Contraception: Boon to Humankind or 'Gateway to the Culture of Death'

[Pure]

The crusade against abortion and the movement to limit promotion or use of contraception are linked, as evidenced in recent events (see below). Opposition to abortion has led to attempts to curb access to "Plan B" (morning after).

And from there one sees the beginning of attempt to restrict or curb contraception. From the fight to change Roe v Wade, may come the fight to change Griswold v Connecticutt (1965), the US Supreme Court decision which recognized a 'right of privacy' and held that that right applies to the body and to a woman's right to 'artificial' birth control (pills, diaphragms, etc.) This right, though not mentioned as such in the Bill of Rights (BR) was held to directly connect to rights to liberty, rights against unreasonable search and seizure specifically enumerated.

Some signs. Yesterday's New York Times surveys the movement against contraception specifically. Evangelicals are joining Catholics in this traditionally Catholic enterprise. Both groups have pushed successfully for federally funded 'abstinence only' programs that mainly stress the failures of contraception.

The Slate story below shows how a panel at a national conference on STDs was made to mute its critique of abstinence programs.

What exactly is the case against contraception? Some of the claims against contraception, besides failure, include that the ordinary birth control pill causes abortions. Further, the use of contraception is linked to both a casual attitude towards sex and negative attitudes to procreation and the proper function of sexual relations within marriage. More generally, it's held that the more contraception there is, the more abortions there will be. This surprising argument is laid out below.

Contra-Contraception

By RUSSELL SHORTO

New York Times Magazine
Published: May 7, 2006

The English writer Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, "Robinson Crusoe," but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom." After apparently being asked to tone down the title for a subsequent edition, Defoe came up with a new one — "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed" — that only put a finer point on things. The book wasn't a tease, however. It was a moralizing lecture. /

After the wanton years that followed the restoration of the monarchy, a time when both theaters and brothels multiplied, social conservatism rooted itself in the English bosom. Self-appointed Christian morality police roamed the land, bent on restricting not only homosexuality and prostitution but also what went on between husbands and wives./


It was this latter subject that Defoe chose to address. The sex act and sexual desire should not be separated from reproduction, he and others warned, else "a man may, in effect, make a whore of his own wife." To highlight one type of then-current wickedness, Defoe gives a scene in which a young woman who is about to marry asks a friend for some "recipes." /

"Why, you little Devil, you would not take Physick to kill the child?" the friend asks as she catches her drift. /

"No," the young woman answers, "but there may be Things to prevent Conception; an't there?" /

The friend is scandalized and argues that the two amount to the same thing, but the bride to be dismisses her: "I cannot understand your Niceties; I would not be with Child, that's all; there's no harm in that, I hope." /

One prime objective of England's Christian warriors in the 1720's was to stamp out what Defoe called "the diabolical practice of attempting to prevent childbearing by physical preparations." /

The wheels of history have a tendency to roll back over the same ground. For the past 33 years — since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960's culminated in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. /

Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. "We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion," says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission. "The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception."/

The American Life League is a lay Catholic organization, and for years — especially since Pope Paul VI's "Humanae Vitae" encyclical of 1968 forbade "any action which either before, at the moment of or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation" — being anti-contraception was largely a Catholic thing. Protestants and other non-Catholics tended to look on curiously as they took part in the general societywide acceptance of various forms of birth control. /

But no longer. Organizations like the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, which inject a mixture of religion and medicine into the social sphere, operate from a broadly Christian perspective that includes opposition to some forms of birth control. Edward R. Martin Jr., a lawyer for the public-interest law firm Americans United for Life, whose work includes seeking to restrict abortion at the state level and representing pharmacists who have refused to prescribe emergency contraception, told me: "We see contraception and abortion as part of a mind-set that's worrisome in terms of respecting life. If you're trying to build a culture of life, then you have to start from the very beginning of life, from conception, and you have to include how we think and act with regard to sexuality and contraception." /

Dr. Joseph B. Stanford, who was appointed by President Bush in 2002 to the F.D.A.'s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee despite (or perhaps because of) his opposition to contraception, sounded not a little like Daniel Defoe in a 1999 essay he wrote: "Sexual union in marriage ought to be a complete giving of each spouse to the other, and when fertility (or potential fertility) is deliberately excluded from that giving I am convinced that something valuable is lost. A husband will sometimes begin to see his wife as an object of sexual pleasure who should always be available for gratification." /

As with other efforts — against gay marriage, stem cell research, cloning, assisted suicide — the anti-birth-control campaign isn't centralized; it seems rather to be part of the evolution of the conservative movement. The subject is talked about in evangelical churches and is on the agenda at the major Bible-based conservative organizations like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. /

It also has its point people in Congress — including Representative Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, Representative Joe Pitts and Representative Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — all Republicans who have led opposition to various forms of contraception. /

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. In a December 2005 column in The Christian Post titled "Can Christians Use Birth Control?" he wrote: "The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm.. . .A growing number of evangelicals are rethinking the issue of birth control — and facing the hard questions posed by reproductive technologies."[/B


Last edited by Pure : Yesterday at 12:02 PM.


