This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. It was published about three months ago, so of course the “right-wing politician/religious leader caught in sex scandal” du jour has changed. But the gist of the article remains very much the same. FTI, this piece talks about sex, but it doesn’t talk about my personal sex life, so it should be safe for family members.
The story is pretty much boilerplate at this point. “Right-wing Republican politician/ prominent Christian Right leader, famous for advocating a rigid sexual morality, caught in sex scandal.” It’s hardly even newsworthy.
The latest, of course, is David Vitter, Republican senator from Louisiana, who built a career supporting abstinence-only sex education, opposing same-sex marriage, and generally trying to legislate sexual morality… and was recently identified as (and has admitted to being) a client of the D.C. Madam.
There’s also right-wing evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, preaching about the evils of homosexuality and supporting a ban on same-sex marriage… having regular sex with a gay male prostitute. There’s Republican Congressman Mark Foley, pushing for laws to protect minors from sex predators on the Internet… sending sexually explicit and seductive emails and instant messages to underage pages. There’s Bob Allen, Republican representative in the Florida House and co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign, sponsoring a bill to tighten Florida’s public sex laws… getting arrested for offering a male cop $20 to blow him in a public bathroom.
And that’s just in the last year.
I’m not even talking about Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Bob Livingston, the widespread pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood, and similar scandals from years past. It seems like cartoonist Tom Tomorrow is asking the right question: “Should we assume that every sanctimonious, moralizing Republican is a closeted sexual libertine — or just most of them?”
So here’s what I’m finding fascinating.
It’s not just that these right-wing figures are generally preaching a rigid sexual morality that they don’t practice. The pattern I find so compelling is that, for so many of them, the specific taboo sex acts they engage in are the exact ones they publicly campaign against.
Ted Haggard — preached against the evils of homosexuality; had sex with a male prostitute. Mark Foley — campaigned against Internet predators endangering minors; sent sexual and seductive emails and instant messages to teenagers. Bob Allen — tried to tighten bans on public sex; solicited a guy in a public bathroom. And now Vitter — opposed same-sex marriage to protect marriage’s sanctity; cheated on his wife with prostitutes. (In what were reportedly some fairly unusual variations.)
It’s almost eerie, how precisely the hypocrisy matches up.
Admittedly, a big part of this pattern comes from the media focus. Hypocrisy in powerful public figures is big news, and I’m sure there’s some cherry-picking in the coverage. After all, “Married Congressman caught with hookers — and he campaigned on the sanctity of marriage!” makes great headlines. “Married Congressman caught with hookers — and he voted to renew the Farm Bill!” isn’t going to make headlines anywhere but the Surrealist Times.
But even given that, there’s a precision to the match-ups between the public condemnation and the private behavior that seems like more than coincidence and media focus.
Maybe it’s all just smokescreens. You rant enough about the evils of homosexuality and pedophilia, and you figure nobody will suspect the truth about those teenage boys. But if all this sexual hypocrisy is a smokescreen, it’s a singularly stupid one. It may protect you from suspicion for a while — but when the hammer comes down, it’s going to come down that much harder. So even from a purely pragmatic angle, you’d think that if you were offering $20 to blow strangers in public bathrooms, you’d pick an issue to campaign on other than the evils of public sex.
Or maybe it’s the natural human tendency each of us has, to believe that we personally can be trusted to know which laws and rules should be obeyed, but that other people can’t be and everybody else should just obey the law. But while that explains the right wingers’ overall willingness to break sex laws and flout sexual taboos, it doesn’t explain the eerie specificity with which their law/ taboo breaking matches their public condemnation.
What’s that about, anyway?
I’m no expert. I’m not a psychologist or therapist. But based on my years of experience in the sex world, what this smells like to me is sexual guilt — and overcompensation for it.
I don’t think Ted Haggard was happy about having sex with men. I doubt seriously that David Vitter or Jimmy Swaggart felt great about seeing prostitutes. Ditto Mark Foley about being hot for teenage boys, or Bob Allen about picking up guys in public bathrooms. Maybe some of these right-wing hypocrites are laughing up their sleeves about how they’ve pulled one over on everyone. But for the most part, I think they feel tremendous guilt about wanting, and having, the exact kinds of sex that they believe are destroying society and making baby Jesus cry.
