Natural Rights, Natural Sex, and Politics OR Sex and Windex ( - cross posted from an old Penigma post of mine)

As the culture wars against women waged by the right accelerate in this election cycle, I think it is worthwhile to recycle an old post of mine from 2010 that I think pertains to our current events in 2012.

The figure that 98% of women have used artificial contraception has been in the news. I wanted to know where that number came from; I also like fact checking. So I was pleasantly surprised to find a good challenge that substantially approved those numbers at politifact.com, along with the study itself that was mentioned - which saved me further checking on my own. I personally have always found the Guttmacher Institute to be an excellent research organization in the past, and have read other studies as well as this one.

I'm not the only one who finds the Guttmacher Institute to be reliable. The politifact.com article noted that the Catholic Medical Association has found the source credible in earlier studies of the same question, and found a pretty consistent percentage of use of contraception among Roman Catholics over time. This is not a new development or trend. While the Roman Catholic bishops may oppose the Obama administration, not all of the Roman Catholic hierarchy does so. The Catholic Hospitals Association, the Catholic Health Association, and Catholic Charities all support the Obama accommodation, including a petition signed by 600 doctors and medical students doctors, including 70 doctors who specifically identify themselves as Roman Catholic, who support the Obama administration's position on contraception.

So as I watch the GOP presidential candidates trying to exploit for their own political advantage the very real health and family planning concerns of Catholic Hospitals, Catholic health care providers, and the overwhelming rank and file of those who are the Roman Catholic church in this country as congregants, I am appalled that a few bishops and some prudish antiquated out-of-step politicians are trying to make this an issue about religious freedom. It is entirely about religious conscience, including following one's conscience to differ with their church hierarchy's dictates, as clearly a huge number of Catholics actually do.

I would argue that the right to religious freedom is a right of the individual, not institutions. Institutions are not people any more than corporations or other organizations are people.

I would argue that Obama should not have caved in to the minority position of the Bishops at all, but that he did so in a way that embraces tolerance for a spectrum of religious belief and practice, including the ACTUAL spectrum of belief and practice among Roman Catholics. The representations made by the right are false, misleading, and their usual bullshit misrepresentation, not an honest engagement over the role of religion in our society or government. Shame on them, and shame on the Bishops, and for that matter, shame on the Roman Catholic church which is promoting a policy that is not founded in either the Bible, or any real traditional teaching. For example, the Roman Catholic church didn't make masturbation - relating to the issue of sex must be for reproduction - a sin until the 6th century.

The legitimate argument that the Roman Catholic church is interested not in the status of their follower's souls as much as in maintaining their numbers regardless of the personal harm to their coreligionists in contending with hardships due to an inability to exercise effective control over their reproductive choices. I find that the right, particularly the religious right, as personified especially in this election cycle by Rick Santorum, are waging a war not only against women, but apparently against people enjoying sex.

I personally am strongly opposed to the imposition of the views on sex of hypocrites like Gingrich or apparent prudes and sexually uneducated asses like Santorum trying to dictate to men and women that they must conform to religious views of when and how and with whom to engage in sex. Rather I would argue that my sex life is my own, and so long as no one who is vulnerable or unable properly and fully to give consent is involved, everyone else but particularly the right and the religious right should BUTT OUT of sexual matters and reproductive matters. Get the hell out of my body and out of my bedroom and quit violating my right to follow my conscience in these matters. The right is all about dictating to others a conformity to their ideas and conscience, denying those who differ with them the right to their own choices.

So, without further ado - here is Sex and Windex:

Sex and Windex

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness."
2nd century Hebrew proverb
Rabbi Phineas ben-Yair
(per Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 14th ed.)

"Honi soit qui mal y pense."
Motto, English chivalric Order of the Garter,
founded 1344
King Edward III of England

I have been following the Simon-Simpleminded-Simon-purity statements that are enjoying a new resurgence in the right-wing culture wars of the current season of political campaigns with alternating amusement and distaste.

