Sexing Up the Christian Conservative Religious Right
(Page 2 of 2)
January-February 2009
by Dagmar Herzog, from New Humanist
Secularizing its message allowed the religious right to repackage repression as the promotion of mental well-being. What used to be deemed immoral is now presented as likely to induce depressive feelings of self-loathing. In dozens of variations, Americans are taught these days that any sex outside marriage—or even emotionally disconnected sex within marriage—is evidence of “low self-esteem” and will inescapably lead to “depressions.”
RELATED CONTENT
Sex Tips for Adults November December 1996 By Will Hermes, Utne Reader Section Articles THE FUTUR...
Sex, Sex, Sex! Web Specials Archives Utne Reader An unlikely trio of the erudite Parabola ,...
Does Islam permit oral sex? Anal sex? Phone sex? ...
United Religions Initiative Launches Global Effort to End Religious Violence July 6, 2000 TODAY@UTN...
The success of the religious right on this topic is remarkable. It’s especially evident in the way that many self-defined liberals now rush to concede that a delay in sexual debut is desirable, that abstinence is a laudable goal, and that keeping the number of sexual partners in a lifetime to a minimum is an important sign of psychological health and self-valuing. Sexual experience is no longer seen as a resource, but rather as a matter of risk and regret. Female sexual agency has once again been made dirty and suspect.
Why does any of this matter? One answer is that sex education in the United States is in tatters. The country is not just withholding information but actively lying to its young people. This is simply cruel. It disempowers young people—girls and women in particular. Meanwhile, the United States has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and sexual coercion in the developed world, the lowest contraceptive use, and the highest rates of abortion.
European sexual politics are surely not perfect, but it is striking that in Europe sexual rights are defended by Christian Democrats on the right as well as Social Democrats on the left. Indeed, in the struggle over how to make room for European Islam, it is often representatives of conservative political parties who have most strongly insisted that those who want European citizenship affirm their comfort both with homosexuality and with female sexual independence.
Europeans went through an arduous but important post-fascist learning process—and it shows. The stance of the European Court of Human Rights, developed in reaction to the experience of Nazism, starts from the premise that it is the task of the law not just to protect individuals against sexual violence and abuse, but also to protect each individual’s right to desired sexuality. Self-determination and consent are considered the most important moral values. Americans have let themselves too long be bullied into losing their ability to defend those values.
Excerpted from New Humanist (Sept.-Oct. 2008), a London-based magazine that battles “religious dogma, irrationalism, and bunkum wherever it is found”; www.newhumanist.org.uk.
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |