Sex, family, and the culture wars / Mark J. Cherry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cherry, Mark J., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sexual ethics.

Families.

Sex.

Culture conflict.

Physical Description:

x, 352 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, New Jersey : Transaction Publishers, [2016]

Summary:

This volume pursues a detailed study of how changes in social life dating from the sexual revolution of the 1960s have affected the family. Cherry shows that attempts to redefine the family away from the marital union of husband and wife come with real costs: social, emotional, psychological, and financial. He argues that while political campaigns have fueled attempts to undermine the traditional family, to pretend it possesses no basic biological, social, or moral reality, such ideologically driven undertakings are injurious to society. Acting as if there are no consequential differences between traditional marriage and other sexual lifestyles ignores significant data demonstrating the importance of the traditional biological family to the well-being of men and women, and the successful raising of children. The family possesses a biological and moral being that is foundational; an essential building block of society. Cherry argues that the family is the most incontrovertible field of conflict in the culture wars; others might conclude that it is the decisive battleground. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars: An Introduction 1

1.1 Sex and the Family 1

1.2 Traditional versus Post-traditional Family Life: Contested Grounds in the Culture Wars 4

1.3 The Family and Its Role in Human Flourishing 9

1.4 Shifting Sexual Mores and Uncomfortable Social Consequences 11

1.5 A God's Eye Perspective on the Family 15

1.6 Four Heuristic Accounts of the Family 16

1.7 A Final Warning 20

2 The Family as a Sociobiological Reality 27

2.1 Sociobiology and the Human Family 27

2.2 Altruism, Kinship, and the Family: The Importance of Inclusive Fitness 31

2.3 Sexual Divergence-Human Reproductive Strategies and Sex Differences 42

2.4 Conclusion: Heterosexual Normativity, Patriarchal Families, Paternalism, and Other Political Controversies 56

3 The Family as a De Facto Category of Social Reality 67

3.1 The Family as a Central Category of Experience, Being, and Knowledge 67

3.2 The Family as a Sui Generis Category of Social Reality: The Being of the Family for Thought and Thought's Apprehension of the Family's Being 69

3.3 Individual Interactions that Become Familial Interactions 75

3.4 Conceptualizing the Social Implications of the Sociobiological Data 80

3.5 Conclusion: The Rejection of a Nominalist Account of the Family 87

4 God and the Philosopher; Or Why a God's Eye Perspective Is Necessary to Secure a Particular Account of the Family 93

4.1 The Necessity of a God's Eye Perspective 93

4.2 God's Perspective on Reality as a Regulative Ideal 94

4.3 The Atheistic Methodological Postulate versus the Theistic Methodological Postulate: Competing Views of the Reality of the Family 100

4.4 Conclusion: Without God Moral Pluralism Cannot Be Resolved 120

5 The Family as a Liberal Social-Constructivist Social Entity 135

5.1 A Moral and Political Ideological Agenda 135

5.2 Idealized Liberty and Equality 137

5.3 Homosexual Marriage and Other Nontraditional Families 142

5.4 The Liberation of Children 145

5.5 The "Mature Minor": Conceptual Puzzles 151

5.6 Conclusion: A Destructive Ethos 167

6 Deregulating Family Life: The Family as a Libertarian Constructivist Social Entity 177

6.1 Experiments in Living 177

6.2 Liberty as a Side Constraint-The Family as a Face-to-Face Voluntary Association 179

6.3 Families May Have Unequal Power Relationships, Embody Nonliberal Accounts of the Good, Discriminate, and Violate Redistributive Justice 191

6.4 Conclusion: The Limits of Legitimate Governmental Authority 205

7 The Family and the Fundamentalist Secular State: The Establishment at Law of a Fully Secular Ideology 217

7.1 Return to the Culture Wars 217

7.2 Faith in God versus Faith in Reason-The Creation of Secularism 220

7.3 The Attempt to Construct an International Secular Morality: The "Human Rights" Agenda 234

7.4 Deep Moral and Epistemological Ambiguity: Human Rights as a Modus Vivendi 242

7.5 Conclusion: A Secular World in Crisis 252

8 Sex, Abortion, and Ideological Entrenchment: At the Brink of Nihilism 273

8.1 Devout Secularism 273

8.2 Shifts in Taken-for-Granted Sexual Mores 276

8.3 Why Abortion Is Central 280

8.4 Living Honestly with Significant Moral Pluralism 284

8.5 At the Brink of Nihilism: Recapturing the Family 287.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Cherry, Mark J., author. Sex, family, and the culture wars.

ISBN:

9781412863094

1412863090

9781412863315

1412863317

OCLC:

932172049