Sex, Science, and Static

Pro-abstinence politics meddles with a CDC conference.
By Amanda Schaffer
Posted Friday, May 5, 2006, at 5:28 PM ET
The upcoming National STD Prevention Conference, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, has just been given an unhealthy shot of ideology. The conference was supposed to include a symposium designed to explore how abstinence-only sex education may undermine other efforts to reduce STDs. The papers and panelists had gone through the customary vetting of peer review. But now the symposium has been abruptly retooled to include two proponents of abstinence programs—and to exclude a well-respected detractor. This is bad news, not only because abstinence-only work is scientifically unfounded but also because the switch represents a new level of government intrusion into the peer-review process of a major scientific meeting.

The biannual STD conference, which takes place next week, is one of the premier professional forums in the country for discussing sexually transmitted diseases. It is expected to draw at least 1,200 academic scientists, STD clinicians, and public-health practitioners. The symposium that's been meddled with was originally titled, "Are Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs a Threat to Public Health?" Its convener, Bruce Trigg of the New Mexico Department of Public Health, proposed a skeptical look at abstinence education, which the Bush administration is funding to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. As moderator, Trigg promised to ground the critique in scientific evidence. His panelists were to be John Santelli of Columbia's School of Public Health and William Smith of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a well-regarded sexual-health organization. Santelli recently wrote a position paper on abstinence-only education for the Society for Adolescent Medicine in which he argued that abstinence programs are medically unethical because they misrepresent and withhold basic health information. /

Trigg's symposium proposal went through all the steps of peer review, including an expert panel, and was accepted. This week, however, a different title and lineup were announced on the conference's Web site. Now called "Public Health Strategies of Abstinence Programs for Youth," the program will no longer be moderated by Trigg, though he and Santelli will still present. Smith, by contrast, has been bumped from the program./

Taking his place are two staunch proponents of abstinence-only education, Eric Walsh and Patricia Sulak. Walsh is a family physician affiliated with Loma Linda University, a Seventh-day Adventist institution in California. His approach to public health is explicitly ideological. "Dr. Walsh seeks to serve the Lord through medical missions and the preaching of the Gospel in all the world," an online bio explains. Sulak, meanwhile, is an obstetrician-gynecologist at Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Texas and the founder of "Worth the Wait," an abstinence program noteworthy for its negative messages about condoms and stereotypical statements about girls and boys. /

So, who's responsible for the switcheroo? Two senior scientists connected to the conference said they were told that Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., had intervened. Souder is a longtime antagonist of comprehensive sexual education who helped to spearhead congressional hearings on the human papillomavirus in 2004 that were a thinly veiled excuse to poke holes in condom use. According to the two senior scientists, Souder reportedly reviewed materials for next week's conference and contacted an official at the Department of Health and Human Services who then leaned on the CDC to add more "balance" to the abstinence discussion. If Smith had not been removed from the panel, the scientists say, the symposium would have been canceled. The CDC confirmed that questions had been raised about the "balance of opinions" on the original symposium. Souder's office did not return repeated phone calls requesting comment./

The new cast of speakers was hastily assembled. Sulak said she first heard of the conference earlier this week. "I don't even know who these people are," she told me, referring to the other members of the symposium. /

Sulak is a good candidate for promoting a pro-abstinence message. "Since when is abstinence until marriage a threat to public health?" she asks. Of course, most experts believe that abstinence is a healthy choice for teenagers. They simply don't believe, based on the evidence, that abstinence-only programs do much good. And they worry that these curricula—which often include medically inaccurate material and disparaging information about condoms—will leave kids ill-equipped to protect themselves, if and when they do choose to have sex. According to Trigg, public-health physicians in New Mexico reviewed Sulak's "Worth the Wait" program and rejected it because of gender bias and medical errors. /

The most vexing thing about this episode is not that STD researchers will apparently have to duke it out with two pro-abstinence ideologues. It's that the event's peer-review process has been undermined. "This conference has always been run as a scientific meeting," said Jonathan Zenilman, chief of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins and president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, one of the groups organizing the conference along with the CDC.