So they overcompensate. They hate themselves for wanting what they want and doing what they do… so they preach against it, and propose legislation against it, and do everything in their power to relocate their guilt out in the world instead of inside their own treacherous minds and bodies. They may even feel that, in fighting the scourge of homosexuality or whatever, they’re somehow making up for their own misdeeds. I even have some compassion for them, although I’d have a whole lot more if they weren’t screwing things up for the rest of us.
And this is just one more reason we need to work for a new sexual morality — to shift it away from a guilty freakout over which tab goes in what slot, and towards a morality based on honesty and consent.
Because if people in power weren’t so wracked with guilt about their own sexuality, I think they’d be a lot less obsessively controlling about everyone else’s. If Ted Haggard hadn’t felt so guilty about fucking men, maybe he’d have become a minister in the gay-positive MCC… instead of battling gay rights at every turn. If Mark Foley hadn’t felt so guilty about emailing and IMing teenage pages, maybe he’d have felt comfortable going for guys who were young but legal… instead of trying to turn the Internet into a Norman Rockwell painting. And if David Vitter hadn’t felt so guilty about wanting unusual fetishistic sex, maybe he and his wife could have come to an agreement about it… instead of trying to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the depraved ravages of gay people in love.
Just a thought.
Victorianism is alive and well. I think the problem is that the church is the last bastion for this anti-human moray. Victorianism goes against the very nature of human sexuality, which unfortunately is echoed in our laws. Repress enough and you get some to go crazy, but not as many as you might think. Personally I know that humans can safely practice wide varieties of sexual deeds quite normally, but each of them feels as if they are the only one to think of such things, isolation. Isolation breeds shame, and shame is the most destructive force known to a society, (see Islam). The US teeters on the fine line of guilt and shame, we canât quite make up our collective minds which of the two we are more comfortable with. When this happens to a man or woman of the cloth, it can have very devastating effects, because the church demands a standard of morality that is impossible for most of us. So we set them up to fail, then act surprised that they did, when each of us says in our own head âthat could have been meâ.
I donât blame any of those pastors/priests for their indiscretion, I blame the world for not practicing what they pay the preachers to tell them, which of course I also believe is wrong. Itâs a no win all the way around, but some of these bible thumpers aught to follow the good books advise; If your dick offends thee, cut it off.
I have always said that, at least among people that **think** they have some mandate or requirement to save souls or enforce law, the things they preach against the most and loudest are almost certainly the very things they themselves are committing. Until recently, I only suspected this was true, but, to quote PZ Myers, “This is just getting ridiculous.”
It seems a lot of right-wing sexual hypocrites were really just asking to be protected from themselves all along. Maybe the next time some religious right figure rails against some particular form of sexual expression, we should see it less as an expression of hate and more as a cry for help. 😉
I was just reading this:
http://www.physorg.com/news113650231.html
– yet another news item on a report that (yet again) shows that when it comes to teenage pregnancy and STDs, abstinence programs don’t work (and are simply wasting money), because it doesn’t achieve any of the things it is claimed to do.
At the same time, comprehensive sex education is “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use”.
I suspect that what abstinence programs do is (i) increase guilt, and (ii) focus people on what they’re abstaining from. Guess what – they think about it more, and the lower self esteem that comes from all that guilt makes it more likely you’ll do something you wished you had not. (At least not right away, and not with the loser you ended up getting it on with)
[It’s the same reason diets are so notoriously bad at keeping weight off – by focusing on food, it becomes a preoccupation. Guilt lowers self-esteem, which increases the behaviour you’re desperately trying to avoid. A more relaxed attitude, with food treated as a natural, healthy part of life, and some sensible attitudes to exercise, do much better.]
I wonder whether something similar is going on with all these hyper-conservato-religious types. It may be that, if they weren’t so focussed on the need to *avoid* these things – even thinking about them, they would not be caught in the guilt spiral that simultaneously makes them campaign against them ever harder while at the same time becoming ever more tempted…
If they accepted sexual thoughts as normal, typical, everyday things; recognized that sexual behaviour is not some bad thing to be guilty about, the hypocrisy would not twist them around so much that they would be much more able to keep themselves from doing the illegal stuff (because they wouldn’t be constantly thinking about it all the time), and maybe they would stop making everyone else so damn miserable.
Sexuality is complex and interesting, and by accepting it for what it is, I think it makes it easier to do what you feel is right.
I think religious types need to stop being so concerned about what everyone else is doing. If they accepted their own selves as sexual beings, they might find it easier to stop being so preoccupied with what everyone else is doing, and easier to maintain a more modest* sexual lifestyle themselves.
