My friends who self-describe as social conservatives are having a bad week. The chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael “Wait, what I meant to say was” Steele is in hot water again for apparently endorsing the pro-choice position on abortion. On Monday, President Obama eliminated Bush-era bans on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. The new omnibus spending bill, signed yesterday, reduces funding for abstinence education and increases funding for contraception on campus. And the bitter cherry on this unhappy cupcake of a week for my right-wing friends is the announcement that Bristol Palin, the adolescent daughter of the former vice-presidential candidate, is not getting married after all to Levi Johnston, the lad who fathered her out-of-wedlock baby boy. Eliot was wrong; March is turning out to be the cruelest month for the socio-cons. (And at wit’s end, they’re now accusing dear Jessica Valenti of turning into Bridezilla, merely because the celebrated author and activist wants an egalitarian wedding.)
Here’s National Review columnist Lisa Schiffren on the Palin situation:
I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around. But, as we all know, shotgun marriages lead to plenty of unhappiness, some of the time. And very young marriages have a lousy track record. So parents of the expecting teens are not willing to push. And maybe they are sometimes right. Still, the default position of the girl, left on her own with the baby, now in serious and immediate need of further education and a set of remunerative skills with which to support herself and Tripp, which will be harder to acquire with her maternal responsibilities, isn’t much of a happy picture either.
For all of the high-minded discussion of marriage policy on these pages and elsewhere, to me it looks very late. That train left a while ago. Even Corner readers, who will discuss choosing life vs. abortion, with endless passion, do not get so worked up about marriage. Which is why all I have to say is, “poor girl.”
You want to know why your side is losing the culture war, Lisa? Because of that last line (the bold emphasis is mine). If all you can do in the face of normal human frailty and adolescent impulse is mournfully shake your head and mutter “poor girl”, then yours is a movement whose race is run. I understand your frustration. She had all the advantages you want to foist on to the rest of America: two heterosexual Christian parents, an abundance of siblings, a first-class abstinence only education. Even after she and Levi “fell short of the mark”, they were offered a chance at redemption; they chose not to terminate the pregnancy and they promised to wed. Oh, how we love the narrative of the redeemed sinner, particularly when that sinner is a pretty white adolescent girl! But now the wedding is off, and one senses it might all have been a sham to advance mother Palin’s political career. Brave Bristol, in a moment of dangerous candor, remarked on national television (on Fox News, the Pravda of the right) that abstinence-only education was “unrealistic”, and her mother didn’t step in to correct her. No wonder, Lisa, you’re frustrated and at wit’s end.
On the other side, Lisa, some of us are having small episodes of intense schadenfreude, for which we ought to ask forgiveness. But once we’re done taking in the spectacle, most of us are going to say that we don’t think Bristol Palin is a “poor girl.” Not only is she still in a very privileged family, but she also lives in a society in which a great many young unwed mothers with fewer advantages than hers have ended up just fine. Only those who are rigidly committed to the notion that lifelong heterosexual marriage is the One Great Prophylaxis against all social decay would be so quick to predict doom for this young woman and her baby. But for those of us on the left, helping Bristol to raise little Tripp on her own is as much the responsibility of broader society as it is of the Palin clan. We’re pushing for a substantially expanded public sector, one which offers economic and educational support to women in Bristol’s position. We’re pushing for a world where not only is marriage for everyone who wants it, including same-sex couples, but also a choice that can be made without regard to financial necessity. We’re pushing for a world where Bristol can have access to excellent day care for Tripp, so that she can be a single mother and work on what you, Lisa, rightly call her “serious and immediate need for further education” while remaining confident that her son is cared for. We’re pushing for a world where men like Levi are encouraged to be involved in the lives of their children, but where women are not forced to choose between poverty on one hand and a marriage to a man they do not love on the other. The more robust the public institutions that provide care, the less the potential for young people to trap themselves into unhappy relationships for which they are unready and ill-prepared. This is at the heart of the progressive understanding of marriage: that is a bond of affection, a vehicle for personal transformation, and one particular venue in which to bring children into the world. But it ought not any longer — if it ever was — be the sine qua non of prosperity and opportunity.
I wish Bristol and Tripp and Levi nothing but the best. I’m glad that they are not getting married, since it seems that one or both of the two young adults isn’t ready to cross that bridge. I’m glad for the message that brave young Bristol sent on national television, when she spoke honestly of the hard work of being a mother to a new infant — and spoke even more honestly about the inefficacy of the abstinence-only curriculum which had been foisted upon her to no avail. To paraphrase Jeremiah, Bristol may be little more than a child, but she knows how to speak the truth. And in the face of the messy reality of that truth, as we come to the end of a hard week for those morality is rooted in a nostalgic longing for an age that never was, no wonder that even on their flagship blogs, their best writers can offer no more than a chagrined, rueful, and impotent “poor girl”.
Your words, Lisa, not ours.
No, her side is losing because they don’t want their moral strictures to apply to their own, and in the Information Age, it’s increasingly difficult to pretend they do. Given the dilemma between pointing the finger at themselves and quietly changing the rules, they’ve opted for the latter. Condemn Sarah Palin for being a mom with a busy career? Oh, I guess career moms are OK after all. Condemn Mary Cheney for being a lesbian? Hey, she’s not sleeping around. Condemn Bristol Palin for not marrying the father of her out-of-wedlock child? Um….don’t you think calling her a slut would hurt our chances in 2012?
And so it goes. When even the moral scolds aren’t bothering to keep up appearances, why should anyone?
