During her visit to Brno, I had a chance to interview Kuby about her book and ask how her Catholic perspective helps her understand one of the most important issues of our time: the continuing sexual revolution that is leading not only to private lifestyle changes but a new legal understanding of sexuality and the family.

Kuby warns that the global trend of "gender mainstreaming" threatens the fundamental understanding of our very human nature, with dire consequences for children, families, and society as a whole.

For example, until 2014 users of Facebook had to indicate their sex - whether they are a man or a woman.

But now the popular internet social network gives users 58 different options to indicate their gender.

Also in 2014, the winner of the popular "Eurovision" song contest was an Austrian man named Thomas Neuwirth, known by his stage name Conchita Wurst, who attracts curiosity by cross-dressing in women's clothing while wearing a thick beard.

Kuby points out that these kinds of situations create confusion and real psychological and spiritual harms for individuals and society.

CWR: For the benefit of our readers, would you please summarize the main thesis of your new book?

Gabriele Kuby: After my conversion to the Catholic faith, and given my background in the study of sociology and interest in political and social developments, I began to realize that sexuality is the issue of our time.

We live in a time when sexual norms are being turned completely upside down, which is unique in human history.

No society does has done this. No society has ever said, "Live out your sexual drive any way you like," but our society does. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Gloria.tv

Questions such as these are difficult to answer because it's always difficult to distinguish diminished capacity to resist a temptation from a diminished motivation to resist. People who tell us they literally can't resist might be deceiving themselves, or they might be looking for a convenient excuse.

There are two ways we can attempt to discover whether people who say that they can't control their behaviour really are suffering from some kind of diminished capacity.

First, we can gather as much behavioural evidence as possible: with enough evidence, we might be able to build an overwhelming case that a group of people genuinely suffer from diminished capacity.

When we see the costs - social, financial, physical and psychological - that drug addicts pay to continue using, we have good reason to think they have a diminished capacity to resist.

The second way we can proceed is to use scientific evidence that bypasses people's reports about what they can and can't do. Again, the case of drug addiction is a good example: some of the neurological changes in the brain of addicts seem to be changes in areas involved in self-control.

What about sex?

Recently, a group of researchers at UCLA attempted to resolve the question whether sex addiction is genuinely an addiction, utilising the second method.

Using EEG, which measures electrical activity on the surface of the brain, they determined that people who met the diagnostic criteria for "hypersexuality" did not find sexual stimuli any more compelling than did control subjects.

This is unlike the response seen in drug addicts, who find drug-related stimuli much more attention-grabbing than do unaddicted controls.

This research has been interpreted as showing that sex addiction isn't real. In the terms I used above, it might be taken to show that purported sex addicts do not lack the capacity to control their behaviour.

They simply lack the motivation; they might be morally condemned (if they are harming their families, say) rather than given a medical excuse.

But we shouldn't place too much weight on this study. The researchers looked for a likely correlate of a difficulty controlling behaviour, but there are many others possible correlates. Continue reading

Sources

• Neil Levy in The Conversation
• Image: SF Gate

Neil Levy is Head of Neuroethics at The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.