Pornosophy: The Scarlet Letter Redux

There was the counter reformation in Europe which was basically a reaction to Luther.  The question is will there be the equivalent movement here in response to the sexual revolution of the 60’s? The issue with the current spate of harassment charges against prominent figures in the politics and the media is, of course, not sex but power in the workplace. But there's an undeniable undercurrent that cleaves to the heart of the sexual revolution.  It’s unlikely that any of the liberties taken by the likes of Harvey Weinstein and others would have occurred were it not for the umbrella of liberalization that took place in the 60s and in fact almost all of those accused were products of the sixties counter-culture, with the exception of Roy Moore that is. However, even back in the heyday of love-ins, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse coined the term, “repressive desublimation,” which anticipated the notion of sexual addiction in pointing to the narcotic effect of the culture of hedonism. However, today with concepts like “affirmative consent” in play in states like New York and California, it appears that those who wish to express their sexual desires have to run a gauntlet of new ordinances and attitudes, that play into an inherent puritanism in American culture which makes novels like Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter more pertinent today than ever.