The text on the above condom illustration reads: “If used properly, this latex condom (or for that matter, any other form of birth control, especially the morning-after pill) will anger a great many people—people who believe that having sex without the intent to procreate is a very, very bad thing. And contraceptive highly effective against pregnancy—that is, unwanted pregnancy, otherwise why use it?—is precisely the problem, even though there might be fewer abortions if those having sex with no intention to procreate used a contraceptive.
“CAUTION: These aforementioned people are fighting quietly but forcefully to make a number of forms of birth control harder and harder to obtain. Everywhere.”
These biblical literalists are truly frightening; their Iron Age views on sexual morality are actually helping to increase the numbers of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in America.
N.Y. Times:
The English writer Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, “Robinson Crusoe,” but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called “Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom.” After apparently being asked to tone down the title for a subsequent edition, Defoe came up with a new one ? “A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed” ? that only put a finer point on things. The book wasn’t a tease, however. It was a moralizing lecture. After the wanton years that followed the restoration of the monarchy, a time when both theaters and brothels multiplied, social conservatism rooted itself in the English bosom. Self-appointed Christian morality police roamed the land, bent on restricting not only homosexuality and prostitution but also what went on between husbands and wives.
It was this latter subject that Defoe chose to address. The sex act and sexual desire should not be separated from reproduction, he and others warned, else “a man may, in effect, make a whore of his own wife.” To highlight one type of then-current wickedness, Defoe gives a scene in which a young woman who is about to marry asks a friend for some “recipes.” “Why, you little Devil, you would not take Physick to kill the child?” the friend asks as she catches her drift. “No,” the young woman answers, “but there may be Things to prevent Conception; an’t there?” The friend is scandalized and argues that the two amount to the same thing, but the bride to be dismisses her: “I cannot understand your Niceties; I would not be with Child, that’s all; there’s no harm in that, I hope.” One prime objective of England’s Christian warriors in the 1720’s was to stamp out what Defoe called “the diabolical practice of attempting to prevent childbearing by physical preparations.”
The wheels of history have a tendency to roll back over the same ground. For the past 33 years ? since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960’s culminated in the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 ? American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion,” says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission. “The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set,” she told me. “So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.”
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By Metal Goddess, October 23, 2011 at 1:45 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I have never had the desire to have children and have never had any. For any fascist and that’s what these people are to tell me I have to bear children is ridiculous. I’m thankful to be in my mid 40’s approaching menopause and an end to the ability to become pregnant. Watching these people in action, my biological clock isn’t ticking quickly enough to suit me. These people are nothing more than a bunch of sexual perverts hiding behind a Bible thinking you won’t notice they’re perverts.
By R. A. Earl, May 9, 2006 at 6:36 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The audacity of so many right-wing religious fanatics to assume their view of things trumps all others is unbelievable. The gloves are off. No more “nice guy” and “live and let live” attitude from me with these people… at least not until I receive the same courtesy from them.
I have a clear, blunt message for anyone who thinks they will assume the right to interfere in my legal personal and private affairs.
Stay away from me. Although I am a profoundly non-violent individual, I would have no hesitation doing you grievous bodily harm should you ignore my warnings.
By Paul Murray, May 8, 2006 at 10:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Monkey hormones.
That’s why dominant males have always resented the idea that other males have sex. If rich white people have extramarital sex, then that’s ok; but if poor or colourefd people do it, it’s abominable.
It’s straight-out primate behaviour that they feel this way.
Ah, well, if women do end up with no form of legal contraception then I guess we’ll have to have Haliburton build more special prisons to house the criminal ones who dare to choose.
Rebecca Solnit, in her recent book “Hope in the Dark”, a series of short pieces about cultural turning points and political activism, says that people have a tendency to pack up and go home once a certain objective has been reached, for instance, allowing women the control over their own bodies.
You can never pack up and go home. Each victory has to be vigorously defended.
Why would anyone wish to see unintended and unwanted children born? Are these children to be the punishment for people who dared to have sex for pleasure?
There have been all kinds of methods for birth control and abortion ever since women found out they did not have to bear children they did not want. It was almost invariably women who had this knowledge and passed it on to other women. They were later on branded as witches or accused of consorting with evil spirits.
By candide, May 8, 2006 at 4:25 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Southern Baptist Convention has apparently decideed to put woman back where they belong, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while their husbands engage in incest, adultery, racism, and alcoholism. They join the Roman Church which has always held women to be sinful vessels of Satan. Let them do this. When abortion, contraception, and freedom are forbidden American women will rise up and vote these Fascisti out.
By Hilding Lindquist, May 8, 2006 at 12:21 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Having been raised a Fundmentalist Christian as a child, I have dealt with the adsurdities of “Biblical” attitudes toward sex all my life ... first because I only knew what I knew as a child, and then as I grew older because I became aware of the contradictions between those attitudes and basic biology. I resolved the contradictions by moving away from childhood religious beliefs.
Now at the end of that journey, I have written a 3-act play that deals with it, HUNTING THE ROAD KILL MOOSE. It has had favorable workshop readings in Hoboken and Montclair, New Jersey, and I am currently planning an extended dramatic presentaion workshop for it off-off-Broadway in the Village.
In the meantime I have made the play available for non-commercial education and discussion purposes on The Blog Lattice ( http://www.bloglattice.org ) at:
By Druthers, May 8, 2006 at 12:09 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Does a long life and too much leisure breed authoritative obsessions. One would think so to see people, who in other times would have been grubbing 12-18 hour work days and falling in their beds exhausted, now intruding into their neighbors lives under the pretext of “knowing what is best,” of imposing their beliefs on society to fill the vacancy of their own lives.