*(such as, hopefully, not preying on kids)
I don’t care what consenting adults do privately. Just stop pointing to the motes in everyone else’s eyes.
The conservogodites don’t ever get it though. If half of them fall by the wayside, the rest just
– excuse the behaviour they rail against in their co-religionists and at the same time
– fight even harder against it for everybody else
That is, they make it worse.
It’s the same thing, really, with any solution they come up with – whether political or personal. If it doesn’t work, it’s not because I’m wrong-headed, or mistaken. I just need to do it harder.
It doesn’t work, guys. Give it up.
GC,
I know that it is what you do but you are an awesome writer!
Anywho, I wrote a post (sorry can’t get HTML tag to work: http://piguy3point14.blogspot.com/) last fall following the Ted Haggard scandal.
Needless to say, I completely agree with you in this matter. It’s not what people do in the privacy of their own bedroom. It’s that old Christian guilt all built-up, dividing the soul. What a shame.
As usual, y’all have it backwards, writing about “religion” as if it were a discrete and autonomous force in human life, instead of a human invention. People don’t have funny sexual hangups because of religion; religion encodes funny sexual hangups because people assign their sexual hangups to their gods and put them into their religions.
It certainly is not only Christianity that shows this. Look at Plato, who lived several hundred years before Jesus, and who (probably) projected his hangups onto Socrates, making him say that it’s better not to have sex, though in the Phaedrus (256C and D) he concedes that even if you get drunk and screw around anyway, you can still maybe be a philosopher. Maybe. This is not that far from Jesus and Paul. The fetishism of virginity as a moral state also turned up in Greek popular fiction at around the same time as Christianity began; so did Christianity impose its hangups on Greco-Roman culture, or did Greco-Roman culture shape Christian hangups? … Buddhism isn’t exactly sex-friendly either, nor is Hinduism. (See the Dalai Lama’s infamous, confused comments on homosexuality from the 90s, which I’m not sure he has ever really clarified.)
About the whole right-wing hypocrite thing, look at this very interesting Op-ed from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/opinion/02macdonald.html?_r=1&em&ex=1188964800&en=543db0d43dfd6f76&ei=5087&oref=slogin
Something about respectability produces this opposite reaction in people — the author shows that Laud Humphreys’s research on restroom sex in the 1960s found basically the same pattern we’re seeing now, of righteous conservative antigay men whose secret (not “private”) behavior is at odds with their public face.
Reading this article made me realize that legal same-sex marriage will give us the same syndrome among gay men. We’ve already seen it, in fact, among the Andrew Sullivans and Mike Signoriles who turn out to do the shameful, nasty things that they condemn other gay men for doing. Maybe we’ll start seeing married gay men cruising for heterosexual prostitutes, despite their furious insistence that they aren’t straight.
A local conservative columnist here in town has one of the largest personal collections of pornography that I’ve heard of — hundreds of videos — yet he writes columns calling for a ban on porn. I know this man personally, and I would guess from what I know of him that he feels he knows how to handle porn, but doesn’t trust others to handle it — Hence, the double standard.
Damn you, Greta!
You take all of my favorite rants, and then deliver them so well that I feel ashamed to declaim on the subject again.
I’m running out of things to say that you haven’t said better.
But seriously, that’s a pretty petty complaint. Thank you for saying them not only well, but to a larger audience.
Maybe, as you said, this is some sort of overcompensation, and my condemnation should be tinged with a bit of pity. But it’s still hypocrisy, and still a execrable basis for making public policy.
“Buddhism isn’t exactly sex-friendly either, nor is Hinduism.”
Actually, while people like the Dalai Lama produce confused waffling, its not too clear that Hinduism is negative to sex. It may be less open to gay sex, but another famous nut (excuse me, religious leader) from there, named Ghandi wanted them to destroy several temples that are *covered* in every sexual position, straight or otherwise, one can imagine. He wanted them destroyed because he saw them as an example of a caste system, where people had specific *places* they where in. Its the same stupid argument, basically, that you get from the west among those accepting of the idea of sex, but hating prostitution. The assumption that the people involved don’t want to be there, don’t have a choice, and are stuck in the job. A fact that is **only** true where it is illegal, and the people that get into it are stuck, don’t have choices, and can’t get out. Its no more valid issue that my whining about how unfair it is that I work as a bag boy in a grocery store, instead of being the head of a major corporation. My being *stuck* in a dead end job, with few prospects and no obvious way, at the moment, to get out is *OK*, but someone getting “stuck” sleeping with people isn’t? And I am about 500% better off that **most** of the people stuck in jobs like I have, because I have the education to eventually get out. His argument wasn’t invalid, but his reasoning about what to do about the temples was stupid and flawed.
