Puritans in charge

H. L. Mencken once quipped that "Puritanism [is] the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."  We always associate Puritanism with the 17th century, with funny hats with buckles and dark clothing and women in modest dresses -- and the torture and execution of witches.  In other words, as a thing of the past.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

However, there is a deep streak of Puritanism in our culture still.  The simultaneous obsession with and revulsion over sex in the United States is peculiar, to say the least.  You can't go to a mall without being accosted by images of nearly naked models of both genders in places like Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.  Movies and television are full of references to sex, both oblique and overt.  And yet a lot of the time, we alternately act as if sex is shameful or depraved, or as if it simply doesn't exist.

And in no realm does our split attitude show as clearly as in how we educate children about their own bodies.  Any time someone proposes frank, realistic sex education in schools, parents have a meltdown about the erosion of morality in the United States.  As if their children won't become sexually active unless they find out about it in class.  As if there weren't an inverse correlation between teen birth rates and the degree to which birth control, HIV prevention, and general sex education is addressed in the schools.  As if abstinence-only education programs haven't been shown over and over to be completely ineffective at reducing teen pregnancy and the incidence of STDs.

Ignore it and it won't happen, seems to be the usual approach.

Of course, when simply ignoring sex doesn't work, the modern-day Puritans choose instead to go on the offense.  Witness the recent push by lawmakers in Kansas to prosecute teachers who "expose students to material of a sexual nature."

We're not talking about pornography here.  The whole thing got started by Representative Mary Pilcher-Cook, who flipped her frilly white bonnet when she found out that there was a poster displayed in Shawnee Mission High School that had the question, "How do people express their sexual feelings?" and listed "oral sex" as one possibility.  Pilcher-Cook said, in a quote that I am not making up, "Children could have been irreparably harmed by viewing this poster... because it affects their brains."

"State laws should protect parents’ rights to safeguard our children against harmful materials, especially in schools," Pilcher-Cook went on to say.  "The fact that the poster was posted without fear is a problem in and of itself."

Phillip Cosby, head of the American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri, was quick to jump to her defense.  With respect to children finding out about sex, he said, "It’s a tsunami.  And maybe we’re the Dutch boy who’s just putting their finger in the dam."  He went on to say that he can't even watch a Kansas City Royals game with his grandchildren without their seeing a commercial for erectile dysfunction.

So how is that a problem, Mr. Cosby?  When my sons were young, I can see the conversation going this way:

Television commercial:  "See your doctor if you think this medication might help your erectile dysfunction." 

My kid:  "Dad, what's 'erectile dysfunction?'" 

Me:  It's a problem some older guys get, where the penis doesn't work as it should.  There's a medication that can help." 

My kid:  "Oh.  Okay.  When's the baseball game going to be back on?"

Yup.  They'd clearly have been scarred for life.

It isn't that I'm not cognizant of the importance of a child's age with regards to what sort of material they're exposed to.  With sexuality, as with most things, there is a point where children become capable of understanding, and it's not a good idea to push ideas on kids for which they're not emotionally ready.  But we seem to have no particular problem with trusting educators to make those judgments in other realms, do we?

No one is assigning Macbeth to nine-year-olds, for example.

But there's something different about sex, apparently, that makes it taboo at any age.  Instead of being honest with our children about their own bodies, we're teaching them that their feelings and desires are inherently shameful.

I still remember a couple of years ago in my neuroscience class, when we were talking about neurotransmitters.  I brought up endorphin, which is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasurable feelings of all sorts, and I mentioned that endorphin is released in the brain during orgasm.

One student looked a little taken aback.  I asked him what was up.  He said, blushing scarlet, "I've never heard a teacher use that word before."

This kid, by the way, was in 11th grade.

Why shouldn't we be honest with kids about their bodies as a source of pleasure and as a way to connect with their partners, and not just as a tool for reproduction?  When we take a step past the focus on men and women as baby-making machines, it's usually only to warn students about the risks.  Only rarely do we make any effort to give teenagers a well-rounded view of sexuality.  How do we expect young people to approach sex in a respectful and responsible fashion when we won't even bring up the topic?  And considering the fact that teenagers are usually hyper-focused on sex anyhow, isn't it better to discuss it openly rather than pretend that if we ignore it, it'll go away?

