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Religion is and isn’t special

Religion is and isn’t special published on 1 Comment on Religion is and isn’t special
Passerotti, God the Father

The primary reason, it seems, that people are now telling Dan Savage that he shouldn’t have apologized– even in as qualified and precise terms as he did– is because it gives the impression that one should not criticize religious beliefs. And if one does so, and it offends, the appropriate thing to do is to relent and express sincere regret. The basic impression of someone who hasn’t dug into the details and/or prefers not to consider them is that Dan Savage insulted Christianity, Christian students were offended, and so Savage apologized to them. Examining the situation beyond that very superficial level reveals all three of these statements to be inaccurate, but people who are just fine with the idea of insulting religious beliefs are concerned to see Savage, ordinarily very much just fine with doing such himself, suddenly appear to acquiesce to those he disturbed. It looks like appeasement, like giving up legitimacy and rhetorical ground.

The “spell” referenced in the title of philosopher Dan Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell is not religion itself, but the protective aura of deference surrounding discussion of it. Dennett argues that if we aim to properly discuss the origins and effects of religion, we can’t be held back by barricades of etiquette which allow the description of religious beliefs and practices as true and/or moral, but not false and/or immoral. Further, we must reject the proposition that religion is a sui generis pursuit, noncontinuous with other kinds of human thought and behavior or even with other kinds of non-human animal thought and behavior. Does this mean saying religion is just like all other kinds of basic things humans– and even other animals– do? No, of course not. The fact that it has a name, constitutes a category, suggests that there are reasons for saying that some things people do, say, and believe are religious whereas others aren’t. However it’s also true that religious speech is a kind of human speech, religious behavior is a kind of human behavior, and religious beliefs are kinds of human beliefs. These are all things that humans conceive, live, and do with their human brains and their human bodies in their human societies and cultures. Studying the cognition of religion– the production and perpetuation of it in terms of how minds produce and perpetuate all other kinds of human activity– means starting with this recognition.

It sounds pretty basic and non-controversial, except when you consider that there are believers who are so certain of the one-of-a-kind, completely separate and special nature of their beliefs that they won’t even call them religion. Instead you get “I’m spiritual; not religious” or “Other people have religion; I have a personal relationship with Jesus.” To them, “religion” is the category of all of the failed, false, misguided attempts of humanity to reach the divine, whereas they have the real thing. To say otherwise is not only mistaken but offensive, precisely because this body of beliefs has been declared so very personal. You wouldn’t question out loud whether someone loves his mother, and for that same reason you shouldn’t question whether he loves his Lord– or how he knows he has a Lord in the first place. The problem is, of course, that loving someone is a highly subjective and emotional matter, whereas gods, spirits, ghosts, demons, souls, and any other entities which are supernatural but asserted to exist objectively are not. Whether God exists as creator of the universe and answerer of prayers, performer of miracles, and possible hater of gays is an objective proposition whose truth or falsity matters. The truth or falsity of the objective existence of all things matter, of course, but you’d think especially that of the supposed origin of life, the universe, and everything.

So claims of empirical truth that come from religion are just like all other empirical truth claims in terms of being subject to the same demands for evidence and justification. Atheists by definition are just people who don’t believe in any gods, but atheists who are also skeptics will point out that they disbelieve because they have searched for such evidence and justification and found them to be lacking. The case for God did not convince them. This is obviously not the entire story, however…atheists are not rational androids who simply  applied logic to the proposition that gods or the entirety of supernatural agents existing and then concluded that they don’t. Being human, atheists are subject to the same intuitions and biases that affect everyone else– and that’s where things get interesting.

See, there’s reason to believe that religion is intuitive….that we suspect and come to believe in the existence of “spiritual beings” because of ordinary features that come with being human. We are social animals, particularly keen to detect and discern the motivations of other creatures with agency. We anthropomorphize at the drop of a hat. We have an existential sense that makes questions like “What’s it all about, anyway? Why are we here?” seem not only sensical but important– especially in the face of crisis. We are incapable of knowing what it’s like to be dead, because there is no way to be conscious of complete non-consciousness (no, sleeping does not count), so accounts of life after death seem compelling and we speculate about what Grandma must be thinking and feeling or even doing right now, even though she passed on years ago. Participating in religious rituals makes other participants feel like family, even if they aren’t actually kin, and being willing to expend resources to do so presents a powerful signal to others of our commitment to the group. We tend to believe in a just universe— the idea that immoral acts must be punished and good ones rewarded, somehow in the fabric of existence if not through the justice systems humans have created. There is just all of this stuff that human brains are prone to do that makes belief in supernatural entities and moral codes likely, if by no means determined. And of course there’s the fact that each individual human born into the world doesn’t have to take on the responsibility of creating a religion from scratch– there is almost certainly one available for him or her, handed down from his or her parents virtually from birth.

Some recent research has indicated that more intuitive thinkers tend to be more likely to also believe in a personal god. An intuitive thinker is a person who tends to think with his or her “gut,” allowing feelings to guide conclusions about the rightness or wrongness or even truth or falsity of different propositions. Intuitive thinking is reflexive and quick, and– let’s be honest– how most of us think, most of the time. It’s not a bad thing; in fact without intuitions we would be utterly lost. We just don’t have the time to make all of the thousands of decisions we make in a day by taking a time out, sitting down, and pondering what to do while taking every possible factor into consideration, weighing the pros and cons, and making an inductively or deductively reasonable conclusion…which charitably but falsely assumes that that’s what we are inclined to do in the first place.

“The human mind is designed to reason adaptively, not truthfully or even necessarily rationally.“

It would be far too cut and dry to say that intuitive thinking is affective, feeling-based, whereas counter-intuitive thinking is…well, thinking-based, but let’s say that counter-intuitive thinking is more reflective. It’s slower and requires a little more effort. Well, a little effort, period, as opposed to simply allowing your first emotionally-laden conclusion to rule the day. It’s intuitive for a religious person to think about God as behaving more or less like a super-human— having amazing powers and knowledge, but still doing things like focusing on one thing at a time and using the most direct physical means to cause events. Having a gender, opinions, and emotions. That’s the “personal god” the most intuitive person is most likely to believe in. I like to say that religion is intuitive but theology is counter-intuitive– theology is where you will find descriptions of God as a genderless amorphous “ground of being” whose behavior (if you can call it that) is complex and ubiquitous. This god is ultimate, and by that I don’t mean “super awesome” but rather “distant and removed.” This is not a god who intervenes directly in human endeavors by means of causing either catastrophes or miracles in order to influence our behavior. That is a proximate, personal god, the kind of being Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell would describe as punishing liberals every time a natural disaster or terrorist attack occurs. This is the god Rick Perry ordered Texans to pray to for relief from drought and threats to property rights, and who he, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain all believe told them to run for president. The god George W. Bush says told him to go to war.

You can probably guess the dangers I see in making God that personal, that proximate. But thoughtful theists generally recoil from it. They recognize the problems in claiming that God subverts human choices (“free will”) to specially punish or reward politicians, the enemies of fundamentalists, or football teams, not to mention directly cause or inhibit natural events such as tornadoes, tsunamis, or the processes of natural selection. Evolution is not a threat to a person who doesn’t demand that God be proximate. The plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover were mostly Christian, a couple of them even Sunday school teachers, but nevertheless they were branded atheists for supporting the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools unqualified by disclaimers questioning its validity. From the perspective of someone who believes in proximate, personal, In-Your-Face God, everyone who isn’t might as well be a nonbeliever. And nonbelievers are the enemy.

This is the type of person who views critique of his or her religion as bullying or blasphemy, who places matters of faith off limits to critical discussion while simultaneously holding that God intercedes directly in world events in a perceptible ways on a regular basis– that is, that God’s existence, nature, and behavior are easily empirical matters. This is the type of person who, while virtually ubiquitous, must not be allowed to dictate the rules of the conversation. If they are, the definition of “respect” becomes “behave as though my beliefs are true,” when in actual fact a) it is possible to maintain that a belief– any belief– is false respectfully, and b) respect can and often should be abandoned when considering beliefs that are ridiculous and/or obviously harmful. It’s not a choice between understanding these beliefs and openly forming opinions about their truth or falsity, how morally acceptable or objectionable they are– we can and should strive to do all of the above. With these as a simultaneous goal, it becomes easier to identify when being critical crosses over into being an asshole and when being empathetic and understanding crosses over into being a doormat.

Religion is special.
And it isn’t.

Conservative group to gather, bemoan 40 year old advance in sexual freedom

Conservative group to gather, bemoan 40 year old advance in sexual freedom published on 2 Comments on Conservative group to gather, bemoan 40 year old advance in sexual freedom

No, I’m not kidding. And no, this is not from The Onion, though it sounds like it. The Family Research Council is holding a symposium on Wednesday, March 21st, to get together and talk about a terrible moment in history. The title is 40 Years Since Eisenstadt v. Baird: A Look at the High Court’s Legal Attack on Marriage. Eisenstadt v. Baird, whose ruling was actually delivered on March 22, 1972, was when SCOTUS decided that unmarried people should have the same access to contraceptives that married people do, invalidating state laws to the contrary. Here is the FRC’s statement on the purpose of their event:

On March 22nd, 1972, the Supreme Court undermined the boundaries and benefits of marriage. In the decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, and implicitly sanctioned unmarried non-procreative sexual intimacy. While the decision may seem archaic and insignificant by modern sexual standards, Eisenstadt v. Baird dealt a decisive blow to the legal and cultural norm that marriage was the institution for the full expression of the sexual relationship between man and woman. The decision and its legal consequences affect us today. Forty years ago, the Court ruled that unmarried couples could not be denied their birth control. Today, the Federal government is forcing us to share the cost, for said contraception and some states are giving marital status to homosexual relationships. Join us on March 21st, as legal and social science experts Helen Alvaré and Pat Fagan explain why the Court’s decision matters and how anyone who cares about the family should understand the legal landscape and the social consequences of this momentous decision.