Er, Mythago (and Hugo), I don’t find too much to disagree with in Ms. Schiffren’s piece. While I think any man who gets a woman pregnant has the obligation to offer a marriage proposal, it seems as though Bristol didn’t want to get married in this case, and that’s her decision. I think that the link between marriage and procreation should be more emphasized _before the fact_: i.e., you shouldn’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy. But, evidently, that’s water under the bridge at this stage in the game. The more important point is that Bristol chose life, for which she is to be applauded. She made the right choice, and any other choice would have been the wrong one.
Thanks for making my point. Suddenly being an unwed teenage mother is her decision, one which is none of our business. And this is why Schiffren and her fellow travelers are losing the culture war. They don’t have the stomach for taking the same standards they’ve foisted on everybody and holding their own to it, and hypocrisy isn’t popular anymore. So given a choice between tarring Bristol Palin with the ‘unwed teenage mother who didn’t keep her pants on’ brush and abandoning the shaming, they chose the latter.
It’s like that old joke about Jews responding to the arrest of underworld figures like Meyer Lansky with “But he was good to his mother!”
As for your attempt to turn yet another thread into an abortion debate, I’d note that Bristol also didn’t choose adoption.
Boy, Hector, you make proposing sound as fun as getting a cavity drilled. You do realize some men want to get married because they’re in love? Yeah, with actual women, despite our being members of the lower gender caste. Sheesh. “Willing” to marry? “Obligation” to propose? So depressing.
It is evident that Miss Marcotte’s ideal world has little place for sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis. Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.
A better contrast between the Word and the World is difficult to imagine.
“But the fact is, that being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy myself without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy event takes place—which, however, as I have already said, may not be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother’s decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.”
What woman wouldn’t be thrilled with a man who is marrying her out of his sense of obligation?
I agree, mostly. I think the liberal worldview talks a great deal about sacrifice, obligation, and our place in the greater community. But, yeah, pretty much. You’re worldview is all about suffering, our’s is all about those “buzzwords”.
It’s so hard to oppress people when they have those pesky freedoms and rights, ain’t it?
Remember you’re talking to somebody who thinks the world went to hell in a handbasket back in the sixteenth century.
(As a side note, apparently the non-People Magazine related sources are suggesting it was Levi, not Bristol, who backed out.)
We’re pushing … we’re pushing … we’re pushing. You can sum up the dangers of the sanctimonious left in those repetitive sentences.
Not “we’re doing.” No, “We’re pushing.”
Pushing others around like chess-pieces, to reorder the world according to your view of justice. Always a favored class, always another class that will finally get the justice they so richly deserve. Sometimes the push is more gentle, designing systems of organized theft for the benefit of those favored. Sometimes it’s not so gentle.
But always pushing.
Hey, I got knocked up at eighteen, “chose life” AND married the father because I had absorbed through the skin that those were the r-i-g-h-t things to do!
And seven years later when said husband and father was shoving me face-first into the wall with my arm jammed up behind my back to the breaking point in front of our two terrified, weeping children, I sure was feeling validated about my choices of sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, and abnegation of the self.
STF, other than “I think liberals suck,” what did your post mean? Genuinely curious here.
Hector, if a man says, “I wish to abnegate myself and sacrifice by marrying you,” then I know, at bare minimum, what a miserable marriage that will be. Your problem is that you think you can tell how moral something is by how miserable it makes you. What a bleak worldview.
Kenosis. Isn’t that something that happens when you are starving, and they can smell it on your breath because your inner chemistry gets all messed up?
And I’ve been pushed around at least as much by the right as by the left.
Can’t we just say it is too bad they could not marry each other and provide a home for their child together, rather than 18 years of bickering over parenting schedules and child support. Bristol, Levi and Tripp are all very young, and we could hope and/or pray that they beat the odds. People wished them the best and I am sure the media spotlight did not help their relationship.
Rainbow, I sincerely hope that nobody here is happy about the situation they’re in.
That would be ‘ketosis’, Angieportus, from ‘ketone’. As opposed to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosis
Rainbow, I completely agree with you.
Mythago, yes, it’s fairly predictable that Levi was the one who backed out. Men tend to have that penchant for being immoral jerks who like to use their partners for sex and then abandon them, more often (to say the least) than the other way around.
One thing, Hugo - might check with Bristol to see if she particularly wants your “help?” A lot of us who have been on the recieving end of such left-wing government largesse, or witnessed the effects of it on those close to us, would just as soon decline to repeat the mistake of accepting that outreached hand again.
Like vampires, once you invite one into your house, you’re not inclined to do so once more.
But for those of us on the left, helping Bristol to raise little Tripp on her own is as much the responsibility of broader society as it is of the Palin clan
Actually, some of us on the left are feminists, so no, we o not believe that child-rearing duties are to be divvied up solely among a mother, her own (female, I imagine) relatives, and Society.
But apparently, like the social conservatives, for you she’s either married or on her own, child-rearing-wise. No obligations (only “encouragement”) for Levi to be “involved” (!!!) with rearing his own child?
Levi Whatshisname was breaking up with his girlfriend, not severing his paternal rights and obligations. It wasn’t his kid he decided not to marry. If Bristol Palin is actually “on her own” as a parent now in some way that she wasn’t before, just because she’s not getting married, it is a crying shame and a scandal.
Sacrifice to what end?
Obligation to whom?
Submission to what?
Abnegation of the self on who’s behalf?
Cui bono?
Also, you seem to be totally unable to understand that Amanda’s worldview not just has room for, but embraces, virtues like sacrifice for a greater good and fulfilling one’s obligations. ‘freedom’ and ‘autonomy’ are not, as you seem to believe they are, synonyms for ‘aimless hedonism’. Amanda believes, almost all liberals believe, in choosing one’s obligations, sacrifices, relationships for oneself.
I can simplify this greatly for people on both sides; you think that we all are born with obligations to God that we can either embrace or ignore, but we cannot simply wish away.
