You are correct that there’s been a reversal on the acceptability of discussions of both religious faith and sexual conduct. (In opposite directions, of course.) Despite certain “outliers,” I expect the current situation to persist for a long time. But what concerns me is the degree of offense certain persons take to the mention of religious faith, or the relative merits of various creeds.
In earlier eras, when the consensus was the reverse of today’s, you would shock people by describing any aspect of your sex life in a public setting. You might even suffer exclusion from some social stratum. But you wouldn’t be condemned as some sort of dictator, which is the not-infrequent response to a public mention of faith today.
Perhaps it’s because one’s own sexual practices, however luridly described, have no normative implications, whereas every significant religious creed both prescribes and proscribes. But whatever the reason, that which is purely self-indulgent has been made a principal topic of discussion, while that which most of us routinely celebrate in large groups on Sunday morning has been forced into the shadows.
For my part, I’d rather hear people speak more openly of their faiths, and hear less talk about Tiger’s deployment of his “publics.”
