Here is a picture of the Flemish artist Hans Memling’s _Allegory of Chastity_, and although it was done in the 15th century, it testifies to the long-term effects of Christianity’s radical sexual revolution that had begun a millennium and a half before.
Here you see Chastity, besieged by the lions of sexual behavior that would threaten to devour her soul. She is secured in her high tower that envelops and constrains her body — the tower of Christian morals (and feel free to insert Freudian interpretations of the tower).
Christians broke sharply from pagan Romans in the first century in their ideas about sex: men as well as women ought to refrain from any sexual acts beyond the constrains of marriage — to visit a prostitute was to prostitute oneself. To co-habit with a fornicator was a violation of one’s own body. Same-sex relationships were completely out of the question. Chastity was preferred to the the sexual life, even that of marriage. As Paul wrote in his Letter to the Corinthians: “I wish that all were as I myself am,” meaning sexually celibate. He grudgingly allowed that sex was permitted but only for married couples — this was the only way to avoid the sin of fornication.
The way that Christianity foregrounded sexual morality ahead of other ethics was another break from pagan tradition, and set the religion on a trajectory that shaped the sexual lives of countless generations.
