Republican Valentine, 2012

Last week, I posted about the republican attack on contraceptives, calling them The Forced Chastity Party . They really want to stake their position as the "anti-sex" party, I guess. Now the top republican presidential candidates are all vowing to attack...porn:

The conservative group Morality In Media is head over heels today after all three top Republican candidates promised to go war against the distribution of porn. In a written statement, Rick Santorum said, “Federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.”

Not to be outdone, Mitt Romney gave a statement to the group that said, “(I)t is imperative that we cultivate the promotion of fundamental family values. This can be accomplished with increased parental involvement and enhanced supervision of our children. It includes strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws, as well as the promotion of parental software controls that guard our children from Internet pornography.”

That's right, folks: just in time for Valentine's Day, 2012, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich All Promise To Ban Porn. I'm quite certain that they actually believe this will be a winning issue for them, but here in modern reality lots of regular folk enjoy porn (if you believe the Internet, anyway). As an election issue...well, it could make the debates more entertaining.

The Forced Chastity Party

Hard to believe, but somehow there's a roaring political battle about insurance coverage of contraceptives. In 2012. The republicans are couching the debate in terms of religion, but their real goal is banning contraception coverage in ALL insurance plans for ALL women. Because, in their world, women shouldn't be having non-procreative sex.

This may come as a shock to the right wing prudes, but women enjoy sex (at least, in my experience), too. Human beings enjoy sex. Regardless of what your sky god tells you. And we're just not realistically going to limit our sex to making more human beings, regardless of someones religion. Buddy badtux the snarky penguin says it well in his header "Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped."

See, it's one thing to debate abortion (though I'm sure you can guess where I stand): nobody "enjoys" an abortion. Abortion is "yucky" (in reality, all internal medicine is "yucky". The insides of a human being are not aesthetically pleasing). But now the anti-abortion people are taking their anti-sex crusade to the thing most likely to prevent abortion. Because they really are opposed to sex.

(It should be noted that these same fundies are also anti-homosexuality, which rarely leads to abortion.)

I just can't see how this is a 'winning' issue for them. Maybe it's because I'm an old 'free love' hippie from the sixties, but I just don't see the opposition to sex as popular. Most of us want our fucking contraceptives.

Sex and the CIA

I've learned that to be a really good scandal, it must include sex. The Cunningham/Wilkes/Foggo scandal is about to get the sex it needs for the public to notice.

I recently received an advance copy of Seth Hettena's Feasting
on the Spoils: The Life and Times of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, History's Most
Corrupt Congressman, which will be published this July and which I highly recommend. In addition to being a terrific piece of political reporting, the book is filled with juicy details concerning the seamier side of the Cunningham affair, otherwise known as “Hookergate.”

I was particularly interested in stories Hettena unearthed about Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, whom former CIA director Porter Goss had named as executive director, the agency's number-three official. Foggo resigned last year not long after FBI agents raided his home and office. The Feds suspected that Foggo, who was later indicted, had funneled CIA contracts to his long-time friend Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor who is accused of bribing Cunningham with money and prostitutes.

Some of the more sensational stories in Hettena's book—and he has on-the-record sources—got me thinking. First, didn't Foggo's frequent indiscretions (for example, flashing his agency ID to jump the line at a strip club) raise red flags about his character? Second, wasn't Foggo's outlandish sexual behavior—like, say, publicly performing oral sex on a hooker (hired by Wilkes) at his own bachelor party—just the sort of thing that makes intelligence officials potentially vulnerable toblackmail by a hostile spy service? Third, might it be possible to cynically point to such revelations and use them as a hook for a blog item that combines sex and espionage?

You already know the answer to #3. As to #1 and #2, I spoke with a number of former CIA officers and asked them about the use of sex as a weapon of espionage and whether Foggo-scale misbehavior would typically be deemed a security risk or cause other problems. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/sb-sex-and-the-cia

The original scandal was pretty basic: Wilkes bribes Cunningham and Foggo, gets government contracts for millions. Cunningham gets caught, goes to jail. Page B17 story. But if we can get some sex in the story? A1 with screaming headlines.

The contract, previously reported to be worth between $2 million and $3 million, was a no-bid, unneeded deal to distribute water in Iraq. In other words, it was right up Wilkes' alley, since he specialized in selling unneeded and drastically overpriced equipment and services to the government via acquaintances like the now-incarcerated Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) .http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/dusty_foggo/

Besides the fun of seeing someone called "Dusty" go on trial, maybe the public will start to notice the corruption that has become so pervasive in the current administration.

Teen Sex

So a new report shows that "abstinence only" education doesn't work. What a surprise. Apparently, some teenagers are having sex. Shocking.

“After 10 years and $1.5 billion in public funds these failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will go down as an ideological boondoggle of historic proportions,” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth.

“The tragedy is not simply the waste of taxpayer dollars, it is the damage done to the young people who have been on the receiving end of distorted, inaccurate information about condoms and birth control. We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that’s not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics”.

“This report should serve as the final verdict on the failure of the abstinence-only industry in this country,” said William Smith, vice president for public policy of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS). “It shows, once again, that these programs fail miserably in actually helping young people behave more responsibly when it comes to their sexuality,” Smith continued.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/04/13/burying-release-of-abstinence-only-report-on-friday-the-13th-seems-fitting

Now, I'm no expert on this generations teenagers. I try to avoid them as much as possible. But I remember my teen years, and they included sex (not as much as I would have liked, but more than the parents knew about). Society wrung it's hands about teen sex in my generation. And my parents generation. And my grandparents generation. The only reason that teen sex wasn't a cause for public outcry in my great-grandparents generation was teen marriage (my great-grandmother married at 15 and gave birth to my grandfather 6 months later).
The folks who worry about "morality" have been wringing their collective hands about teen sex for many decades, and our current religionists thought they could do something about it. The fools thought that they could teach our youngsters to deny biology, to deny reality.
Do they remember their own teenage years?