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Sexologist Wardell Pomeroy of San Francisco, a co-author of the Kinsey studies, predicts that sexual conservatism will not last. "In another three or four years, we're going to go back again," he says. "This is inevitable. I don't think it can be bottled up." Few other analysts, however, see any sexual energies being repressed.
The new conservatism is no victory for puritans. No sexual counterrevolution is under way. The sexual revolution has not been rebuffed, merely absorbed into the culture. America is more relaxed and open about sex, but also blessedly a bit tired of the subject. A sexual revolutionary at a party, chattering on earnestly about sex as a natural function, a panacea and the cutting edge of social change, would quickly end up standing alone. Many sexual techniques and practices that were shocking a generation ago—oral sex, for instance, or living together—have been widely accepted. So has premarital sex, particularly in urban areas. Girlie magazines, which have long since gone gynecological, circulate freely, and adult access to sexually explicit novels, movies and video cassettes is rarely questioned. Attitudes toward masturbation have shifted too: it is hardly seen as the triumphant act of self-love heralded in some of the quirkier sex manuals, but fewer and fewer Americans view it as morally repugnant, much less as a health hazard.
In the gray area is homosexuality, increasingly tolerated but not approved, as well as porn on television and teen-age sex. Other practices and proposals, along with their advocates in the heady days of the '60s and early '70s, have been firmly rejected: "open marriage," group sex and child sex. Though many values are still being sorted out, most Americans seem stubbornly committed to family, marriage and the traditional idea that sex is tied to affection or justified by it. "Cool sex," cut off from the emotions and the rest of life, seems empty, unacceptable or immoral. "The whole culture is on a swing back to more traditional expectations," says Dr. David Scharff, a psychoanalyst and author of The Sexual Relationship. "There is a return to the understanding that the main function of sex is the bodily expression of intimacy.'' —By John Leo. Reported by J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago and Elizabeth Taylor/New York