As for Buddhism… Well, its primary focus is on enlightenment by giving up dependence on material things, which is a) stupid in and of itself, since there isn’t a lot of evidence that non-material things will get you there either and b) its kind of by definition has to include things like sex. Claiming that its hostile to it though.. I don’t know, are math classes, or any other subject/job/whatever that precludes doing it in the middle of the floor, while everyone else keeps studying, also “hostile” to sex?
No, Christianity and Islam have a pretty good hold on the category of “hostile”, with regard to this subject. Judaism too, but not *quite* to as obsessive an extent, but this isn’t a surprise, given where it all cropped up from.
As for who influenced who. The virgin birth stuff cropped up in other mythologies, ranging from Egypt to the older pre-Xian forms, like El, Inara, etc. It was hardly unique even when the stories of Mythras where invented. Frankly, I am not sure if there is *anything* that Christianity didn’t borrow or steal from someone else, with the possible exception of their own name. The influence is heavily from the old to the new though, since its hard to borrow and/or steal ideas, unless they are recognizable enough for people to accept them. The influence running the other direction, from the church to the people tended to happen **after** enough people had embraced the new rewrites. So it has been, clear back to when people where stealing Sumerian tales about big floods and multiple contradictory creation stories, from who knows which cultures, to make up Genesis.
I think that these men do believe what they “preach” deep in their hearts and try to make laws or bring social pressure to ban ‘X’ activity in order to help them stop themselves. It is the thought of making it too hard to do, or too dangerous, or too difficult that would be a way of stopping some personal fetish that they feel they cannot stop themselves from doing on their own.
Wonderful post from efrique. The argument that abstinence programs âincrease guilt, and focus people on what they’re abstaining fromâ is an argument I have used a lot to explain this weird phenomena (using food and dieting as an example too). But enfriqueâs critique was superb.
What used to amaze me (and still does) is how âkinkyâ conservatives are. From memory, every Tory in the UK who has been caught with his pants down was also hog-tied, covered with honey while being tickled by a nun (okay Iâm exaggerating but you know what I mean). While not condemning honey-covered religious-purging bondage, itâs just not the kind of thing your average joe or jenny gets up to. When a greeny or lefty politician gets caught in the act, itâs usually straight adultery without the feathers, raincoats and llamas. It seems a tad unfair that the liberal is fighting for the rights of the wacky conservative but getting none of the action himself.
Perhaps there is more to the eroticizing effect of the taboo. As an ex-catholic, I used wonder how protestants enjoyed sex (without the risk of burning in hell). The taboo aspect, at least for me, is a bit fundamental (but maybe Iâm one of the wacky ones). On the other hand, if itâs so natural and healthy, why arenât we all fucking in the street? Do social sanctions turn us all into other creatures behind closed doors? Is that what makes it exciting? This reminds me of another blog on this site about mixing sex and humour. For some posters, it was like mixing fire and water. Maybe sex and taboo are more like mixing fire and kerosene.
Well, as a Christian (don’t get your dander up yet!), I have been studying things of this nature since I am pursuing a degree in psychology. I find stuff like this fascinating. Everything I say following this is what I have come to believe. I don’t have a corner on truth, but I believe that the Bible is absolutely true and is itself truth.
Anyway, as you pointed out, I too have noticed, along with others, that Christians seem to campaign and preach against the very thing they struggle with the most. This is not broadly true of course, but in a number of cases it is true.
Christians feel that they have to maintain an image of perfection and righteousness so as to appear to have something that you would find desirable, i.e. salvation or something like that. That is why it is so scandalous to hear or read about Christian leaders doing things that Christians condemn.
Why do Christians engage in such risky behavior? Sin. Even if you don’t agree with me, at least hear me out. Sin = selfishness. It’s all about me, myself, and I. Suppose you were on the Titanic enjoying a nice cruise. Ship hits iceberg, panic ensues. You start pushing women and children out of the way so that you can get to a lifeboat. In effect you are communicating that those whom you just pushed out of the way can go to Hell because you don’t care one iota about their life or their wellbeing; you only care about saving your own skin. You make it to the lifeboat and the crew does nothing because there isn’t time for fairness or justice, just to get as many off as possible. They lower the lifeboat and everyone works to get away from the sinking ship that threatens to suck you under with it. There are waves and wind that are threatening to overturn the lifeboat, so you do what any selfish (sinful) person does, you start throwing the other occupants in the lifeboat overboard to save your own skin.
