Janet Smith's new ally in the culture wars: Raquel Welch

If you grew up when Raquel Welch was considered one of the "sex kittens" briefly dominating the silver screen, you might be surprised to hear what the star has to say about “sexual freedom.” Kathryn Jean Lopez, in "Raquel Welch’s Sexiest Storyline Yet" (National Review Online, May 17, 2010), writes:

If you need a quick primer on the birds and the bees, on how a culture has been misled, and on why Carrie and her friends from yet another Sex and the City movie have had miserable, not-so-pretty lives, the woman once declared “Most Desired Woman” by Playboy can help you out.

The actress has written a book, Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, which might just stand out on bookstore shelves. We need it to!

In an article that coincided with her book’s launch, she wrote: “Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth-control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.”

... [The concept of "sexual freedom" ushered in by the pill, she writes,] "has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity. No one seems immune.”

... Janet E. Smith, editor of Why Humanae Vitae Was Right, among other books, and professor of life ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, tells me, “I keep hoping common sense might have some force with the secular world.” In the spirit of that hope, Welch’s comments are a welcome change.

Some will undoubtedly scoff at all this, simply because Welch was once herself a "sex kitten," and because, like Nancy Pelosi, she has had her own share of face lifts (one reviewer of her book on Amazon was so shallow as to give the book a single star because Welch failed to include any new information about her face lift and beauty treatment strategies). Welch's own obsession with beauty and the cult of youth may be called shallow too. Yet she has been writing for some decades now in support of traditional family values in family magazines like Ladies' Home Journal (no, I don't have a subscription, though my wife used to). There is also something about her situation that is not altogether antithetical to those women in Rachel's Vineyard Ministries who have had abortions and repent of them. Welch, too, is a version of the mugged liberal turned conservative, if you will, someone who once embraced the image of the "sex kitten," but has witnessed the widespread damage to families that a culture of recreational pursuit of sex can yield. I don't know that one should expect her to wear sack cloth and ashes on that account. Welch's writing does not hold a candle to Janet Smith's articulate assault on the culture of death, but neither is it an unwelcome profession of awakening, and one that may have some impact in areas of popular culture where more articulate voices often remain unheard.

[Hat tip to E.E.]