The sabotage of sex
My parents have five children, two of my dearest friends come from families of ten and nine respectively, and I currently know at least ten young married couples in Washington who are either expecting children or recently brought a child into the world. So how did all of these dedicated pro-lifers manage it without the benefit of sexual intercourse?
I apologize for an overly facetious attempt to illustrate the point, but I think we can all agree that pro-lifers are neither frightened by nor hostile to sex. They do, however, believe that sex has a meaning and can only cause damage when taken lightly or casually. They view sex as a life-affirming and life-giving activity, and they resent being forced to subsidize its degradation by those who have helped it instead become a cause of pain and death. They also see the benefit to society of a widespread and healthy attitude toward sex and a respect for human life, whose content does not require religious faith to accept.
Last week, Brainwash guest columnist David White hinted at a conspiracy among pro-lifers who, he tells us, are in fact influenced not so much by a desire to stop killing babies as by a zeal to stop people from having sex. As evidence of the “War on Sex,” he points to the fact that pro-lifers (shockingly) oppose government approval of abortifacient contraceptives.
Far more facile is his contention that modern-day opposition to Griswold, a 1965 Supreme Court decision that elevated “privacy” to the level of a constitutional right, is evidence of a whole-scale attempt to ban contraception. Of course, the perfidy of Griswold has little to do with its particular subject — whether Connecticut could continue to ban contraception — and everything to do with the fact that it overturned hundreds of years of accepted practice regarding the federal-state relationship — and the judicial-legislative relationship — without any serious constitutional justification.
Is the fact that pro-lifers scoff at a bad court decision a sign that they are out to ban rubbers? Contraception has clearly harmed the institution of the family since its proliferation in recent decades, and I will never use it. But I do not know anyone who wants to make it illegal. On the other side, I do know of people who want to make me pay for it — through the federal Title X program, through federally funded international family planning activities, and through public school sex-education programs that blatantly encourage sexual exploration among young children. I do know of people who want to make pharmacists’ jobs contingent on their willingness to ignore their consciences. Exactly who is imposing their morality now?
There is no reason for the government to subsidize the contraceptive industry, which will do fine on its own. If you are concerned about its well being, I invite you to show some good faith — take the money you usually give to the Democratic Party and instead donate it to Planned Parenthood
Who Caused this Problem?
Mr. White also notes that a handful of conservatives have been railing against the prospect of a vaccine for HPV, an extremely common and dangerous sexually transmitted virus that causes nearly all cases of cervical cancer. This straw man is more substantive, but a straw man all the same.
Unfortunately, a small handful of pro-lifers have heaped scorn upon the idea of voluntary vaccinations, on the grounds that risk of disease creates a theoretical disincentive to promiscuity. But the price in this case is just too great, and for a teenager, receiving a vaccine is nothing like receiving a condom, a wink, and a nod from an adult. The overwhelming majority of pro-lifers, while unwilling to show approval for bad behavior, would never want to see a girl die or become infertile for life, just for making a single mistake.
But for precisely the same reason, we must consider why sex became so dangerous an activity in the first place. It is frustrating to debate whether one should hand a kid a condom, when you are debating against the very people whose ideas on sexual liberation have made HPV, HIV, herpes, hepatitis, gonnorhea, chlamydia, and other STDs a risk for everyone. It was not prudish pro-lifers, but the sexual revolution that resulted in the proliferation and diversification of STDs. We have not waged war on sex — they have sabotaged sex.
Mr. White notes that some abstinence education programs have disseminated clearly exaggerated statistics on STDs. So for those students who were taking copious notes in those classes, let me clear things up a bit. Today, between 20 and 25 percent of teenagers suffer from some venereal disease. It wasn’t always this way — not even close. In 1960, there were only two known venereal diseases, both of which were quickly identifiable and curable with a shot of penicillin. People were also more prudish and less promiscuous, and their children were still not being taught, at taxpayer expense, to change that.
In recent years, as greater numbers of people have taken on more sex partners and engaged in riskier activities, the number of common STDs has skyrocketed to around 50. Even if condoms give their users good odds against HIV, that is not the case with many other diseases, many of them long-lasting, increasingly drug-resistant and hard to detect without lab tests — inviting terrible and sometimes deadly complications later.