Like you, I have grown disgusted at my own behavior, and those of my fellow Christians. Religiously minded people have done terrible things throughout history and they continue today. I am ashamed at some of the things that we as Christians have done. Were we right to do those things? No! We seem to think that we know all things and thus we can answer absolutely and definitively regarding many matters that we believe to be true even though those beliefs don’t match up to what the Bible says. Many Christians have made statements (Pat Robertson regarding hurricane Katrina being God’s judgment against the vile wickedness of Louisiana being a great example) that are most likely untrue. True, God may have done such things in the Old Testament time period, and He may still do things like that today, but we forget 2 Peter 3:9 that tells us that God desires “for everyone to come to repentance.”
The image that Christians put on display for all to see is just that, an image to display and to hide the ugliness (sinfulness) underneath that they don’t know what to do with. So they do what they can (problem right there since it isn’t in our power to do much of anything about our sinfulness; which is why we need a savior according to the Bible that must be collecting dust on the bookshelf or table of many Christians; maybe it too is for show!) and fail to realize that we can’t do anything about the corruption of our flesh brought about by sin. Christians these days have a terrible understanding of the Bible, there hermeneutic skills are severely lacking, and they run around spouting off about things that they don’t fully understand nor strive to understand. They could read a blog like this and be totally offended and think the worst things about you and anyone who reads this blog. Did they take the time to understand you, to know you as a person, or did they brush you off as a sinful pagan and want nothing to do with you? If a Christian condemns you, they are putting their stamp of approval upon you to be sent to Hell. That’s a loving thing to do isn’t it?! Slap a Christian across the face with that and they will probably start stuttering and then continue claiming that you are a vile pagan deserving of Hell! Some of us are a sad lot are we not? I prefer a different approach, such as the one I’m taking with this lengthy comment. Condemnation is NOT the key to understanding people and loving them as we Christians are commanded to do in the Bible.
Unfortunately, many Christians have subscribed to the “health, wealth, and prosperity” type of Christianity. This is not new since even Jesus disciples asked Him whether the parents or the blind man had sinned in John 9:1-7. Jesus replied that the man’s state of blindness from birth was not the result of his sin or his parents sin, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Christians have it all messed up when they think that God punishes them when they sin, and that He punishes the pagans (category that you would be placed in) for their sins as well. God may punish, but only when it is for the benefit of the people involved (remember 2 Peter 3:9?). I am not going to pretend to know why God allowed 9/11 or hurricane Katrina or any other natural disaster or otherwise (Nazi concentration camps) because I can’t see the big picture of how it affects the world from that point on and whether it is better to have allowed it to happen than preventing it despite the many lives lost. I dislike it very much when Pat Robertson opens his mouth about God’s judgment and how He is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah if He doesn’t judge America soon or any other statement made by someone blatantly lacking in understanding. I agree with Socrates, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I truly know and understand.
Christianity is not some religion with a laundry list of dos and don’t s, but a relationship with the being who created you. That is the core of Christianity; many Christians miss that fundamental truth.
I agree with you on some points, but disagree with you on others. Speaking of such, I find it amazing that Christians dogmatically think that there is only one right way to do things and they know what and how to do it! God allows for diversity of thought and beliefs (surely He would have destroyed those who uttered and believed things not true if He was against diversity of thought and belief, no?) so who am I to make the case that He doesn’t? Do I have all of the answers as a Christian, nay, far from it! I search for the truth and continue t do so since I have found that I have been wrong about a number of things. I hope that I never feel that I have arrived, but I would rather that I am always journeying towards the destination of truth. Wow, I am starting to sound a bit like Socrates who enjoyed the struggle to find an answer more than the answer itself.
We Christians, well, everybody, has this idea that what we believe is true and everybody else is wrong. We will fight about stuff for the pettiest of reasons. Again, sin explains it rather well based on my understanding of sin from studying the Bible and the affect of sin upon humankind and the earth.
