When I see articles like this one at Huffpo, I am reminded that there are members of Congress who would like to keep women and men from deciding whether and when they will have babies. This impulse is often the result of a religious belief that it is their duty to discourage people from having sex unless they are trying to have babies. And sometimes, as indicated in the Huffpo article, it’s motivated by a belief that other people should be compelled to have babies they would rather not have. Maybe my memory is foggy, but I don’t remember this power of Congress being spelled out in the Commerce Clause or in any of the enumerated powers.
I realize that the Huffpo article concerns health insurance coverage, but reading it reminded me of my recurring suspicion that many members of Congress are incurably meddlesome when it comes to other people’s sexuality.
It is my belief that people who feel these compulsions are engaging in warped sexual fantasies of their own. They are getting off on keeping others from getting off. I suspect that there are many of these pleasure police and it’s time to OUT them. Let’s force them to make their repressive sexual agendas explicit. Here’s how I would do it, if I had my way: Make every member of Congress stand up at a podium, one by one, and answer a single simple question, but first they would be read the following explanatory prelude:
“The following question concerns only those pills and devices that are used prior to or during sex to prevent pregnancy. This question does not concern abortion.”
Now, here’s the question:
Every American adult should be entirely free to purchase any
currently available pill or product to prevent pregnancy.
Yes or No?
This imaginary spectacle would allow Americans see who is for personal liberty and who is for meddling. Let’s make it all public. Let’s allow The People to see who “represents” them:
An estimated 98 percent of sexually active women in America have used some form of birth control at some point in their lives. According to a recent Thomson Reuters/NPR poll, 77 percent of American voters believe that insurers should cover the cost of birth control with no co-pays.
Alas, my proposed thought experiment will never occur. For the foreseeable future, the meddlesome members of Congress will continue to express their aversions to other people’s sexual pleasure only indirectly, for instance, by voting in wacky ways on insurance issues.
I wonder whether Rep Steve King is against requiring people who have health insurance pay medical premiums that cover appendectomies because there are many people who won’t need to have appendectomies. He’s a real piece of work. At least he’s already stepped up and declared his position: I like to meddle with other people’s lives.
The problem is I’m sure everyone would just love to see a spending bill from congress to allocate the money required to “freely” buy everything that seems to be a good idea. This is why we’re in the mess we’re in. I can suggest all manner of good ideas, as long as somebody else gets to pay for them.
When we really want to mess with individual responsibility all we need to do is set up an insurance plan that requires people to pay for other people’s needs without their even knowing what they’re paying for. Sounds like another 50 billion dollar ripoff ponzi scheme to me.
Karl: ALL insurance policies force some people to pay for the misfortunes of others. That is the nature of insurance. It is a communist plot that is fully embraced by hard-core capitalists until it provides for health services that allow a woman the option of whether to be pregnant.
Insurance doesn’t force you to do anything, its optional if you care to understand the basic process.
Forcing people to purchase anything is totally unconstitutional. Individual people can opt out of both paying into or receiving social security “benefits” without being fined or jailed. Collective groups can file for exemptions under the nedw health care program and many have, but individuals have no say over this federally mandated plan. That’s a ponzi scheme placed upon every man woman and child unless you are a part of some collective bargaining unit. No wonder insurance companies lobbied for passage of the new federal regulations.
Karl: Every state has always had a Division of Insurance that determined the types of conditions that must be included in a standard policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States
Why aren’t you angry at all the states for making you pay for ovarian cancer (by making sure that all policies cover this condition), since you won’t need to be treated for that?
Karl,
It’s called shared responsibility. Isn’t that a christian idea?
But the numbers argue against you. You’re worried that you’re going to have to pay for someone else’s birth control? I suppose you don’t mind paying for someone else’s health problems through other mechanisms. Emergency room care, loss time, increased infant mortality, increased burden on family services, overcrowded schools, not to mention court time, increased interest rates on credit cards, car insurance…
Some things are simply cheaper. Texas banned Planned Parenthood and ended up paying an extra 10 billion in Medicare costs to make up for the loss of services PP provided at lower cost to consumers. Or was it 100 billion? Just to salve their conscience that they weren’t funding abortions—which they weren’t—they eliminated an efficient source of women’s health care that cost the state very little and added a fiscal drain on state resources for less efficient care.
Besides, you ALWAYS pay for other people, one way or the other. I would think you would be glad to know the mechanism in this instance rather than have the extra dollar drain by stealthy avenues you can’t trace easily.
When business complains that we as a nation lose X billions of dollars per year due to this or that social problem, doesn’t that suggest that maybe this is everyone’s problem and we all ought to take care of it? Or do you think those numbers are put out there in order to guilt people into sucking it up and “being better” without any kind of help or support from the people doing the bitching?
You don’t like unmarried women going around having babies. Fine. Stop complaining everytime someone does something that might alleviate that in a manner that might work. Telling women to keep their legs crossed doesn’t—nor is it your place to tell them that. Giving them the ability to control their fertility is more than morally appropriate—it makes good sense for the community.
You know, I’m beginning slowly to appreciate the mandate to buy health care. In a way, it’s Obama saying to all the complainers “Okay, you don’t want to pay the government to do the things you want done, then you HAVE to pay someone—you will buy insurance.” Opting out of paying for what has become a national problem is no longer an option.
