This is precisely why Christians and churches must address this issue. As Carl Trueman put it, the sexual conscience of modern culture cannot do this, for the same reason that an alcoholic cannot be trusted to guard the expensive stuff. Our communities are suspended in midair, somewhere between the abolition of man and the nihilism of the labiaplasty.

If there’s any good reason to distrust the self-awareness of contemporary progressives, it’s the cultural epidemic of pornography.

Of all the Sexual Revolution’s fruits, porn is arguably the one that has rotted fastest. It has defied the categorical wisdom of libertines by growing in users and extremeness, even as cultural mores against casual, commitment-free sex have eroded. Contrary to the predictions of many, porn has proven to be addictive and isolating. What was once promised as an end to slavish prudishness has instead ensnared millions in powerful neurological patterns, patterns that, if unabated, are conducive to the worst kinds of abusive and sadomasochistic behavior.

Despite much emerging data, including research on the psychological costs of addiction, it seems that the American left rarely talks about porn and culture. A celebrity iCloud hack or the firing of a schoolteacher tend to inspire a round of takes on body-shaming and feminism, of course. And occasionally a Game of Thrones episode will trigger a backlash against simulated rape. Otherwise, it seems that pornography is the pink elephant in the room for most mainstream liberals.

One glaring example of this can be found in a recent New York Times piece by Roni Caryn Rabin, an alarming profile on the growing popularity, among teenage girls, of genital cosmetic surgery. “Labiaplasties” are surging in demand among girls under 18, despite the warnings of doctors against the procedures. What could be driving this demand for perfectly engineered nether-regions? Here’s how Rabin’s piece answers:

These girls have come of age at a time when they can go online and look up images of the vulva, doctors say. But the images are often air-brushed and do not portray the range of normal variation in shape, color, size and asymmetry, experts say.

“I think the most important thing to understand is that there’s huge variety in anatomy,” said Dr. Veronica Gomez-Lobo, the director of Pediatric and Adolescent Ob/Gyn at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and the president of the North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. She often recommends young women look at unretouched photographs of vulvas, like those in the book “Petals” by Nick Karras.

This is an Olympic-quality hurdle. The “air-brushed” pictures mentioned in the second sentence are, obviously, not those of anatomy textbooks or health literature. It doesn’t take powerful deduction skills to realize that what’s being discussed here is pornography. So why is there a herculean effort to avoid mentioning it?

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