2004: Year Of Perversion

By Lara Riscol, AlterNet. Posted December 28, 2004.

What a shame, a sham. When sex morphs into America's daily news staple, political barometer, only moral compass – even as Armageddon's fetus slaughters and mutilates innocents daily – you know you survived an election year. As President Bush's Revival sends shudders throughout the world – certainly over poor women and children stripped of reproductive health services – corporate media continues to slam "sex as moral values" down our throat. I am so fucking glad to dump 2004 like a bad date who doesn't understand the meaning of No. Don't. Stop!

From abstinence to Super Bowl's Nipplegate to "The queers are coming to get you," conservative politicos and pundits have made sexual perversion an art form. Sex as distraction. Sex as distortion. Sex as defamation. All non-marital sex as death, disease and destruction. Sex so far away from what is good and right and beautiful, from our gift to pleasure, to touch the divine.

As the mother of the most beautiful 2-year-old boy in the world, some would say it's typical for my interest in sex to wane. So despite seeing the retro right's sexual train wreck barreling down upon truth and integrity, I had better things to do this year than keep up with sex smears against liberals. Instead I indulged in such loony left deviances as breastfeeding and otherwise caring fulltime for my son; traveling with my husband's work to keep the family together, and buying a new home closer to Jared's papa, and surrounded by great schools, trees, trails and kids.

Obviously way out of touch with Real Americans who vote their values, which apparently involve other people's groins, wombs and fallibility.

Not that conservatives can't be considered fallible. They're gay. Have gay parents, or daughters named Mary. Late August, a gay blogger posted a taped phone message allegedly of Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Va.) soliciting sex from men. Considered the second most conservative member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Shrock was the co-sponsor of the proposed Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The practicing Baptist soon dropped his re-election bid and went into seclusion with his wife and son – until he was offered a job last week by fellow Congressman, Rep. Thomas Davis III (R-Va.) as the top staff person for a subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee.

He still won't be able to personally carry out America's mandate of his Constitutional amendment – a commitment renewed by Bush immediately after November 2 when 11 states voted for such state amendments – to protect, of course, the sanctity of marriages like Sprock's and Britney Spears'.

In one year, the world's most famous Lolita pop tart and self-professed virgin wedded and divorced in the same Las Vegas trip, and then blissfully became Mrs. Federline just after new hubby's old live-in gave birth to their second child. See between breaking up families, raunchy photo shoots, and stripper stage moves, Britney's a vocal Bush supporter and traditional values proponent, especially of saving, kind of, yourself for marriage.

Ah, abstinence. Bush launched the year with a wink to America's reigning family dogma nonprofits by pledging in his State of the Union address to double unproven abstinence education funding, thus fattening even more faith-based coffers. Although short of his pledge, Congress found another $170 million for 2005 while slashing most domestic spending, including college financial aid. Almost 1.5 million low-income students will suffer the loss, but at least Bush appointed another chastity crusader as Secretary of Education, the formerly divorced Margaret LaMontagne, who now goes by the name Margaret Spellings.

With a third of our HIV prevention billions promised to anti-abortion Christian-based groups, America is now exporting white weddings as social panacea from here to Africa. Masters of misinformation, theo-conservatives have spun abstinence successes into justification for their bulging billion-dollar entitlement. Abstinence works, they say, seizing upon 2004 data showing a big drop in teen pregnancy during the 90s – attributing 25 percent to abstinence and 75 percent to increased contraception use.

Duh. Abstinence from intercourse avoids pregnancy. And 30 years of peer-reviewed research says that comprehensive sexuality education delays first intercourse and reduces risky behavior once one's sexually engaged. Not only does the data say nothing about the impact of abstinence programs, but President Clinton's abstinence dollars under Welfare Reform didn't reach states until 1998. Bush's more restrictive abstinence didn't hit the streets until 2001. Recent preliminary results actually show that abortion has increased since Bush has been pandering to its sex-obsessed base.

Lara Riscol is a sex columnist and author of a forthcoming book, Ten Sex Myths That Screw America.

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