If people would have no problem letting people die on the street instead of getting medical care, then they might have a moral leg to stand on in this issue. But that’s not the way it is. So the bottom line, once more, is “Provide services, but don’t charge ME if I don’t use them.” Well, screw that. If you bitch to your landlord that your apartment needs new windows and he puts them in, do you complain when he raises your rent to cover the cost? No. This is called Community Maintenance—you live here, you want certain things to be the case (like people receiving medical care when they need it), then you pay for it.
Mark: Why didn’t he make this case, and then add that single payor would be a more cost-efficient way to get this done? I gave up on single-payer, which CAN be another way of taking in payments to cover the costs, but without the profits that are currently being siphoned off to private insurers (who have virtual monopolies in most regions of the U.S.).
Eliminate for-profit health insurance. We’re the last industrialized nation to have it. Eliminate the profit motive and the business becomes about paying for health care. And just because they’re not-for-profit doesn’t mean no choice. Germany has more than 200 companies for its relatively small country.
Many people just will apparently never see that it is initial wrong choices that sets each and every individual on a path of personal immorality, and that what sets a culture on a path of collective immorality is when we coddle the makers of wrong choices away from personal responsibility for having made those wrong choices.
I can live with the fact that you don’t want to believe what written in a religious book because you don’t believe in the values of right and wrong attributed to the Character of such a God and you especially laugh at the hypocrisy of the followers of any said God. I just fear for any country that thinks it can rewrite recorded history to mean whatever they want it to mean.
Karl: I have a hard time seeing how making available to people the resources for taking responsibility for their personal choices is somehow coddling immorality. What you seem to advocate is that people should be made to face your version of responsibility or else.
Erich,
Somewhere in all that bombast over the health care bill, that argument WAS made and was then shouted down by assertions that anything the government did would automatically cost more.
Mark: That is where Obama really disappointed me in the health care debate. How could profit-making insurers cost more than non-profit govt. run program with a known track record for being reasonably efficient (Medicare)? Obama should have used the bully pulpit on this point, but instead cut back-room deals with for-profit health insurance companies.
Karl, you screed is a recipe for another Stalinist state. Picture those who are born poor, children born into poverty, become poor through excessive medical bills, or are disabled. Through no fault of their own, they do not have the advantages of general society to rise above their circumstances. Have these made any wrong choices? In your scenario it seems these are doomed and we’ll thus be rid of the excess population.
The problem wih the right these days is that they see the privileges and opportunities which they have received by lobbying or the luck of the draw as having hit a triple (ala W!). The rest of the world is where it is because they are immoral, made wrong choices or are morally deficient.
The next part of the rightist rant is against anything which would upset the applecart of advantage which the folks in charge already have, like allowing the lower immoral masses to vote (all the ID laws passed in Republican and Southern States!), have access to higher education (cut Pell Grants, other student aids), have access to job training to move up the economic ladder (Cut TAA programs off completely since they have expired and are only on a lifeline!) or access to basic healthcare (challenge the new law, cut and gut Medicare and Medicaid).
I see the privileges of the few being preserved to the severe harm to the many. More and more of the burden of taxes to support government has been shifted from the more well off to the backs of the dwindling Middle Class and the poor. The backlash which the burden shift has caused has been wrongly focused on the folks which actually work to serve these groups because the left is inept. I see all this as a part of The Republican War on Christmas as I have already written.
“The right is wrong, morally bankrupt and beyond redemption.” I would write this title for my first book if I were the type of person to make judgments but, will not lest I too be judged.
If you think what I am spewing will lead to a Stalinist State then count me in.
The resources you wish to put in the hands of people encourage them to become more and more dependent upon a nanny state that believes it knows what’s best for the less well off and disadvantaged but which maintains them in that position by making their posterity dependent upon paying for the coddling of their parents. That actually sounds very Stalinist to me. That’s Stalinist towards people that really try to make good choices and try to correct wrong choices towards the future.
I would prefer resources that will help cut off the coddling and encourage more and more people to take personal responsibility for all of the various levels of their choices, from the not so good choices to the better ones. You no doubt would call this unfair and hurtful to just too many people.
Seems way too many people now a days just want all the choices of adults to be equal, in both rights and consequences, while leaving out personal responsibility. In this regard why shouldn’t teens trying to be adults also deserve access to make the same kinds of choices and rights? It seems that since we can’t really make the choices equally good, then we have to try and make the consequences for the not so good choices diminished even though it means the destruction of the consensus of those who thought they were making better moral choices.
Karl, did you even read what I wrote? You still treat people who are poor, disabled or badly off as though some choice was made in the matter. It’s not “God’s will,” it’s Republicans’ will and it’s wrong, immoral and totally beyond redemption! To begin from a point of “It’s your fault, live with it” for a kid with Down Syndrome, an elderly couple whose medical bills are over $100,000 and face bankruptcy (ooops, not anymore!) or a victim of an accident through no fault of the innocent consumer or a crime victim is simply unconscionable!
Repent, ye too shall be saved!
I have said nothing of the sort.
You have attempted to reason that since I prefer to encourage personal responsibility for the outcomes a wide range of choices that do not have equal outcomes that I am also responsible for puting people into the conditions that resulted in the choices as well as the outcomes.
