Duality wrote:
Why is human sexuality such a taboo but violence is generally accepted?
I see this question asked quite often, but it betrays a lack of understanding of the unwritten rules of human nature.
Let's start with the violence. If aliens were watching these political debates they'd assume that action movie heroes were going around killing people for fun. But violence is movies is moralized. It's about good guys and bad guys. Not unlike The Iliad or the The Odyssey, they strive to teach a sense of honor, albiet in a hyper-masculine way. (Note that the quality of action movies do not compare to Homer).
Now let's move on to sex. Take a look at the poverty in our society and you will find broken homes. People far on the left will say that the broken homes are the result of inequality and racism/classism. People far on the right will agree that broken homes are a red herring, but say that they are a result of low IQ's. But most people do in fact recognize that socializing children relies on social norms, which in turn rely on a critical mass of two-parent households.
Another factor for prudishness about sex is sexual jealousy. Women don't want men to cheat because they don't want to lose his ability to provide. Men don't want women to cheat because they want to feel reasonably secure that their children really are his. But each member of the partnership has an incentive to cheat. Men get to have more offspring by cheating, and women can cheat with a higher-status male with better genes and get better quality offspring. So societies that survive and thrive tend to repress sexuality to some degree to reduce the "crimes of opportunity".