It is a familiar story, and it goes like this:

Sex is natural. Sex is good. Sex is enjoyable. There is no need to be ashamed of it. Indeed, we inflict serious psychological damage on ourselves if we attempt to repress our sexuality. Repression stems from a negative view of the body, for which Christianity is largely responsible. But to be embodied is to be innocent not guilty, and the sexual conjunction of bodies celebrates this innocence in the play of paradise. It is these truths about the human condition that our own age has rediscovered; Eros, demonized for so long, is again found to be a god who bestows on his devotees the bliss of participation in his own divinity. We are now at last at home with our bodies, we are no longer ashamed of them. And we are no longer ashamed to speak of that which so intimately concerns our bodies. Sexual liberation is also (or even primarily) the liberation of speech. What was formerly unsayable can now be spoken freely, without fear or shame.

Or so it is said. The story of our sexual liberation is told and retold in many different versions; it is constantly updated, so as to incorporate new emphases overlooked by earlier renderings; and various qualifications and nuances may be added or subtracted. But in all these variations it is recognizably the same story that is told and retold, so compelling that it imposes itself as self-evidently true.