Politicians now appear to be setting different standards. "My sense is that the leadership in Washington just thinks this is business as usual and doesn't even realize that these kinds of things didn't happen before," Santelli said. These things didn't happen. And they shouldn't start to.

Amanda Schaffer is a frequent contributor to Slate.



http://www.pacatholic.org/public policy/Contraception.htm
The Social Case Against Contraception
Kathryn Kolbert, who has spent nearly 20 years promoting and defending abortion, was recently reported to have suggested a shift in focus for abortion advocates.
According to The Express-Times, Ms. Kolbert said those on both sides of the issue should agree that there are too many abortions, young people should talk with their parents about pregnancy, and society should support women who choose to bring their children to birth./

Later in the article, Ms. Kolbert's solutions to these problems are enumerated: money for poor women's health care and infertility research to support women who choose to have children, sex education in schools to promote parent-teen pregnancy discussions, and universal access to contraception to reduce the number of abortions.
/
That's a lot to discuss in a short column, so let's examine Ms. Kolbert's last solution for reducing abortions: universal access to contraception. This sounds like a reasonable solution - more contraception equals less pregnancy equals fewer abortions. This argument seems to resonate even with those who consider themselves staunchly pro-life. But the equation doesn't work./

As access to contraception has grown, so have the number of abortions. The numbers rise in tandem. The abortion rate among teenagers has more than doubled since the government started funding "family planning" through its Title X program.
In recently addressing a Texas Baptist congregation, former abortion provider Carol Everett dramatically illustrated why an increase in contraception results in an increase in abortions. She said, "our doctors prescribed low-dose birth-control pills with a high pregnancy rate, fully aware that they needed to be taken very accurately at the same time every day or pregnancy would occur. This ensured the teens would be my best customers, as teenagers typically are not responsible enough to follow such rigid medication guidelines on their own. I knew their sexual activity would increase from none or once a week to five or seven times a week once they were introduced to this contraception method. Then I could reach my goal: three to five abortions for each teenager between the ages of 13 and 18."/

Just as many people fail to recognize the correlation between contraception and abortion, neither do they realize that so-called contraceptives sometimes act as abortifacients. The IUD, Norplant, Depro Provera, and the pill can all cause early abortions. If the pill does not work to prevent conception, it then works to make the womb a hostile place for the newly-conceived life. In addition to their abortifacient effect, contraceptives also result in other harmful side effects for women, including, some say, an increased risk of breast cancer./

Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae not only explains the Church's position on contraception but also names the likely social consequences of its use. While it may be difficult to convince many non-Catholics on the beautiful theology the Church offers on this subject regarding the unitive and procreative aspects of conjugal love, the social ramifications the Pope predicted are easily recognizable in contemporary society. Contraception is not just bad for Catholics, it's bad for the human person, couples, and for society./

Still, advocacy groups are clamoring for more contraception and universally mandated contraception, allowing little room for conscientious objection to its use or forced provision. We must be bolder in convincing others, including public officials, that promoting contraception makes bad public policy.










-----
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/contraception.htm
HomePage
Prof May Home Page
CONTRACEPTION, GATEWAY TO THE CULTURE OF DEATH

*William E. MayMichael J. McGivney Professor of Moral TheologyJohn Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family atThe Catholic University of AmericaWashington, D.C.

Introduction

In his great encyclical Evangelium vitae Pope John Paul II discusses the relationship between contraception and abortion. To the common claim that contraception, “if made available to all, is the most effective remedy against abortion,” the Holy Father replied:When looked at carefully, this objection is clearly unfounded. It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation to abortion. But the negative values inherent in the “contraceptive mentality”…are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived….

Certainly, from the moral point of view contraception and abortion are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being; the former is opposed to the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment, “You shall not kill” (no. 13.2).

Note that here the Pope does not directly identify contraception as an anti-life kind of act. He characterizes it as an anti-love kind of act, one that, as he says elsewhere, “falsifies” the meaning of the conjugal act as one in which the spouses freely “give” themselves unreservedly to one another. [1] In addition, he specifies that contraception is a violation of marital chastity and thus opposed to the sixth commandment, whereas abortion is opposed to justice and violates the fifth commandment. [2] Nonetheless, he insists that despite their differences “contraception and abortion are very closely connected, as fruits of the same tree” (Evangelium vitae, no. 13); and, as he has pointed out in some of his addresses and homilies, contraception too is opposed to the good of human life. [3]