Somehow, our breakthroughs in prevention and education have not stopped STD infections from growing to epidemic levels in just 50 years. Those who decided to break down the walls of public morality have not succeeded in patching them up with latex.
So were our cultural and scientific leaders of last century being mindful of the public health when, in their zeal to eradicate a “prudish” societal attitude, they made it public policy to encourage unsafe behavior? Is it responsible, from a public health perspective, to encourage kids to explore, or to consider “alternative lifestyles” that carry with them risks of infection many times greater?
Consider our Surgeon General’s lengthy new recommendation that every building must immediately become smoke-free. Is his “just-don’t-do-it” treatment of smoking consistent with his treatment of other unsafe activities, like sodomy?
Change the Debate
Mr. White finishes by referencing a recent anonymous Washington Post piece by a 42-year-old married woman who claims that the unavailability of the abortifacient “Plan B” pill somehow forced her to abort her child. He quotes Norm Ornstein as stating, “As you see more stories like that, I think it’s going to change the nature of the debate.”
I agree. I also remember a similar piece in The New York Times by Amy Richards about how she killed two of the triplets in her womb because of the lifestyle change she feared they might induce: “[N]ow I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”
Oh, the horror.
Both of these stories will probably affect the debate by awakening someone, somewhere to the appalling, selfish and callous attitude they manifest. This represents the ugly side of the trivialization of sex, but also the work that pro-lifers have to do and that only they appear willing to do. Today, a child has become a bothersome burden, to be disposed of for the sake of convenience using some improbable and ad hoc rationalization that his life would have been lousy anyway.
David Freddoso, a native of Indiana, is a political reporter for Evans and Novak Inside Report.
11 Comments - add your own
MC — July 5, 2006 at 12:03 pm
David - I think that sometimes people aren’t excited about kids coming into the world because they aren’t excited about the world in the first place. Something I’ve noticed in my parents (who have only 7 kids, and would have loved many more) is their deep affection for the world and an acute consciousness of their experience of it and its significance: a storm rolling in, geese hatching an egg, croquet on a summer evening with us kids acting goofy. We were their biggest blessings, keenest joys, and most interesting learners. I think most children of parents like mine can identify. Sometimes “pro-life” becomes just another tediously over-used, politically-laden term. But it means “in-favor-of-ensouled-existence.” Taken at its deepest level, that includes both deep passion and strong responsibility. No wonder that a cavalier approach to sex dilutes both joy and justice…
Cheers!
MC
T. — July 5, 2006 at 12:45 pm
I was already loving the article, but that comment by MC just made it that much better.
It does bother me how people paint pro-lifers as prudes who are obsessed with hating sex. Pro-lifers are people who love sex but love people more. Many of the vehement pro-abortion crowd have the problem of loving sex more than they love people (though they profess love for humanity in the abstract).
Va — July 5, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Well-put article on the pro-lifers’ view of sex. Some like to say conservatives frighten people into not having sex. While the increased occurrence of STDs most likely correlates to the sexual revolution, STDs are a negative by-product of extra and premarital sex, though not one that should be used as a scare tactic. They certainly strengthen the argument about sexual restraint but the essence of the argument is the moral core, which you do a good job of articulating.
c — July 5, 2006 at 3:08 pm
A fine response. I would add that those who practice contraception will not really know what sex actually can be, unless and until they learn to give themselves completely to another person without the reservation that is contraception. Contraceptive sex is something less…a mechanical pleasurable activity. We love something when we allow it to be what it is completely, and for sex that is only sex without contraception.
James N. Markels — July 5, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Uh, try the Pill, then.
Melinda — July 5, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Freddoso hits another home run! Well done, Dave.
S — July 6, 2006 at 11:06 am
Freddoso,
An excellent article, as I could not have said it better myself. You make the obvious point that pro-lifers are in fact pro-sex, but see it in its proper context and treat it responsibly. Also, you rightly recognize that our problems including disease stem from our cavalier attitude toward sexuality. I think it’s interesting, but people don’t chastise those who show restraint when it comes to food or drink but commend them. Why does the same not apply to those who show restraint regarding sexuality?
frost — July 6, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Methinks thou protests a tad too much. The religious right does have its zealots and unreasoned nutcases, whether you choose to admit it or not. Like, there’s “Operation Rescue” nutcase Randall Terry (who has been lauded by James Dobson) who said he’d ban the IUD and “the pill” if it were within his power. Thank God, it’s not.
