If there is one thing America is still very, very good at, it is moralizing about sex. Long after the manufacturing jobs have all left America, and after we have drilled out the last drop of oil, and after we've abandoned Arizona to either climate change or some new mutant form of racist old people, we'll still have at least two major industries. The first is the fast food industry, which will never die. The second is the omnipresent industry of deciding who should have sex, when they are allowed to have it, and how much they should be punished for it.
So this was a good week in America. We were able to have lots and lots of conversations about Our Great Defining Issue, the only one that really seems to motivate us anymore. No jobs? Yeah, Congress might get around to that someday. Economy sucks? Meh. Hey, I think we're still at war, right? I think? Hmm, hard to tell. But start talking about penises and vaginas, and everyone in political discourse immediately wants in on that. That's right in our wheelhouse. We're good at moralizing about other people having sex.
9th Circuit Appeals Court panel rules banning gay marriage is unconstitutional: This is a great one. The premise here is whether or not allowing two men or two women to get married somehow poses a "threat" to all the other marriages in the country. The nature of the threat is not well understood, even by the people warning about it, but the major threat seems to be that it suggests that sort of thing might be an option, for heterosexuals, and then all hell will break loose. The number of conservatives out there who would apparently turn gay in a heartbeat, if it were to become an option, is apparently immense (judging from recent scandals, prominent conservatives can only barely contain their rampant gayness now).
Supposedly giving the same legal rights and recognitions to gay couples as to straight ones "delegitimizes" heterosexual marriage; this turns conservative heterosexuals into the true victims, because they have to think about other people having naughty, deviant sex and that makes them sad. Like every other issue of discrimination, we are urged to discriminate because not doing so will hurt the feelings and moral convictions of the people who really, really want to discriminate. And what those people want to discriminate against most, right now, is other people having unauthorized sexytimes.
Congress works on another anti-abortion restriction: Another pillar of American legislative prowess, with the capper of being named after Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, two great minds that were greatly despised by bigots back in the day, this bill reflects Congress' laser-like focus on making sure people who have unapproved interracial sexytimes are punished to whatever extent we can manage. It makes aborting a fetus based on its race a crime, which is right there something most of us cannot quite fathom happening to begin with. How often is the race of a baby a surprise, exactly? And if it is, does that perhaps suggest we need better sex education, in this country?
The bill also disallows abortion based on the sex of the fetus, which is I think primarily needed because that is what the Communists in China do. So this manages the enviable congressional feat of being racially-premised, and morality-premised, and communist-peril premised, and having an ironic name that would make both Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass cry.
Nobody expects the Catholic inquisition: A fine one, this. The Catholic Church has very, very stringent guidelines against unapproved sexytimes that hardly anyone of the faith actually follows through on, but which are nonetheless considered such pillars of the faith that feeding the poor, healing the sick, and covering up rampant child rape all must take a back seat. First the Catholic Church was upset that the government would not continue to give them free money for their adoption centers that barred adoption by gay men or women. Now they are offended that, when they are acting as employer and not as church, they are expected to abide by the same rules as every other American employer when it comes to health benefits. Health benefits that might, shudder, pay for contraception, which to the Catholic Church is the same thing as paying your employees to be sluts.
Mind you, there is nothing my old church seems to hold so dear as its mandate to govern when, where and how all other people on the planet may have sex. Suggesting they follow the same rules as other employers is something the bishops consider a deep injury to them, because as bishops, they demand control over all aspects of human sexuality. Not Catholic? Who cares. Don't agree with them? Who cares. Everybody else in the country has to follow the same rules? Oh, you'd better believe they don't care.
That brings us to our final story, or at least, our final story for now:
A breast cancer charity cuts off breast cancer screening money because the screeners also provide contraceptives and abortions.
What more can we say about it? The American privilege of deciding who ought to have sex, and whether they should have sex without baby-making, became more important to a breast cancer charity than actual breast cancer was. It was a political effort. It was part of a long-running feud as to whether Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides medical care for even poor women (tsk), should even be allowed to exist. It's not targeted at abortion—if it was, the myriad other, far more common functions of Planned Parenthood would be noncontroversial, and supported—but at the entire premise of women's sexuality. The notion of women having sex without consequences is just as frightening to some as the premise of gay sexuality. It's just not to be done. It is a moral failing, and nothing quite gets a certain segment of the American public so riled up as when furiously denouncing other people's moral failings.
I wonder what would happen if we Americans focused on the economy half as much as we focused on other people's sex-having. If we mustered, somehow, the same sort of passion for a space program or high speed rail, or climate change, or what the hell, world peace—if we mustered passion for those things like we mustered it when pondering whether or not women should be allowed to have sex while taking contraceptives. Pretend for a moment that we had the same amount of legislative obsession with creating new jobs in industry that we do for regulating reproductive health. Imagine every person obsessing over what two men might be doing in a bedroom somewhere instead dedicated themselves towards earnestly not giving a damn, and instead, I don't know, just went and read a book or something.
Sadly, it will probably never happen, but it would be nice to see. The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Want You to Get Over Yourself Act of 2012 has a real nice ring to it.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
Cheney spoke yesterday at CPAC, the conference for people for whom reality is just an illusion foisted upon them by a cold and liberal universe. (The universe, you see, is full of dark matter called Librons, which in addition to keeping the universe from flying apart like Ann Coulter in front of a television camera, have the unfortunate side effect of inverting perceptions of reality for all but the most trained Randian observers. Oh, and Scientologists.) I'm supposed to say, at this point, something like "you can't make this up", but of course you can make this stuff up. It's easy to make it up. That's the whole point.
Some highlights...
As conservatives, we believe in a government that takes up a smaller share of the national income, that treats tax dollars with respect and restraint. And we believe in a government that keeps to its limits under the Constitution, never expanding beyond the consent of the governed.
And then, he farted candy and rainbows. And all the little woodland creatures came out from under the floorboards to help sew him a magnificent new dress for the ball.
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