It’s telling that the final paragraph refers to “the family,” and not “families.” This is for the same reason that the organization is called the Family Research Council in the first place– to seize hold of the notion of “family” and fight with tooth and nail against it referring to any other arrangement than one biological mother and one biological father who are married and have sex only after marriage. I would say “for the purpose of procreation,” but apparently the FRC is a-okay with sanctioning married non-procreative intimacy, just not the unmarried kind.

And of course, they likewise want to grab onto the word “marriage” and insist that only one meaning of the word is appropriate– theirs. That’s the only way to describe the SCOTUS ruling as an “attack on marriage” with a straight face, when it did absolutely nothing to actually prevent people from getting married (just as, when it eventually acknowledges the right of gays to marry, it will do nothing to prevent anyone from getting married but conservatives will likewise again complain about being “attacked”). Presumably the FRC wants all children to be born to married parents, so their opposition to Eisenstadt here amounts to an objection to unmarried people being able to have sex, period. Thinking about this, bear in mind that not only did 95% of Americans have premarital sex in 2002, but that (evenly balanced as to sex) 70% had it in the 1930’s.

The people going to the FRC gathering on Wednesday should consider that their great-grandparents might well have had sex outside of marriage, and used contraceptives in the process to prevent pregnancy. Yes, I know it’s not fun to think about your ancestors having sex, period. But just for the sake of this thought experiment, it’s important. It’s important for the sake of remembering that no matter how much you want children to be born to parents joined in marriage, the solution is not to try and force unmarried people into marriage by preventing them from being able to have sex without risk of conception. For one thing, it should be obvious by now that that doesn’t work. For another, people make their own sex lives, both before and after marriage (or totally outside of it, for those of us who are not keen on marriage to begin with). It’s possible that if Eisenstadt had not turned out in the way it did, there might still be states with laws on the books preventing unmarried couples from having access to birth control. In which case we could expect to see the number of married couples skyrocket, but the demand for birth control remain the same if it doesn’t escalate. Because people who want to have sex without procreating will do so. And they are the majority, all of the time.

Misconceptions on contraception

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Do you know how this stuff works?

This ongoing battle over the significance of contraception has come as quite a shock to those of us for whom it has been a normal, completely non-controversial part of life for so long. But perhaps it shouldn’t be. Attacks on its importance have come in large part from people who don’t know how contraception works, and that number will surely increase if measures like Utah’s push to ban instruction on birth control, homosexuality, and any kind of extra-marital sex in public schools succeed and proliferate. What’s especially worrisome is not just that Americans are stunningly ignorant of the varieties of contraception, their function, and their effectiveness, but that they aren’t aware of their own ignorance:

Jenna had been living with her boyfriend for several months when he floated his own contraceptive theory. Jenna was taking her birth control pills continuously, meaning that she was skipping the pack’s built-in placebo pills in order to stop her period. At some point, her boyfriend discovered how she had managed to avoid the monthly ritual. “I was thinking you were just magical, like a unicorn,” he told her. “I mean, you hope one exists somewhere, but you never think you’ll get to live with one…a cool chick with no period drama that has sex all month long.” He added, “The guys thought I was making it up.” (Boyfriends could not be reached for comment for this story).
According to a new study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, many young American men exhibit attitudes toward contraception that could best be described as “magical.” The study [PDF] surveyed American singles ages 18–29 about their perceptions about and use of contraception. Twenty-eight percent of young men think that wearing two condoms at a time is more effective than just one. Twenty-five percent think that women can prevent pregnancy by douching after sex. Eighteen percent believe that they can reduce the chance of pregnancy by doing it standing up.
For the most part, men lagged behind women on the pregnancy prevention front. And when the study dipped into the realm of “female” forms of birth control, the gender divide intensified. In the study, 29 percent of men and 32 percent of women reported that they know “little or nothing about condoms.” When asked to rate their knowledge of birth control pills, 78 percent of men reported to be clueless, compared to 45 percent of women.

According to that study, most young people (the American singles in that age group) 
a) are sexually active (78% in the past year),
b) believe (94% male, 86% female) that pregnancy should be planned, and
c) say that it’s important (88% male and 86% female) to avoid pregnancy right now.
Nonetheless, 19% no contraception at all and 24% use it inconsistently. 17% of women and 19% admitted that it is quite likely that they will engage in unprotected sex in the next year. 31% of women said that they had had an unplanned pregnancy. 
Why the discrepancy? A combination of ignorance (lack of information) and false belief (misinformation). Because these men and women did not receive sufficient instruction on contraception, they have relied on “folk” knowledge about how it works, which can make contraception seem unreliable at best and actually suspicious and harmful at worst:

Despite the myths, inflated fears, gaps in knowledge and more, nearly
all unmarried young adults say they have the knowledge they need to
avoid an unplanned pregnancy.  • 90% believe (and 66% strongly believe) they have all the knowledge they
need to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. Moreover, many are fatalistic about fertility and pregnancy… • 38% of men and 44% of women believe “it doesn’t matter whether you use
birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.”
• Hispanics (49%) and non-Hispanic blacks (50%) are more likely than nonHispanic whites (34%) to believe that birth control doesn’t matter much.  …and many are suspicious of the whole birth control enterprise.  • 31% overall (40% of non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics) agree with the
statement, “the government and public health institutions use poor and
minority people as guinea pigs to try out new birth control methods.”
• 32% overall (44% of non-Hispanic blacks and 46% of Hispanics) agree with
the statement, “the government is trying to limit blacks and other minority
populations by encouraging the use of birth control.”

The study is full of other disturbing statistics, which you should definitely read for yourself. The take-home message, I think, is that young Americans are woefully misinformed about contraception, and even though the study says that only 13% of this group believe it to be morally wrong, misunderstanding how contraception works and how well it works can feed into the creation of beliefs about who needs contraception, and how much, and why. Erroneous beliefs that foster prejudice and, worse, grossly mistaken policy. Like in Arizona, where legislators are trying to make it possible for your employer to know whether you’re using birth control and, if they have a problem with that, fire you for it.

One can’t help but wonder how well they understand birth control. My hunch is: not well at all.  

Pamela Geller is vile

Pamela Geller is vile published on 1 Comment on Pamela Geller is vile
Previously I knew Pamela Geller as a “creeping Sharia” proponent, the kind of person who makes a living off making Americans as afraid of Muslims as possible to the point of encouraging us to refuse them the rights we would ordinarily recognize as existing for any American; for any human. She is that, but her reaction to the Fluke/Limbaugh matter shows that she is a female misogynist as well, past the ranks of Ann Coulter. There’s a special category of political commentator that should place them beyond consideration by anyone who strives to be rational. This category I called “unhinged,” and Limbaugh and Coulter have dwelt in it for a very long time. Now, Geller makes me wonder if another category is needed for the super extra unhinged, the kind who might need to be institutionalized but instead are treated as a relevant political voice by…well, some. It’s hard to tell how many. 

Exhibit A:

A 30-year-old poses as a 23-year-old, chooses a Catholic University to attend at $65,000 per year, and cannot afford ALL the birth control pills she needs… so she wants the US taxpayers to pay for her rampant sexual activity. By all accounts she is banging it five times a day. She sounds more like a prostitute to me. She must have an gyno bill to choke a horse (pun intended). Calling this whore a slut was a softball.

Exhibit B:

I have had it up to here with Fluke’s vagina. Seriously. Clearly she’s a plant. I don’t have to exalt or honor women who debase and lower themselves to meat status. I will not honor this pig. I will not teach children to debase themselves. I will not teach children that this is “empowerment.” I explain it to young girls this way. Go into any Wal-Mart or Target. There are hundreds of black handbags for sale in bins, hung on display walls, all cheap or moderately priced, and they can’t give them away. Now  go into Hermes. There is one black, gorgeous, impossible to get, crocodile Birkin bag. There are waiting lists for this bag. No one can get that bag. It costs a fortune and still everyone wants that bag.
Be that bag. I despise the women’s movement. I despise what they have done to women (and men). Just look at Fluke. She is a full-fledged activist and an embarrasment [sic] to decent young women. 

Note: Sandra Fluke is not the one who made this about her sex life. Sandra Fluke did not make any mention of her sexual activity, and it wouldn’t matter if she had. In no way did Fluke pretend to be anything other than what she is, and it’s not her fault if conservative commentators made assumptions which proven to be erroneous. And Sandra Fluke is not the one comparing women to merchandise.

Women aren’t an ideological group. We are a biological/cultural one, so there’s no sense in which the behavior of one woman should be considered an embarrassment to the rest of us. But if one should be considered such, it doesn’t seem like Fluke is that woman.

What Rush hath wrought

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On the Daily Show clip in my previous post, Jon Stewart begins (after introducing the show) by noting that Rush Limbaugh’s profession is to be a loathsome human being. It’s just a matter of fact– he’s good at it, and has done it for over two decades with considerable success. But it’s easy to forget that there are people who think otherwise. People who actually take him seriously. People who think that he has things of value to say. People who pass such messages on to their children. Who then pass them on to other children.

