Kathryn, Michael, since we must tread this grim path, my problem with the Aspirin gag and subsequent apology is that it wasn’t so much a joke as a bit of ancient folk wisdom – a bit like the old line that the second child takes nine months but the first takes whatever God wills, as they used to say when picking out the gift for the September baby of March newlyweds. These are lines about societal views of sex, and, while they’re certainly “antiquated” (in Michael’s word), the response to Mr Friess suggests an attempt to criminalize not the gag so much as the attitude underlying it. As the Hyacinth Girl writes:
I’ve been listening to the coverage of Santorum’s big donor’s Aspirin statement. Since when has it been controversial to suggest that women used to value chastity..? It just isn’t a big deal that Foster Friess makes a reference to the days when sexual promiscuity wasn’t celebrated or considered inevitable.
Ah, but it is a big deal to the ideological warriors of “Liberation”. The Pundette comments:
Once upon a time society understood that if a young lady didn’t care to risk conceiving a child, she could choose to refrain from the activity that caused it. In a thousand ways, the culture supported her in that choice. Now the Obama administration hopes to install “free love” as a permanent state-sponsored entitlement.
Her post is worth reading in full, especially the excerpt from a New York Times story that happens to confirm the thesis of Charles Murray’s new book, “For Women Under 30 Most Births Occur Outside Marriage“:’
Amber Strader, 27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant. A former nursing student who now tends bar, Ms. Strader said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. “It was like living with another kid,” she said.
When a second child, with a new boyfriend, followed three years later — her birth control failed, she said — her boyfriend, a part-time house painter, was reluctant to wed.
If, as I do, you live in the country, you have dozens of neighbors like Miss Strader – nice high-school girls who babysit your kids; you lose touch, they move to the next town, and you bump into them a couple of years later doing the late shift at the diner or the general store; they’re 23 or 24, with three kids by three different guys. And they’re still nice, and still kinda pretty, if aged beyond their years. But life and its opportunities are fled. If you’re Britney Spears and you wake up after an almighty bender next to some guy you’d rather not face the grey morning after with, there are high-priced lawyers and managers and minders to make all the bad stuff go away. If you’re Britney at the KwikkiKrap, it’s not so easy. “Free love” is free in the same sense all those government programs funded by Chinese debt are.
This is a legitimate subject for debate – especially when Obama’s Leviathan has chosen one side in the debate, and is funding it lavishly. It’s very difficult to have a functioning economy with dysfunctional human capital – that’s as true for America as it is for Greece. A country in which Foster Friess’ line rouses more concern than that New York Times headline is not one you’d want to bet on.
Meanwhile, over in London, The Daily Mail has a bleak little interview with Christine Keeler, a player in Britain’s most famous sex scandal. I met Miss Keeler once, and wrote about her here. She puts it this way:
‘All that Swinging Sixties. It didn’t do anyone any good, did it?
‘Easy sex and the Pill. Marriages were ruined. I never did approve. I never really enjoyed the sex.’
Japan is bucking the trend.
"Here in Britain, 46 per cent of all births are outside marriage. In America it is 41 per cent and in France 54 per cent. In Japan, the figure barely scrapes above 2 per cent."
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Since when has it been controversial to suggest that women used to value chastity..? "
Married women use birth control pills. It is definitely controversial to suggest that married women should value chastity (though I know some don't believe in contraception at all).
The idea that married women on the pill should just "close their legs" is for neanderthals. Friess has the right to express that idea, but if it seems like most of society is repulsed by it, that's because we are.
Count how many siblings you have, then consider what Friess was saying about your mother.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe whole point of Mark's comments had to do with unmarried women and the consequences of the sexual revolution. As Charles Murray has pointed out, the elites and upper classes promoted the sexual revolution but generally speaking, live their personal lives more conservatively or can afford to while still promoting the ideology. The lower economic classes live the consequences of what the others pushed on our society and still push through their agents in this administration and their media allies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf we scrutinize the remark as a Shakespearean sonnet or Delphic prophesy, we might arrive at your strained interpretation.
"Most of society" hasn't parsed it further than a Sunday cartoon.
But you want everyone to side with the cool kids, and the tone of impatience with the obtuse is more important here than any actual thought. Never mind what the man said, it's just important that you know it wasn't cool.
