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October 29, 2008
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Believe it or not, Sarah Palin wasn't chosen as John McCain's V.P. candidate just because she's passably telegenic and possesses a set of well-used ovaries. It's because she walks the socially conservative walk that she talks. Not only did she "choose life" when her Down syndrome child was diagnosed prenatally, but when her daughter became a pregnant, unwed teenager, abortion probably wasn't even on the table. (In 2006, she said she would "choose life" even if her daughter was raped — in other words, the kid's opinion didn't count.)
True, Christianity has always been suspicious of sex, and sexual regulation of the young has always been, like the Protestant work ethic, part of the mindset of capitalism. But a significant number of anti-choice believers have had abortions, defending their choices as the necessary exceptions to the rule. What's more, these beliefs have attained totemic value for particular tribes within the American public. Belonging to a church and paying lip service to its values is very important in certain communities. How did this subculture, and its repressive attitudes towards sex, insinuate themselves into the mainstream of American political life?
The Society for the Suppression of Vice later split off from the YMCA, and Comstock was granted near-absolute power in enforcing his mandate. A Civil War veteran and former dry-goods clerk, he was a man terrified of his own sexuality. Comstock felt such guilt over his teenage masturbation that he thought he might kill himself, and as an adult he sometimes acted out his contrition by paying prostitutes to strip naked, then arresting them for indecent exposure.
Not only were sex workers entrapped, but those who sought to share realistic information about preventing pregnancy, even in medical textbooks, were subject to arrest, fines and imprisonment. Ads for condoms and potions meant to "restore a woman's menses" disappeared almost entirely from the newspapers.
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Commentarium (4 Comments)
The men went to the cities and discovered women? And what did the women do, just stand around waiting to be discovered?
Well, no. The women actually had a complex society based on farming corn and squash, fishing, and hunting deer. They lived in harmony with nature and had a semi-democratic form of government.
The 1870's were a bit more complex than described in this article. The backwash of the moral crusade of the civil war had produced both a wave of reactionary cynicism and a constituency of permanent moral outrage. That outrage looked around and it wasn't hard for it to spot a new target. Internet porno fans should figure this one out pretty quickly: photography was an exploding new medium in the twenty years following the war. Every year, the technology grew cheaper and simpler, and every year the market for pornographic photos grew exponentially. Comstock could confiscate however many tons of illicit photos he wanted, and it was just the equivalent of busting a few hippies for drugs while box cars full of the stuff were consumed by the middle class every day. The War on Pornograpy was just a national rehearsal for the War on Drugs.
TP is right; however (1) Hey, it's a column, of course I have to simplify things, and (2) The focus here is on using the courts to enforce mores. The importance of this will become more clear in the next two columns.
Now you say something