I stated what you can not grasp because you think people can somehow create a society that will prevent any and all choices from leading to hardships inspite of the fact that you know many choices are in fact directly responsible for many outcomes. Many good decisions and choices can still lead to unfavorable outcomes, but saying that the harm done by some people to their own bodies is not at least partially their own fault is not true.
Sure appeal to the need to care for the orphan’s, widows, and strangers in our land as the reason why we need to create governmental programs to somehow alleviate our twangs of conscience. Problem is once started down this road there is never enough money to service the programs and the people, because the existence of one feeds the other.
Putting programs like these into place not only increases the need to supply funding to “lower” our sense of misplaced guilt, but which the existence of the program enables others to see it as a social safety net for them and others as well should they follow the same path for their lives.
Karl: It seems—seems, mind you—that your method of encouraging people to be responsible is entirely negative. Don’t do this, don’t do that, stay away from those, leave these be.
Now, let’s be blunt. I’m in a dark place with a willing female. Before passion takes us beyond the ability to think, I ask if she’s using any birth control. If she says no, I produce a condom. We have a rousing good time. (If she says yes, I admit it is a risk whether or not to believe her, but let’s assume she’s telling the truth. Again we have a rousing good time.) We go on with our lives, meet other people, eventually finding someone with whom we choose to partner in a more permanent way. Neither of us suffered any negative consequences and I for one have a really pleasant, plus memory of a great evening.
Where is the irresponsibility?
Now, let’s change the social conditions. No birth control is available. It cannot be found. (This situation pertained at the turn of the 20th Century up through the late Thirties. In fact, it didn’t change appreciably until WWII.) We’re in the same clinch. If we go ahead, we have to hope she doesn’t get pregnant. If she does, then we have the option of getting married or hating each other for having created a bad situation. Neither of which would have been necessary had birth control been available. Oh, yes, the option preferred by people who don’t have to make these choices—we neck a little and part frustrated. Not a life-threatening thing, but annoying. (And just so you know, an option I chose several times, simply because no birth control was on hand.)
Going ahead would be irresponsible. But society had a get out of guilt free card, i.e. “making an honest woman out of her” via marriage—which was termed “doing the responsible thing.” But was it? What if you end up hating each other anyway?
Now, I get the impression that for you, the only acceptable actions would be Don’t have sex or Get Married first.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that neither of those is universally “right” for all people. It’s probably not right for most people at least for some period in their lives.
It would seem that using birth control would be the act of a responsible person.
It would seem therefore that denying people access to it is not only irresponsible but criminal. Because we’re not just talking about the two people involved in the clinch. Now through social means you’re guaranteeing third party involvement should people follow their natural impulses.
If there is no such thing as birth control, this is not a problem. But since there is, then barring people from it actually does take on immoral dimensions, because we’re now guaranteeing a negative outcome just because we don’t approve of their individual behavior.
Responsible behavior would be to do all you can to prevent the worst outcomes of common actions. You worry about their souls later.
I really don’t see what’s so difficult about this. If you don’t like the idea of premarital sex, then don’t do it. That’s your option. I—and many others—don’t see it that way and that should be our privilege. I don’t care to see poor and ill-equipped people running around doing a lousy job raising kids they never wanted. Providing them with the means to prevent the advent of those kids is a small cost to society and doesn’t take any skin of anyone’s personal morality. At least, it shouldn’t. Unless you can somehow feel good about preventing casual sex at the expense of horrible childhoods.
I know, I know, it shouldn’t be that way. Gosh. Reality really bites. Often unnecessarily.
Responsibility is both understanding and accepting the outcomes for one’s attitudes and behaviors on both an individual level and on a culture level.
If you say you don’t care a rip about sociological and cultural outcomes you really don’t know what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. You simply believe that there could not be and should not ever be any negative consequences for a night of passion that resulted in memories of a great evening of passion and pleasure.
Well I’m sure all manner of immoral people simply think the same way about all manner of their own personal activities, which they equally conclude don’t affect anyone other than themselves, so don’t worry, everybody be happy!
Karl: Do you disapprove of all sorts of mutually pleasurable experiences involving two people outside of marriage (e.g., sharing a tasty meal, or having a mutually enjoyable conversation) or or only mutually-pleasurable sex?
If it’s only about sex outside of marriage,and it your concern is that it’s inappropriate for religious reasons, there’s no need to discuss this topic further, as we’ve done that many times already.
I didn’t say I didn’t give a rip about sociological and cultural outcomes (and you must explain to me the difference someday). I asked where the irresponsibility is when two people take steps to insure no undesirable consequences before indulging in sex. Now they may well get mad at each other later, maybe one or the other or both might feel guilty about something later, but forgive me if I don’t consider that any concern of a third party. There are two things of importance in my question—pregnancy and disease. Proper use of contraception minimizes risk of both.
I then put it to you that when methods are available for people as individuals to do exactly that—minimize those two consequences—and third parties act to bar access or make it very difficult to get contraception, where does the responsibility lie then? For me it’s with those third parties.