A Daily Kos member going by the name “beantown mom” posted an account entitled “I’ve spent the past two days trying to convince my 16 y/o she is not a slut.” Long story short: her daughter had to go on hormonal birth control due to menorrhagia and secondary dysmenorrhea. Her daughter then went to a five day camp for band members, during which any prescription medicine had to be kept by supervisors and distributed at the beginning of each day to those who required it. Pretty standard procedure, right? Here’s what happened next:

Thursday, my daughter came home from school and seemed to be a little out of sorts. I chalked it up to being tired and trying to get caught up on homework and such; however, I did ask her if everything was alright and she said yes, she thought so- it was just that at lunch there were some girls whispering and pointing at her in lunch and then they would break out into little fits of laughter. She couldn’t figure out why they were singling her out but admitted that a couple of the girls were ones she had once had a problem with. They were the “popular” girls, 2 of whom were cheerleaders, and last year they had singled her out calling her names and such when they got bored and, in my daughter’s words, “ran out of girls to harass and make fun of in lunch”. I gave it no further consideration- we went on about our business of getting homework done, etc. Friday morning, I took my kids to school and headed off to my mother’s to do some errands and such for my family. With the impending storms and bad weather bearing down on us, I sent my daughter a text that I would pick her up from school. My son had baseball so I only had to worry about her getting home. I pulled into the parking lot and saw that she was standing inside the doors at school, her head down and shoulders shaking- I thought she was laughing at something someone said or was looking at her phone reading something funny. I honked and waived [sic] to motion her out, not sure if she saw me. She never looked up, just pushed open the door and practically ran to the car. She flung open the door and I started to say something about the wind and rain, but stopped mid sentence because of the look on my child’s face! She was sobbing, face streaked with tears, cheeks red and eyes so swollen I could hardly see her beautiful brown eyes- I slammed the car into park right in the middle of the parking lot and asked her what was wrong.

Apparently I’m a slut- a whore- a bitch who is screwing every guy in school! 

She was speaking but it wasn’t making sense- who said this? What are you talking about? For a minute we were talking over each other and finally I said just get in the car and tell me what is going on! She handed me a wrinkled piece of paper. I could tell it had been opened and closed, folded and unfolded wadded up and straightened out so many times it almost looked like it was going to fall apart in my hands. 

Little miss innocent, huh? Whatever slut- you take birth control pills so you can f*&# every guy in school! What a joke- u are nothin but a whore! Pretty bad when some guy on the radio who isn’t afraid to tell the truth has to break it down for everybody- if u on the Pill u are nothing but a skank ass ho! My mom said girls on the pill are tramps who just wanna get laid and don’t care about nothin- is that how u are?

I thought I was going to throw up! I was crying- crying for my sweet daughter who was in a puddle on the front seat of my car, crying because I was so angry I didn’t know what to do first! I drove home with one arm around my daughter and one hand on the wheel; I was saying things but for the life of me I can’t remember any of what I said now. I just wanted to take the pain away from my child! I wanted to make her stop crying, wanted to erase all the horrible pain that she was feeling.

I read about this at Pandagon, where Amanda Marcotte has a pointed and optimistic essay about the ridiculous effort to portray the vast majority of American women as somehow shameful because they have or will rely on birth control at some point in their lives. That group which, statistically speaking, almost certainly includes both the bully who wrote the note above and her mother. Amanda describes such shaming as “backsliding” in a culture where hormonal birth control has been a realistic option for three generations:

These kinds of attacks on individual women—in this case, a 16-year-old girl in high school—are only effective in an environment where the bullies can imply that using contraception and/or being sexually active is deviant. The idea is to isolate the victim, make them feel weird and different, and terrify them for it. But when you have the President in the White House talking about contraception as a normal part of health care for pretty much all women, it becomes clear that being sexually active and using contraception is the national norm, as wholesome and American as apple pie. The high levels of support for the HHS mandate suggests that most Americans are already there. This panic reaction is the last gasp of the old order trying to turn back the clock, to a time where it was scandalous for people to live together without being married, to when women who have sex with their boyfriends worry about their reputation, and when contraception was seen as embarrassing, and so some people tried their luck without getting any, and usually failed.  The thing is, as this example above shows, backsliding is possible. (If anyone in my high school was bullied for using contraception, I don’t remember it.) Which is why it’s more important than ever to talk about sex, and specifically how normal it is, how universal it is, what the benefits are, and to shame anyone who would say otherwise. We have the numbers on our side. We just need the courage. Remember, the people who think there’s something bad about women just because they fuck are the weirdoes [sic] here. Don’t be afraid to really believe that and act on it. 

Hear, hear. The word that keeps coming up for me is “irrelevant.” Birth control is normal, uncontroversial, and necessary for men and women, married and unmarried, with children or without, young and old. People who try to pretend otherwise in the name of sexual propriety and are attempting to use this issue as a means to shame American women in general (and specifically) are badly out of touch, have nothing of value to say on this vital topic, and have shown themselves to be truly…irrelevant.

If you still need some levity after the above (I sure do), check out the Mother Jones “Are You A Slut” flow chart. It’s ridiculous in its accuracy and accurate in its ridiculousness.

Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday…

Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday… published on No Comments on Here’s Rachel Maddow yesterday…

…demonstrating why dummies are more dangerous than dicks:

You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life.

You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life. published on 4 Comments on You want the blue pill; we’ll pay for it. You want the red pill; Rush Limbaugh owns your sex life.
In Limbaugh Land, consumption of these is
determined not by time but by sluttiness.

