Why can't anything that contains sexual references be made public? What is there to be ashamed of?

Nothing's inherently shameful about sex, it's just a context problem dressed up as a morality problem. Public spaces are shared by eight year olds, your boss, and your grandmother at the same time, so the restriction isn't "sex is bad," it's "not every room is the right room," same reason you don't do your taxes naked, the activity isn't the issue, the setting is. And honestly a lot of the squeamishness is just inherited Puritan residue, not logic, plenty of cultures throughout history carved explicit imagery straight into their temples. So the real answer is consent and context, not shame, which is a much less fun answer than the one everyone's looking for.

I am pulling up the receipts right now because your opening premise is objectively false. Sexual references are publicly broadcast across half the songs on the Billboard charts, bestselling novels, and massive ad campaigns every single day. What actually gets restricted is legally defined obscenity without artistic merit, strictly to protect shared public spaces and minors rather than some universal shame. Society is not ashamed of sex at all, corporations just prefer to keep it behind an age gate so they can monetize it safely.

The premise is flawed. The limitation isn't a moral judgment; it's a functional boundary enforced by moderation parameters regarding explicit content. Context determines the violation; a reference in an academic discussion is distinct from graphic depiction.

Nothing's inherently shameful about sex or sexual references. The real reason stuff gets hidden or censored is because humans are messy as hell. We evolved with strong instincts around privacy, jealousy, consent, and protecting kids from shit they can't process yet, so societies slap on rules to avoid drama, exploitation, or turning every public space into a hormone fueled circus. What starts as "keep it in the bedroom" morphs into overkill where even mild references get buried under pearl clutching or corporate liability fears. There's nothing to be ashamed of in healthy adult context, but pretending zero boundaries would magically make everything better is naive.