This is a perspective who’s popularity has, historically, far outstripped its utility.
“It is evident that Hector’s ideal world has little place for freedom, rights, autonomy, and self-expression. Instead, his worldview emphasizes ‘sacrifice’, ‘obligation’, ‘obedience’, ‘submission’, ‘abnegation of the self’, ‘kenosis’, and all the other buzzwords of the Dark Ages.”
(That was not original — I cribbed it from commenter “Dan” at Pandagon, who is much smarter than me.)
Hector, you are quick to assume that men “use women for sex, then abandon them.” So, in your world, women never desire men or want sex? I’m a woman lots older than you, and I’ve had lots of sex with men I desired, enjoyed, liked, had great affection for, but did NOT want to join my life to.
Have I “used men for sex, then abandoned them”? For the most part, I think not; I do feel remorse about one guy, 15 years my junior, who turned out to be much more in love with me than I realized, and was very hurt when I broke up with him. But even in that case, I never lied to him or promised him anything.
You seem to buy into a depressing, medieval myth, which denies full humanity to both men and women: “Men want lots of sex and begrudge women any love and commitment; women want commitment, but they hate sex and only put up with it in order to shackle men to support them and the babies they exist to bear, adore and sacrifice themselves for.”
How sad for you, Hector. Honestly, wouldn’t you rather marry a woman you love, who loves you, because being together makes you both insanely happy — as opposed to marrying an appropriately pure/virginal Catholic wife, of appropriate childbearing-age, in order to glorify God by copulating in a religiously-correct fashion, contraception-free, thereby producing the maximum possible number of new little Catholics?
No one forces you to take welfare, or food stamps, or even to drive on the roads. Help is just that; you have to ask for it to get it, no one’s going to force it on you. Heck, you can even waive tax cuts if you want to.
So just because you wouldn’t take, doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t need it.
Sophonisba, you’re right. I erred in how I phrased that. Of course Levi can continue to be involved, and indeed should be compelled to be at least involved financially; it’s not an either married or out of the picture dynamic, and I ought not to have implied that it was.
That said, single mothers ought to have access to public resources as well as to those of the fathers; the less financially dependent upon a husband or an ex a woman with a child is, the better.
And without trying to descend into a What About Teh Menz argument, I think the involvement of single fathers could only be improved if there were more public resources available.
I think the involvement of single fathers could only be improved if there were more public resources available.
The government offers you a $25,000 voucher to put your child in a private school. Does this make you more or less likely to homeschool them?
The state provides you with a $150/week food stamp program for your kid. Does this make you more or less likely to do another overtime shift at the cannery to bolster the family food budget?
Public money tends to drive out private effort, not the other way around, unless the money is structured correctly. If you somehow give a guy a $10,000 tax credit for putting in parenting time, that might incentivize him to do more parenting time. If you give his kid public money, that just makes him feel less obliged.
No one forces you to take welfare, or food stamps, or even to drive on the roads.
Well, at least roads has a clear constitutional mandate for the government to do.
Help is just that; you have to ask for it to get it, no one’s going to force it on you.
Pardon me whilst I clean the coffee off my screen; there’s nthing that wants to make many of us load up our shotguns with rock salt that the appearance of some Federal Goon with a briefcase arriving in town and announcing “I’m from the government and I am here to help you.”
And somehow, “We’re good, now go home” never seems to be an answer these Daleks pay attention to.
Heck, you can even waive tax cuts if you want to.
Better direct this stage left; ya’ll are the ones always complaining when taxes get cut.
So just because you wouldn’t take, doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t need it.
What the heck. Just print more money, eh? Or get another checkbook, because in Washington NSF is no bar to writing a check.
Unlike us “little people.”
Hey, quick tech question.
Can someone tell me how to fix my browser?
Whenever I read a response from The Gonzman, instead of actually addressing the point made I just see non-responsive snark and ideological non-sequitur..
Is there a setting I need to tweak?
[bangs side of monitor]
Weird…
A better contrast between the Word and the World is difficult to imagine.
Oh, I don’t know, Hector. The Gonzman provides a pretty good contrast to “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s”.
Gonzman,
A couple of things here. First of all, one of the points to be made from all this is that it’s Bristol Palin we’re talking about here. Of all people, she’s not going to want or need the state’s help; she’s got a successful mommy who’s going to be (hopefully) watching her back. A (too) large number of other single mothers DON’T have this. As a sidebar, let me ask you…do you think this means that only young single women with a strong, financially stable and secure family should be ignoring their abstinence-only sex ed?
A larger point, however, remains. The mechanisms in place to help these single mothers, the ‘receiving end of such left-wing government largesse,’ are epically awful, it’s true. But they’re awful as a direct result of underfunding, of rules put in place by the likes of YOU, to protect your precious conceit that that government hand MUST be brutal/incompetent.
I dunno, Robert. I suspect I might prefer to be able to stay home with my child and help with homework, or talk, or read, or play, or, you know, generally parent instead of working that extra shift…
Depends. Did y’all finally succeed in destroying public education?
Robert, you seem to suggest that public assistance will somehow cause parents to stop working to help their children. I’m not sure that that, really, ever happens. I’m also skeptical that the parents with whom that does happen will suddenly shape up if you take their food stamps away.
Also, it’s not like you’re in danger of providing these children with too much parenting. If you paid all of the bills for a full-time single mother, you think she still isn’t working?
If so, I assert that you don’t have any children.
NBarnes,
Re: This is a perspective who’s popularity has, historically, far outstripped its utility.
You stated my view pretty eloquently, although I’d add that such obligations are not merely to God, but to nature, to the natural order, to each other, and to society and the state. I would add further that I don’t hold this view on the basis of its ‘utility’; I hold it because I believe that it’s true.
