This week, in the opening remarks to his Savage Love Podcast, columnist Dan Savage examined the religious right’s crusade against human sexuality. As Dan is wont to do, he presented a very good argument for not voting Republican.
We all know single-issue voters, people who vote for a candidate based on said candidate’s position on one issue without considering any other factor. Gun owners are notorious for voting for Republican candidates who promise to protect their right to bear arms. An acquaintance of mine is a union laborer and probably should vote Democrat for the sake of his livelihood. However, because he fears more than anything – including unemployment, apparently – the forcible removal of his guns, he routinely votes Republican. This doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Well, I happen to be a single-issue voter myself, or very close to it. The issue that influences my political leanings the most is sex positivity. By that I refer to the right of a woman to choose abortion, availability of birth control, and marriage equality. I cite these issues specifically as, during an election year, they are ones that are at the forefront of American politics. Additionally, I cite these issues because they are important to me. I’m sure the argument can be made that, as a business owner, I should vote Republican. But like the aforementioned gun-owning union laborer, I am too focused on protecting our quickly-evaporating sexual freedoms to consider anything else.
A Republican administration might lower my taxes and save me money, but this money would be akin to blood money. A financial windfall wouldn’t mean anything if my friends and loved ones are unable to enjoy basic human rights including the right to marry, and if the women in my life can’t depend on birth control.
As you can imagine, the importance of these issues precludes me from voting for Republican candidates. That is not to say that I would never vote Republican, but there would have to be a very compelling reason to do so, and I can’t think of anything logical that would make me support a Republican candidate. I suppose that if Charles Manson was released from prison and despite his status as a convicted felon somehow ran for President of the United States on the Democratic ticket, I would have to vote for the opposition. Unless it was Rick Santorum.
This man is a frothy mix of hatred, social ignorance, and fear of sex.
It’s easy to look at someone like Rick Santorum and, taking his comments about homosexuality into account, believe that the religious right’s crusade against sexuality is limited to LGBT individuals. But this couldn’t be more wrong. Once upon a time I believed that anti-sodomy laws, i.e. legislation that turns consensual oral and anal sex into a crime, were designed to oppress gays who, by definition, don’t engage in penile-vaginal intercourse. This misconception didn’t make these laws any easier to accept; consenting adults should have the right to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own bedrooms, shouldn’t they?
While I was aware that the religious right had it out for gays, I assumed that being straight meant that I was in the clear. I took comfort in the belief that, if I happened to be traveling through the Deep South and decided to have anal sex with Jill in our motel room, the fat Southern sheriff sitting in a surveillance van watching our antics on a closed-circuit monitor would clearly see that one of us was female and disregard us. Right?
Probably not. As Dan Savage points out in this week’s podcast, the religious right seeks to prevent everyone from having recreational (i.e. non-procreational) sex. Evidence for this can be found not only in anti-sodomy legislation, but also in the right’s crusade against abortion and birth control. It’s not that the religious fundamentalists here in the United States expect women to stop getting pregnant and seeking abortions should they be outlawed; likely they understand that the only sort of abortion available would be a so-called “back alley” abortion, an often life-threatening medical procedure carried out by unqualified personnel in unsafe conditions.
This raises a thought-provoking and almost unfathomable question: Does the religious right want women to die? I’m inclined to say yes. Perhaps not all women; those who deny their sexual desire and do not take initiative are probably safe. Those who fall into the traditionally-approved female role are unlikely to incur fundamentalist wrath. However, in the eyes of the religious right, those who have sex for purposes other than procreation, or those who become pregnant and choose to terminate their pregnancy should be punished for this transgression.
The outlawing of abortion serves a twofold purpose: Beyond forcing pregnant women to either carry the baby to term or risk grievous injury or death undergoing an unsafe abortion, it would also, ideally, cow women into toeing the line. In truth, no one will be cowed, as the human impulse toward sexual behavior is considerable.
Just because someone is against contraception doesn’t mean that he or she will never need to use some form thereof. Just because someone demonstrates outside of Planned Parenthood doesn’t mean that he or she will never have cause to seek out an abortion. People from oppressive conservative religious and political backgrounds frequently find themselves or their significant others pregnant unexpectedly. Denying one’s sexual impulses doesn’t make them nonexistent; instead it makes one less likely to prepare for sexual activity beforehand. As a result, such people are unlikely to use birth control or carry condoms.
Everyone has sexual urges. It’s natural and healthy, and I would have thought that those who believe so strongly in God might believe that He deliberately included sex when He created us. After all, even an atheist like myself is inclined to acknowledge (albeit tongue-in-cheek) that something as wonderful as sex can only be a gift from God. Unfortunately, by denying their sexual sides in some cases until the point of penetration, the religious among us have to suffer not only by carrying a baby to term and raising it, or aborting it; but also the shame that comes from living in a conservative environment and being an unwed mother or someone who’s undergone an abortion.
The thing I want everyone to remember is this: The conservative politicians running on platforms of social conservatism and so-called family values don’t care about you. They only want your vote. They will get into bed with religious zealots who want to control not only how you live and who you fuck, but also what you think. These politicians will continue to have affairs while simultaneously decrying the moral collapse of American society, and when their staffers get pregnant they will pay for the abortions.
-Jack
*We get political sometimes. It happens. It is our belief that one can’t run a sex blog in America without occasionally thinking – if not blogging – about politics. It is not our intention to offend, but rather to drag the issue into the spotlight and, in doing so, to force our fellow American voters to take action. If you don’t, you shouldn’t complain when you wake up one morning and discover that your rights have been taken away.
