Healing My Patriotic Shame

While I lay in bed in the early morning of September 11, with my infant son nursing at my breast, America was under attack.  Or so it seemed.  The morning of 9/11 was one of the most memorable of my life.  My husband called from Los Angeles to tell me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  I turned on the television, just in time to see the second plane fly into the second tower.  Mere minutes went by when the towers collapsed. 

Those events were cathartic enough, however, it was what followed that truly changed me.  Like everyone else in America at the time, I truly felt a kinship with my fellow Americans.  A renewed patriotism that I thought would solidify the country, wake us up and bring us together as citizens uniting for good. 

What ensued was a calculated propaganda campaign that divided us with fear.  We were told not to trust our neighbors who are different from us.  Our president went into hiding after 9/11 for 3 weeks, instead of telling us there was nothing to be afraid of, we were given a rainbow of “threat levels.”  We were forced to give up our civil rights when we flew on an airplane in the name of “safety,” and yet none of those violations actually stopped the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber in the ensuing years—the passengers did, proving that it was never our civil freedoms that compromised our safety, but rather the element of surprise.  As I stood in the Islip Airport with the entire contents of my luggage on display for the public, a woman in a uniform opening all of my cosmetic bottles and smelling them, tearing open my brand new purchases from the city and throwing them back in the suitcase, telling me it wasn’t her job to put them back the way she found them, I realized that Bin Laden had won. 
With disgust I watched Obese, uneducated Americans with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other talk about how we are America and we were going to kick the Muslims behinds.   And I was afraid.  Not of Muslim extremists.  But of the ignorance that seemed to be gripping our country.  I was afraid because my president was telling me to be afraid.  And fear comes from weakness, so in essence my government was telling me we were too weak to fight against a few radicals. 

At a time when I needed to hear a recap of FDR’s  “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” speech, I was hearing that the threat was real and that we need to be afraid.  At a time when America needed to come together in solidarity, talking heads were telling me not to trust my Muslim neighbors.  At a time when we should have been fighting ignorance, we chose, instead to fight people.  And we weren’t fighting with our enlisted sons and daughters, who had patriotically signed up to serve our country, but with our own private mercenary terrorist groups.  They had pleasant names like Blackwater and KBR Haliburton.  But I saw right away they were being paid the equivalent of the GDP of some small countries, supplied with unlimited munitions and not required to swear an allegiance to our government.  What would happen if someone hired them to attack us?  The Muslim extremists had killed 3,000 of our own in their worst attack ever.  These companies were capable of taking out tens of thousands of people on a mediocre day.  And I was confused as to how they weren’t considered terrorists.

In short, I realized that I had a certain amount of shame toward my own country.  Once I had been so proud of the U.S.A., but our subsequent behavior after 9/11 has made me unable to call myself a proud American anymore.  What could have been and should have been America’s shining moment, when we turned tragedy into triumph has turned into a magnifying glass of what a failure we are.  The twin towers still remain un-built, we still can’t take our own water onto a plane and even though we’ve killed Bin Laden, we are still at war.  I am different because 9/11 has left me with the wound of patriotic shame.  I am different because I never had a desire to be a proud American.  I just was.   I am different because before 9/11 I expected my son to grow up in a strong America that valued freedom and equality. 

And yet, I still have hope that we can regain our former glory.  But that entails change, not from our government, but from me and you.  It entails work and dedication- the same work and dedication our forefathers had when they started this country.  It takes you and me, turning off our televisions, getting together with our neighbors and respectfully discussing the America we want to have and then going out and doing our part.  We still have the ability to vote for whomever we like for office.  That means we need to do that.  We need to make a pact that we won't vote exclusively for our party.  That's for lazy people and losers.  If we Americans are to be winners it means that each and everyone of us need to lodge our own personal campaign for a better America.  It means we need to all come together in agreement that we will not vote for the person who spends the most money.  We will not vote for anyone who has a commercial on television or a sign on the side of the road.  We will form neighborhood coalitions who will go and find out who's funding the candidates and vote for the one who is getting funding from his/her constituents only. 
Is anyone out there with me on this?

