May 1, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Nothing irritates progressive commentators quite so much as watching nations reject the failed experiment of the Sexual Revolution.
Despite the fact that the so-called sexual liberty we enjoy in the West has ravaged families, spawned a rarely-reported on epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, and gutted the institution of marriage—all while failing utterly to deliver on the happiness that was promised—it makes progressives nervous when political leaders glance at the rotten fruit and decide that they would prefer to work at building something quite different. For example, the conscious rejection of libertine sexual values by a growing number of Eastern European countries is a repudiation that makes progressives feel enormously threatened.
One recent example would be Russia’s decision to block the smut monopolies PornHub and YouPorn, the world’s largest providers of free pornography. PornHub alone manages to infect untold numbers of people annually, with over half a million years worth of pornography being consumed on its sites during the year 2016 alone. Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (the Roskomnadzor in Russian), which is in charge of monitoring the internet, responded to previously issued court decisions by blocking the sites earlier this month. (The same agency also briefly blocked PornHub in September of 2015.)
Predictably, Twitter promptly exploded with outrage. In 2019, the right to consume massive amounts of pornography is one that is a disturbingly precious one to a significant percentage of the population, and those mocking the decision did not take particularly kindly to the Roskomnadzor’s practically helpful suggestion that frustrated porn addicts could perhaps “meet someone in real life” as an alternative to solo digital experiences. PornHub offered whoever was in charge of plugging its digital sewage pipe a premium PornHub subscription, an overture that was ignored. As of today, PornHub and YouPorn are still blocked in Russia, triggering much huffing about the violation of freedom being inflicted on the poor pantless people who will presumably have go do something useful.
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And then there is Hungary, a nation that has consistently attracted the ire of the elitist Eurocrats by refusing to join the European Union in welcoming enormous numbers of economic migrants. Instead, Hungary has worked to rejuvenate its flagging birthrates by implementing a raft of state policies aimed at incentivizing and strengthening the family. Since 2010, Hungary has seen marriage rates skyrocket by 43%, accompanied by divorce rates plunging by more than 22%. With marriage rates on the rise, children are more welcome, and the abortion rate in Hungary has dropped by 33%, contributing to a birthrate that is at a twenty-year high. This is no accident: Hungary’s government has taken a hard look at both their own nation as well as the West, and has decided to try and plot their way out of demographic disaster.
Ironically, internal opposition to Hungary’s new family-oriented policies comes primarily from the socialists, who for all their rhetoric about the essential nature of the welfare state still see stable family units as a threat to the perpetual government dependence necessary for people to embrace their collectivist program. Despite this, another round of pro-family laws are set to take effect in Hungary on July 1, including a 3,000 euro mortgage reduction for those who have a second child and a 12,000 euro reduction for a third child. In 2020, Hungarian mothers of more than four children will receive a lifetime personal tax exemption. Many of these policies allow women the financial freedom to choose what they actually want—and as Hungary’s birthrate indicates, many of them want to have children and build families.
Hungary’s government, as you can imagine, is not very well-liked in the West, with former Prime Minister Stephen Harper getting roundly condemned simply for congratulating Viktor Orban on his election victory. The truth is that many nations in Eastern Europe—Poland would be another—believe that post-modernism and Marxism have been tried and found wanting. They suffered under those miserable regimes, and thus secular socialism does not hold the same sparkle for them as it does for the Millennial Westerners who believe oppression is an Internet outage. They have lived through Communism, they have borne the brunt of Marxist totalitarianism, and now they are trying to clear a path through the rubble just as the West falls for Karl Marx once again.
Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his latest episode, he interviews Dr. Monica Miller, founder and director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, about her start in the pro-life movement in the 1970s as a graduate student under the tutelage of Joe Scheidler. She also talks about the impact taking photographs of aborted babies and showing them to the public has had on awakening people to the horrors of abortion.
