Consequence-Free Sex

It was entirely predictable that right-wing males would act like giant assholes in the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling; after all, these are the perpetually-aggrieved folks who have felt neutered by “feminazis” since women first demanded the vote.

My favorite response was from Douchebag Emeritus Erick W. Erickson, who tweeted:

And yet, because Hobby Lobby pays for men’s Viagra, that is exactly what this employer is doing: subsidizing consequence-free sex, only just for men. Because, by virtue of biology, all sex for men is consequence-free. It just is. Birth control levels the playing field for women. And it is no surprise that conservative men, whose most unifying feature is an overarching inferiority complex, have been threatened by that since the first cave lady brewed her special cup of herbal tea to keep the babies away. Insecure men will always try to control that which they cannot control. And that’s what we have here.

This, from The New Republic, sums it up thusly:

There’s a reason so many women were outraged on Monday. They saw the decision as yet another attempt to preserve the old double-standard—to dump most of the responsibility for reproductive health and child-bearing on them, in ways that inevitably deter gender equality. With comments like Erickson’s bouncing around cyberspace, it’s easy to see why they had that impression.

Yeah, it’s not an “impression.” It’s called reality.

Kids Today, Sex Ed Edition

Once again, dear blog readers, I’ve neglected you. I’ve been meaning to write about this story since it first appeared in our Gannett fishwrap, but I’ve been way too swamped with other stuff. Since then Betsy at Pith and ThinkProgress have covered this, so hit those links if you want more info.

The bottom line is, some Fundiegelical conservative abstinence clowns somehow got approval to give a sex misinformation assembly at Nashville’s Hillsboro High, which happens to be the high school my kids would be attending had Mr. Beale and I not decided to stick a fork in Jesus’ eye and avoid breeding this lifetime. I know, how un-Christian of us.

The assembly was full of crackpot ideas, such as:

All medical textbooks say life begins at conception.

… and ….

Having sex with eight partners would be the equivalent of drinking a whole classroom’s spit…

… and ….

[…] “fetus” means the same thing as “baby” …

…. and ….

[…] a grim picture of the various types of abortion: dismembered fetuses, punctured uterine walls, bleeding for 8-9 weeks, death.

… and ….

As for adoption — never discourage it, she tells the class. Don’t even use the term “give up” the baby. If a girl says she’s pregnant, send her to the nurse, and she should start taking prenatal vitamins.

… and my absolute favorite:

If a girl becomes a single mom to a boy, she says: “Who’s going to do all those things that men like to do with men? Hunting, fishing, playing ball, all those things that teach them how to be a man and setting those boundaries?”

Got that fellas? So, if you don’t like to hunt, fish or play ball, you are not a man! You’re some kind of girly-man, sissified by your single mom. And Jesus hates you.

I’m trying to imagine how an assembly like this would have been greeted in my day. Back in the ’70s when I was in high school, these ladies would have left our classroom pulling spitwads and chewing gum from their hair, their model fetus baby reduced to shards and their Hope Center flyers transformed into origami 747s.

Of course, that was a more innocent age. Today kids record these assemblies on their cell phones and take it to the media. Bravo, unnamed student. My hat’s off to you.

I mean, I’m just trying to imagine what these kids thought when they heard this stuff about “who’s gonna teach your boy how to hunt and fish” and all. Did these ladies not think there might not be a few sons of single moms in the audience? What incredible idiots.

What’s really scary is that one of the presenters, Beth Cox, is a member of the Sumner County School Board. Cox is also on the board of directors for the organization which brought this nonsense to a Davidson County high school, Decisions, Choices and Options. Though the group claims everything they teach is “medical, fatual information,” the group has just one doctor on its board of directors: Dr. Bryan Bondurant, a veterinarian and failed conservative Republican candidate for Congress.

Hilarious. How did these Sumner County hayseeds get on the list of approved presenters in Metro Nashville schools in the first place? This stuff they’re selling isn’t medical, factual information! It’s an ideologically-driven misinformation campaign. In case y’all missed it, you lost the culture wars. Now fuck off.

My mom went to Catholic boarding school back in the 1940s. This is exactly the kind of “sex ed” kids of her generation were given. She told me the Jesuits taught that at the condom factory, one out of every 10 condoms is given a pin-prick. I asked her, “Did anyone ask the priests why a condom factory would do that?” No, she said. It didn’t occur to them.

That really was a more innocent age, when teenagers were a bit more gullible — though no less inclined to engage in sexual exploration. Kids today are a little savvier. And I’m glad at least one had the forethought to blow the lid off this ridiculous excuse for “education.” Now, let’s yank these clowns off the “approved” list for Nashville’s public schools. Because at the very least, our kids deserve factual information, not religious views and pseudo-science.

What The Hell Is Stacy Campfield Doing?

Can someone explain to me why Stacey Campfield is still going on national radio shows to spout his crap? Having been thoroughly humiliated over the past two weeks, shouldn’t he be hiding in, um, a closet somewhere, licking his wounds?