If Obama is so right on this, why can't his supporters do any better than the Mean Girl school of rhetoric?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseexactly
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason,
Here is the Catholic definition of chasity:
"Chastity is the virtue which excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite. It is a form of the virtue of temperance, which controls according to right reason the desire for and use of those things which afford the greatest sensual pleasures. The sources of such delectation are food and drink, by means of which the life of the individual is conserved, and the union of the sexes, by means of which the permanence of the species is secured. Chastity, therefore, is allied to abstinence and sobriety; for, as by these latter the pleasures of the nutritive functions are rightly regulated, so by chastity the procreative appetite is duly restricted. Understood as interdicting all carnal pleasures, chastity is taken generally to be the same as continency, though between these two, Aristotle, as pointed out in the article on CONTINENCY, drew a marked distinction. With chastity is often confounded modesty, though this latter is properly but a special circumstance of chastity or rather, we might say, its complement."
All married couples are called to be chaste within marriage. Chastity, therefore, isn't only for single couples. Catholic ideas concerning chastity, continence, abstience, and modesty have a long pedigree that go back to classical antiquity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI disagree with your defense of the Mr. Friess' comment as ancient folk wisdom. To the contrary, I saw it as one more indication of the debasing of women and morality, somewhat the point you are trying to make.
I watched Mr. Friess' comment, live. While I understood the "joke," it did not sound funny in the least. What struck me was how crude it was. Until that moment, Mr. Friess had been quite articulate in defense of Mr. Santorum.
For me, it was as if reality TV had now invaded MSNBC. It was probably even worse because the interviewer was Andrea Mitchell, who is one of the more dignified of the telenewscasters and a woman of a certain age. I saw it as very disrespectful -- of Ms. Mitchell, of the topic, of women in general.
I am an independent, leaning republican; married, Catholic, and of an age similar to Ms. Mitchell's. I found it ironic that a backer of Mr. Santorum, who purports to be a man of deep religious beliefs would make such a crude statement at 2 pm in the afternoon.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe culture war has been raging in the US (it is long since effectively over in Europe) for decades, long before Pat Buchanan gave his speech at the Republican Convention in 1992.
The best thing about Obama's overreach on conception is that he has finally made the central battle ground in that war a subject of conversation among conservatives. Promiscuity, for both men and women, is destroying this society, but saying anything against sexual amorality is so declasse.
Dems, "moderate" Republicans and liberaltarians have long since been lost to the cause. But perhaps now genuine conservatives who are not terrified of being ridiculed by John Stewart will begin to speak up on this most important subject. As Mr. Steyn has done here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA bit dated in some particulars, this essay from Scibner's Magazine (1887) appears to be all to accurate. The undermining of marriage, just like the undermining of private property, both have a deeper goal.
The Ethics of Democracy by F.J. Stimson.
"We will therefore conclude with the perhaps unforeseen result, that democracy, when crowned with power, seeks rather what it consders the well-being of the community than the liberty of the individual.
...
"Therefore, without prejudice against any one proposed reform, it is impossible not to end, if not with the deduction , at least with the suggestion - that (for some reason which we will not now attempt to fathom) the three institutions - of private property, of marriage, and of personal liberty from State control - are so inseparably bound together that neither one may fall without the other two."
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Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“'Free love' is free in the same sense all those government programs funded by Chinese debt are."
Heh, not even a metaphor these days. Our Obamunist overlords have declared contraceptives "free" even as they require religious organizations to pay for them.
Liberation warriors indeed -- liberating "freedom" from "responsibility." All on credit, natch.
Oh, and for the record: there are married couples who use natural means. By choice. Are they entitled to subsidy as well?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is definitely controversial to suggest that married women should value chastity
In the case of a married woman, having sex with her husband IS chaste. A married woman who refrains is celibate.
Mark is right: if the Left thinks they're giving us enough rope to hang ourselves with, there's no reason we can't use that same rope to hang THEM.
If the truth is on your side—and it always is, when battling the Left—don't be afraid to use it. There's no advantage to hiding the truth from the undecideds: who knows whether such strange new ideas might resonate with them.
"Preference cascades" are real, and now that the sexual revolution has played itself out, with all its unhappy results, it's time to let people know that they're not the only ones out there who've noticed that we were sold a bill of goods.