One of the things you must do in order to sit in judgment on such matters as you do—and you do, Karl, your polemic oozes judgment—is decide that any such intercourse not sanctioned by marriage must necessarily have nothing but negative outcomes. Of course, there’s no guarantee sex within the bounds of marriage won’t have negative outcomes,and I don’t mean just physiological ones, though there’s that, too. You seem incapable of seeing anything positive in nonmarital, multi-partner sex. Fine. But we were discussing the responsible participation in sex.
After the Fifties we found out, little by little, just how wonderful a housewife’s life generally was. Everyone pretended their homelife was just like Ozzie and Harriet’s. But no one’s really was and a lot of women—and by extension men—were pretty miserable. But because all this misery took place inside the “sanctity” of marriage, it was assumed everything was as it should be.
Sorry. It wasn’t. And we’re still sorting it all out.
But we’re still not talking about that. But it seems unlikely we will be. You keep inching the conversation toward the cliff of social doom if people are allowed (allowed?) to have sex that does not lead to babies, with people they’re not married to.
Who’s happier? Someone who never marries but has a series of relationships of varying degrees of intimacy, creates no unwanted children, transmits no venereal diseases, and remains friends with many of his/her former lovers and suffers no guilt or neuroses? Or someone who waits for marriage, marries the first person that “looks” right, then lives the next 50-plus years in an inadequate and unfulfilling relationship because of compatibility issues that didn’t emerge until well into the marriage?
Oh, but happiness isn’t a metric for morality.
Maybe it should be, though. At least one of them.
Normally sharting a tasty meal or having a mutually enjoyable conversation whether done publically or in private is not going to result in changes to the social fabric of a culture.
Sexual relations outside of marriage is never the best choice and that’s not only a religious reason, there are ample sociological and historical reasons as well. Those who think that their basically consensusal sexual activities between consenting adults, teens and even now children isn’t affecting the social and moral fabric of our nation are oblivious to the real world.
You can blame the hang-ups of as many societies that you would like as being religiously based sexual morals, but a rational look at sociology and history states otherwise.
Karl: Let me be clear. I’m not talking about sex involving teens and children. I’m talking about adults. Please assume that I’m talking about adults who carefully decide to and express their consent to their sexual partners. Assume that no one is pushing his/her partner into something unwanted. Assume that the parties take care to practice safe sex such that pregnancy is highly unlikely (or impossible — e.g. vasectomy) to occur and diseases are not an issue. And I’ll add this one for your sake: Assume that the partners are not highly sexually active. Assume that they are in their 40’s, they both live in the United States, and that they have both had the misfortune of having their spouses, their only respective prior sexual partners die (thank God, they were married to their respective partners). To summarize. Two adults (For you, Karl, assume that they are a man and a woman) in their 40’s were both married until 5 years ago, when their partners both died of natural causes. These two surviving souls lead celibate lives until they find each other in an aisle of an independent book store (she noticed him flipping through a book on how to give a woman sexual pleasure. He is unflappable, and explains to her that the following afternoon he will move to Indonesia, where he has a long-term work assignment, and he does not ever expect to return to the U.S. They have a 3-hour conversation, after which they end up embracing and kissing under a street light outside of the bookstore. They both look into the others’ eyes at length. He blurts out, honestly, that he had a vasectomy many years ago. They decide, without any hesitation, that they want to make love to each other (so there’s no doubt, Karl, this means sexual intercourse – penis into vagina plus orgasms). They have passionate sex several times that night, knowing that after they part ways the following morning, they will never see each other again. In the morning, they thank each other for the wonderful time and say goodbye to each other forever.
Do you have a problem with their decision to have sex? If the woman involved were your daughter, and you found out about this encounter, would you tell her that her conduct was morally wrong?
If so, we see the world in massively different ways, so much so that there is no basis for continuing to discuss Congressional action regarding birth control.
“Sexual relations outside of marriage is never the best choice and that’s not only a religious reason, there are ample sociological and historical reasons as well.”
Never? Never?
Gosh, my whole life is a waste. I’ve been absolutely wrong in ever encounter I’ve ever had with a woman. How could I be so blind?
Come one, Karl, superlatives are always suspect, and this one is a doozy. By extension you have to show how doing it your way is superior and on what grounds. When the Sexual Revolution happened and everyone started telling the truth about their intimate lives, we learned that people and society was already pretty screwed up, especially when following The Rules. Because people aren’t square pegs or cookie cutter psyches.
The only major consequence has been that women are no longer required to limit themselves to minimal roles in society at large. Yes, this has had major consequences to society. It has disrupted the economic relations between men and women, it has overturned centuries of sexism, and has led to massive reassessments of what it means to be A Man and A Woman. Frankly, all to the good, in my opinion.
But no change of that size comes unalloyed with negatives. However, it has become clear that the cries of those who see only the negatives are those of people who pine for the “Good Old Days” when men were men and women stayed quiet. These people do everything they can to sabotage the mechanism whereby women can be individuals in their own right and this nonsense over birth control and nonmarital sex is one example.
I’m sorry, Karl, but there simply is no evidence to support your contention that nonmarital sex is categorically bad. No more than is there evidence that exclusively marital sex is categorically good. It is not a one-size-fits-all issue.
