Scarlet Letter

I think that one of the problems of being a drive by commenter on present day reality is how easy it is to grab the low hanging fruit in order to make one's point and assault the "other side." Johnny has blonde hair, Johnny is an asshole so we can now positively infer that all blondes are assholes, reductio ad absurdum.

Having said that, the airing out of the most extreme examples of a philosophical base can be instructive when one is interested in projecting how people might act if they were truly given free reign to actualize their battle plans, something that thankfully rarely occurs in our divided and polarized world.

As an illustration, I point to an article I read today in Alternet. Christian Right Group: You Don't Have the Right to Have Sex Outside of Marriage, Society Should "Punish" It. The Family Research Council apparently doesn't believe that unmarried people have the right to have sex.

Family Research Council senior fellow Pat Fagan appeared alongside Tony Perkins, the head of FRC, on Washington Watch yesterday to discuss his  article which claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court.”
Fagan argued that the Supreme Court decision was wrong because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse.” “Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever,” Fagan said. 

I recognize that I constantly harp on conservatives that preach the notion of limited government and then try to burrow into the most private and intimate behaviors of people that they may consider immoral or theologically suspect. I also recognize that it is in the interest of society that young people  not engage in sexual activity until they are emotionally and psychologically capable of making responsible decisions.

What bothers me is that conservatives rarely go after these extreme FRC people with their 17th century calvinist notions, they leave it to the liberals to point out the ridiculous absurdity. Now if we look at what Fagan says he starts off not talking about young people, he says "single people." And I think that while the difference is fine, we can get a real clue into his thinking. We are not talking about young people, we are talking about unmarried people and that is an entirely different quarry. What we have here is a bunch of people telling other people how to live and what to believe.

Shame, corral, punish people, much like they do in the Islamic world, hopefully without the stoning. The Supreme Court basically ruled that it is okay for unmarried people to screw and it is still bothering these people. Fascism, actually. Religious fascism. I am sorry gentlemen, but you are not going to roll back the sexual revolution, hard as you try.

Now it is preposterous to assume that all Republicans support the wackjobs at the Family Research Council. Sort of like saying that all Democrats are marxist, tree hugging vegans who want to declare a literal war on meat eaters and capitalists. But it would sure be nice to once hear a clear thinking Republican tell these people that they are all wet and to back off. I won't hold my breath.