In pointing out the anti-life character of contraception John Paul II is recalling a long tradition in the Church. There is, in fact, a long and respected Christian tradition, common to both the East and the West and, indeed, to Catholics and Protestants until this tradition was broken by the Church of England at the Lambeth Conference in 1930, comparing contraception to homicide. After citing representative texts from that long tradition, I will then relate the anti-life character of contraception to one of the major roots of the culture of death identified by John Paul II in Evangelium vitae and to his claim, in Familiaris consortio, no. 32. 6, that the “difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle…is much wider a deeper than is usually thought, one which involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.”The Christian Tradition and the Anti-Life Character of Contraception

Passages from St. John Chrysostom, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Si Aliquis canon (part of the Church’s canon law from the mid-thirteenth century until 1917), The Roman Catechism, and the Reformer, John Calvin, illustrate the long Christian tradition stressing contraception’s character as an anti-life kind of act.St. John ChrysostomThis great Father of the Eastern Church spoke in no uncertain terms about the homicidal nature of contraception, writing, for instance, as follows:Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot but you make her a murderess as well. Do you not see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with his law?…Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetuate killing? [4]

St. Thomas AquinasReferring to contraception, the Angelic Doctor declared:Nor, in fact, should it be considered a slight sin for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart from the proper purpose of begetting and bringing up children….the inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural good of preserving the species. Hence, after the sin of homicide whereby a human life already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is impeded. [5]

The “Si Aliquis” CanonThis canon, integrated into the law of the Church in the Decretum Gregorii IX (book 5, title 12, chapter 5) and part of the Church’s canon law from the mid-thirteenth century until the 1917 Code of Canon Law, clearly compared contraception to murder. It declared:If anyone (Si aliquis) for the sake of fulfilling sexual desire or with premeditated hatred does something to a man or a woman, or gives something to drink, so that he cannot generate or she cannot conceive or offspring be born, let him be held as a murderer. [6]

The Roman Catechism (Catechism of the Council of Trent)In its treatment of marriage, this Catechism, used universally in the Church from the end of the sixteenth century until the late twentieth century, had this to say about contraception: “Whoever in marriage artificially prevents conception, or procures an abortion, commits a most serious sin: the sin of premeditated murder.” [7] We ought to note that Pope Paul VI explicitly referred to this text in footnote number 16 appended to Humanae vitae, no. 14.

And finally, we have the testimony of one of the leading figures of the Protestant Reformation.John CalvinCalvin, in his commentary on the sin of Onan (Gen 38), wrote as follows, in language reminiscent in part of that used by St. Thomas Aquinas in the passage already cited:Onan not only defrauded his brother of the right due him, but also preferred his semen to putrefy on the ground….The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between a man and a woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before is born the hoped-for offspring….If any woman ejects a foetus from her womb by drugs, it is reckoned a crime incapable of expiation, and deservedly Onan incurred upon himself the same kind of punishment, infecting the earth by his semen in order that Tamar might not conceive a future human being as an inhabitant of the earth. [8]

These texts should suffice to show that a long Christian tradition regarded contraception as an anti-life kind of act, comparable to homicide and intentional abortion. This tradition was retrieved and developed at length in a 1988 essay by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself. [9]

The argument developed by us is well summarized by Alicia Mosier in an article in First Things. Commenting on Pope Paul’s description of contraception in Humanae vitae, no. 14, where he identifies as immoral every action that proposes to impede procreation, she wroteroposing to render procreation impossible means, simply put, willing directly against the order of intercourse and consequently against life….Couples who contracept introduce a countermeasure…whose sole purpose is to make it impossible for a new life to come to be. Contraception is an act that can only express the will that any baby that might result from this sexual encounter not be conceived….it manifests a will aimed directly against new life. [10]Since contraception is an anti-life kind of an act, in addition to being an anti-love kind of an act (as John Paul II has emphasized), it is clearly linked to the “culture of death.” That it is indeed the “gateway” to this culture will becomes evident if we can show the close bond between contraception and one of the “roots” of this culture identified by John Paul II.
======

 

[imalickin]

and people wonder why i left the church.

 

[LadyJeanne]

My name is Jeanne, and I am pro-contraception. Thankfully, I can obtain birth control easily and affordably (well, condoms, anyway), and thankfully, I can't be stoned or sent to jail for using contraception. I don't believe in hell or religion, so moot point on sins or whether sex is only for marriage/procreation. I have never had an abortion, nor an unwanted pregnancy.

If that makes me anti-life in anyone's eyes - don't care. In fact, I don't fucking care.

 

[Liar]

Pure, could you take the discourse down a notch for us dumbnuts?

Or rather up, to a more abstract and general level. What's the BR, what does the Constitution in general has to do with my stand on the right to contraceptiion?

And the only Griswolds I know of are the National Lampoon variety.

 

[Pure]

Hi Liar, Background history of contraception laws; texts

Background for Europeans and others.