The only undesirable outcomes in your thinking are pregnancy or other health related risks, these are not the only consequences of sexual activities outside of marriage. Sure there are often disillusioned ideas for many individuals themselves, but their are consequences that are totally glossed over by collective groups of people that refuse to see what harm they are doing to not only their own society, but also those from other parts of the world.
The irresponsibility comes from saying, the better choices are really non-existent so we will ignore what ever considerations I should think about by saying what I do is of no consequence to anybody else.
Why do you suppose culture after culture self-implodes after they move away from encouraging sexual chastity before marriage and then a single monogamous lifestyle during a marriage between a husband and wife?
If you think your discussions of “How I met and bedded my lover” is the stuff the rest of society needs to hear about then you really don’t care how what you discuss is going to affect those listening to you.
Actually, it is the best choice (assuming neither of the two parties engaged in the relations are married to other people.) How best to determine sexual compatibility? Wait until the special night and find out that they’re not and then spend the rest of their lives trapped in a sad relationship? Or is such compatibility a no-no?
I thought Karl was a free-marketer, and one of the assumptions is that before committing there should be detailed (or even “perfect”) market information.
Karl: If you were the emperor of the United States, would you enact and enforce a law that no two adults shall have sex unless they were married to each other? [For this hypothetical, assume that “sex” means penis inserted into the other person’s vagina resulting in mutual orgasms].
Oh, Erich! Silly man! Don’t you know that “proper” sex never admits to female orgasm? Decent women don’t enjoy it! Yeesh, what a cad.
I had the same thought, Mark. Erich’s “mutual” argument presumed an intelligent frame.
This is getting weird
If you think this is weird, watch Karl refuse to answer my question. We’ve been down this road before with Karl, and I’m tired of witnessing him couch his religious beliefs as moral platitudes or social welfare tips. Come on, Karl. Just admit that your “logic” for sexual propriety is something you learned at Sunday School or when your parents taught you about the birds and the bees.
Please stop wrasslin’ this pig! You’re gettin’ covered in filth and the pig likes it!
Watch Erich refuse to admit that studies like that done by J.D. Unwin in his research classic study “Sex and Culture” has any bearing upon modern life from either an Anthropologigal, Sociological, and especially an historical perspective.
Erich believes that there is nothing in actual recorded history that one can’t blame on the flaws of religious people and/or the cultures of religious people.
I have admitted my values are easily traceable to religious teachings, that does not mean these teachings are simply “irrational” and whimsical creations of some perverse Diety. Erich refuses to see how his beliefs about “adult” sexuality has no bearing upon young people and even children in a culture such as ours.
No, adults are not responsible for pushing their young over the cliff, they just point the way and then if they do feel a smattering of guilt, that gets rationalized away as religious sentiment, in order to decide statements like sex outside marriage between adults ensures compatability and causes no one any harmful consequences what so ever.
Karl: If you are intentionally refusing to answer my question (see the earlier hypothetical), just admit this, and you and I will be done with this topic.
“Erich refuses to see how his beliefs about “adult” sexuality has no bearing upon young people and even children in a culture such as ours.”
I don’t think Erich said any such thing. Certainly I don’t hold that opinion. Of course what adults do has an impact on children, especially since children strive to become adults and base their own development on the models they see.
Your answer would seem to be to shove sex deep into a closet where no one can see it and raise kids as if there is no such thing and then, at the cusp of adulthood, spring it on them in a homilistic approach that deals with virtually nothing real.
But furthermore, you raise the specter of “protecting the children” which is the war cry of every busy-body who ever wanted to shut down something they deemed inappropriate. It has become evident from deep historical research that all this stuff, hidden though it may be, ends up being a part of adult lives anyway, but if you hide it, pretend it doesn’t happen, treat it as evil (based on nothing, really), then you get a generation of neurotic, hung-up, generally unhappy hypocrites who indulge anyway and then just feel bad about it. That’s healthy.
But it’s still way off the original topic.
Karl: Your characterizations of me (re religion and sex and children) have no basis in fact, but this non-evidence based approach is what I’ve come to expect from you.
I’m still waiting for you to answer my question.
Karl, please vet your sources. J.D. Unwin (1896-1936) did his inventive “research” during the Indian Jones era of archaeology and sociology. Even back in that fuzzy era of almost scientific understanding, his opinions were widely declaimed.
The recent reappearance of his one publication is largely due to the approbations of anti-sexuality groups like the “Cornerstone Family Council” and “The Quranic Teachings”, etc. Most of these groups have made this not-only-obsolete-but-inaccurate text available for downloading via torrents and ebook systems.
Here’s the problem in all this:
Are there negative consequences to sexual activity?
Yes.
Are they necessarily negative or is their negativity a consequence of the context in which they occur?
If the former, then obviously we have a problem and Karl’s prescriptions should be taken seriously. We should, depending on the gravity of these negative consequences, seek to confine sexual activity into arrangements that minimize the social and personal impact.
If the latter, then we have to examine the context to see if by altering them these negative consequences can be lessened or eliminated.
In my experience, people adapt.
Also in my experience, anything people do with each other is capable of producing negative consequences. Often, it’s the context in which they occur that guarantees such negativity.
So given that, we have to ask if there is any negative consequence to revisiting and amending or altering the context in which sexual activity occurs? And if these negative consequences outweigh the benefits of such alterations?