While I bless and thank my parents often in my heart for having insisted that an attention span and ability to concentrate is like a muscle which must be exercised to remain strong, a premise I bring to many tasks..........there are certain activities which produce for me a tedium which is almost physically painful to endure. It is just one of the reasons, I - along with many people - dislike the necessary task of washing windows. Unlike other domestic tasks, there is no 'domestic godess' gratification in it; it is an annoying necessity to be reluctantly endured and gotten over with as quickly as possible.

Until recently, I just cringed when thinking of the smirking, leering pseudo-purity promoted by professional right wing political parasites like Christine O'Donnell who make a living off of saying any dreck the right wants to hear. Instead, in response to a news item about her anti-masturbation crusade on the news in the background, I played an old CD while washing windows, selecting the most lust-inducing music available in my collection. In this case it was from 1991, a local group, Mick Sterling and the Stud Brothers. My friend Sara introduced me to their music a few years ago (thank you Sara!) simply describing Sterling's vocal quality as 'beefy', but said with an edginess in her expression which implied much more. I would describe the mixture of rough and smooth in his delivery as the auditory equivalent of a caress followed by the feel of a lover's fingernails lightly but firmly dragged across one's skin, making it tingle.

The mixture of Sterling and the instrumental accompaniment of 'Squib Cakes' built nicely through 'Turn Me Loose'; but it was the lyrics and energy of of 'Bump and Grind' which carried me through cleaning the big living room window. It was "I want to bump and grind and get on down, hold your body next to mine" that generated the knot of energy just forward of the small of my back, taking me into the moment and away from my usual attempts to distract myself from boredom. I conjugate irregular french verbs while standing in grocery store check out lines waiting for overflowing carts of necessities to be processed through, in order to block out screaming toddlers having temper tantrums, for example. But that doesn't do much to get the blood pounding or the libido blazing. It doesn't have that pounding, elemental power of human sexuality that centers you in the moment, in the wonderful feeling of moving your body it takes to carry you through washing windows.

So, as I look up from the computer at the morning sun shining through the oh-so-clean windows, unmarred by even the tiniest streak, I can smile, and raise my cup of black coffee in a toast to Sterling and sexuality. Because the better lessons of sex is not that we are evil for having sexual urges, or that God will frown or punish us for them, but to exalt in the humanity of it, in the energy of it, the JOY of it, because we all share it, so long as we control and direct it positively, and do not lose that control of it.

Sex, and even lust is not dirty, especially not if you use it with a little Windex. Because, in the wise words of a religious man from the second century, cleanliness is next to godliness, in mind and body. It is the attitude that sex and sexual impulses are evil except for the narrowest possible expression which makes it dirty and sin-foul. If I may be allowed a somewhat loose translation that conveys the meaning more than the precise equivalent word for word, the motto of the order of the garter is that the evil is in the mind of the person who seeks to find evil, in things, in actions; an example would be the pseudo-purity espoused by people like O'Donnell that equates auto-eroticism with adultery.

I hope you enjoyed 'Sex and Windex'; other titles I considered were 'Lust and Dusting', and ............well, I will leave it to readers to come up with their own, because my list is too long to share here, and in any case was probably deficient in masculine chores that were analogous. Have your own fun with it, and try to be aware of all the ways in which sexuality enriches our lives and mundane experience.

Or, if you are having trouble putting down your beverage and walking away from the computer, if you are procrastinating your own tedious tasks, you might want to check out the youtube video of Mick Sterling, performing "You Don't Know What Dirty Is".

Koch Brothers and Quasi-religious Persecution?Is Predatory Capitalism the New Religion of the Right?

cross posted from Penigma.blogspot.com:

Prayer for Koch Industries, Is Capitalism the New Religion of the Religious Right?

I received this email from a friend who is an occasional reader, who noted that I had recently written about the apparent lack of intellectual honesty evidenced by the finding of the Koch/von Hayek correspondence here.  Also I had written about the Bloomberg News Report on Koch here.