In the US, the Supreme Ct decides whether laws are consistent with the Constitution, which is written down. Attached to the constitution are lots of amendments, but the Bill of Rights is the name for the first ten, passed as a package, and according the the founders intent when they wrote the main document.

Amendment I, for instance provides for a right of freedom of speech, assembly and religion.
Amendment IV forbids unreasonable searches and seizures.
Amendment V calls for 'due process', proceeding by indictments,

The list is stated NOT to exhaust all rights; others are not enumerated.
(Google US Bill of Rights for the whole thing).

By extention, though, a right to write a book, artistic expression, follows from 'free speech,' it's been held. The right to hand out leaflet promoting one's religion, likewise.

Now, many states had laws, into the 1960s forbidding sale of contraceptives, e.g., diaphragms. Since the mid 19th century there have been laws against abortion. The antiabortion laws were largely overturned in the Roe v. Wade decision of the mid 60s. In effect, a "right" to abort in the early stages was stated, and held to follow from other rights, like the right to privacy and to liberty.

The laws forbidding sale of contraceptives were overturned in the Griswold case, which proposed a "right of privacy" esp. as applied to one's body. This was held to follow from other rights specifically mentioned, including liberty and security of one's person. Hence any woman coulld take a pill, insert a diaphragm, and so on, to 'plan' her family, IOW to prevent pregnancy. Incidentally it's not well known, but the New England states, which were Calvinist/Puritan put the laws against contraception on the books, though later on it was the Catholics who kept them there until the Griswold decision.

Since the right has been active especially with the inauguration of GWBush, they wish to appoint judges to the Supreme Court that will allow laws such as the Evangelical protestants and many Roman Catholics want to see on the books (again), e.g., a law against abortion with VERY limited exceptions. Perhaps, some would like a law forbidding sale of condoms to teens, and limiting 'contraceptives' to married couples with a drs. prescription.

The point of the posting is that the 'religious right' is attacking rights on a number of fronts: abortion, contraception, prayer in schools, 'death with dignity' legislation, and so on. All of this agenda is held by the Catholics to promote "a Culture of Life," -- a phrase coined, iirc, by a recent pope. By implication, those with contrary agendas are said to promote the "Culture of Death." Similar moves in argument are made, in you recall, by followers of Ayn Rand.

---
Texts of decisions:

Roe v. Wade (abortion)
http://www.tourolaw.edu/Patch/Roe/

Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception)

http://supreme.justia.com/us/381/479/case.html

 

[R. Richard]

If you are going to be good at something, you need to practice. For something as important as reproduction, you need a lot of practice. Certainly you do not want to produce a baby before you have had lots of reproductive practice to elevate your level of skill. Thus contraception is good, allowing a lot of practice before firing live rounds, so to speak.

JMHO.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

If you are going to be good at something, you need to practice. For something as important as reproduction, you need a lot of practice. Certainly you do not want to produce a baby before you have had lots of reproductive practice to elevate your level of skill. Thus contraception is good, allowing a lot of practice before firing live rounds, so to speak.

JMHO.

*snort*

It's like spinning the biggest roulette wheel ever. You are ALWAYS going to land on a number. You can't PRACTICE spinning the wheel. It's not a game of skill--it's a game of chance.

 

[R. Richard]

*snort*

It's like spinning the biggest roulette wheel ever. You are ALWAYS going to land on a number. You can't PRACTICE spinning the wheel. It's not a game of skill--it's a game of chance.

That's what they told me about dice, before I learned to throw 'em scientific!

 

[Pure]

question for rr, selena, 3113, imalickin

ok, you want to practice, BUT

how to you meet the objection that contraceptives cheapen and distort sex (and make that sort, more frequent), cause irresponsible attitudes, including to health risk, and violate its natural 'end' or goal (procreation).

cheapen--people think, 'fuck whomever, wherever,'
distort-- allow its practice outside of relationship; allow its practice for
teens, even 12 year olds.
irresponsibility--whatever I do, whatever disease you have, I'm
protected.
AND IF NOT, I'LL GET AN ABORTION, i.e., take a life to continue my
casual lifestyle.
health risks: look at the spread of herpes, chlamydia, since the Pill.

violate end-- as the writer in my posting said, the husband makes his
wife a whore (instrument of pleasure, only). he and she avoid carrying
out our (humans') 'natural purpose' of continuing the species.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I have come to the conclusion, that a large segment of the population are simply miserable. No sweat off my nose, but they also seem to have seized upn the theory that it's their job to make sure everyone else is miserable too.

Thier mantra seems to be we can never rest, so long as it is possible that someone, somewhere out there is having fun.

