By Samuel D. James
I understand what Ben Domenech is trying to say in his eulogy for Hugh Hefner, but I’m afraid he has strained out the gnat and swallowed the rabbit. Domenech sees in Hefner’s legacy a nostalgia that conservatives can appreciate—a nostalgia for a time when women were women, and men loved women because they were women. Domenech is correct that the unblushing amorousness of Playboy contrasts with our contemporary “sexless,” politicized public square. But he misses the fact that pornography, which Hefner did not invent but did commodify once and for all, is an agent of our current crisis. Read more