We have been looking at a practical aspect that is concerned with the availability of an alleviating bit of technology.
Even if we grant that sexual activity ought to occur only within certain narrow limits, does it follow that making available this technology to those people so conducting their private lives constitute a potential negative consequence? I mean, even if we are 100% monogamous, is there a downside to providing the means for couples to engage in all the sex they want with each other without fear of making more babies?
If the answer is no, then how much more desirable would it be to provide such technology to people not in monogamous relationships?
Karl clearly would like to make it difficult if not impossible for people to do anything other than have sex within the limits of marriage and seems willing to make any kind of jerrymandered sociological argument to show that this is the only way to go.
This is neither practical nor desirable. There are downsides to forcing people into such boxes.
If you believe behaving in this way is part of your ticket to a wonderful afterlife, maybe this makes sense. If you don’t and you believe you only have this life, such an attitude is frankly tyrannical.
No one here has said that people who choose absolute monogamy are wrong. I certainly don’t believe that. Do what is best for you. I am fully able to see the benefit in that if that’s your choice. You can’t seem to return that ability. You can’t seem to stretch your imagination to allow for the possibility that what you condemn may not be a bad choice for others.
Before you go making the argument that such permissiveness leads to all manner of perversity, please recall that I wrote on that topic quite some time back and made a case for consensual sex that did not allow for sex with minors and even argued that crossing class boundaries is fraught with potential abuse. But that’s not the argument Erich was making and not what we’ve been discussing here. We’re talking about making available to people, some with limited resources, the means to control something which can mean disaster for them and all I can see in your counterarguments is a deep revulsion toward paying for it. You don’t want tax dollars or laws that support people who live in ways you find personally offensive.
I suggest the basis for your offense is entirely prejudicial and illogical and your pecuniary reaction likewise ill-considered. Sex is probably one of the greatest things humans can have and to tell us we can’t have it because we’re not doing it the way a 2000 year old book says we should is incredibly…wrong.
Mark’s solution as to how to choose between two possible lines of thought, one former and one latter.
“In my experience, people adapt.”
Ain’t that the truth, but what do they adapt into?
Historical truth. Read Unwin – the cultures morality in general self-implodes or is overtaken by others without such widespread opportunities for sexual indulgences that are able to maintain enough cultural energy to want to pass along a hope and a future to their children.
Unwin’s work has been discredited. Why drag out someone from the heyday of puritan hypocrisy. You would do better to read Masters and Johnson or the work from the Guttmacher Institute. You won’t, but you should.
It’s interesting though that you elected to respond to the only subjective statement in a long response that put forth a series of hypotheticals, any one of which would have yielded a conversation instead of granting you a platform for further irrelevant blathering.
The fact is a healthy sex life is good for people, and it doesn’t seem to matter if it’s polyamorous or monogamous as long as it’s good, wholesome sex. Enabling people to have that without the negative biological consequences is in my opinion a GOOD thing.
Rome did not fall because of sexual immorality—while it could be argued that the Palatine was drenched in debauchery, outside that small confine Romans were pre-made to be good christians. Name me another civilization that you think collapsed because of unregulated fucking and I’ll tell you why it really happened.
Alas, Erich still lives in a land where he wants me to answer a question that he thinks is a valid question because he thinks it is possible for there to be nothing negative of any significant consequential nature to “consentual” sexual behavior.
I obviously do believe it is possible to “legislate” the positives of sexual morality, to encourage and promote it, but only by pointing to the virtues of chaste self control, both before and during marriage. I also believe that it is just as innane to try to legislate the negatives of sexual immorality upon a people who care little about the culture or civilization that are in the process of deconstructing.
Karl: You lack the balls to give an honest and clear answer to my question, even though it is clear that you HAVE a clear answer. I’ll go further: You’re afraid to simply admit that it is your desire and intent to legislate federal laws on the basis of religious beliefs. And I realize that this does not present a legal hurdle because you (and many other like-thinking folks) insist upon a reading of the First Amendment in which the separation clause is invisible AND in which it is presumed that the United States was founded upon the highly selective conservatively-skewed teachings of Jesus Christ. With assumptions like these, why do you engage in discussion at this forum? Or, better yet, why do we respond? Based on hundreds of your prior comments, Karl, my plan was simply to clarify your position and move on. That is the purpose of this comment. I don’t wish you ill. I know that you BELIEVE that the world used to work so well back in the 50’s, those days that Republicans yearn for in ignorance of the many problems that were systematically swept under the rug.
I’m sorry to hear that the man and woman in my hypothetical are headed to hell for the sin of engaging in mutually consensual pleasure, despite the fact that you can’t point to any harm, except harm that is presumed because you have religiously condemned the act in the first place. That’s your world view, certainly not mine. And the irony is that almost everyone who holds your viewpoint makes exceptions to their own rules when it comes to their own behavior. I base this claim on the large numbers of Christians who get pregnant without being married and the large numbers of Christians making use of abortion clinics. http://www.ruthblog.org/2011/04/12/mapping-america-ever-had-an-unwed-pregnancy-by-current-religious-attendance-and-structure-of-family-of-origin/ and http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html
We could reduce the numbers of these unfortunate statistics if only preachy people like you were more honest and pragmatic. You’d rather be holy than actually do something to address these issues, just like large numbers of conservative legislators, and this country will continue to pay the price in the form of lots of undesired pregnancies, many of which lead to abortions. I suspect that your next move is a “Just Say No” campaign, or maybe it’s a new set of criminal laws punishing unmarried sex.