Auntie Social,
I don’t think that women aren’t interested in sex, although I think that the extremes of lust are something that are pretty unique to men: there are good sociobiological reasons why prostitution and pornography are uniquely male vices. I don’t disapprove of chemical contraception (still on the fence about condoms), I don’t think premarital sex is always wrong, and I’m not even Catholic, although I’m about as far towards Rome as you can be within the Anglican communion without actually swimming the Tiber. If you’re, actually, interested in finding out my views you might be better off asking me.
Like other revolutions, I think that the sexual revolution was good in its inception. While I would oppose the most extreme forms that that revolution took (abortion, casual sex, and to some extent homosexuality, among others), and I would oppose the ideologies that motivate at least some of the ‘revolutionaries’ (the idea that men and women are interchangeable, that sex is OK simply for pleasure, etc.). I think that there was a lot of need for the rules of the past to be loosened. That said, there are some rules that must not ever be broken. I won’t mention abortion here, since it would derail the thread, but one of those rules (as it pertains to men) is that if you get someone pregnant and she chooses not to give the baby for adoption, then you either marry her if she will have you, or you commit to supporting the child if she won’t.
Robert, you seem to suggest that public assistance will somehow cause parents to stop working to help their children.
Not so much that, as that I’m suggesting that increased public assistance will NOT somehow cause parents to work MORE - unless, of course, it’s structured to do that by providing incentives for work. But that is very rarely ever what is proposed; it’s never “let’s make a voucher program that gives single parents a thousand dollars if they successfully do tasks a, b, c”, it’s always “let’s make a program that replaces parental labor with state money”.
And sometimes that is perfectly OK. If you have a situation where parents are not stepping up and children are suffering, then the moral hazard created by a state program might be something we just have to live with. I’m not going to say “let’s stop giving TANF funds to needy mothers” just because 2% of those mothers quit trying to make it on their own.
But I’m not going to kid myself that doubling TANF is going to suddenly inspire dads to start paying their child support or coming over and reading to their kids, either.
A lot of women would be astonished to learn that watching porn flipped their chromosomes around.
And really, the ‘casual sex’ meme is becoming tiresome. It’s a big fat signal that the speaker doesn’t personally care to wait for their future spouse, but wants to crap all over people with different standards for engaging in premarital sex. (I have actually heard people say they don’t “sleep around” because they wait until the fourth or fifth date.)
Mythago,
I really, really don’t care what you find ‘tiresome’. Hell, I find most of what’s said in this thread to be tiresome.
I don’t disapprove of chemical contraception (still on the fence about condoms)
Sure you are! Why approve of something simple, easy, and cheap, when you can prefer something that’s expensive, exclusively burdensome to women, and often physically detrimental to them? Sex is all about marking a woman with your fluids, after all, regardless of fertility or conception concerns.
there are good sociobiological reasons why prostitution and pornography are uniquely male vices
You would keep on saying that if there was a woman physically preset in the room with you writing pornography, and another woman right next to her masturbating to it. To such faith, what reply?
Hector, if you really, really don’t care whether anyone else finds your arguments persuasive, then the only effect of your posting her is, essentially, mental masturbation. If you’re trying to persuade, then you probably want to offer arguments that go beyond showing you’ve carefully massages what is ‘moral’ and ‘natural’ so that it allows you to do as you please while still lecturing others.
Sophonisba,
Re: Why approve of something simple, easy, and cheap, when you can prefer something that’s expensive, exclusively burdensome to women, and often physically detrimental to them?
Well, perhaps because condoms present a physical barrier between the couple, which would seem to violate the ‘one flesh’ aspect of sexuality. Perhaps because they would seem to detract from not just the procreative, but also the unitive aspect of sexuality. Perhaps because this was the position espoused by the majority on Paul VI’s advisory council (which Paul, unfortunately, ultimately overruled).
But you seem to know my intentions better than me, so whatever you say, I suppose.
Mythago, I’m not interested in trying to persuade _you_, because I think your mind is already made up. I’m trying to persuade people who are still on the fence about these issues.
Well, yes, I’m a Jew, so your chances of persuading me to accept Christianity are nil; but that’s not really your problem. Regardless of who you’re trying to persuade, you hurt your credibility when you insist the Law goes in straight lines except where it bends around you.
So let’s pretend I start lecturing a Jewish poster because he ate a cheeseburger, on the grounds that God strictly forbids consumption of meat and dairy together, not to mention pork; when that poster says “Don’t you eat shellfish?” I start waffling and say well, but I’m not really violating the spirit of the law, you need to look at the bigger picture, and anyway in Moses’s time shellfish was a lot less safe to eat so…
That poster (and, I expect, most people) would find me completely unpersuasive. Not just on the subject of cheeseburgers, but on any standing I might have to say “what you are doing is incorrect” and “my views are correct”. I would have made it clear that I am not interesting in applying my professed standards to myself in a way that would require me to alter my behavior - and not just to one person, but to ANYONE I was trying to persuade.
Which is to say, a Christian who intends to remain chaste until marriage has a lot more standing to lecture others on “casual sex” and contraception than one who makes excuses for not doing so.
Amen, mythago.
Mythago,
Well, people do change their religion all the time, you know. But regarding your main point- no, I wouldn’t find you completely unpersuasive. I’d listen to you, and if you had a good reason why the prohibition on shellfish no longer applied while the prohibition on pork did, I might actually be convinced. I have a Jewish friend, for example, who eats the former but not the latter.
Your argument might have merit if I was a ‘Sola Scriptura’ protestant- except that it’s debatable how we are intended to interpret ‘porneia’ or ‘fornicatio’. It might have merit if I was a Catholic who believed that sacred tradition was infallible- except that it needs only a brief glance at history to see that, even if the church is guided by the Spirit in the main, it can and has made mistakes.