Other religious-right types have wanted to ban books like “A Handmaid’s Tale” or plays like “The Crucible” because they’re offended by kissing, smoking’n stuff. Hell, one highly conservative kook endeavored to have a library censor a “Where’s Waldo” book because there was a topless cartoon woman on a cartoon beach on her cartoon tummy. Really! Sure, it’s certainly their right to do things like picketing adult book stores, too, though it sometimes seems a bit silly — they might put their time to better use maybe. Yet, I worry about those pompous, sanctimonious and often condescending folk who’d presume to tell the rest of us how to live, who would inflict their moral superiority through pointing fingers and legislation….
We might recall the religious right’s hampering, stalling and blocking of doctors’ prescriptions for contraception in years past — now there’s that goofy California congressman who has the audacity to try banning RU-486?
He would inflict his superior stance on we lesser types? My God, what gall.
Nah — in this day and age of border problems, hideous spending and government growth (not to mention Iraq, Iran, North Korea and everything else Dubya seems incapable of handling), so much of the hard-right’s misplaced priorities seems troubling — to say the least. The abortion issue seems more important than the aforementioned topics/problems. They’re “one issue” people who fail to realize that some of us are not in favor of abortion - - that, in reality, we’re actually Pro-CHOICE; the woman can choose to have a baby, and often does…..
Candidly, I doubt any of the zealots would acknowlege this, but “babies” (per se) are not destroyed by abortion. Embryos or fetuses are. There is a considerable difference between a potential baby… a protoplasm-of-potential, and a viable being. A ‘beating heart’ does not mean “life” (which is why many of us sign Living Wills). The freedom to choose abortion means that hardship, prolonged suffering of unwanted children, and extreme emotional stress (of both mother/child) might be eliminated. I totally resent anyone telling my daughters what they can or cannot do with their bodies — this sure isn’t something which should be dictated by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swigert, our government, or any others’ moral/religious values.
Sure would be nice if all these efforts were transferred into something positive, rather than just being a judgemental thing…
Interestingly perhaps, it occurs to me that, as most “Pro-Life” people also believe in the death penalty, they aren’t really pro-life — they’re Pro-Birth, right?
Matthew Mehan — July 6, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Dave,
The only criticism I have of your piece is that you forced the reader to connect a few dots that ought to be verablized: to slam abstinence programs as somehow against sex is logically wrong. Abstinence is designed to make sex better by helping to educate people about the many logical reasons to wait until marriage to have sex–excuse me, to make LOVE!!!!
The great weakness of White’s piece is his utter disregard for the true nature and dynamics of love, which is inextricably tied to sex. To treat sex as a toy, or a tool, or a statistic, is to trample love. A real war on sex would be a war on love, and mocking efforts to encourage the next generation to save themselves as the precious gift they are so that they can lovingly give that gift of themselves totally to their spouse–mocking that sure sounds like a war on love and therefore a war on sex. Aside from all the errors of fact, the title of White’s piece seems doubly ironic when considered as above.
Thanks, Dave.
Jason Bradfield — July 8, 2006 at 9:58 pm
It seems to me that Mr. White’s main point was not that some pro-lifers are waging a war on all sex, but rather pro-lifers are too vocal in their opposition to sex outside of marriage for purposes other than procreation.
Mr. Fredosso’s article and the comments above simply confirm Mr. White’s thesis. In fact, they serve as better evidence than the original article.
Of course, if he meant that pro-lifers are anti-sex even for married couple attempting to have children then, yes, he would obviously be incorrect.
DF — September 2, 2006 at 6:32 pm
The debate here, Jason, is between those of us who want to teach our children about sex in a way that will help them lead fulfilling and happy lives, and those who, heedless of the public health and public good, are trying to force their secular-humanist morality on all of us, even if it means sex becomes dangerous and deadly for everyone.
There is no real response to the fact that the latter are responsible for our current STD epidemic. It is therefore folly to entrust them with solving the problem they created.