I hold to a radically different interpretation of the Constitution. My interpretation is based on the actual words of the Constitution, and it grants wide-ranging liberties to all adults, free from the religious-based interference of others. I certainly don’t see any passage of the Constitution that would prohibit sexual association with others of our choosing, or the right to have sex without having a baby. I don’t see any provision of the Constitution that establishes a theocracy, much less designates that the theocracy should be conservative Christianity (the Karlite sect).
“And I realize that this does not present a legal hurdle because you (and many other like-thinking folks) insist upon a reading of the First Amendment in which the separation clause is invisible”
Hey, Erich, it just occurred to me that maybe we have understood this wrong. Perhaps it’s not a desire to see religious law enacted as the norm, but more basically a pleasure in indulging judgmental polemic and its concomitant superiority because we can rely on that separation clause to never allow it to come to pass. It’s a safe way to be Mrs. Grundy. I mean, look at the ridiculous jeremiad recently about Sharia Law—clearly our leaders, even the mouthpieces of the religious right, don’t actually want to live in a theocracy. What would they do for an election issue if they allowed it? What would people of such a bent bitch about if they got their stated way?
Just a thought.
Mark. Good point. Maybe we’re seeing lots of grumbling about the immorality of modern-day sex–for-pleasure-without-fear-of-pregnancy as a badge of group identity, rather than actually having any plan or intent to make it law. I once again urge that most of these people are birth-control using (or former birth control using) hypocrites.
Presumably a hypothetical question that can be answered in a manner Erich can understand.
“Karl: If you were the emperor of the United States, would you enact and enforce a law that no two adults shall have sex unless they were married to each other?”
No, I would not.
I already said that would be inane for human beings to believe that they can legislate a better choice of premarital chastity and faithful monogamous sexual expression within marriage between husbands and wives simply by passing laws against sex outside of marriage.
In the same way you will not encourage open and honest communication by stating you are right and the other guy is wrong, or by simply stating that you don’t agree with the way the other guy has supposedly come to his conclusions.
I would simply encourage all adults to seriously consider what sexual activities reduce or minimize the negative outcomes to both the individuals and to a culture, and how this can best be passed along to the young people and to the children in a society.
Of course, how that can best be done and passed along to the young people and children in a culture such as ours today can not be agreed upon because all that is needed for anyone who disagrees is to cry foul – that’s a religious belief, not a pragmatic humanistic approach.
I’ve answered this type question before by stating there are no laws “against” the Fruit of the Spirit. Of the Ten Commandments three are phrased in positive “thou shalt” ways, the rest are written in the “thou shalt Not ways.” When we ignore the encouraging of the three positives which really can’t be enforced in any legalistic way, all we find that society can do is to run around trying to be policemen that have their own opinions about the importance of the other seven, and where to draw the lines of severity between all of the different varieties of the less than better choices.
Dan,
I’d really like to see some scholarship showing who disagrees with the research findings of Unwin. I’m very open to discussing whatever you come up with.
In the early twentieth century, the British social scientist J.D. Unwin conducted a massive study of 6 major civilizations and 80 lesser societies covering 5,000 years of history in order to understand how sexual behavior affects the rise and fall of social group. The study Unwin conducted included every social group on which he could find reliable information. He set out expecting to find evidence supporting Sigmund Freud’s theory that civilizations are essentially neurotic and destroy themselves by restricting sex too much. But to Unwin’s surprise, all the evidence he discovered pointed exactly the other way.
Unwin found, without exception, that if a social group limited sex to marriage, and especially to lifelong monogamous marriage, it would always prosper. There was “no recorded case of a society adopting absolute monogamy without displaying expansive energy.” He said, when sexual standards were high, “men began to explore new lands…commerce expanded; foreign settlements (were) established, colonies (were) founded.” In contrast, if a social group lowered standards so that sex was no longer limited to marriage, it always lost social energy. And again he found absolutely no exceptions, saying, “In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on pre-nuptial [premarital] and post-nuptial [extramarital] continence.” In every verifiable case, he found once a group became sexually permissive, “the energy of the society…decreased and finally disappeared.”
He came across the same pattern over and over. A society would begin with high standards limiting sex to one partner in marriage for life. This produced great social strength and that society or culture would flourish. Then a new generation would arise demanding sex on easier terms and would lower moral standards. But when that happened the society would lose vitality, grow weak, and then die. He explained that “In the beginning, each society had the same ideas in regard to sexual regulations. Then the same strengths took place; the same sentiments were expressed; the same changes were made; the same results ensued. Each society reduced its sexual opportunity to a minimum and, displaying great social energy, flourished greatly. Then it extended its sexual opportunity [lowered standards]; its energy decreased, and faded away. The one outstanding feature of the whole story is its unrelieved monotony.”
