The Oscar winner for Best Lead Actress this year was Mikey Madison for her role in Anora. After offering the expected thanks to family, friends, and the film’s production crew, she thanked “sex workers” for inspiring the film, which told the story of a young exotic dancer and occasional prostitute caught up in a dysfunctional romance with a Russian oligarch.

I . . . want to again recognize and honor the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally. All of the incredible people, the women that I’ve had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience.

A full-fledged endorsement of an immoral and exploitative profession is especially strange in the post-#MeToo era. As Lila Rose of LiveAction put it,

‘Sex work’ isn’t ‘work.’ It’s destructive and evil. It preys on vulnerable young girls and boys. It is not empowering or liberating. It fuels trafficking and abuse.

In fact, the same could be said of the film itself and the actress herself. After all, Madison is a real person whose body was exposed to the world. She was paid for it. Does consent change that she is also the victim of exploitation?

At the other end of the cultural spectrum are Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are famous for espousing a corrupted brand of masculinity. Openly, misogynist, the Tate brothers are Muslims who praise terrorist groups, brag about abusing and degrading women, and have been credibly accused of sex trafficking minors. Despite this, some right-wing podcasters celebrated when the U.S. government pressured Romania to release them from prison, where, since 2022, they’ve faced charges of sexual assault and trafficking of women.

In an alternative form of the same twisted logic that celebrates the exploitation of women by calling it empowerment, the Tates are defended for countering woke, anti-male culture by being awful men. Hopefully, their U.S. publicity tour will be cut short by the Florida Attorney General, who has launched a criminal investigation into the brothers.

Though these progressive movie stars and far-Right podcasters likely couldn’t stand one another, they’ve embraced the same moral confusion. The praise of “sex work” or sex abusers does more than illustrate the horseshoe theory. Each illustrates the futility and danger of embracing sexual autonomy as the highest human good and consent as a legitimate form of sexual ethics. There are inevitable, dangerous consequences for individuals and societies that reject the biblical description of human beings, the only idea in the world that has both advanced the dignity of women and restrained the impulse of men.

Several years ago, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat warned critics of Christian conservatives: “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.” The antisemitism and misogyny of the “new right” is likely what Douthat meant. More recently, we’ve witnessed what far-left Christian ethics without Christianity can look like. Perhaps now, we finally have the answer to the question, “Can we be good without God?” The answer is, “We can’t know what is good without God.”

That’s not to say humans don’t try, again and again, confusing their anger or oppression or inflated egos as moral enlightenment or wisdom. In the end, what is proposed is nothing new, only what might be called “zombie ethics,” ideas that should have died off years ago but seem to come back half-life and wreak further havoc on men, women, and especially children.

Meanwhile, the post-Christian West continues along the moral momentum that Christianity contributed to it, but there’s little left of the actual truth that fueled that momentum. When it comes to our conceptions of right and wrong, justice and truth, courage and compassion, human dignity and responsibility, we are running on fumes.

The West will miss Christianity if it’s ever finally gone. But it need not be, because the central conclusion of the work of Christ is that repentance and renewal are possible. Individuals, families, and societies can return to Truth and be reconciled with God and with one another.

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