I don’t think that, say, casual sex is wrong because St. Paul, Moses, or Aquinas said it was- I believe it for a complex of reasons having to do with natural-law reasoning, scripture, and tradition. Casual sex would be wrong even if the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches all endorsed weekly orgies tomorrow. (They won’t, but that’s besides the point). I believe that reasonable arguments can be made, from natural law, as to why casual sex is wrong, and I believe that scripture and tradition agree with them; I don’t think that such arguments are nearly as strong with regard to contraception, or to people sleeping with each other in the context of certain long-term relationships. In those cases the argument rests on sacred tradition, which while it needs to be taken seriously, isn’t always a sufficient guide. If you want to debate with me on those points, then go ahead. But debating which precepts of the Law need to hold today, and which are matters of underlying natural or divine law, is precisely what we should be doing- not going the route of saying ‘either you accept all traditional teaching, or you accept none of it’.
But debating which precepts of the Law need to hold today, and which are matters of underlying natural or divine law, is precisely what we should be doing- not going the route of saying ‘either you accept all traditional teaching, or you accept none of it’.
Absolutely, but the fact is that we all make choices — we choose what traditional teachings we’re going to accept and which we will reject. You have a very obvious pattern of choosing to reject policies that are inconvenient for you (”casual” sex is wrong, but the premarital sex you presumably have or want to have is fine, contraception is fine) and accepting traditional teaching where it doesn’t effect you: homosexuality, even for loving, monogamous, married couples, remains wrong — you, of course, are straight; childlessness is wrong — you, of course, want kids. Well, how nice for you.
Hector: what are you doing here? I can’t figure out why you keep posting on this site. What is your purpose for posting here? Your views are fixed - that seems an absolute, so why dabble here?
Sorry for the thread drift Hugo.
Mythago, you sort of nailed Hector’s M.O. perfectly. Well done.
Hector, do you seriously think that anyone who is morally and socially evolved enough to read Hugo’s blog regularly is going to be seriously “on the fence” about your homophobia, your superstitious Bobby Jindal exorcism-supporting brand of peasant Catholicism, and your clammy, sweaty support of repressive “moral” hypocrisy like Mrs. Palin’s cynical manipulation of their failure to teach her daughter to abide by the morality she’d like to legislate on other women? Bristol “chose” life because truly moral people in society are sword to fight people like Bristol’s mother who would like to remove the ability to “choose” from other women. And in defense of Levi Johnston, given that abortion was never likely an option for Bristol, given her who her mother is (in spite of all the self-righteous talk about her “choosing life”) nor, likely, was birth control. I suspect Levi was bullied into playing the dutiful “fiance,” and very likely had no desire to marry into that family.
I second Mythago’s post…what ARE you doing here? And btw, you’ve used “sola scriptura” half a dozen times since I first encountered you on this blog. It doesn’t make you sound learned or impressive, it makes you sound pompous and prone to obfuscation.
Pfffft. “Complex” does not mean “I have gut feelings based on a miasma of half-baked prejudices and a privileged worldview, but think I’m unique because I cobbled together bunch of goofy crap to justify them.”
^5
For me, the logic of responsible sexuality goes something like this:
1) If we have sex with other people, we must, at some level, want a relationship. Otherwise, why bother?
2) Therefore, it makes sense to make sure the sex we have fosters the relationship, rather than destroying it. If something designed to bring us together drives us apart, it would seem reasonable to think we’ve done something wrong.
3) therefore, responsible sexuality means putting the other person, and the relationship between you, first.
It also seems reasonable that the current socially conservative constructs, with abstinence education, abstinence pledges, and “promise rings” haven’t done much to foster this kind of responsibility.
Except that as I already said, hypothetical-mythago is arguing that you can’t eat pork because the Law forbids it, while shellfish is OK even though the Law forbids it. (For example, many people think that the prohibition on pork is based on health reasons that are no longer extant, and therefore the rule is obsolete; this is flat-out false.)
The other problem with pointing to a clear, unambiguous statement of the Law and finding wiggle room is that you then have to explain why you drew the line where you did. So if sex outside of marriage is OK, why not “casual sex”? St. Paul didn’t say anything about that. If lying with a man as with a woman is not OK because that is the Law, does that mean it’s OK for women to lie with women? And if not, why not?
And it gives one’s credibility a big hit when the new interpretation gives a personal benefit. If I happen to really love scallops, how can you be sure that my interpretation of the Law is correct, rather than merely an excuse for eating scallops?
St. Paul aside, “casual sex” is such a silly term because it’s meaningless; all it indicates is “sex had by someone else, and with less emotional commitment and lead-in than I would be comfortable with.” It’s like the joke about how anyone who drives faster than me on the highway is a dangerous idiot, and anyone who drives slower than me is incompetent.
Well, perhaps because condoms present a physical barrier between the couple, which would seem to violate the ‘one flesh’ aspect of sexuality. Perhaps because they would seem to detract from not just the procreative, but also the unitive aspect of sexuality.
This just mind-boggling to me. Sounds like someone just doesn’t want to wear a condom.
Bingo, Laurie. Most men don’t like wearing condoms, period. And perhaps not enough women insist on it.
Hector, how about a little honest disclosure of your views, as a Catholic, on the “sin” of birth control rather than a lot of pious blather about how condoms “violate the ‘one flesh’ aspect of sexuality.” How rancid with hypocrisy your posts are.
Thanks Michael. Still mind-boggled an hour later! I believe Hector is an extremely conservative Anglican, not a Catholic (even though he talks about Pope Paul). He says this somehow gives him some wiggle room to support hormonal contraception but not condoms.
