Back in November 2010, shortly after I retired from teaching, I wrote a post paraphrasing a classroom discussion among my Freshman English students. The discussion, with only a few weak murmurs of protest, concluded with the rather bald statement that sex is boring. If I remember correctly, there were a few comments on that post, disagreeing not so much with the statement as with the idea that college students really think like that.

Now there’s a new book out: The End of Sex. The author, interviewed on Fox News today, blamed what she called the “hook-up culture” on college campuses for the demise. This is not news. Of course, it’s dying. Without love, sex is ultimately just boring. Without the trust, the self-abandonment that is really possible only in the liberating freedom of marriage, all sex can offer is the thrill of recklessness. And boredom is the discovery of least consequence.