For that whole miserbale lot, is ay, enjoy it, you richly deserve it, but don't try to spread themisery to me, because I happen to like music, a drink occasionally, a cigarete now & again and sex.

Contraception dosen't really have a lot of appliation for me. In fact it has zero. But the idea that I can't decide for myself to use it, does have application. Because I am just as much a citixzen of this nation as they are and I have the same fundamental rights. Including the right to make decision that affect my body.

I am sick of these mysogynistic pricks. I can't even discuss them without the desire to perpatrate a hate crime upon them.

 

[imalickin]

ok, you want to practice, BUT

how to you meet the objection that contraceptives cheapen and distort sex (and make that sort, more frequent), cause irresponsible attitudes, including to health risk, and violate its natural 'end' or goal (procreation).

cheapen--people think, 'fuck whomever, wherever,'
distort-- allow its practice outside of relationship; allow its practice for
teens, even 12 year olds.
irresponsibility--whatever I do, whatever disease you have, I'm
protected.
AND IF NOT, I'LL GET AN ABORTION, i.e., take a life to continue my
casual lifestyle.
health risks: look at the spread of herpes, chlamydia, since the Pill.

violate end-- as the writer in my posting said, the husband makes his
wife a whore (instrument of pleasure, only). he and she avoid carrying
out 'natural purpose' of continuing the species.

so because a woman gives her husband pleasure she's a whore? well call me a whore then. it's only a word without meaning for me. i am in a relationship which is strong and filled with love. the religous right would have me become a baby factory because i like sex?

also, having had a historectomy at age 35 due to cycists on my ovaries, i suppose i should not be having sex because i am unable to procreate? i am just a whore to be used by my husband for pleasure now?

i have two words for the religous right - fuck you!

as far as society goes - i believe there would have been little difference in peoples attitudes over the last 40 or so years, just an explosion in the population. families with hugh quantities of children that they were unable to support. children dying of starvation, a problem that exists even to this day. a problem which on the surface, should be preventable, but because of logistics isn't.

oh, i have already had my 2.5 children before i was turned into a whore. we planned our family. even if i hadn't had my insides ripped out, i would have been on the pill and spent all the time i would have spent popping out baby after baby each year with the two i already had. and giving my husband pleasure like a good little whore.

 

[R. Richard]

cheapen--people think, 'fuck whomever, wherever,'

I sure would like to get a list of hot looking babes in my area that think that way!

distort-- allow its practice outside of relationship; allow its practice for
teens, even 12 year olds.

I used to live in San Diego, PB specifically. I can tell you that I have seen 16-year-old female children in micro bikini wiggle it into a bar in PB and turn on every guy in the place [R. Richard most definitely included!], only to be thrown out of the place by the ever vigilant bartender. Hell, in OB they might even serve the girl! [Belgeon, feel free to chime in here!] I am not attracted to young children, but a 16-year-old girl is not necessarily what I consider a young child. I do avoid girls under the age of 18-year-old on the "15 will get you 20" rule.

irresponsibility--whatever I do, whatever disease you have, I'm
protected. AND IF NOT, I'LL GET AN ABORTION, i.e., take a life to continue my
casual lifestyle.

When I pick up "Suzy Creamcheese, I dump her fast!

health risks: look at the spread of herpes, chlamydia, since the Pill.

Much of the STD problem actually started with the war in Vietnam. Guys came back with diseases and versions of diseases never before seen in this country. However, it is true that the more you screw, the greater the chance of getting an STD.

violate end-- as the writer in my posting said, the husband makes his wife a whore (instrument of pleasure, only). he and she avoid carrying
out our (humans') 'natural purpose' of continuing the species.

Pure, just because a woman walks like a whore, dresses like a whore and talks like a whore, it does not mean that she is actually a whore. You damn well better get that stright or get really good at kung-fu or some similar art.

 

[Pure]

hey, some of my best friends are 'hoes'

---

For the sake of argument, though, I'll try to state the Catholic and sometimes evangelical position. Since they're rather shy in these parts.

Sex is a good part of the world that is connected to procreation, and facilitates the 1-1 bonding, in adulthood, of husband and wife so that the offspring may be cared for and educated.

Sexual release in masturbation is pointless (a minor offense against nature, when in the young), since it's not conducive to that end. Friggin alone works against pairing. It represents the absolute separation of the pleasure mechanism from its purpose. In the grip of the masturbatory urge, the man would as soon fuck a watermelon as a real woman.

A man's 'use' of a prostitute is wrong in part because it amounts to masturbation. She's just a receptacle, like the watermelon.