Laurie, during his long and tedious defense of Bobby Jindal’s adventures as an “exorcist,” larded with insistences of how the biggest problem today is that not enough Christians believe in devils and demons and hobgoblins and the like, he admitted that he identifies with Jindal because they’re both non-white converts to Catholicism. Reading his posts over the last year on this blog as a whole, the image arises of an obfuscating, right-wing homophobe who—while deeply wedded to his beliefs on how woman and gays ought to just remember their place, and his views on demons and devils and exorcisms that would not be out of place among illiterate, superstitious 16th century peasants—he’s learned just enough “socialese” and “academese” from his academic friends to disguise (he believes) those views as reasonable dialogue. The end result is, at best, faux-compassionate coercion. This new vein of posts about how one should only have sex with people one wishes to marry indicates either a complete disconnect from social reality, or a bad case of terminal virginity. I don’t think either status particularly bolsters his credibility.
Heh. I guess I am behind the curve. Hector is new to me!
Hi Laurie,
Yes, I’m a conservative Anglican, not a Catholic. While I admire a great deal about Catholic spirituality, and share quite a few Catholic beliefs, I can’t accept the doctrine of papal supremacy.
Michael Rowe,
I’d prefer not to dignify your posts with a response, but I will ask a question. Do you simply not believe that demons and the devil were involved in the Jindal case (I might agree with you there) or that they don’t exist at all? If it’s the latter, I don’t see why you call yourself a Christian at all. As for myself, I’m not particular about the details, but I very strongly believe that an evil power, opposed to God, exists and is powerful within our universe. (Indeed, one of my quibbles with orthodox Christianity is that in their polemics against the dualist heresies of the Cathars and others, they went too far to the opposite extreme of denying evil any independent power of its own). And I certainly believe, as the New Testament makes clear, that Christ conducted exorcisms. Of course, as one might well point out, Jindal, unlike Christ, isn’t divine. Lastly, I will continue using Latin as much as I bloody well please: I think that the penchant of some to cater to the ignorance of the American general public is absurd.
Laurie, I think that condoms are qualitatively different than hormonal contraception, and I’m strengthened in this belief by the fact that it was the general opinion on Paul VI’s advisory council in ‘68. The Pill was designed to mimic the natural hormonal affects that attend pregnancy, and hormonal suppression of pregnancy through lactation was a widely used method of birth control in hunter-gatherer societies (and continues to be so in developing countries today). Nevertheless, I certainly don’t want condoms to be _illegal_. I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa for a few years, and I talked to women’s groups (and young men) on occasion about contraception- while I didn’t personally discuss condoms, I certainly involved friends and coworkers who did.
The notion of me as ‘right wing’ is rather silly- I write extensively in favor of left-wing Latin American governments, as a quick perusal of my blog should show you. Lastly, a couple of people have pointed out that my moral code would place heavier burdens on gays, on women, and on people who don’t want to have children than it would on others. That’s certainly true, and I’d never argue otherwise. But that objection seems to be drawn more from liberal-democratic political theory than from Christianity. God doesn’t ask equal sacrifices from all of us- he asks some of us to sacrifice a lot more, and no doubt He looks more charitably on them when they fail. But one cannot base one’s moral code on making everyone sacrifice exactly the same- that way lies absurdity.
Laurie,
If you do want to discuss this further, you’re welcome to comment on my blog anytime.
Lastly, a couple of people have pointed out that my moral code would place heavier burdens on gays, on women, and on people who don’t want to have children than it would on others.
Hector, the point is that YOU (not God, Hector, but you) are putting a heavier burden on gays and women than on YOURSELF. And I’m quite sure that God didn’t create the world with the intention of burdening women and gays and making sure Hector has the lightest possible weight to bear. You’re willing to go to great lengths to change the rules when they apply to you, and I don’t disagree with either your reasoning or your conclusions. But you simultaneously choose to hold everyone else to the most rigid possible standard. It’s brazen hypocrisy.
I hope you are able to hear at least an ounce of this criticism, Hector. If not, I think the many hours you’ve spent here may have been pointless. Why come here if not to learn? Are you so arrogant that you think you have something to teach us all, but absolutely nothing to learn yourself?
And this goes back to exactly why the Reactionary Moral Right is chagrined. They can no longer offer a coherent rationale without applying it to themselves, and they’re not willing to follow their own rules, or even pretend to. Hence the wholesale abandonment of the mommy with career = evil, daddy at home = wimp meme (bye, Danielle Crittenden) when Palin was nominated, and their backing away from slut-shaming unwed teen mothers rather than risk splashing Bristol Palin.
There was a time when the public was a little more willing to accept “do as I say, not as I do”. Except for the hard-core believers who have absolutely mastered doublethink, that time is past.
What I can’t get wrap my mind around is the notion that Pope Paul VI or Hector or anyone would think that the very concrete benefits of condoms (indeed, their very concrete necessity) are somehow outweighed by some abstract mystical concept of the supposed unitive purpose of sex (not to mention the abstract mystical concpet of a condom somehow interfering with the unitive purpose of sex).
“I’m also an Indian who converted to Christianity, at the cost of severely strained relations with much of my family. In my case, Anglo-Catholicism”
I’m an Anglican, Hector, and no Anglican refers to himself an “Anglo Catholic.” We refer to ourselves as Anglicans. Were you lying when you posted that you were an “Anglo Catholic” in order to make your cheap bid to identify with First Exorcist and demon wrangler Bobby Jindal, or are you lying now that you’re referring to yourself as an “Anglican?”
Laurie, the Catholic Church doesn’t accept the Pill as appropriate contraception either, contrary to Hector’s attempt to imply that it does.
