Framed

Religion Leads to Abstinence and Dog Tossing

I couldn't make up this kind of stuff if I tried:

Highly intoxicated and dissatisfied with her sex life, a 28-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday for stealing her husband's wallet and later assaulting the deputy who booked her into jail.

The meltdown, which deputies witnessed along with the couple's 3- and 4-year-old children, started when the husband, 24, had told his wife they had three hours to quit smoking, drinking, swearing and engaging in some sex acts because "they were going to be good Christians now," the woman said.

The man said she had woken him up to have relations, but then became disappointed and angry.

Kitsap County deputies were called to the apartment on the 11800 block of Majestic Lane NW at 2:38 a.m. after a neighbor overheard yelling, crying and slamming doors, the report said.

When deputies arrived, the woman denied any assault had taken place, and repeatedly, without sparing a vulgar euphemism, told the deputies about how unsatisfied she was with her sex life — some of the time carrying around a half-gallon of whiskey while doing so.

During an argument with one of the deputies, the woman picked up the family's 20-pound dog and threw it at the deputy, who caught it, the report said.

I mean, I can see being pretty disappointed if my wife came home one day and told me that since she'd found Jesus, she didn't need nookie anymore.  Would I be mad enough to toss my dog?  Only if I found out Jesus was our neighbor's gardener.  But Sophie's downed so many Ho-Ho's recently that I doubt I could do so without injuring myself.

(h/t to PZ Myers)

Resquiat In Pacem

This  is a shame:

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the "D.C. Madam," was found dead in Florida Thursday, according to Tarpon Springs police.

Palfrey hanged herself in a small storage shed on her mother's property where she had been staying, according to a police statement. Palfrey's mother, 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, found the body, police said.

What did this woman do that was so terrible that she deserved to be humiliated, tried, convicted, faced with a six-year prison sentence and hounded into suicide?

She arranged for people to have sex.

What a terrible thing.

And as John Aravosis reminds us, David Vitter is still a senator.

You Will Pay Pam Stenzel

Pam Stenzel is coming to town tonight to give one her patented "you will pay" talks designed to scare kids out of having sex.  Stenzel and her message are described thus in Michelle Goldberg's book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism:

Reclaiming America for Christ is a place where the Christian nationalist movement drops its democratic pretenses and indulges its theocratic dreams.  So at the 2003 conference, when the abstinence educator Pam Stenzel spoke, she knew she didn't have to justify her objection to sex education with prosaic arguments about health and public policy.  She could be frank about the real reason society must not condone premarital sex--because it is, as she shouted during one particularly impassioned moment, "stinking, filthy, dirty, rotten sin!"

A pretty, zaftig brunette from Minnesota with a degree in psychology from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Stenzel makes a living telling kids not to have sex.  Rather, she makes a living trying to scare kids out of having sex--as she says in her video No Screwin' Around, if you have sex outside of marriage "to a partner who has only been with you . . . then you will pay."  A big part of her mission is puncturing students' beliefs that condoms can protect them.  She says she addresses half a million kids each year, and millions more have received her message via video.

Yikes.  Sex is dirty, stinking, rotten and dirty.  You will pay if you have sex outside of marriage, even if you're in a committed, long-term, monogamous relationship.  These are not the values I want my kids internalizing.

I could at least muster some grudging admiration for her if her approach actually worked, but it doesn't--and Stenzel apparently doesn't care as long as the checks roll in:

At Reclaiming America for Christ, Stenzel told her audience about a conversation she'd had with a skeptical businessman on an airplane.  The man had asked about abstinence education's success rate--a question she regarded as risible.  "What he's asking," she said, "is does it work.  You know what?  Doesn't matter. Cause guess what.  My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex.  The public schools' job should not be to keep teens from having sex."

Then her voice rose and turned angry as she shouted, "Our job should be to tell kids the truth!"

"People of God," she cried, "can I beg you, to commit yourself to truth, not what works!  To truth!  I don't care if it works, because at the end of the day I'm not answering to you.  I'm answering to God!"

I wonder if all the communities that pony up the thousands of dollars Stenzel's presentations command are as blase about their effectiveness at reducing teen pregnancy and STDs as she is.

Later in the same talk, she explained further why what "works" isn't what's important--and gave some insight into what she means by "truth."  "Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here," she said.  "AIDS is not the enemy.  HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy.  An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy.  My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy.  I will not teach my child that they can sin safely."