The 'experiments' of teen sex are fraught with danger, since the boy and girl are 1) self absorbed, and 2) not responsible. Commonly one is using the other, and there is little liklihood the 'pair' will exist more than a few months, though the child born to a teen is there for life, as are certain diseases (herpes, PID). Premarital or teen sex is a bit like smoking in a gas station. The contraceptive methods, as used by them, are almost bound to fail at some point, leading to various nasty consequences.

The proper place of sex is marriage; it's a beautiful and god ordained part of marriage, intended to serve God's (Nature's) end, 'human life.' Take away the husband and wife's openness to children, to procreation, and you essentially get two people, each using the other as a masturbation tool. Further, given their purpose of preventing life, they will almost inevitably take the next step, a horrible crime, using abortion as they say 'to take care of the accident, ' i.e kill the preborn child,

The 'course of nature' is for LIFE--that from a coupling, divinely sanctioned (marriage) and forever, comes children, life renewed. The married couple is an arrangement established in the beginning, to bear fruit.

Of course a couple need not have a child every year. So they abstain for a period when they don't want children, rather than 'chemically treat' the ovaries of the woman so they don't ovulate. Chemically to induce sterility in a marriage would be like taking a fine fruit tree and dosing it with chemicals that prevent it ever from flowering or bearing fruit.

It follows from the above, that the main place where 'contraception' is morally justified is within a marriage for treatment/prevention of a serious medical condition (ovarian disease) or where a pregnancy would likely be fatal. Thus no contraception should be OTC.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Given the amount of recreational sex in Nature (monkeys, bonobos, chimps, dolphins), I find it amusing that Nature is touted to argue for the "sex for procreation in marriage only" rule. Those who use this argument know nothing of Nature. They just assume that they do, because Rev. So-and-So taught them that such and such verse in the Bible means that evolution is impossible and we were all created and fell in the Garden of Eden, starting with Adam and Eve, etc. ad nauseum Nothing against all Christians. Just this sort who make their fellow Christians look bad.

 

[LadyJeanne]

So where did that 'sex is for procreation only in marriage' idea come from?

 

[rgraham666]

So where did that 'sex is for procreation only in marriage' idea come from?

From a bunch of men who felt they weren't getting enough.

 

[LadyJeanne]

From a bunch of men who felt they weren't getting enough.

Actually, they weren't getting any, right?

...sex on a limited basis for limited purposes within the social contract of marriage worked best for controlling the unruly, orgy-mad masses?

 

[cantdog]

I don't sweat this subject. Not even a little. I can't see the moral implications with a microscope. Reliable contraception is nothing less than a boon to humanity. If there are religionists with a beef about sex, let 'em take it up with God. Who invented sex, if they are to be believed.

If an omnipotent being invented sexuality, why in hell would that being shit Its pants every time some sheila showed some tit?

Same with contraception. It makes life better, dammit. Better. Get lost with your moral objections.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Actually, they weren't getting any, right?

...sex on a limited basis for limited purposes within the social contract of marriage worked best for controlling the unruly, orgy-mad masses?

From what I read, that's only true of maybe half of them. Sodomy, for instance, was once called the "monk's disease". Just an example.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

So where did that 'sex is for procreation only in marriage' idea come from?

It's not, so far as I am aware, stated anywhere in the bible.

Like a lot of other cotrinaire positions, it's the position the churchhas adopted, based on their interpretation of tangeitally related verses.

By and large, the doctrinaire positions aren't supportable by chapter and verse quotations. there is, for example, no injunction against abortion in the bible, although women of the era almost certainly knew of the qualities of certain plants. instead, the position is rooted in something tangeital, thou shalt not kill.

There is a very strong prohibition against gay men, but nothing against lesbians in dueteronomy. The doctinaire position is that both are equally abhorent and there is a reference to it in another chapter, one of Paul's epistiles IIRC.

At base, the majority of those who are loosely grouped as the religious right, can't agree on what most verses say or mean. They also don't agree on a huge range of issues, from the nature of god, to the nature of communion with him. What theyhave in common, is that they are politically active, and to strengthen themselves politically, they have allied with each other. They are all pushing for a thoracy, and they all are confident once they get rid of the pesky civil liberities and other protections, they will win the religious bloodbath and their particular version of religion will be the one that rules.

On any position the religious right adopts, thre are also people who hold that position with no reference to the religious right. Those poor souls end up feeling like they are victims of the religious right no less than those of us who feel victimized by their polciy, because they end up feeling like voicing their conviction is aninvitation to get hung in effigy as a fundy.