The environment – Many Christians subscribe to a sacred/secular dichotomy. This means that they regard praying, attending church services, missionary work, etc. to be sacred and more important than getting rid of a gas guzzling SUV (I’m not an environmentalist wacko, but I do believe that there are things that I can do to be a good steward of the earth that I believe God created) that they got to keep up with the Joneses and get something that burns less gas but has a few cubes less of cargo space. I won’t fault them if they need a SUV, but if they have it for status then I will hold them accountable especially if they complain about high gas prices or the environmental damage caused by others. Back to the sacred/secular dichotomy. Thus, Christians care less about the environment because they see it as secular, and therefore, less important than praying. I was taught by a wise professor at school that all things are sacred in that God created all things, however, not all actions, behaviors, or uses of things is good. Using money to buy drugs is not good, even though money in and of itself is not evil or bad. I find it amusing and telling how people will speak out so vehemently against slavery, but they are quite OK with being a slave to drugs (drug addict). Funny thing, isn’t it?
Christianity is a mess and many refuse to admit to such. It is even harder for them to admit that they have problems. Still believing that somehow, someway the Chrristian life is supposed to be rosy and easy perhaps (Recall John 9:1-7, well, all of ch. 9 for that matter)? “He sinned, so we should expect calamity” they might reason. “Why doesn’t God bless me with a lot of money” another asks. Is God obligated to do these things? Nope. Perhaps there is an important lesson that he/she isn’t learning because he/she is to stubborn, strong willed and selfish to realize that God is withholding for that persons benefit. What a concept! “But I want my rosy and easy Christian life!!” Such selfishness… I’ve been guilty of such things in my life. But God in His graciousness has revealed to me that I have behaved so badly and has enabled me to change.
BTW – I have a lesbian friend, haven’t seen her in awhile, who was condemned by a church I used to attend. They saw her as evil and that she should know better rather than seeing her as a person who was struggling with issues in her life and needed support and encouragement from other believers. So yes, I have seen the devastation and hurt caused by Christians who apparently not reading and studying their Bibles carefully. I suppose it’s just easier to believe what some person writes in a book about an issue than to study the Bible to see what it says about the issue…
Well, I’ve rambled on long enough. Hopefully you can see that not all Christians are bad and that Christianity isn’t bad, just mis-represented by Christians who haven’t put in the legwork to seek the truth but instead have taken the easy way and believe others who do all the legwork for them. Like spoon feeding a baby whatever you want and the baby eating it up eagerly.
Wow, all those papers I have had to write at school has turned me into a very wordy person! I might have to copy and paste this into Word to see how many double spaced pages I would have for the fun of it…
Great post Greta. The hypocrisy, oh how it darkens!
Slightly off topic, but I’d like to add, from my memory of having recently crawled out of teenage-hood, that withholding informaiton about anything interesting (e.g. in abstinence-only sex ed), leads to a sizeable proportion of young people to immediately increase their curiosity about the subject by about 100 times, or more, simply because it’s forbidden and therefore exciting. That’s where the seeking-of-porn-as-research and I-don’t-know-what-this-is-but-let’s-try-it mentalities start to kick off. It doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, but some people are more curious than others, particularly on universal bodily functions like sex, no?
Speaking for myself and a lot of my peers, after being taught pretty comprehensive sex ed with plenty of relationship advice thrown in (about communication, negotiation, equality, etc), sex became a)extremely ordinary because all adults do it in some form or another so it was just a matter of time and maturity, really; and b)there was a choice: we learned to think about whether we wanted to have sex or not at any particular age, and why, and not just say: “Um they said we shouldn’t do it but I kinda want to but I know that’s wrong what should I do~~~~” with all the potential for eventual disaster that it entails, whether that be very bad sex, sex when they weren’t mentally ready, pregnancy, STDs, or self-denial and deprivation. Not to mention the guilt of it all. Oh, and of course with good sex education the people who want to have sex also know about the proper precautions against pregnancy and STDs, and therefore were less likely to end up with unintended outcomes. It’s a win for everybody involved, I think.
Er, sorry about the off-topic rant? >.<
A car maker will provide an instruction manual for buyers on how the car should operate. Any deviation from those instructions will lead to problems. All the nonsense above is based on a pagan notion that we are all ‘mini-gods’ & anything goes. Wheteher certain tele-evangelists don’t practice what they preach is totally irrelevant to cosmic reality. Homosexuality is a moral degradation practiced by selfish, hedonists who mock Biblical history & invent their own ‘credo’. Sure, don’t believe me but ultimately, cosmic reality will come crashing in on you & you’ll wish you’d been a morally better person. But of course by then it’ll be too late. You only need to wait to find this out.