Compared to say anyone on Fox News, or other right wing media, particularly of the Rupert Murdoch owned variety, or pundit entertainers like Rush Limbaugh, or the majority of the right wing blogosphere, Bloomberg does a competent job of being factual.  I have no doubt whatsoever that Bloomberg is going to proceed with extra care when going up against Koch Industries, who have 'deep pockets'.  The political right is notoriously litigious.

Not that Bloomberg is either a Democrat or a liberal; while he started out as a Democrat in the last millennium, he's been a Republican through most of the past decade, including his political career, before switching from being a Republican to an Independent in 2007.

So while the New York mayor and media mogul is not anywhere as far right as the Koch brothers (well, two out of three of them anyway), he is a fairly centrist individual with some respectable Republican credentials.

So it was with that in mind that I perused with great skepticism the following email (redacted to preserve the privacy of the sender) which I am assured did in fact come directly from the wife of a Koch employee rather than as a chain email:

Subject: Prayer for Koch persecution

Hello Sisters,      I'm writing to ask for an urgent prayer request.  We're doing fine, but Koch, the company we work for has need.  They have been ruthlessly persecuted over the past 2 years by the liberal media and followers of leftist ideologies.  Those people know they must somehow attack and discredit one of the most successful representations of the Free Market Enterprise that has made this country great.  There have been numerous articles and allegations of all sorts and tomorrow morning on ABC's Good Morning America, they'll be doing another "hatchet job".         These lies and misrepresentation can have strong repercussions.  Please pray that the viewers will see the truth and the obvious slant of the enemy.  And that they would "wake-up" to the destruction of our Liberties in the United States.          And please point anyone who needs to, to go to this website for Koch's side of the story:  www.kochfacts.com.            I so appreciate your prayers and any others you make for the continued upholding of our Nation's Freedoms and Liberties!      May God be Merciful,

Now I'm far more likely to be praying vigorously for a bit of Koch Industries PROSECUTION, rather than to save them from any perceived 'persecution'.

In my usual interest in fact checking, I have not only begun my own fact check effort, but also forwarded this on, including the linked page, to politifact.com, in the hopes they will take a whack at fact checking BOTH Bloomberg and the Koch Industries claims. 

Which, should they take up the challenge, I will of course post here.

I'm hoping I might tempt my mikeb co-blogger, Laci, into working with me, on my own efforts; because this might be beyond my own humble resources.  I'm hoping Laci's background might be uniquely suited to the international and legal aspects, but I also respect that his time is valuable and there are many other demands on it.

But most of all, I was struck by what amounts to a new religion that equates greed to god, and predatory capitalism to patriotism and representative democracy.  Beyond the specific challenges over fact are the extremely disturbing Libertarian leaning assumptions about economics, government, religion, and most of all, the presumption that other Americans who disagree with their extreme right wing positions ARE THE ENEMY.  That word was used specifically; the author of this email sees people like me, like Pen, like Laci as their ENEMY rather than simply people who differ from them.

The sheer intolerance of that, the paranoiac world view of that passage is deeply disturbing to me.  That it might very well derive, in the case of the email, from a misleading representation of the facts by Koch Industries is equally disturbing.

This represents a kind of political engagement that was new in the days of the so-called moral majority in the 90's - a group of people who were neither particularly moral, nor any kind of majority, and it has continued to evolve as the religious right during the 2000s.  And by evolve, what I really mean is to become more extreme and more intolerant and less reality based.  In other words, crazier than they were before.

So I am contemplating this fact check endeavor as a push-back against the intolerant, against the bogus religious associations of greed and God, and against the unwarranted paranoia of the right represented by this email.

 I'm tempted to begin with a prayer for the prosecution - and even for a little persecution to happen TO the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, for my personal inspiration and as a touch of humor to the otherwise dry business of fact checking.