Vaniver comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong
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Quality and quantity were the only sex-related problems that came to mind?
Pregnancy, particularly pregnancy out of wedlock, and venereal disease are the traditional sex-related problems. Both of them are massively higher after sexual liberation. (Out of wedlock births are also exacerbated by welfare, which is part of a larger political discussion.)
Births out of wedlock are somewhat difficult to hide from government record-keepers in developed countries like the US, though they may be possible to hide socially (which is what most people care about anyway). Out of wedlock births among African Americans are currently at ~70%; in 1940, a full generation before the civil rights era, it was 19%.
Venereal disease is a bit harder to compare to last century (whereas we have out-of-wedlock rates going back quite a bit), and there are issues with diseases (like syphilis) becoming treatable and overall medical care (including reporting) increasing. But the impact of the Sixties on American gonorrhea rates is still clear. (It also seems likely that gay liberation contributed to the AIDS epidemic- but the primary comparison there is to Cuba, where those with AIDS were quarantined. Unsurprisingly, quarantine reduces transmission rates.)
Hmm? You quoted the rest of my question which talked about other things. It really was a question. :)
In any case, I must admit that unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases (if these diseases have mostly become treatable then they're really not as much of a problem are they?) did not really spring to mind. I was thinking of effects on marriage and the impact through that on society at large.
However, even your data speaks only about a specific class of people, and not for all of America. Which suggests that certain socioeconomic groups can deal with the change in sexual norms while others can not. So the problem may not be entirely with the change in sexual norms?
Anyway, it is time for me to confess I am not American, nor familiar with the data trends on America and the effects of the sexual revolution there. I live in a country without too much sexual freedom and its own set of problems. It is interesting to see what problems are expected to happen when things get more laissez-faire around here though. And I wanted to point out the problems of a society with far lower sexual autonomy.
But this is tangential to Vladimir_M's point about some sort of double standards among liberals vis-a-vis sexual norms. For what its worth I don't consider autonomy as absolute and inviolable, and although I do place a high value on individual autonomy in sexual matters, I am not averse to a cost-benefit analysis either.
Since we're on the topic, I'll link one analysis that I'd found interesting:
From Gene Expression
What about Africa? Sure, there are all sorts of problems making that comparison, but it shows that anti-gay attitudes aren't particularly protective. Also, of course, attitudes were much more conservative in late-15th and 16th century Europe, but syphilis did pretty well. Looking at the rates of HIV infection by state, Cook's PVI only accounts for about 6% of the variance, about the same as urban density (the two are themselves somewhat more correlated). If we take PVI as a rough proxy for conservative attitudes about sexuality, it seems like conservatism isn't particularly protective.
That's probably because illiberal attitudes towards homosexuality probably don't reduce homosexual sex all that much. They just drive it underground. That makes epidemics harder to trace and harder to stop. Also, these attitudes tend to preclude education about condoms and STDs (since it's hard to teach "don't do this but if you do, be safe"). Sex ed actually does seem to increase condom use, and thus reduce the spread of HIV.