I was feeling a bit anxious about all the Orwellian absurdities going on in our country. Randomly, I began listening to The Righteous Brothers and suddenly everything seemed a little more ordered and honest.

Apparently, for me, there’s something about a couple of crooners singing Unchained Melody and other hits and using terms of endearment like “baby’ and “honey” and unabashedly embracing the glorious differences between men and women that’s surprisingly refreshing.

Until recently, artists like The Righteous Brothers felt no inhibition about writing and singing songs that celebrate love and attraction between genders. There were no pronoun police, no anti-machismo militants, no shame and no efforts to emasculate men and weaponize women. Refreshing?

If some think our pseudo-infatuation with many genders and desire-over-biology transitions are good for us as a people—or are good for ANY people—I don’t see any shred of common good in elevating desire over basic biology. I think they’re stiff-arming reality and open-arming fantasy.

If others think The Righteous Brothers should be renamed, “The Righteous Persons” or that they celebrated what is now considered sexist, rather than natural, I disagree. If those who hold this view don’t value tradition and institution created through loving design, I think they’re either fooling themselves or are being fooled, or both.

In their defense, The Righteous Brothers ask their love interests, “Without you baby, what good am I?” At first blush, these words seem to be about worth or utility. I think they’re about more than that; I think they hint at a “lostness” and a completion.