Just about any position you happen to like, you can grab a bible, cut and paste verses, mangle context and make "inferences" to support it. Or, if that's too much work, just declare God has spoken to you and exlained that this, really means this. AS PT barnum observed, you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the public, so too, you'll never be alone, you can always find some folks who will buy into your vision if you are charismatic enough.

The truth is, Jesus came along before Dupont. Paul was writing his epistles well before Merk was incorporated. Muhommad was giving practical battlefield advice well before trinity. So Jesus didn't have a position on rubbers. Paul didn't have one on birthcontrol pills. Muhommad didn't discuss the morality of employing nukes. Whenever you apply one of these gent's positions to the modern world, you are making an inference. And the Fundys are no different.

They will eat a big breackfast of southern fried ham and biscuts, then go out and protest that God said homosexuals are abominations. Of course pigs are unclean animals, so according to deuteronomy eating one makes you an abomination just as well. Also acording to the bible, all sin is equal to god, it's all abhorent to him. So literally, eating ham and having butt sex are equally abhorent.

It's all in where you draw your inferences. All in where you think god really meant that and wehre he was just kidding.

Or if you prefer

It's all about how much you are willing to invest in critical thinking and assessment. The less you are willing to invest, the more you are willing to take on some "learned" person's position. And if you aren't willing to invest any, you'll just take their position hook, line and sinker as being right.

So when did god say, "Look boy, that pecker I gave you ain't for pleasureing yourself or your wife. It's solely to get your sperms to her eggs to make babies. I don't want none of this masturbating or seeing prostitutes or jerking off with your buddies"?

I believe thats in there right before he declared using nuclear weapons was right out. Or maybe before he mentioned that lipstick and the bob hair do were straight from satan. Or possibly right after he declared Jazz was hell's own chior music.

 

[cantdog]

Verily, Colly, thou hittest the nail on its flat little head.

The Catholics have a mechanism to update the Message: their Popes. "What thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven..." It gives them a way to pronounce on the new stuff with authority from the Writ. The Mormons have a tradition that Prophets are coming along all the time. They pay a lot of attention to the messages which certain sorts of dreams might be trying to convey. Quakers have a mechanism to invent prophecy anew, as well.

A lot of them have evolved methods to move beyond the static interpretaion of millenially-old texts. I think we need that, some of us.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Verily, Colly, thou hittest the nail on its flat little head.

The Catholics have a mechanism to update the Message: their Popes. "What thou bindest on earth shall be bound in heaven..." It gives them a way to pronounce on the new stuff with authority from the Writ. The Mormons have a tradition that Prophets are coming along all the time. They pay a lot of attention to the messages which certain sorts of dreams might be trying to convey. Quakers have a mechanism to invent prophecy anew, as well.

A lot of them have evolved methods to move beyond the static interpretaion of millenially-old texts. I think we need that, some of us.

The really funny thing is, despite my sarcasm, i believe the bible has a great deal to say today that is as pertinent now as it was when it was written. The parts that are important, the ones that speak to salvation, to love, to forgiveness and to finding a better way to live have resonance still.

I know it isn't the case. I mean I don't want to believe people are that viciously evil, but it seems to me the religious right has taken the trivial, minor and vbindictive parts and rasied them up to be the parts that are enduring. While relegating the parts I think are enduring to side notes.

 

[R. Richard]

...sex on a limited basis for limited purposes within the social contract of marriage worked best for controlling the unruly, orgy-mad masses?

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you do not understand your own heritage.

The real driving force behind marriage was agriculture. In a hunter/gatherer society it is actually an advantage for a woman to have as many sexual partners as she can reasonably manage. If the male thinks that a woman's child is his, he will usually help feed the kid. In an agricultural society, it becomes very important to know who owns the land. Thus, monagamous marriage is supposed to determine that a child is the product of one specific man and one specific woman and the child will have rights to inherit the family farm.

Just what I have read.

 

[cantdog]

Well, really. The transition to agriculture from tribal hunting and fruit-picking was a hell of a long time back, dude. Five thousand years, give or take.

Ass.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you do not understand your own heritage.

The real driving force behind marriage was agriculture. In a hunter/gatherer society it is actually an advantage for a woman to have as many sexual partners as she can reasonably manage. If the male thinks that a woman's child is his, he will usually help feed the kid. In an agricultural society, it becomes very important to know who owns the land. Thus, monagamous marriage is supposed to determine that a child is the product of one specific man and one specific woman and the child will have rights to inherit the family farm.

Just what I have read.

I understand that - that's the 'social contract of marriage' part I mentioned.

But how does the 'masturbation is a sin' and 'sex is for procreation only' fit into that? Why is it necessary to avoid masturbation? Or to have sex for fun in marriage? Why only for babies? What does that have to do with anything?