Call me a prude, but I have a problem with this. There are some practices that surely do deserve to be judged and even shamed. Anything involving children seems an obvious starting point. But beyond that, what about animals, violence or coercion? Does being cool now mean nodding along sympathetically to someone’s strangulation fantasy? These are extreme and, perhaps, clear cut examples. But the rise of sex positivity parallels the erosion of once certain taboos and boundaries.

Take Pride: what was an important political movement for equal rights has morphed into a rainbow-colored festival of kink and perversion where old men in fetish gear rub shoulders with “furries” (for the uninitiated, adults in cartoon-like animal costumes) for an audience of glammed-up teenage girls. Or take drag: what was once the preserve of adult-only nightclubs is now seen as a regular Saturday morning activity for young children on a trip to their local library. Thanks to the rise of sex-positivity, it’s considered more “awkward” or “problematic” to call these things out as inappropriate than it is to don a harness and tell a toddler they should be pleased you are living your best life. …

What’s going on here is not just a question of changing tastes and behaviors but a more fundamental erosion of the boundary between our public and private lives.

[At some point, ‘judgment’ became a far naughtier word than ‘fetish.’ Even ‘discernment’ is out of bounds. — Ed]