Purging the Religious Right's Sexual Demons

By Lara Riscol, RH Reality Check. Posted February 10, 2009.

"COLORADO JUST OPENED ITS PUBLIC BATHROOMS TO EITHER SEX!"

The Focus on the Family ad screams above a waist-down shot of a man in combat boots waiting in front of a stall, toilet seat up, as a white girl in a long white smock, white shoes and bobby socks, sneaks open her stall door next to him. The message below blasts Colorado's Democratic governor and legislators for passing an anti-discrimination law to include sexual orientation and gender identity. After losing his campaign to kill the bill last spring, James Dobson, head of the Christian culture war powerhouse, warned "Every woman and little girl will have to fear that a predator, bisexual, cross-dresser or even a homosexual or heterosexual male might walk in and relieve himself in their presence."

Way to grind civil rights nuance into a black-and-white bathroom boogieman. As early as the 1970s, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly reduced her fight against the Equal Rights Amendment to protecting women and children from unisex toilets. Equality, whatever -- do you really want men and ladies in line for the john together at a ballgame?

Even without an ERA in place, unisex potties have popped up in public places. At the recent 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, I smile as I walk into the first of the site's many labeled Gender Neutral Restrooms. Aside from a mild jolt when first spying the row of urinals, I rather enjoy the multifaceted landscape on my way to and from taking care of business.

Speaking of a beautiful view, about 2,000 mostly young people of all shades pour into the Denver ballroom for the keynote given by civil rights legend Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union in 1962 with Cesar Chavez. For decades the Catholic mother of 11 has spoken out for queer folk in cross-movement struggles for social and economic justice, from campaigning for Harvey Milk to recording a bilingual ad against Proposition 8. Beaten 20 years ago so badly by police during an otherwise peaceful protest that she had to undergo emergency surgery to remove her spleen, she testifies to a religious right that scapegoats our communities for distraction.

"Feminists, gays and lesbians, immigrants are not the enemy," says Huerta.  She says we're forced to respond now, "We need to educate each other's movements to create change. We have a mandate to remove the ignorance from society until we get the human rights that we all deserve." She closes with leading the chant she made famous: Si, se puede! She adds, "When I met Obama he said, ‘I stole your slogan.' I told him, ‘Yes you did!'"

The crowd roars with joyful laughter. Looking around, I feel as if I've floated into an Obama rally of color, youth and hope. A glance at the program shows how vast the diversity here with five days of sessions on sexual freedom and literacy, various communities of color, youth, aging, disability, religion and spirituality, feminism and straight allies. Evenings you might choose a social, recharge at a 12-step recovery, or worship at a faith service. As John Lennon's "Imagine" fills the room I think, this is America. After 16 years bludgeoned by zealots wielding sex as weapon to divide and conquer Americans -- from the smut of Clinton to the sanctimony of Bush -- can it be time for a new sexual revolution in the age of Obama? Yes it can!

The last time I crammed into a room of 2000 around a pivotal election was the first Values Voters Summit in D.C., featuring conservative superstars, such as Dobson, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Rev. Jerry Falwell and four GOP presidential aspirants, including Gov. Mitt Romney. The ridiculed enemies were feminists, gays and liberals, who want to convert your kids to the dark side, who pose a greater threat to America than Al-Qaeda. One sexual demon summoned throughout the weekend to rally the evangelical troops was the children's book, "King & King," where the prince rejects the many princesses to marry another prince.

The Abstinence Clearinghouse annual conference I attended later wasn't quite as meanspirited or ethnically and generationally monochromatic. But themed "Abstinence: It's a Black and White Issue," speakers -- from a former beauty queen to a former welfare mom and woman who disavowed her multiple abortions -- made absolutely clear that God's truth allows for one path to sexual integrity. Same call to arms against the feminists, liberals and the "condom crowd" who condemn marriage, family and America with their anything-goes moral relativism.

Having covered for 10 years the sexual schizophrenia of our nation's culture war, I've noted how purity politicos package and sell a retro feel-good salve of simplicity for society's complex modern ills. Like tax cuts for the economy and bombing for security, abstinence-only unless married is the far right's hawked magic potion for social stability, the silver bullet to slay the sexual dragon we call freedom. With Talibanesque fervor, "family values" powerbrokers demand a leap of social engineering faith: if we corral sex within marriage, then we disappear teen pregnancy, abortion, unwed mothers, poverty, crime and AIDS. Dismantle sex education and services, and reverse 40 years of the sexual revolution "if it feels good, do it." Drink the traditional kool-aid and you're for purity and good. Reject on grounds of reality, reason and moral sense, and you're for perversion and evil. It really is black and white.

See more stories tagged with: religious right, abstinence, lgbt, sexuality, sexual literacy

Lara Riscol is a freelance writer who explores societal conflicts and controversies surrounding sexuality. She has been published in The Nation, Salon, AlterNet and other media outlets worldwide.

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