And Hector…keep spraying this blog with your Latin effluvia, just don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re successfully passing yourself off as an intellectual.
“Catering to the ignorance of the American public” indeed. You’re so amusing. Keep chattering about demons and hobgoblins, and how gays and lesbians are against “natural law,” and craven, embarrassing public self-identification with lowbrow-prole frauds like Sarah Palin and climbers like Bobby Jindal while you piously pontificate about condom use with all the earnestness of a the chronic perma-virgin who skeeves everyone they meet out—talk about catering to the ignorance of the American public. That having been said, the ignorant American public isn’t reading this blog, which begs the question of whether even THEY are tired of your reactionary bigotry of your sophistry and drove you across the desolate plains of the Internet looking for a new planet to try to colonize? Like this blog?
I’m an Anglican, Hector, and no Anglican refers to himself an “Anglo Catholic.”
I was raised Anglican/Episcopalian, and actually I’m going to have to disagree with you, Michael - a few Anglicans do refer to themselves as “Anglo Catholic” - just not any that I’ve personally met in real life. It’s not at all the usual way of referring to Anglicans, but it’s a faction that I’ve heard of - a term used by a particularly High Church subset who want the Anglican Communion to move as close to Catholicism as it can get without accepting papal infallibility (at least, that’s how I’ve heard “Anglo Catholics” described - in all my years as an Episcopalian, I never actually met one in real life, just read about them and heard tell of them).
That said, I agree with Laurie in weighing the concrete benefits and sometimes necessity of condoms as more important than their theoretical more mystical effect.
Well, that would explain his superstitious belief in devils and witches and demons Hector as evidenced, and it would explain the Catholic-inflected bigotry towards gays and lesbians and the draconian perspectives on women’s reproductive rights and freedoms. I suppose the obligatory obol Hector pays to the ferryman on his ride into the 21st century America is his assertion that he “writes extensively in favor” of “left-wing Latin American governments, as a quick perusal of my blog should show you.”
The fact that what constitutes a politically left-wing ideology in Latin America has no bearing on what constitutes the social or political right, or left, wings in the U.S.—the crucible of this discussion here about the obligations of young unmarried people—is something he naturally hopes readers won’t notice. And if they don’t notice that, perhaps they won’t notice that all of Hector’s views, from his homophobia to his sexism, line up squarely with the American right wing, making him, in fact right wing. At the same time, I’m mesmerized by his admission that while he very generously isn’t advocating for condoms to be “illegal,” (thank you, Hector, you saint!) he worked “as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa for a few years” but while he “talked to women’s groups (and young men) on occasion about contraception,” he never mentioned condoms, even though the non-use of condoms in Africa is the primary cause of the spread of the AIDS pandemic there. In other words, in the same way he speaks for God about the “unequal burdens” He has placed on “gays and women,” he prioritizes his own religious superstition about the evils of condom use over the well being of the”women’s groups (and young men.)” Which rather begs the question of what he was doing with the Peace Corps in the first place. It also sheds some light on his stated “favour” towards “left wing Latin American governments,” given that much of Latin America remains in the thrall of the exact same religious superstitions Hector endorses, driven by the Catholic church, which are, again, largely responsible for the spread of AIDS in those countries through its willful promotion of an Church-driven, anti-prophylactic, “abstinence only” culture. Over here, Bristol Palin merely wound up pregnant. In another country she might have wound up dead. And due to the same policies advanced by Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Hector.
The “evil power, opposed to God” does indeed exist, Hector. It exists in the celebration of ignorance, regressive, and anti-scientific superstition at the expense of people’s health and lives. It exists in the form of religious and cultural intolerance for one’s fellow man, and the subjugation of women, in order that one’s own draconian world view be ascendant. You ask me how I call myself a Christian if I don’t believe in your devils and boogeymen and hobgoblins. I call myself a Christian because I am a man of my time, not a man larded with infantile superstitions from centuries past. God gave me the ability to think and reason. I tend to have the gift of looking at the world as it is, not as some ash-smeared lay-exorcist wannabe would like it to be in order to justify his bigotry.
Having just escaped another four years of pandering to drooling, gibbering, anti-science, anti-intellectual, mouth-breathing evangelical window-lickers—and having their prime avatar, Mrs. Palin, exposed as a fraud whose own daughter can’t abide by the medieval morality that she wanted to legislate on other women (let alone her stance on gay marriage, which looks particularly absurd given the non-occurrence of Bristol’s politically-expedient “wedding”), it makes sense that the views of men like Hector, who seem to wish to speak for God in loco parentis, be given such a thorough weighing before being thrown out with the rest of yesterday’s theocratic trash.
Again, I don’t plan to respond to Michael Rowe. I debate with people that I respect, and to be honest his writings here remind me of nothing more than a petulant child. You can have the last word, Mr. Rowe, I’m done with responding to you. One question though: so when you renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil at your baptismal vows you were lying at the third part of it?
Lynn Gazis-Sax,
Yes, that’s a pretty fair summary. It boggles my mind that someone could never have heard the term “Anglo-Catholic”. It’s the self-descriptor of people like my priest in Boston, and me. I believe in transubstantiation, in venerating the Mother of God, in the assumption of the Mother of God, in kneeling during the eucharist, and so forth, as does he (indeed, my church in Boston still has a lot of pre-Vatican II liturgical practices, such as genuflecting during the ‘Et incarnatus est’, which I love).
Interestingly enough, my priest there (celibate, ultra-traditionalist that he is) has come around on the gay issue, and his reasoning is compelling to me, though I don’t quite accept it as of yet. Perhaps he will succeed in convincing me one of these days.
Mythago,
I didn’t say that Paul VI approved of the Pill, I said that that was the majority opinion on his advisory council (that the Pill was different morally from a condom). Pope Paul disagreed with that, and I disagree with him.
Daisy Bond,
How open to having your worldview challenged are _you_?
It amazes me that anyone would think a forced, (however subtle or covert that force is), marraige would be better than single parenthood, with or without the support of the father. One of the great things about the last century has been the advancement of the pursuit of happiness - or at least reasonable contentment - for adults and children. No child should be brought up in misery, with that example for life what hope do they have? Are these people who advocate shotgun weddings suggesting that no person has the right to try and be happy/content? Then what is the point?????? really what is the point? if the purpose of life is for you and your children to be miserable.
Michael - if you are a Christian, you might want to work on the whole “love your enemies” meme. Just saying.
Robert, thanks for your maudlin advice. I don’t consider Hector my enemy, and I don’t believe that “love your enemy” means being “nice” and not acknowledging either his raging hypocrisy, or those terrible price paid by vulnerable, over the centuries, for his views. I have no trouble calling out bullshit. Just saying.
Hector, not as open as I should be, I’m sure, but I do try to do my best. I have changed my mind many times.
The criticism I made has been leveled at you separately by least three people. Even if you find us all obnoxious and flawed, I would think that deserves some serious thought, if nothing else. It was in inevitable that your ideas would be challenged here; well, now they have been, and I figure you must, on some level, want them to be challenged. Seriously, why else would you be here?
Hector could simply be lonely, Daisy, and he’s clearly not interested in being challenged, but since his speciality is prevarication, you won’t get an answer to your question. He’s been challenged with an entire list of facts and realities, with one degree of intensity of another, but the best anyone gets from him is some tepid version of “Well, those are my personal religious beliefs as an ‘Anglo Catholic’” and another excretion of ambiguous theology personalized with self-congratulatory references to “my priest,” etc.
This has been Hector’s modus operandi on this blog for as long as I’ve been reading it. And if anyone seriously challenges him on his sexism or homophobia, there’s an immediate sniveling reference to “petulant child[ren]” followed by an assertion that his interlocutor can “have the last word,” immediately after which Hector gets in the last word.
Yeah, I am aware of the Catholic arguments against the Pill and condoms — but those arguments have to do with the belief that it is wrong to prevent the creation of new life during sex. (In fact, I think that may be what Pope Paul VI meant when he referred to the unitive aspect of sex). I don’t agree with those arguments but they seem at least a little more substantial than the idea that a barrier over the man’s private parts (i.e. condom) somehow detracts from the intimacy (i.e. unitive aspect) of sex and that if it does that is somehow sinful or wrong. I’ll take a little less unity and a little more protection from disease and unwanted childbearing, thanks.
Not that I mean to imply that a condom suppolies only a “little” protection. That was clumsy wording in my last sentence.
Michael Rowe,
No, I meant you can have the last word, and I meant it. As you did, in fact.
Daisy Bond,
Well, it depends what issue you mean. My pro-life views are, pretty much, unshakable, and I can’t imagine any potential argument that could shake me from the belief that the deliberate taking of innocent life is wrong, and should be illegal in a civilized society. My views regarding condoms are more open to correction, but I’m still pretty confident I’m correct here. My views about the morality (not legality) of homosexuality, on the other hand, are very much open to correction, and I’m not confident in them at all. That’s part of the reason that, in the United States, I think gay marriage should be legal, and why I tend not to spend very much time criticizing homosexual acts. (If they are wrong, they’re no more wrong than other sexual sins like, say, masturbation. and there’s a good possibility they’re not wrong at all).
I’ve heard several compelling arguments that homosexual acts should be morally licit, that what St. Paul, Aquinas and Savonarola condemned wasn’t the kind of natural, inborn homosexual tendencies we think of today, and that while celibacy is a worthy, super-erogatory discipline (for straight and gay people both) it shouldn’t be mandatory for gays any more than it is for straights. I find those arguments compelling- on the other hand, I worry about the potential implications. That sex will become even further separated from procreation, that we will come to even further think that gender is a matter of social conditioning, that we will accept the error that our bodies are our own, to do with as we choose, and that we will move further towards accepting the Modernist ideas that would downplay tradition, the supernatural, authority, and obedience. So yes, I am open to arguments, and indeed go back and forth on this issue a lot.
Daisy Bond,
Further, if I’ve given the impression that I think I’m morally pure, then let me hasten to add that I’m not. I have committed sins, including sexual sins, plenty of them. Hugo might not consider them sins, but I do, and they’re quite as bad as homosexual acts (if, indeed, they are a sin).
Hey Hector - you’d better dust off your birch stick, you’ll need to be flagellating yourself soon what with all this sinning left right and centre. Does a frisson caused by vibrations while sat on the back of the bus count, you never know it could be damnation all the way, just for that pesky bus ride. Sorry, I couldn’t help sending up the Pythonesque quality of you comments. Also, did you know that when you write or speak after the person you are debating with, it means you have had the last word? Hector, you brighten up my evenings.
Matey, you rock. ^5
Wow. I’m just a happy little hedonistic atheist and you guys are making me sympathize with Hector, who seems to be stating his (perhaps strange) beliefs respectfully and with some humility. Perhaps the ire is more deserved than it appears from this thread alone, but…criminy.
Yeah, Tam, Hector is really, really sweet, but very fire and brim stone - plus humility is not always present. Check out some other threads. I just couldn’t help it, he makes me smile.
Sorry for the drift Hugo.
Yes, if we could return to the subject — if there is anything left to say — that would be swell.
Hector, I truly appreciate your polite comments and I’m glad to see you’re open to reconsidering some of your views. I don’t think this thread is the place for discussion of abortion or homosexuality, so I’ll just leave me comment at that.