with each other in the bedroom has baffled me since I was in my teens and became aware of their pervy obsession. What makes them so interested in this? I have puzzled and puzzled it through and cannot come up with anything resembling a rational reason for this single-minded quasi-totalitarian creepiness.

These people ain't right in the head.

Public, because obviously in private very few people practice what they preach, and the human noggin loves to accuse others of what they themselves are doing. It's just in the American character. LGBTers have always been pilloried, but the refusal to back away into the shadows starting with events like Stonewall really, really pissed them off. The reaction has been an elongated cultural "How dare you?!" It isn't even the sex, which is offensive enough to them. It's that we're no longer ashamed of it. That's what really grinds their gears.

Not that our side is particularly immune to it. We also love, love, love public sex scandals when they afflict our ideological enemies. Just the other day, some thread in LBN was speculating how delicious and obvious it would be for various conservatives to be gay (which is problematic for a whole host of reasons I won't get into here).

Or the Ashley Madison business. As if each of us are purely monogamous and sexually pristine.

I thank my lucky stars I'm gay. That way no one has any expectations of my sexual behavior!

It's quite nice, really.

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

Superstiton and greed are the twin altars upon which Mister Madison's Republic is being sacrificed.

Glancing at Millennial sexual culture, people just seem to care less and less what other people do. Part of that is standard progressive evolution of culture (the heirs of the 60s), but also the Internet is destigmatizing a lot of sexual behaviors. I was browsing Reddit earlier, and there was an entire subthread, full of heterosexual men, discussing the merits of butt-licking (and the topic at hand wasn't even focused on sexuality).

Now that people are growing accustomed to the notion that each of us are "freaks" on some level, the public shame compass seems to be spinning back towards the shamers. Telling someone they can't like what they like is being increasingly seen as the asshole thing to do.

The younger generations don't seem to give an owl pellet about the things the jebus-wheezers get so exercised about. Hopefully it will die off for the most part.

Today's kids have always had an African-American teacher or principal, a Latino coach, an Asian or Indian doctor, a gay friend or two, and the labels don't mean jack to them. They see normal as normal.

but the push back against EVERY movement toward a more enlightened, secular society.

I've said this before on DU and I'll keep saying it.

It is going to get a LOT worse before it gets better.

Christianity has enjoyed undue influence on Western civilization for about 1500 years now and they are finally starting to get some push back.

They don't like it. Not one little fucking bit. They don't like not getting their way all the time and they don't like the idea that being pushy assholes is looked at with disfavor. And they won't give up until belief in bronze age myths and Middle Eastern superstitions are thought of in the same way as the pantheon of the Greeks and Romans.

Trust me when I say this;

It will get a lot worse in this country before it gets better, no matter WHO is elected to high office.