Therefore, based on overwhelming evidence, Unwin decided, “Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.” Not only was Freud wrong, he was dangerously wrong. No matter how strong, no society can ever avoid losing social strength once it lowers sexual standards, and once it does, signs of growing weakness appear within one generation. Freud thought restricting sex to marriage threatened the survival of civilization and might even threaten survival of the human race. But Unwin discovered that restricting sex to the traditional marriage structure makes societies strong and that easing sexual standards supporting the traditional family structure always leads to social collapse. Based on Unwin’s findings, there is no other outcome, and if we heed his findings, it means we must realize that deconstructing the family to justify lust will certainly threaten the strength and survival of American society as a whole.
Karl…
To reduce such a complex set of propositions to one metric is just inane on the face of it. I can think of one counterexample even without my first cup of coffee—the rise of Islam in the seventh and eight centuries. Depending on wealth, multiple wives was a social norm and yet for three centuries their expansion was unprecedented to that point, along with flowerings of art, architecture, mathematics…you would have to expand your model of monogamy here to be entirely male-centered.
Also, just about every expanding empire up till the modern ago came with mass absorption of conquered women into chattel condition and the rape of locals.
Any half-way decent grasp of history shows this proposition to be seriously flawed. Are you seriously trying to suggest Unwin’s work has any validity given the reality of so-called high-growth societies?
Of course then there were also the many groups who adopted monogamy as you suggest who didn’t prosper due to other factors…
This is just too lopsided to take seriously.
“it means we must realize that deconstructing the family to justify lust will certainly threaten the strength and survival of American society as a whole.”
Here’s the problem. No one here is doing any such thing. Nothing I or Erich has said goes to deconstructing families. You do realize that a family can be destroyed by the advent of too many mouths to feed, don’t you? Birth control can be and is a very important tool in maintaining the viability of exactly what you’re talking about.
You need to separate out sex from this binary attitude—either there is absolute monogamy or there is catastrophe. Sex doesn’t belong to a family unit, it belongs to individuals, and the free exercise of it is as essential as the free exercise of speech. It is my belief that sex at its best is a conversation. So ask yourself if it makes sense to tell people they may only have dialogue with one person their entire adult lives.
That said, I stipulate that there are certain kinds of conversations and conversations between certain people that are exclusive. But that’s our choice. (There are also practical limitations—age and experience and education play into the kinds of dialogues we have and with whom.)
Frankly, I don’t think lust needs justifying. What it needs is management and putting it in a box and pretending it’s not safe to bring out in public is not managing it, it’s avoiding the topic.
Note: the most sex obsessed people are those with the most rules about it. I’ve had conversations with devout Muslims about this and I am amazed at the degree of thought they put into restricting sex and sexual matters. No regular reader of Playboy was ever that continually concerned with the subject.
Still, this is not what the thread was about. Even if we were dealing only with monogamous couples, doesn’t it make sense to guarantee them access to contraception in order to better manage their families? You’re so worried about unmarried couples going off in the bushes that you keep not dealing with the primary issue.
When the proposition being proved is of the nature, “How many angels can boink on the head of a pin,” it is hard to find specific research to refute his conclusion.
Causes of shifts in behavior versus success of civilizations is now fairly well documented, and has no correlation with the choice of permanent monogamous pair bonding or any particular sexual acceptability.
An exception of course, is the common acceptability of polygyny in cultures where the majority of young men tend to kill each other off for war or status. When there are several women for every man, the Old Testament legal standard of marrying plural women is more acceptable. In some cultures they are wives, in others, servants or slaves. But the social-sexual ratio is the same.
Here’s a couple of quotes that I really like. Let’s all take a deep breath and get back onto sensible ground.
“The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens — but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters.”
~Tom Robbins
‘Love, and do what you Will’
~Paraphrased from Rabelais and Frater Perdurabo
Let’s see, Unwin’s 5,000 year review of “sex and culture” matters disproved his null hypothesis resoundly. Freud thought that restrictions upon sexuality were responsible for the declines in societies, these variables were shown to be negatively correlated and quite opposed to Freud’s theories.
Unwin found that it was an increase in sexual opportunities for either and/or both sexes that led to a decrease in the amount of energy available to lead family units. This decrease in available energy for guidance to the next generation made it more and more difficult for the next generation to make better choices about their own sexuality.
Try and try as you might, the only kinds of work you’ll find opposed to this historical perspective are a drop in the bucket of what is now approaching about one complete generation.
Lo and behold, just way to many people, leaders included have no stomach for self-control and no desire to learn from history either.
It seems to me our current problems have to do with a small cadre of individuals with pecuniary incontinence, not sexual. Unless you’re suggesting that sexual liberation promotes fiscal rape.
I’m just saying, Karl, that the rise and fall of civilizations is vastly more complex a thing than can be explained by one metric. You can also argue that the kind of promiscuity you’re talking about is a consequence of cultural decline rather than a cause and find plenty to support it. When the framework and support mechanisms that enable stable family life erode, guess what? Families erode.
When fathers and/or mothers either individually or collectively from one generation push onto others or society in general the role that they should be taking in the raising of the next generation, a spiral of social decline is already underway.
When “society” claims they must take the lead in showing parents how to raise their children in a politically correct way, the culture is well on the way to moral and financial bankruptcy. There will never be enough money even from natural resources and programs from the best of intentioned statist to hold back the flood of dissillusioned youth and minorities.