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As Hyacinth Girl says, "The message pushed by our sexual 'liberators' is a lie and it damages us. I’ve heard it’s no good for men either, this conflation of promiscuity and masculinity, but I hear lots of crazy rumors. Maybe we should take an honest look at where our society has gone with all this 'progress' and how empty we’ve all become. I see a lot of sad, lonely, joyless people who have everything, including anyone they desire, and it’s not a pretty sight."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"in the case of a married woman, having sex with her husband IS chaste. A married woman who refrains is celibate."
However you phrase it, that's what Santorum believes, that K-Lo believes, that the Catholic Church believes - that married women shouldn't have sex unless there's a chance they'll have children (if you don't believe me, just read her post from this afternoon: External Link
. In a nutshell - any sex for fun (even within a loving, dedicated marriage) is abusive and leads to male objectification of the woman. It's kind of hilarious how closely this matches up with second wave feminist critiques of pornography, actually...but in any case, that's the message - don't have sex unless you're willing to have that act potentially lead to children. Is this really the banner Republicans want to line up under? Please, please do - if there's any culture war item Democrats can absolutely win on, it's contraception.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe only banner on the field is for the freedom to do and not do according to what you think right, no matter how nutty.
But you already knew that, which is why you have to re-flag the issue.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusemarried women shouldn't have sex unless there's a chance they'll have children
So if a couple is naturally infertile—including after menopause—Catholics say "no nookie"? You CANNOT be serious.
In a nutshell - any sex for fun (even within a loving, dedicated marriage) is abusive and leads to male objectification of the woman.
That's a lie and you know it. Try arguing against what they actually say, or is it just too much fun to work from stereotype?
if there's any culture war item Democrats can absolutely win on, it's contraception
Bring it.
The Catholic view on contraception is stricter than mine, but I'll gladly clear a path for them to preach it. The sexual revolution, which was predicated on The Pill, has left a lot of wreckage in its wake, and a strong dose of medicine to start the pendulum swinging the other way is exactly what we need.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHey, I'm just quoting K-Lo who was quoting a Catholic priest (see: External Link
) , who specifically says:
" “When that petition is made for contraception, it’s going to make pleasure the point of the act, and any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love.”
...Father Landry says it’s women who intuitively get how divorcing sex from procreation allows men to use them; in his experience, it is almost always the woman who moves a couple toward abandoning artificial contraception.
“They have a lot of times experienced having been used in their marriage or their previous relationship,” Father Landry said."
So yeah, according to him if you're infertile and having sex, then it's just for pleasure and the woman is just "a means to an end" and the man is using the woman - so from that one would assume his advice to infertile people would be to not have sex. I'm just quoting from the horse's mouth here - maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but it seems pretty clearly stated to me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are misinterpreting it, because the whole discussion was in the context of contraception. If a couple engages in the marital act without using contraception, there is no problem. It doesn't matter if they are infertile, or at the wrong point in the menstrual cycle, or anything else. The point is not to withhold anything from your spouse, including your fertility. That's a selfish act, and it damages marriages, and the institution of marriage itself.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse" If a couple engages in the marital act without using contraception, there is no problem. It doesn't matter if they are infertile, or at the wrong point in the menstrual cycle, or anything else."
That's not what the Priest said. The Priest said, and I'll quote again, "any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love." I don't see how you read that any way other than sex for pleasure is bad. Are you saying the Priest offered a poor interpretation of Catholic teachings? I'd accept that, I guess - since most Catholic do indeed use birth control, it's obviously not a very persuasive argument to, well, anyone.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI can't disagree with a priest who says that sex when used solely to gratify one's own sexual desires, rather than as an expression of love for one's spouse, is harmful. Treating others as objects is wrong.
As for what the Church teaches:
Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2362 "The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude."
Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure:
The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. (Pius XII, Discourse, October 29, 1951. )
I think it's a persuasive argument to anybody who chooses to listen to it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAgain, "any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love.”
Can you explain to me how an infertile couple or a couple past menopause could have sex in which pleasure is the "fruit of the act" rather than the "point of the act"? Because it's difficult for me to see how that's possible, if it's NOT possible for fertile couples to have protected sex and have pleasure be a "fruit of the act"...or is this one of those "mysteries of God" that we humans can't understand?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDude, you don't get the larger message; ergo, you don't get the smaller ones embedded within it.
You have to seek understanding of spiritual issues the way the rest of us do: scripture study, meditation, prayer, and living God's commandments. Otherwise, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.
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