The crowd applauded.

Of course, Stenzel isn't just teaching her child.

I think I'd prefer if wasn't teaching my child either.  And I sure hope she doesn't take my school district's money to present a program that doesn't actually help to reduce teen pregnancy or STDs.  But maybe that's what she means by "you will pay."

Southern Man

I've written before about Alabama's sex toy ban and the sex-obsessed elected officials there who make it a priority to prevent women from having orgasms.  Apparently the stupidity is contagious and it's spreading throughout the south.  Virginia, Mississippi, and now Texas are also trying to pry vibrators out of the hands of the women there.

The reasoning of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in arguing for such a ban is amazing: it seems if we allow women to own vibrators, the next thing you know we'll have to allow "consensual adult incest or bigamy."  Now that's a slippery slope!

Things would be so much easier if we were British.

Naturally, I've got my own crackpot theory about why sex toy bans seem more popular in the south.  It goes something like this:

1. Southern men are more macho than other guys, because

2. Southern men are more insecure than other guys, and because

3. Southern men are worse lays than other guys; and therefore

4. Southern men don't want "their" women to have orgasms without them, because

5. Southern men are afraid that "their" woman will find them unexciting and won't screw them.

But your mileage may vary.

Daily

I sent an e-mail to my wife this morning: "Good news, honey.  I've finally found a church we can join."

It seems that Pastor Paul Wirth, who leads (I'm not making this up) the "Relevant Church" in Ybor City, Florida, has announced that in an attempt to address the area's high divorce rate, he has exhorted his married congregants to have sex every day for a month.  As the church states on its website:

People are not having enough sex. An epidemic of breakups prove the needs that lead to a great sex life are being overlooked. Dirty dishes, frumpy clothes, and a lack of authentic connections are killing the romance. A great sex life is a challenge and takes focus, determination, and planning. Some say it’s an unrealistic goal, but we disagree. We believe you can have a great sex life, in fact we believe God wants you to have a great sex life.

Well, praise Jeebus.

Leave it up to a church, though, to make something delightful seem like a chore.  That bit about "focus, determination and planning" sounds a little grim, like saving for retirement or remodeling your laundry room. 

I hope someone is keeping track of whether this idea actually works, because while it's easy to make fun of, who knows?  It just might work.

Brazilian Common Sense

Yet another reason to invade Brazil:

Brazil's government announced plans to put condom-dispensing machines in public schools to help teenagers reduce the spread of AIDS.

So in addition to the previously-noted benefits of grabbing their oil and their women, we could also steal some of their common sense and compassion. 

Seriously, can you imagine the U.S. government--whether we have a Democratic or a Republican President--implementing such a plan?  Can you imagine an America where billboards casually promote condom use by gay men?

This kind of thing is all the more incredible when one considers that Brazil is the largest Roman Catholic country in the world.  Could it be that the Brazilians have a better understanding of the separation of church and state than we do?

Supposing

Suppose you were an anti-sex zealot and you wanted both to make it more difficult for the young and the poor to fuck, and to exact life-changing consequences if they did.  Suppose also that you were a member of Congress, or had the ear of a like-minded Congressman. 

One thing you might do is to dramatically increase the cost of the most effective means of birth control so as to put it out of reach of a great many people.  You'd do that by slipping some language into a new Medicaid funding law that would change the way the feds subsidize birth control for poorer people, community clinics and college health care services.  That would cause the charges for some birth control methods to increase by 400%.  If anyone called you on this, you'd say the effects of the change were  "inadvertently included in a law intended to reduce Medicaid abuse."

Then you'd gloat behind a facade of "concern":

“From our perspective, this does bring to light a public health concern, but for a different reason,” said Kimberly Martinez, the executive director of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, which advocates abstinence from sex until marriage. “These young women are relying on this contraception to protect them. But contraception isn’t 100 percent — for pregnancy or for disease.”

And if you were lucky, you might even force members of Congress and Presidential candidates to take a stand on discounting birth control in an election year, just in time to energize your fellow Calvinists and get them to the polls to ensure that they all voted against promiscuity, fornication and orgasms.

Of course, I've got no evidence to support the idea that this is all a culture wars conspiracy.  I'm just sayin' . . . .