But the undercurrent of Puritanism that still exists in the United States makes it unlikely that such an approach will be realized any time soon.  If we're still at the point when a state legislator wants to have criminal charges levied against a teacher for mentioning oral sex, we have a very long way to go.

The bully pulpit

Bully (v.) -- to use superior strength or influence to intimidate someone who is in a weaker position of power, typically to force him or her to do what one wants.

There.  I just thought we could clarify that from the get-go, because there are evidently people who need a refresher on the definition of the word.  I'm thinking in particular of Buddy Smith, executive vice president of the American Family Association, who apparently doesn't get it -- especially the "superior strength or influence" part.

Smith showed evidence of his poor understanding of simple English words last week, because of a discrimination issue in (surprise!) Mississippi.  You probably have heard that a few weeks ago Mississippi governor Phil Bryant signed into law a bill that allowed business owners to refuse service to LGBT individuals on the basis of "freedom of religion" (prejudice and bigotry evidently being constitutionally protected rights, or something).  Well, besides the challenges that the bill will rightfully face in the courts, fair-minded shop owners came up with a tactic of their own; to tell LGBT individuals that they were welcome in their shops.  If other stores wanted to lose business, that was fine, but they were willing to serve anyone, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.

So these stickers started to appear in business windows across the state:

Well, far be it from the American Family Association to take such a stance lying down.  Nosiree.  If you won't stand by us in discriminating against gays and lesbians, well... well...

You must be a bully.

I'm not making this up.  Smith said:

It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign.  And it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture. 

They don’t want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behavior — and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth.

And as for the shopkeepers who put the stickers in their windows, Smith has the following to say: "If you do that, you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience."

Right.  Because selling a gay man a Snapple is exactly the same as saying that Christians have no right to live by the rules of their faith.

The choice of the word "bully" is especially trenchant in this context, because as a high school teacher, I see instances of bullying with sorry regularity.  And I can say that in my 27 year career, the single most bullied group of teenagers I have seen has been gays and lesbians.  Far from being (in the words of the definition) "(of) superior strength and influence," LGBT teens are picked on, discriminated against, and teased, and as a result have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts of any demographic in the United States.

Then there's the issue of the sticker campaign being an attempt to "trample the freedom of Christians."  The fact is, of course, is that no one is trying to tell Christians they have to be gay; what they're saying is that you can't discriminate against other people because they're gay.  Christians have every right to think that being gay is sinful, and that gays are going to be condemned to the fiery furnace to be tortured for all eternity by the God of Love.  Christians can choose to eat meat on Fridays, or not, or drink alcohol, or not, or get a divorce, or not.  Hell, they can decide that god wants them to superglue feathers to their face and cluck like a chicken all day if they want to.

What they are not allowed to do is to refuse service to people who choose not to cluck along with them.

What always gets me is that these people don't seem to have any sense that what they are doing is precisely the same thing that was done to African Americans by the Jim Crow laws, and in a previous generation, what was done to Chinese immigrants by the Chinese Exclusion Act.  Each time, there were demonstrations against the practice of legislating bigotry, and each time, the government finally caved in and halted it (at least by law; no one is under any illusion that it halted the prejudice itself).  The phrase "ending up on the wrong side of history" comes up frequently in these discussions, but people like Smith don't seem to see the parallels.

They are too busy fretting about what consenting adults do in their bedrooms than they are living by the words that Jesus said that even we atheists can agree on -- "Love thy neighbor as thyself," and "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Especially the "thou hypocrite" part, Mr. Smith.  Especially that part.

Despite all of this, I still have the feeling that in general, we're headed in the right direction as a nation.  At least this kind of thing is making the news; thirty years ago, no one would have even considered this newsworthy, and most LGBT people were still safely in the closet.

Thirty years before that, there were still widespread lynchings and beatings of African Americans in the Deep South.

Progress is incremental, and quicker in some places than in others.  But progress is still being made, despite the efforts of people like Buddy Smith and his pals in the American Family Association to turn the United States into a Christian version of Iran.  We are not a theocracy -- which means that each of you is free to follow whatever religion you want, or none at all.

Other than that -- as my dad used to say, your rights end where my nose begins.  And if you are open for business, you have no right to refuse me service based on my skin color, hair color, religion, ethnic origin -- or sexual orientation.