The vanguard issue no longer is same-sex marriage, but the right to unlimited sexual variation.

David P. Goldman (Spengler) writes at Asia Times,

The ancient devil, we learn from the Book of Job, tormented ancient man by taking away what he needed. The modern devil, we learn from the Faust legend, torments modern man by giving him what he wants. What if you could act out any fantasy that entered your mind, explore any perversion, enflame any hidden desire, and do so with no cost and no consequences? You soon would become a devil yourself, addicted to your own morbid fantasies and incapable of emotional response to another human being.

Western society has inched towards this condition for some time. Early in 2016, it took a giant and irreversible leap across the moral barrier. Films of sexual practices whose existence were unknown to most people a generation ago have been available for some years to anyone with an Internet connection. Now the Japanese firm Tenga has developed the first virtual reality sex machine, complete with bodysuit and Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Soon you will able to be anyone you want to be, and have anyone you want any way you want.

The machine is still a prototype, to be sure, employing rather crude mechanical applications and images from animated pornography. Future iterations, though, will permit multiplayer participation like many of today’s computer games. According to the website Inside Reality, “The sex system is designed to work with a game called ‘Sexy Beach,’ but in the future could be used for intimate cyber meet-ups with those you may or may not know personally. There are multiple facets to the Illusion VR, which when combined, present the user with a fairly accurate portrayal of a sexual encounter. First is the body suit itself, which can send impulses all over the wearer’s body to make it feel like another human being is touching them.” Other details are unsuitable for this publication.

…Inventing one’s own identity, including one’s own sexual identification, is the definitive claim of modern liberalism. It was enshrined as a putative Constitutional right in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

…Our brains and bodies are hard-wired for two and only two gender roles, namely male and female, and most people develop their sexuality by encountering people of the opposite sex. That was then. Virtual reality sex solves the Saturday night date problem.

…The lack of interest in conventional sexuality is striking, but not surprising. What used to be accepted as normal relations between adults bore an association with responsibility: love, commitment, marriage and children. The designer identities promoted by modern liberalism instead promise narcissistic gratification.

…We already know the end of the story, because we have seen in the land that invented the sex robot, namely Japan. As the Guardian reported in 2013, “A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier.

…There are few institutional barriers to human-machine crossover in sexual relations. The Supreme Court itself has established the right to define one’s own sexual identity as a principle in Constitutional law. The vanguard issue no longer is same-sex marriage, but the right to unlimited sexual variation. When North Carolina last month enacted a law that would limit the use of public toilets to people born with the corresponding gender, the Obama administration threatened to withhold billions of dollars of public funding from the state for alleged discrimination against a sexual minority. The mayors of San Francisco and Seattle banned all official travel to the offending state.

(So did the governor of New York.)

…

A generation of American college students has grown up the dogma that there is no greater good than inventing one’s gender identity and no greater evil than frustrating it. It is mad and unreal. Virtual reality cannot transform the madness into reality, but it can make it the next best thing, a fantasy sufficiently vivid to embrace as a lifestyle.

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