Right Wing Nut House

Well, I can’t say that people ignored my latest PJ Media submission. The invective unleashed against me in a couple hundred comments for contending that social conservatives have a problem with sex was predictable, if not very inventive.

Apparently, believing that such personal matters do not belong in the context of a presidential campaign means that I actually support all the extreme sexual practices, sexualization of society, and even polygamy that my critics blame for America’s moral depravity. And if you point out that sexual morals is a question of personal choice and that people should mind their own damn business, I am skewered for not seeing that having sex out in the open and being so prevalent in the culture is the end of civilization as we know it.

It’s not these well meaning busybodies making superficial moral judgements who are the problem. The moralists have always been with us and despite being an anathema to the very notion of freedom, feel perfectly comfortable in trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

It is Republican politicians pandering to the notion that government can actually do something about the sexual revolution that is the real threat to personal liberty. This is self evident. And those who profess reverence for the Constitution have a funny way of showing it. It is not a question of some imposing their morals or values on the Christians and others. It is a matter of personal freedom of expression, guaranteed by the Constitution, that is at issue. Are the Kulture Commandoes saying that the Constitution is the problem? Indirectly, yes. “Gee, if we could only make the notion of freedom disappear, sex would be back in the closet (as would gays), teens would be ignorant of sex, TV would be watchable again, and going to the movies wouldn’t be the harrowing experience it is today.”

Sorry, you can’t put the sexual genie back in the bottle. The real beef of the socons is with the idea that sex is no longer hidden, nor is it a societal taboo to say you love it, or that you enjoy porn, or that women seek it and love it as much as men. It is beautifully, gloriously out in the open to both the detriment of the culture and the empowerment of its adult members.

It needn’t even be mentioned that children have no role in this. Parents must work a lot harder to shield their children from influences that they cannot comprehend, nor deal with the consequences — both physical and psychic. But because it’s harder for parents does that mean we should trade some kind of government control over our personal preferences? No one really cares if social conservatives preach their sermons about the evils of what they consider unnatural or immoral sexual practices. But if conservative politicians and their allies try to force the rest of us — or, more accurately, to make the socons believe they can force us — to live by the teachings in those sermons by censoring, limiting, or otherwise interfering with the personal choices of American citizens in adopting their own lifestyle, then the issue becomes Constitutional freedom and not a matter of morality.

I put it this way in my article:

But when Republican politicians, and others associated with conservatism or the Republican Party, start echoing the various criticisms of contraception, of casual sex, of sex outside of marriage, the perception cannot be dismissed that the imprimatur of the entire party - and consequently, the government if they ever came to power - has been granted and that somebody, somewhere, might want to do something about it. As a voter making a political calculus on how to mark one’s ballot, the GOP is kidding itself if they don’t think this affects the decisions of millions of citizens.

This is especially true of women, although there are plenty of younger Americans who are watching this debate on contraception unfold and no doubt wondering what all the hub-bub is about. According to a CDC study released in 2010, of 89 million American women between the ages of 15-44, 99% had used some form of contraception. That figure includes 82% of American women who used some form of oral contraceptive, Depo-Provera, injections, or the “ring” or the “patch” at some time in their lives.

That’s an awful lot of voters to offend by hinting, as Rick Santorum did, that states should have the right to ban contraceptives. Or that oral contraceptives are more dangerous or harmful than most other drugs on the market. Trying to attach a stigmata to women who use birth control pills - implying that being sexually active is the same as acting licentiously - may fulfill some atavistic desire to apply an outdated code of conduct to women, but it is hardly good politics.

This is not a safety issue, or even a women’s health issue. The issue is sex and the evolving cultural mandate that women should be able to enjoy the sex act as much as men without the fear of pregnancy. This is the real beef that the social conservatives have with the pill. It has revolutionized bedrooms in the U.S., while setting off a a massive change in the mores and morals of men and women.

No doubt some of this change has been harmful, even frightening. The sexualization of children is certainly one of those harmful consequences of freeing sex from the purely procreative. The explosion of teenage pregnancies, and teen sexual activity, is another untoward consequence of the pill. But change is the way of the human animal, and the technological revolution that created the pill 50 years ago couldn’t have been stopped anymore than we could have halted the splitting of the atom, the invention of the integrated circuit, or the spread of the internet. In each case, technology answered a need in society, and if those wonders hadn’t been invented then, they certainly would have been at some point shortly afterward.

But why bring what by any definition is a personal moral judgment into the political arena? Why insist that our politicians address what can only be described as an issue for which government is not equipped to deal, let alone has any business discussing in the context of a presidential campaign?

I was heartened to see so many of the more than 230 comments agree with at least some of my critique. But few, if any, of my critics responded to the thesis of the piece; what business do these issues have in a presidential campaign? Why should government get involved in defining what is “moral” or “immoral” about sex?

They gave no response because there is none. So they attacked me by accusing me of supporting the choices made by others. I offer no value judgment on women or men who have sex with dozens of different partners, or who wear revealing clothing, or who purchase porn, or who engage in sexual practices frowned upon by the social conservatives.

When it comes to sex, I am very much a vanilla sort of man. But it is glorious living in a country that allows others who might choose Rocky Road — and have the Constitutional protection to make that choice.