And yet here he is on the David Pakman Show last week talking about anal and vaginal sex (h/t to commenter ThresherK). It seems he’s brushed up on his HIV/AIDs facts a teensy bit, though he still spreads those same discredited statistics about the lifespan of gay men, and he just barely stops himself from saying “most” gay men don’t have long-term relationships, etc.

So, here’s the thing. Why is he doing this? Is he trying to rehabilitate his image as a homophobic idiot? He’s not doing a very good job. He’s still coming across like a homophobic idiot — only one with an unhealthy obsession with all things gay and gay sex in particular.

Let me say, it is incredibly creepy hearing Stacy Campfield talk about anal and vaginal sex on the radio, pontificating about dominance in the animal kingdom and sodomy and all that. I really don’t want to hear him talking about sex. I don’t want to hear any politician talking about sex in this kind of detail, frankly. Stacey is focused like a laser beam on the nasty, like he’s got some weird kind of fetish — call it a reverse-voyeurism, like he’s got some kind of compulsion to talk about it all the time. It’s super creepy. Not only doth he protest too much, he’s doing it waaaay too graphically.

It’s time for him to stop because my intuition tells me this goes beyond politics, Stacey’s getting some kind of personal satisfaction from this discussion — a satisfaction he can’t get any other way. Really these are things I don’t want to be worried about in my life, Stacey Campfield’s satisfaction.

Stacey, you’re creeping me out. Just, stop. Just because a producer calls and asks you to be on their show doesn’t mean you have to say yes. No one wants to hear you talk about sex all the time. It’s pervy and voyeuristic and conduct unbecoming a state senator.

[UPDATE]:

Just learned an ethics complaint has been filed against Campfield and the Tennessee AG’s office is investigating:

The alleged ethics violation stems from an exchange between Shores and Campfield last spring. Shores challenged Campfield to a debate over homosexuality and the Bible. Campfield agreed to a debate, but he said it could only be over his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would ban discussion of homosexuality in elementary and middle schools. Campfield then requested a $1,000 retainer fee.

“I will happily debate you. I require a $1000.00 [sic] retainer fee and all expenses covered. You can do with the rest all you want,” Campfield wrote in a Facebook message to Shores.

Shores then contacted the Tennessee Attorney General’s office to file an ethics complaint against Campfield since he was requesting a fee to debate a bill that he authored while serving in the Tennessee Senate. Last August, Shores received an email from Victor Domen Jr., senior counsel for the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, informing him that the complaint had been filed and a formal investigation was being launched.

Seriously, is this a cry for help or what? Maybe it’s a cry for a reality show. Hell if I know.

Your Tax Dollars At Work, Sex Ed Edition

When we said Washington was filled with a bunch of clowns, we weren’t kidding. The latest to feed at the abstinence-only gravy train is Derek Dye, “comedic juggler” who’s also a “certified abstinence educator,” which turns out to be as bogus as “life coaching.” (With all due respect to the life coaches out there, I just don’t get what you people do …)

Thanks to George W. Bush and a complicit Congress, we currently spend $1.5 billion a year to fund abstinence-only until marriage sex education in our public schools. And yes, that money goes to people like Derek Dye, as he is employed by the Elizabeth New Life Center that received a $800,000 CBAE grant in 2007 to promote abstinence until marriage. His qualifications? A “Bachelor of Fun Arts” from Barnum Bailey Clown College, and an abstinence educator certification that can be purchased for $50.

ThinkProgress has a YouTube clip of Dye’s act. His basic message seems to be, if you have sex before you’re married, smoke, drink or use drugs, your life will be ruined. And balancing a ladder on his chin and juggling machetes is supposed to illustrate that somehow.

I don’t get it. This message is supposed to be stronger than raging teenage hormones? Get real, people.

>Grand Old Tradition

>More things I did not know.

According to this article on “tearoom trysts,” men have sought out anonymous homosexual sex in bathrooms for decades:

ST. LOUIS — Back in the 1960s, long before a U.S. senator got busted for lewd behavior in an airport bathroom, it was called “the tearoom trade.”

But social researchers knew almost nothing about it.

So a young graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis started digging. He spent months hanging out in the public restrooms of St. Louis’ Forest Park. He wanted to observe the tearoom trade in action: men who met for brief, anonymous homosexual trysts in public. He wanted to discover what compelled them.

The interesting thing is that many of the men participating in this activity are not, in fact, gay. In fact, it seems there’s something else going on here:

Humphreys found that 54 percent of the men were married and living with their wives. He found 38 percent considered themselves neither bisexual nor homosexual. The men wanted a sexual release that was quick and would not endanger their standing with their family or society. Just 14 percent of the men identified themselves as living-in-the-open homosexuals.
….
Humphreys coined the term “breastplate of righteousness” to describe men who used the cloak of social and political conservatism to conceal their deviant behavior.

This is very interesting. I had no idea that research into this behavior goes back to the 1960s, or that the research suggests there really is a connection between conservatism and the compulsion to act out in this way.

Any guys out there want to weigh in on this one? Have you seen anything like this? How common is it to get approached in public bathrooms, anyway?