We have allowed millions of people to destroy their relationships, their understanding of sex, and their lives on both sides of the camera not just by refusing to legally restrict behavior, but by refusing to pass moral judgements. Now, in the figure of Bonnie Blue, the logical moral product of that culture has arrived. We once had a moral framework that explains why our consciences are revolted by what she is doing. It is called Christianity.

Watching the handwringing response by UK commentators to the rise of OnlyFans porn star Bonnie Blue reminded me of a viral clip from the TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother that I saw recently. In it, the character Barney Stinson is boasting to his friends about how many women he has slept with. But instead of the backslapping accolades he expects—after all, his friends are promiscuous, too—they express disgust. “That’s too many,” they tell him.

Stinson is understandably confused by this. What invisible line did he cross between his 99th and his 100th conquest? Nobody can explain. They just somehow know that “that’s too many.” 

The clip sums up the recent conversation between editor-in-chief of Unherd Freddie Sayers and his fellow columnist Kathleen Stock about Bonnie Blue’s recent documentary, in which she beds 1,000 men in a single day. In our hyper-sexualized culture, in which city centres are shut down and entire months set aside to ostentatiously celebrate sexual debauchery, Blue has accomplished something remarkable: She has managed to shock both the public and the commentariat. 

Blue’s seemingly insatiable sexual recklessness has made her very wealthy. She defends her on-screen prostitution against all comers, regularly doing the rounds on the podcast circuit, including in an interview with Chris Williamson and recent Christian convert Louise Perry (author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution). The less said about the specifics, the better, but one point that Blue makes consistently is particularly potent because it is very obviously true: How can you condemn me if everybody is watching porn?

Indeed. Chris Williamson noted—to her face—that Bonnie Blue is “the reductio ad absurdum of the sexual revolution.” Or as Perry observed, Blue holds up a mirror to the culture, and some, at least, have retained the capacity to be horrified by what they see. Many, many others, it must be said, have pumped so much pornography into their minds that they are utterly desensitized even to a documentary titled “1,000 Men and Me.”

The conversation between Freddie Sayers and Kathleen Stock illustrated perfectly why secularists and sexual revolutionaries have no answer to Blue’s challenge. Both are non-religious; both consistently reached for religious language as they struggled to process her rise. Stock called Blue’s documentary “depravity.” Sayers stated that it is “obviously disgusting and reprehensible.”

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