According to this new report on monkeypox from the Washington Post, public-health officials still aren’t ready to treat the emerging disease like a real threat, because to do so would encroach on our society’s secular religion: total sexual license.
The article’s headline says it all: “As monkeypox strikes gay men, officials debate warnings to limit partners.” And the subheading: “Sex is a major driver of the global outbreak. But health officials and longtime HIV activists say calls for abstinence don’t work.”
Contrast this tepid response with the society-wide crackdown public-health officials recommended in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I need not recount the full laundry list; we all remember all too well what it looked like. And while some of that initial response to Covid makes sense in hindsight — it took us some time to learn what we were really dealing with, and a certain level of overly cautious advice was understandable and appropriate during that learning period — much of it looks ridiculously foolish, especially considering how long it went on relative to what we had learned. As Tim Carney points out, Americans were prevented even from attending funerals for much of the pandemic, thanks to the draconian guidance of public-health officials.
To this day, there are parts of the country that continue to enforce mask mandates when case numbers rise. There are school districts that plan to require children to wear masks in the classroom, regardless of their parents’ opinion and regardless of the almost nonexistent risk of the disease to children — and, indeed, to most all Americans. Vaccine mandates persist in many places, despite the fact that people who have gotten the vaccine can still catch Covid and pass it on to others. The risks and outright dangers of overreaction to Covid have become all too apparent, yet we persist in overreacting.
But when it comes to monkeypox, and when it is entirely evident precisely who is most affected by this disease and how they are contracting it, public-health officials are loath to issue guidance of any kind. Why? Because to do so would risk contradicting the most sacred dogma of our time: consequence-free sex on demand.
Our society’s dedication to limitless sexual self-expression and gratification is evident in the endless calls for free contraception and unlimited abortion, the desecration of marriage as a lifelong and life-giving union between one man and one woman, and our culture’s efforts to totally reshape what it means to be human incarnated as male and female. All this in service of the notion that every individual finds true fulfillment ultimately and only in his nature as a sexual being, and that as a result, each of us deserves complete license in this realm — even, apparently, to the point of spreading a dangerous disease.