I’m a big believer– and try to be a big practioner– of giving people the benefit of the doubt in disagreements. Because it’s a nice thing to do, yes, but also because it’s way too easy to do things like assume the conclusion of a person’s position and then attribute that to them as if it’s what they have in mind and support (“You support legalization of marijuana, I think that legalization of marijuana means that teenagers will get stoned and run over small children at the drive-through,* therefore you must want teenagers running over kids at the drive-through.”) And there’s the additional fact that if you interpret what someone says in the best possible light, they are far less likely to complain that you put words in their mouth. In fact, you might even improve on what they were trying to say.

However….it’s hard to give Rush Limbaugh any benefits for making the following argument:

1. Women who want health insurance to cover birth control are asking to be paid to have sex.
2. Therefore, they are prostitutes, or at least sluts.
3. And if we’re going to pay them to have sex, we should get something out of it.
4. Therefore, they at least owe us video footage. So make with the sex tapes already.

Yes, this is the most charitable possible framing of what Limbaugh said on his radio show regarding the testimony of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke in Congress on the need for contraception coverage.
First:

LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex. What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

Then:

LIMBAUGH: So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.

First of all, Fluke wasn’t even talking about herself– she was talking about a lesbian friend who stopped taking hormonal birth control because it was too expensive, and not covered by her university on religious grounds. She was on the birth control to stop ovarian cysts from forming, and after going off the pill a cyst formed that required surgery to remove the entire ovary.

But let’s say Fluke was talking about herself. And let’s say she’s heterosexual, and just wants to have sex with a man or men with a drastically reduced likelihood of getting pregnant. That seems like a good idea, right? That sounds like being careful. Responsible. And regardless of how much sex she has, and how many men she has it with, she’s going to require exactly the same amount of birth control as her lesbian friend (who might be having all kinds of sex herself, but presumably not with men): one packet every month. One pill every day. So the “she’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception” slam is blown out of the water, right there.

What about the claim that having insurance pay for birth control equates to taxpayers being made to pay people like Fluke to have sex? Well, again, people take the pill for a lot of reasons that don’t involve preventing pregnancy…like Fluke’s friend, who (again) could be having any amount of sex with any number of people. So maybe instead of telling women not to have sex if it requires using birth control, Limbaugh should tell them to become lesbians. But she wanted the pill to prevent cysts. Some women take it to control their menstrual cycle. Some women take it to minimize the symptoms of endometriosis. It is a multi-purpose medication, used for a number of very important purposes just like lots of other medication already covered by insurance. Like, you know, Viagra, which I’ve never heard of someone taking because he’s afraid of losing a testicle.

Additionally, of course, there is the fact that paying people to have sex without getting pregnant is cheaper than paying them to get pregnant, carry out the pregnancy, and give birth to a child they didn’t want and can’t care for. Limbaugh considers legal abortion a “holocaust” and women who fight for the right to have abortions “feminazis,” so it sure seems like he should be all in favor of any preventative measures women can take before conception to make sure that it…well, doesn’t happen. Nope. He’s a proponent of Santorum-backer Foster Friess’s method of aspirin-between-the-knees, which it’s hard to believe was funny when the FDA legalized the pill (for menstrual disorders first, note) in 1957. When I’m pretty sure people already knew that it’s possible to have sex with your knees together.

Limbaugh’s argument is fundamentally not financial; it’s moral: birth control is about making it possible for women to have sex without risk of pregnancy, and they shouldn’t want this. If they do, it’s probably because they’re having sex with someone they are not married to and don’t want to marry, which makes them sluts. Message to Limbaugh: most Americans by far either have used or will use birth control to avoid pregnancy. Most Americans by far have had or will have sex outside of marriage. Most Americans by far, I am guessing, do not want to risk creating a pregnancy every time they have sex, whether married or unmarried. Limbaugh himself is almost certainly one of these Americans in all three cases.

So why is he arguing so adamantly against this? Because it offers a chance to make a cheap shot at American women. All Americans benefit by having easy and cheap access to birth control, but Sandra Fluke’s testimony made for an opportunity to say that women who benefit from that access must be sluts.  As Rep. Jackie Speier said today in calling for a boycott of Limbaugh’s sponsors, it’s flat out misogyny:

“Shame on you for calling the women of this country prostitutes,” Speier said. “Ninety-eight percent of the women in this country at some time in their lives used birth control.” “So I say to the women in this country, do something about this,” she continued. “I say to the women of this country, ask Century 21, Quicken Loans, Legal Zoom, and Sleep Number to stop supporting the hate mongering of Rush Limbaugh and if they do not do that, then I ask them to boycott those companies.”

Yes. Yes to this, but I wish she hadn’t appealed specifically to women. It’s an issue that should be of interest to everyone, because it affects everyone, and…everyone should consider Rush Limbaugh a hateful moron for saying crap like this. Charitably, of course.

*The actual plot of a PSA that ran on TV for a while.

The wife. The boy.