Thank you for sharing, Chris.
After a very gut-wrenching ethical discussion was posted under the Atheist Nexus Ethics group titled âRape â Who Is Responsible?â I saw the true nature of a significant number of men in the atheist/skeptic community.
Too many atheist/skeptic men are no different than Bible-thumping Southern Baptist men like Albert Mohler and Bruce Ware â they hold the view that women are somehow to blame on some level if theyâre raped or traumatized by domestic violence for failing to be submissive and âaccept our placeâ in a patriarchically defined society in the US.
I left Atheist Nexus because of this. I sent one of the administrators, Andrea Semler (âThe Nerdâ), an email late night on Dec. 11 2009 asking her to remove my membership and profile from Atheist Nexus because of this. I had difficulty maintaining my Internet connection long enough to remove my membership and profile myself due to winter storms knocking out my cable Internet.
After seeing how even the most “enlightened”, ârational thinkingâ, âlogicalâ men really think and feel towards women, about rape, about the seriousness of women in the US being deprived of the fundamental right to birth control and abortion (thus denied bodily autonomy that male humans are entitled to) and about the fact that women are still just as poor and oppressed due to job discrimination (a major cause of female poverty); I really don’t see any point in bothering with Atheist Nexus anymore. The message is loud and clear that the most influential and privileged men in the New Atheist movement really don’t care about all the injustices being occurred today against the female half of the population.
They don’t care that many women across the US are denied access to reliable contraception and abortion, and what it’s doing to poor rural women â like me. Iâm a real, living, breathing, feeling, sentient woman, not an abstract esoteric concept to be reduced to some comfy armchair discussion.
They donât care about the damaging effects of historically and Biblically inspired misogyny that is still shaping many OB/GYN and maternity health practices and polices today.
They don’t care that most of America’s poor, uninsured, and hungry who are struggling below the federal poverty line of $10,000/year are women.
They don’t care that they’re just as oppressive of women as their fundie Xtian counterparts when they’re indifferent to our valid concerns; when they collectively dismiss the seriousness of rape, and the lifelong trauma it poses for women because “enlightened” atheist men feel justified in blaming the rape victim, or ‘rationalizing” that â of all other crime victims â women rape victims are always somehow at fault: either for failing to put up a hard enough fight to prevent the rape, or for walking home from work or school because of lack of money for a cab/lack of public transportation/lack of a ability to afford a car; and for failing to dress for urban guerilla warfare.
Iâm sorry, but I am not very hopeful that things will ever get better for American women and girls â especially those of us from deep poverty â no matter what men believe; whether theyâre atheists or full blown dyed-in-the-wool fundie Xtians.
The voices of atheist women (especially feminists) are being censored and silenced in the skeptic community by a lot of men. This is not an accident. Itâs a conscious deliberate act.
Weâre called âcrazyâ, âhystericalâ, and âparanoidâ and run off of atheist networking sites when we raise valid issues, policies, laws, medical procedures, and their damaging effects that directly impact the lives, health, happiness, and wellbeing of women and girls â even when we present irrefutable credible sources of info on this.
Weâre accused of persecuting all these âpoorâ put-upon white males. Weâre told weâre just embittered âman-haters.â
Indifferent atheist men and misogynist atheist men are no more of a friend to women than over-privileged rich Xtian white males whose money and positions of power influence, shape and direct public policies that abuse women and cause untold damage in untold number of womenâs lives. The outcome for women and girls is still the same: Life sucks for us. There is no joy, nothing to feel hopeful, optimistic, or happy about.
Bottom line: what are affluent, influential white male atheists doing with their privileges to make life suck just a little bit less for poor rural women and girls across the US who are denied access to advanced educations, good jobs, decent food, adequate housing, adequate clothing, preventive health and dental care, vision care, humane maternity care, contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion?
It doesnât matter whether it is religious fundamentalism or atheism that dominates our communities and shapes public policy if at the end of the day, a poor woman without transportation still suffers in poverty and is stuck remaining pregnant against her will and against the best interests of her health, happiness, and quality of life. Period.
So, if I have to choose my battles between the âNew Atheistâ movement and womenâs human rights, itâs not rocket science as to choice I will make as a feminist, and as a published atheist woman author and social justice activist struggling in poverty without access to appropriate health care in the US.
Best Regards,
Jacqueline S. Homan