At one time it was thought that education would allow the gap between the general mass of humanity and those fortunate enough to be born or exposed to higher education to be narrowed. For a short while this seemed to be taking place.
Now, however, the wider public seems so divorced from science and logical thinking that it is returning to “magical thought.” I believe what I want and what I want is, or if it is not, against all reality I will make it so by the force of my beliefs and force them on others to re-enforce my beliefs.
Doubt, the groundstone of all logic is totally absent from the project so, like children in the dark, clinging to certitudes is the only way not to face fear.
Minding one’s own business, once a virtue, is now completely out of style.
Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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By Metal Goddess, October 23, 2011 at 1:45 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
I have never had the desire to have children and have never had any. For any fascist and that’s what these people are to tell me I have to bear children is ridiculous. I’m thankful to be in my mid 40’s approaching menopause and an end to the ability to become pregnant. Watching these people in action, my biological clock isn’t ticking quickly enough to suit me. These people are nothing more than a bunch of sexual perverts hiding behind a Bible thinking you won’t notice they’re perverts.
Report thisBy R. A. Earl, May 9, 2006 at 6:36 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The audacity of so many right-wing religious fanatics to assume their view of things trumps all others is unbelievable. The gloves are off. No more “nice guy” and “live and let live” attitude from me with these people… at least not until I receive the same courtesy from them.
I have a clear, blunt message for anyone who thinks they will assume the right to interfere in my legal personal and private affairs.
Stay away from me. Although I am a profoundly non-violent individual, I would have no hesitation doing you grievous bodily harm should you ignore my warnings.
Report thisBy Mike Mahr, May 9, 2006 at 1:21 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Prurient: Too interested in the details of another person’s sexual behavior.
Repressed sexual deviants, religious fanatics and self-righteous hypocrites are often morbidly obsessed and inordinately interested in matters of sex.
In my experience, extreme examples of this type consider sex more evil than murder.
Report thisBy Paul Murray, May 8, 2006 at 10:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Monkey hormones.
That’s why dominant males have always resented the idea that other males have sex. If rich white people have extramarital sex, then that’s ok; but if poor or colourefd people do it, it’s abominable.
It’s straight-out primate behaviour that they feel this way.
Report thisBy David, May 8, 2006 at 2:37 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Ah, well, if women do end up with no form of legal contraception then I guess we’ll have to have Haliburton build more special prisons to house the criminal ones who dare to choose.
Report thisBy C Quil, May 8, 2006 at 9:56 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Rebecca Solnit, in her recent book “Hope in the Dark”, a series of short pieces about cultural turning points and political activism, says that people have a tendency to pack up and go home once a certain objective has been reached, for instance, allowing women the control over their own bodies.
You can never pack up and go home. Each victory has to be vigorously defended.
Why would anyone wish to see unintended and unwanted children born? Are these children to be the punishment for people who dared to have sex for pleasure?
There have been all kinds of methods for birth control and abortion ever since women found out they did not have to bear children they did not want. It was almost invariably women who had this knowledge and passed it on to other women. They were later on branded as witches or accused of consorting with evil spirits.
Time to go back to the battlefield, I guess.
Report thisBy candide, May 8, 2006 at 4:25 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Southern Baptist Convention has apparently decideed to put woman back where they belong, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while their husbands engage in incest, adultery, racism, and alcoholism. They join the Roman Church which has always held women to be sinful vessels of Satan. Let them do this. When abortion, contraception, and freedom are forbidden American women will rise up and vote these Fascisti out.
Report thisBy Hilding Lindquist, May 8, 2006 at 12:21 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Having been raised a Fundmentalist Christian as a child, I have dealt with the adsurdities of “Biblical” attitudes toward sex all my life ... first because I only knew what I knew as a child, and then as I grew older because I became aware of the contradictions between those attitudes and basic biology. I resolved the contradictions by moving away from childhood religious beliefs.
Now at the end of that journey, I have written a 3-act play that deals with it, HUNTING THE ROAD KILL MOOSE. It has had favorable workshop readings in Hoboken and Montclair, New Jersey, and I am currently planning an extended dramatic presentaion workshop for it off-off-Broadway in the Village.
In the meantime I have made the play available for non-commercial education and discussion purposes on The Blog Lattice ( http://www.bloglattice.org ) at:
http://www.bloglattice.org/Hunting_the_Road_Kill_Moose-Act_I.html
Acts II & III are accessible through the header on Act I (and reciprocally in their headers).
Report thisBy Druthers, May 8, 2006 at 12:09 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Does a long life and too much leisure breed authoritative obsessions. One would think so to see people, who in other times would have been grubbing 12-18 hour work days and falling in their beds exhausted, now intruding into their neighbors lives under the pretext of “knowing what is best,” of imposing their beliefs on society to fill the vacancy of their own lives.
Report thisAt one time it was thought that education would allow the gap between the general mass of humanity and those fortunate enough to be born or exposed to higher education to be narrowed. For a short while this seemed to be taking place.
Now, however, the wider public seems so divorced from science and logical thinking that it is returning to “magical thought.” I believe what I want and what I want is, or if it is not, against all reality I will make it so by the force of my beliefs and force them on others to re-enforce my beliefs.
Doubt, the groundstone of all logic is totally absent from the project so, like children in the dark, clinging to certitudes is the only way not to face fear.
Minding one’s own business, once a virtue, is now completely out of style.