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One of the stories I mentioned yesterday was Feministe’s take on a recent…err, presentation given by Virginia Delegate David Albo to his fellow members of the House on how a romantic evening with his wife Rita had been spoiled when the two of them came upon coverage on the Rachel Maddow show about Virginia’s Republican push to require a controversial invasive ultrasound for any woman who wants an abortion.

I wonder if Albo imagined that this light-hearted, laughter-rousing account of being spurned by his wife for a night because of a position on a very serious issue affecting female reproductive freedom would (in addition to the position itself) make national news and be tossed about on the internet. I wonder how much of the story is true, how his wife Rita feels about his having told it, and how it felt to be one of the delegates in that house listening to it. About their family life being portrayed for laughs as though it were a 1950’s sitcom.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read here…especially the comments.

Why serial cheating beats open marriage

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…according to Newt Gingrich: because anything other than one man and one woman is pagan.

Seriously:

It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

This man is a historian. But he doesn’t know that….

1. There are multiple instances in the Bible of men having more than one wife– at a time, even– without any mention of it being wrong.
2. Monogamous relationships between one man and one woman were not invented in the Bible, and certainly existed outside of the historical and geographic contexts it describes.
3. When Jesus addressed the issue, he specially mentioned divorce in order to condemn it.

Wait, who am I kidding? He knows these things. A person could never have read a page of the Bible and known– or at least, have been able to make an educated guess– about all of them.  There is no coherent sense in which opposite sex monogamous marriage can be described as belonging to the Bible, or to Christianity, and not to “pagans” (whatever Newt imagines those to be), certainly without also such description being compelled to drag along behind it, like a ball on a chain, the fact that Newt’s own behavior has been condemned just as explicitly as any other deviation from that standard.

This sin– the sin of repeated infidelity and divorce, followed by remarriage– is one to which Newt and his kind are susceptible, so it is ignored. Other sins, the ones that represent minor or no temptation at all, can safely be vilified as pagan, criminal, unAmerican. That’s how scoundrels manage to wave Bibles– by carefully expunging the parts that condemn their own behavior as much as anyone else’s.

Gingrich’s serial cheating would make him a strong president…wait, what?

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Cheating for America– not on it! 

The fact that Newt Gingrich is running for president, and actually has supporters for that position, makes my brain hurt and my heart sink. It inspires a despondence that I don’t care to dwell in, frankly. But I have to admit that the whole discussion about whether he asked his second wife (whom he married after cheating on the first) for an open marriage before leaving her and marrying the woman he was cheating with who became wife #3– gosh, it’s kind of hard to write that out– is fascinating to me. Apparently the serial cheating is bad, but not as bad as the notion of his having asked for an “open marriage.” And let’s be clear, if what former wife Marianne says is true, what Gingrich did wasn’t asking for an open marriage exactly. The words “open marriage” might have come out of his mouth, but what he was really asking for was to continue cheating with impunity. Reading those words, I could feel the collective cringing of Americans who are actually in open marriages– a consenting arrangement in which a couple decides together that each of them may have another partner or partners, with explicit permission– as their lifestyle’s reputation went further down the drain.

Newt has, of course, vehemently denied that he did any such thing. He has complained bitterly about the indignity of even being questioned on the subject, as if he wasn’t the same man who found it appropriate to lead impeachment proceedings against Clinton for lying about an affair. As if he isn’t the same man, running for the nomination of the same party, which trumpets family values as a reason to deny rights to gays. Apparently those family values allow room for serial cheating, divorce, and re-marriage, but not for things like consenting open relationships or affirmation of government-awarded rights and privileges for relationships between two people of the same sex. I admire the intentions of this suggestion on Yahoo! News that Gingrich could become an unwitting argument for gay marriage if elected president by being the living antithesis of family values, but that would both require Gingrich supporters and other opponents of gay marriage to acknowledge their inconsistency and further entrench the notion of gay marriage as somehow being equivalent to serial infidelity. The former is unlikely; the latter undesirable. And anyway, there are plenty of things that make Gingrich an extremely poor choice for president apart from that. Dan Savage– sex columnist/podcaster, influential gay rights advocate– has been having a field day with this issue. On Friday he wrote:

Let me be quite clear: Newt wasn’t claiming that the story about his six-year affair with a congressional staffer twenty years his junior was false—the third Mrs. Gingrich was there last night—just the story about Newt asking his ex-wife to agree to an open marriage. That was false. (Callista “Devout Catholic” Gingrich was down with the open marriage: “Callista doesn’t care what I do,” Newt allegedly told his ex-wife.) So… Newt Swingrich got a huge round of applause from a GOP debate audience packed with God-fearin’, traditional-marriage-lovin’, gay-marriage-hatin’ social conservatives… for insisting that he cheated on his second ex-wife for six years like a good Christian. He did not ask his second ex-wife for an open marriage. An honest open relationship was never on the table. Newt and Callista’s adulterous relationship was grounded in lies and deceit and betrayal from the start and Newt never wavered from that path. Newt never tried to negotiate an agreement—not even a retroactive one—that would have allowed him to sleep around and remain married. Newt did not ask his most recent ex-wife for an open marriage and he won’t ask any of his future ex-wives for an open marriage. Because that would be wrong. Clap clap clap. (Who are these friends who knew Newt and his second ex-wife and can “prove” her story is false? Were they present during these conversations between Newt and his second ex-wife?)

