Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics (Hardcover)

by Dagmar Herzog (Author)
Key Phrases: abstinence programming, abstinence advocates, new sexual revolution, Religious Right, United States, True Love Waits (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

David Brock, New York Times bestselling author of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
“It’s wishful thinking to imagine that the Religious Right is in retreat on all fronts in America and Dagmar Herzog fearlessly reveals how at the nexus of sex and politics, evangelical conservatives still control the agenda. How did this happen and why are progressive leaders silent on sex in America? With eye-popping research and reporting, Dagmar Herzog offers answers and, more important, issues a transformative challenge to all Americans. Sex in Crisis is a remarkable, necessary book.”

Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of Election, Little Children, and The Abstinence Teacher
“Sex in Crisis is a brilliant analysis of the ways in which our bedrooms have been invaded by the anxiety-mongers of Big Pharma and the moralists of the Christian Right. Dagmar Herzog's account of America's New Sexual Revolution is crisply written, often disturbing, and utterly persuasive.”

Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University
“To appreciate the heady brew of contradictions bubbling in the evangelical right's secular campaign about sex — including its successful use of therapeutic language, double messages on chastity and salvation, and pro-sex view of marriage — Herzog's sharp-eyed critical study, packed with jaw-dropping evidence, is a must read.”

John Gagnon, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, The State University at Stony Brook, coauthor of Sexual Conduct and The Social Organization of Sexuality
"The religious right has repackaged its anti-sex messages in a secular wrapping to suit the changing cultural and social world over the last decades, but inside the box is the same old message, sexual abstinence and sexual ignorance for all, except in marriage. What is new is that if the sex you are having is not heterosexual, marital and serving God's purposes it is the source of mental and physical illness in addition to being sinful. Dagmar Herzog has carefully documented the ways in which the religious right has through distortion and falsehood taken over the language of sexual health and played upon the sexual fears of the American public and its politicians to invalidate all other forms of sexuality. This is an important book about the way in which the sexual conversation in the United States has been shanghaied to advance the religious and secular agendas of the far right."

Product Description
America is in the midst of a second sexual revolution--and this time, argues historian Dagmar Herzog, the love isn't free.

There is a war on sex in America--and conservative evangelicals are winning. Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, America has gone frigid.

Republicans--and even many Democrats--insist that abstinence is the only acceptable form of birth control, and fully 50 percent of American high schools teach a "sex education" curriculum that includes deceptive information about the prevalence of STDs and the failure rate of condoms. Students are taught that homosexuality is curable, and that pornography is addictive.

Americans are not anti-sex, but they're increasingly anxious about sex--largely due to the tactics of the Religious Right. Afraid of sounding unelectable, American liberals have failed to challenge its retrograde orthodoxy. We are all evangelicals now.

How has the Religious Right achieved this ascendancy? Surprisingly, argues Dagmar Herzog in Sex in Crisis, Evangelicals have appropriated the lessons of the first sexual revolution far more effectively than liberals. With the support of a billion-dollar Christian sex industry, evangelicals have crafted an astonishingly graphic and effective pitch for the pleasures of "hot monogamy"--for married, heterosexual couples only, of course. This potent message has enabled them to win elections and seduce souls, with disastrous political consequences.

Fierce, witty, and brilliant, Sex in Crisis will force America to confront its national sexual dysfunction--and rally all but the most pious hot monogamists to demand a more sophisticated national conversation about the facts of life.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (June 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465002145
• ISBN-13: 978-0465002146
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #634,450 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Please Be Objective, August 9, 2008

By	Leslie Bary (Lafayette, LA United States) - See all my reviews

Jeri Nevermind - actually I believe it is since abstinence only and other dishonest forms of sex education were instituted that the rate of unplanned pregnancies has risen so sharply. And part of actual sex education, as opposed to fearmongering and empty moralizing, would be to teach fathers responsibility, and women assertiveness (as opposed to obedience and "just saying no"). The very largest proportion of abortions, illegitimate children, etc. among my students are had by women from religious families, trained to obey men ("have sex with me!" "now abort the child, it is not convenient to me!" "but have this one, because God has told me you should!").

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book: -Interesting Read, May 29, 2009

By	David J. Roof (Urbana, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent book, -very interesting and illuminating.

It's not simply `against' the right or overly partisan. The book takes a critical look at left and right political policy. -Very critical of the Clinton administration.

It considers the new approach to sexuality on the right, which I think people on the right might find very valuable and insightful (if you can read outside a political orientation).

Some elements of the book are speculative (it's on sexuality) or you might not agree with the conclusions of the author, but it's a well documented and well researched book. It also deals with many emerging factors (i.e. the growth of internet porn, sexual pharmacology...). I opens many issues worth consideration in a new and illuminating light.

5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting in places but doesn't make the case, August 27, 2008

By	Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book has some interesting material but the author never manages to justify her overall argument: that the Christian right has changed the way Americans think about sex, making us all more anxious, more hypocritical and more dissatisfied.
I'm no supporter of the Christian right but not every ill in our society can be laid at their door and the author failed to persuade me of this. She begins with the claim that the invention of Viagra in the late 1990s and the sudden availability of Internet pornography fundamentally changed our understanding of sex. She states on page 10, without offering a scintilla of evidence, "Viagra changed how everyone thought about sex." It made every man even into old age a potential Lothario. Well, excuse me, I just don't buy it. Two pages later, Herzog is suddenly arguing the exact opposite -- that men in huge numbers had become bored with sex. The evidence quoted here is a few magazine articles.
That's basically the method throughout. You'll find here an enormous amount of footnotes -- Herzog has read everything and once an assertion appears in print, no matter where, it can be quoted and footnoted. But she never goes out and speaks to real people herself (or at least the book never includes their opinions). This is therefore an "academic" book for a popular audience. It falls between the stools -- not rigorous enough to be academic, not entertaining enough to be popular.
Herzog always seems to have both sides of the argument. Christian evangelicals now embrace sex but only within marriage. That doesn't seem wrong to me. What's her alternative? She never quite says.
I too oppose the waste of dollars on "abstinence only" sex education. It doesn't work. But that's the point. Far from changing the behavior of young people, or changing our societal attitudes toward sex in general, it's water off a duck's back. And now the political pendulum is swinging away from the Christian right as well as such policies.
It's true, as Herzog notes, that the Republicans spent years using homophobia to win elections. But what's the result? Public acceptance of gay marriage and gays in general has only risen.
The best chapter concerns the Bush administration's war against condoms in the international fight against HIV. There, she's on firmer ground. The United States has done enormous harm in the world with its damaging policy opposing the use of condoms to fight AIDS. As a result, people have died and societies set backward.
This book could have been a lot better without making extravagant claims. I suspect the publisher pushed Herozg to do so, thinking she could widen her audience beyond academic circles. But it's a bridge too far.
For more about me and my book Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons (Prentice Hall Paperback) go to www.alanelsner.com