I think I’ve come up with an idea that may bring some balance to the culture wars.
Here’s my idea: Whenever politicians decide to introduce a bill that would make gay marriage or abortion more difficult, they have to attach a statement detailing their own sexual practices, likes and dislikes. And they have to be explicit; the statement has to mention any and every kink, preference and bend in their sexual makeup.
After all, if they’re going to enshrine their view of sex in the law, we should at least have full information on what that view of sex is.
And make no mistake, it’s about sex, particularly whether individuals – largely women — have a right to determine exactly what their sex life will be.
It’s particularly obvious in the debate over gay marriage. I have a sneaking suspicion that if every gay couple pledged to remain celibate as the price of marriage, a lot ofhomophobes would accept that. That way, they wouldn’t have to be skeeved out when they think about people engaging in sexual practices they find icky.
The connection isn’t quite as obvious when it comes to abortion, but again, make no mistake: It’s about sex.
Back when I covered the abortion wars in Fargo (or Abortion Wars I, as it should probably now be known), there was a subtext that mightily frustrated me, because as a daily newspaper reporter I couldn’t get a handle on it. For a lot of the protesters who thronged the clinic, it really wasn’t about saving the babies. It was about the frustrating (for them) fact that people who weren’t supposed to were having sex. Of course, those people were all women. One very seldom heard anybody scream about the rather significant role of men in all this. Nor, as a friend of mine said, did you her them talk about things like prenatal care and early childhood nutrition, which would seem to be pretty important if you really care about the babies.
I suspect that part of the protesters’ motivation was a deep and abiding fear of sex and its power. A lot of people see abortion as a way to have consequence-free sex and that terrifies some folks.
And it terrifies them on a very personal level. It forces them to occasionally, in the dark night of their soul, ask themselves questions about their own sexuality. Do they like sex more than they should? Do they like things that they’ve been told all their lives are bad? Of course, it may not be that deep in some cases; it may be, to quote H.L. Mencken’s famous definition of puritanism, “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” A lot of the anti-abortion types I’ve met seemed like deeply unhappy people, the kind who would be galled that others don’t share their torture.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with for why people even care about gay marriage enough to fight it. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how somebody else’s sex life affects my life. Hell, I’m just happy if other people are having sex. I really couldn’t care less how they’re doing it.
It also reduces homosexuality to a question of one’s genitals. Those who fight gay marriage say it’s about The Children, although they don’t quite have any facts to back up their contentions that having gay parents hurts either a kid or society. It’s more about what Dad and Dad or Mom and Mom do when the kids aren’t around. But as anyone who’s ever been married knows, marriage isn’t just about sex. Sex is important, but marriage is really about two people forming an emotional bond and making a commitment to each other, whatever form that commitment may take. And it’s about paying the bills and getting the car gassed up and who takes out the garbage. It’s about a way of living; it’s about daily life. And it’s about whom you fall in love with.
What it isn’t about is a narrow view of what goes where and how much people enjoy it, even if what goes where isn’t to somebody else’s taste.
And that, as much as anything, is what offends. Why does one side in the culture wars reduce the other side to nothing more than a sexual being? Is that what their lives are like? Is that why their brains squirm so?
Now granted, my proposal will be rather difficult to implement. The sex police really won’t want other people peering into their bedrooms. They’ll fight my proposal, logical though it is, tooth and nail. But then, logic has never been their strong suit anyway. If they were logical people, they’d see that gay marriage doesn’t affect them one bit.
So allow me to kick it off. It’s a little late to affect the situation in North Dakota, but I’ll rush into the breach and be the first to ask the questions. North Dakotans are nothing if not polite, but there comes a time when politeness has to go out the window.
Let’s start with Bette Grande, who is the face of anti-abortion legislation in North Dakota. What are your preferences, Bette? Hot lingerie? Threesomes? Or are you a missionary-position, once-a-month-maybe kind of gal? What turns you on? What turns you off? Do you like a little strange? Inquiring minds want to know.
Now, a lot of people who read that will be highly offended that I dare to ask those kinds of questions. And they’ll be right; it is extremely offensive.
Almost as offensive as the government peering into my bedroom and judging how I have sex and how I deal with the consequences of that.