…which makes me very curious to hear what Savage thinks about this commentary by a psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, who insists that the “psychological data” of Newt’s infidelities would make him a strong president. Seriously. Yes, it’s on Fox News…of course. If you don’t want to go there, I’ll just quote some juicy bits for you:

As I have written before for Fox News Opinion, I don’t think voters belong in a candidate’s bedroom. But the media can’t seem to help itself from trying to castrate candidates for the prurient pleasure of the public.

Yeah, it’s the media’s fault. For reporting what people (rightly or wrongly) want to hear about, just as they did when it was Clinton’s cheating that made headlines. For informing the public, including Ablow, about the thing which Ablow is now going to say presents a good reason to support Gingrich as president.

I will tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s personal history actually means for those of us who want to right the economy, see our neighbors and friends go back to work, promote freedom here and abroad and defeat the growing threat posed by Iran and other evil regimes. First, one note on what Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean: It does not mean that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States. You can take any moral position you like about men and women who cheat while married, but there simply is no correlation, whatsoever—from a psychological perspective—between whether they can remain true to their wedding vows and whether they can remain true to the Oath of Office.

…whatever “remaining true to the Oath of Office” means. It sure doesn’t mean invading Iran, so far as I can tell. I agree that from a psychological perspective– from any perspective– cheating on one’s spouse doesn’t mean that one would be a bad president.  It doesn’t render a person incapable of working to create jobs, protect freedoms, decrease the deficit, or, you know, legalize gay marriage. Just saying.

I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages: 1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him. 2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.  3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.  Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

My conclusion: Okay, so by that logic Richard Ramirez should be president. The “Night Stalker” who killed thirteen people in 1985 in a campaign of murder, rape, and eye-gouging should be campaigning for president instead, since he receives bags full of mail including marriage proposals at San Quentin where he’s been imprisoned for 23 years. Countless women want to “sign on for life” with a serial killer. I’m sure at least some of them are attractive, though I’m not sure why that matters. Ablow seems to think it important. Kissinger famously said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and that most likely applies to the power to slaughter a dozen or so people with your own hands as well as to (potentially) do so to endless more as president. I’m guessing Ablow is one of those people who likes to complain that “chicks dig jerks” while simultaneously evaluating the worth of every man by the appearance of the women he manages to attract.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation. Conclusion:I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

My conclusion: Okay, I suppose lying in a hospital bed counts as “sitting down.” But what about the whole part where he wasn’t direct and unsparing up until he was? You know, the cheating part? Should we welcome a president who is lying to us up until he tells the truth, because he finally has concluded that he needs to “follow his heart”?  Gee, Congress, you know…I guess there aren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And I knew that all along. But I needed to follow my heart, and tell you the truth. I hope you can understand.

5) Mr. Gingrich’s daughters from his first marriage are among his most vigorous supporters. They obviously adore him and respect him and feel grateful for the kind of father he was. When I want to know who in a marriage (or, for that matter, a series of marriages) is the one who actually was aligned with their best interests, I never dismiss evidence of who the children gravitate toward and admire. In this case, they have judged the father who left their family, then remarried twice. And they judge him 10 out of 10. I only hope my own children love me and respect me as much when they are adults.

They probably will, because they’re your children. But they might not back you politically, because despite loving you and being directly related, they can see a distinction between respecting you and supporting you for public office. They might be more like John Huntsman’s daughters, or more like Rick Santorum’s nephew. They might speak out against you or not, depending on a multitude of convoluted factors beyond how they much they care for you. In short, like every other voter, their decisions are their own and there’s no particular reason that anyone else should agree with them.

So, as far as I can tell, judging from the psychological data, we have only one real risk to America from his marital history if Newt Gingrich were to become president: We would need to worry that another nation, perhaps a little younger than ours, would be so taken by Mr. Gingrich that it would seduce him into marrying it and becoming its president. And I think that is exceedingly unlikely.

*blurk* 

Yes, I get that that was supposed to be a joke. It earns the envy of lead balloons.

Dr. Keith Ablow, you will not be at all reassured to know, is a forensic, adult, and adolescent psychiatrist as well as head of Dr. Keith Ablow Life Coaching as of May, 2011. One can’t help but wonder how successful and happy are the marriages of the people whose lives he coaches, as well as whether Mrs. Ablow does a lot of looking over her shoulder.

ETA: I love this exchange on Dispatches:

Tabby Lavalamp: Shouldn’t Ablow be concerned that during a possible term of President of the United States, Gingrich might want to resign to become President of Paraguay?eric:  Why, does the US have cancer? Randomfactor: Paraguay is nowhere near pretty enough.