Sound of Freedom Film a Clarion Call for Good

Unbeknownst to most people these days, human history is cyclical not linear. The pendulum has swung back and forth between sexualized societies and societies with sexual integrity three times in the last 400 years.

“What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

The most obvious example in our recent history has been the swing towards sexual anarchy that has taken place since 1960. We will get back to that momentarily but first let me say that after seeing Sound of Freedom it is an excellent movie that is based on a true story that is extremely well, and tastefully told. For those of you who might be hesitant to see it because you fear it may be too traumatic, I believe you will be pleasantly surprised to find out that it is not.

I wonder if the liberals who laid the groundwork of this latest sexual revolution could have envisioned that the ultimate fruits of it would be a horrible sex slavery situation that is brilliantly brought to light by Sound of Freedom? Possibly not, they were just beginning to get a glimmering of the scientific understanding we now have of the brain and particularly how addictive substances and behaviors affect it in the early 1960s. The invention and wide distribution of hormonal birth control starting in 1960 was instrumental in this unfortunate revolution. The detaching of sex from its natural consequence, creating babies, was the first major step. This was the beginning of turning sex into one of today’s major behavioral recreational drugs.

The Warren US Supreme Court with their decisions in 1962 to remove prayer from schools, and in 1963 to remove Bible reading were major steps also in this decline. Sex ed was then inserted into schools in 1964 and we continued further downhill. No-fault divorce became the law in 1970 and then of course abortion was legalized across the country in 1973. All these steps led to more and more youth sexualization and general sexual anarchy in our society.

What we know scientifically now is that the mesolimbic dopamine reward pathway in the human brain, and especially the male human brain from adolescence to adulthood responds sharply to sexual stimuli. In past generations because of the greater emphasis on sexual integrity and making marriage the only acceptable context for sex, the level of stimulation of young people, especially young men, was exponentially lower than it is today with high-speed Internet porn being everywhere.

We now know that the brain responds to this overload of sexual stimuli with its endless novelty which also is a dopamine spiker, especially for males, by down regulating dopamine receptors in the mesolimbic dopamine reward pathway. In practical terms, with this natural downregulation or another way to think of it is desensitization, it takes more and more extreme and eventually outrageous types of sexual acts being depicted in order to get the same stimulation high that was obtained more easily when the exposure to these materials was lower. Physiologically, we are made for a much lower dopamine spiking environment in both the areas of sex and food, as well as stimulators like our iPhones etc.

Porn and what has come about in conjunction with it, hookup culture, has made many men more vulnerable to kinds of sexuality that many people would think is totally unacceptable by society. I have personally witnessed the kind of destruction hookup culture has particularly visited upon the college women in my classes. As I said previously, throughout human history we have had times of sexual anarchy, but each time there has been a broad societal awakening in which the pendulum has swung back to times of sexual integrity. I believe that Sound of Freedom is a strong and timely call for all of us to answer to go back to a society where sexual integrity is the norm and child trafficking is eliminated. It will be so beneficial for all people throughout our society and especially our addicted men and the women they hurt to accomplish this. Rates of anxiety, depression, suicidality, STI’s, sexual assault, rape and every other sexually related ill known to humankind have been sky-high for the last especially 15 years.

Going back to the Bible and the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding human sexuality will help heal what has become a very sick culture. In doing so, we are only helping ourselves, our children, and our children’s children into the future because the words of Scripture will not return empty:

“Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.” 1 Corinthians 6:18