Watching movies from the 1940s is like being transported into a different world. Men wear suits, and women wear beautiful skirts or dresses. No obscenity or vulgarity corrupts the scene. Male characters are manly, while female characters are feminine — both for good and for ill. Few people of loose morals earn the glitzy lights. Traditional family life, with male providers and ladies minding the home, is normative. Think “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Then everything changed.
Joy Pullmann, executive editor of these pages, meticulously catalogues episodes of this revolution in her new book, False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America. But her book is more than just a parade of perversities; it shows how today’s queer politics fails in light of the standard found in the theory and practice of America’s founding.
For Pullmann, queer politics is the leading edge of “regime change,” a move from one way of life (as depicted in those old movies) to a new one (where sex is center stage). Generally, that old, straight regime sought to sustain manners that taught people to restrain unbridled sexual urges, which inevitably fizzle out, so they could find happiness in married and family life. The new queer constitution elevates human sexuality as the primary human preoccupation, remaking family life and public virtue in light of sexual obsession. Most people think through their pants.
Yet Pullmann shows that the queer constitution is not simply a spontaneous product of human choice. A sexual state propagates its hard,