Conversations with God vs. Divine Right

Michelle Bachmann freely admits that she has conversations with God.  God tells her things.  Rick Perry seems to allude to the same thing.  George W. Bush also said he would speak to God and get messages in return.  Now, I do understand the desire for many people to hold a personal belief in something intangible.  Provided that their faith makes them better people (and that seems to be the case for the silent majority of the faithful) I have no issues with that.* 
However, I do draw the line at candidates professing this level of devotion.  This is mainly because history has shown us so many times how devotion to something that can’t be proven, can be used to manipulate people into perpetrating evil.  But in the case of presidential candidates there is a much more fundamental reason for my outrage.  And that goes back to a doctrine that was in place in Europe during the colonization of America- the doctrine of Divine Right. 
For those that didn’t pay attention in high school, Divine Right is the notion that monarchs of countries were chosen by God, by sheer nature of their birth, to rule.  They were told from a young age that they and they alone could talk directly to God since they were chosen by Him and therefore, the messages they would receive were divine.  They had the same authority over life and death as God. 
Most of the people who fled to the colonies did so to escape religious persecution.  And the antithesis of this idea truly is the foundation of the Constitution.
When people like Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry tout their “conversations” with God, they are employing a manipulative marketing technique to get people to vote for them.  They’re not saying, “I talk to God the same way you do.”  They’re saying, “I talk to God and He responds back to me.”  In other words, God had chosen him/her to be His messenger and spokesperson. 
That’s fine if they are a minister or a reverend.  But as a political leader, it’s setting the stage for the next step of “you voted for me because God told you to, which means that God must have sent me. Therefore, I’m not stepping down just because I was voted out or my term is up.”  Or worse, “God gave me the authority to execute anyone who disagrees with me.” 
Now I’m not saying that Bachmann or Perry would take it this far, but if we as a people vote for them, then the marketing technique they are employing will have proven to work.  The next thing we know, everyone will start using it.  Sooner or later a despotic type of person will be able to fool the public with his/her religious rhetoric and get elected.  That’s what we need to be on guard for, and as the old adage says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Personally, I like democracy and don't want to have to cure what we would have instead. Vote responsibly.

*When it comes to “conversations” with God, I am assuming that the person doing the “hearing” is actually feeling or thinking things and not really hearing a voice from outside their body. I think it's safe to say that anyone hearing voices is most likely mentally ill and probably wouldn't make the best presidential candidate. 

My Decision to Die

For most of my life I have been so ashamed of my breasts.  They developed at a young age and never stopped growing.  In school, I got teased about them.  At home I was tormented about them.  It wasn’t until I was well into my 30s (and with the love of my husband who told me I was crazy not to love them) that I really started accepting them, loving them and then even flaunting them. 

After turning 40 I became diligent about getting my mammograms every year.  But 3 years ago I erroneously understood that the protocol had changed and that instead of every year, I would only need to get them every 2 years.  Since I knew my insurance wouldn’t cover a mammogram that wasn’t necessary, I waited and forgot about going for my mammogram.  I wasn’t too worried since everything always came back clean. 

About 8 months ago or so, I noticed some cellulite on my left breast.  It wasn’t much but just a long streak that seemed to continue under my arm.  I just figured that at 48 years old, it was part of the changes my body would be undergoing. 

Quite by accident 3 weeks ago, I felt a lump in the “cellulite.”  Immediately I called my doctor (whose office was at lunch) and called the imaging center.  The imaging center got me in for a mammogram the next day.  And then I was called back for more imaging and an ultrasound.  Then I went back for a biopsy and last Tuesday it was confirmed that I have breast cancer.   I know nothing other than that at this point, which is why I’ve had plenty of time to worry and plan.  Also, this limbo time gives me the opportunity to write this blog from a very unique perspective. 

Of course the worst diagnosis that I could receive is that I have stage 4 cancer (stage 4 means that it has metastasized to different places in the body and spreads more rapidly than it can be stopped).  And of course, that is the first place my mind goes.  In the past 10 years I’ve had 2 people I was very close to diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  My husband’s best friend received his diagnosis a year before he died.  He did the whole thing of radiation, chemo, etc.  all the while in tremendous pain and died anyway.   My other friend had been a world class athlete in his youth, was tremendously active and healthy when he was diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer at the age of 49.  He fought it for 4 years—and I know he hung on as long as he could for his young family.  But he too, died after years of suffering.    

I have decided that should that be my diagnosis, I will go a different route.  I will refuse to fight.  My doctors will be instructed to just keep me comfortable and let me die.   Now, I don’t blame my friends for trying to fight and it’s not the suffering that really bothers me the most.  What bothers me the most is leaving my family with all the bills after my few years of my survival are over.  They will be devastated when I die, whether or not it’s sooner or later.  Yes, would it be better for my young son to have a few extra years with me?  Most certainly, the answer is yes.  However, those years with me will be nice for him, but they won’t enhance his overall life experience as much as college tuition will. 

Even though I have insurance, this is the dilemma I am faced with today in America.  This is the modern day Sophie’s Choice we must make in this situation.  And yet people like my own mother, are still hell bent on denying a public option.  When I told her about my decision, she went hysterical, crying “please don’t tell me that.  It’s so hard for a mother to hear that about her child.” 

And yet, just a few weeks ago I sent her link to me singing a version of Cee-lo Green’s “F U” that I had rewritten about healthcare.  Her response was to tell me that I sang it beautifully, but she didn’t agree with what I said on it.  If we had a public option right now, I wouldn’t know what choice I’d make if it came to that.   It would be a decision that I would come to with my doctor and my family about the best course of action.  If a public option had existed, I would have had the mammogram after a year, regardless of what I thought the protocol was and probably not have been in this situation in the first place.  If we had a public option, I never would have had to fathom making the decision  between my life and my family’s future.

Now, at this point my demise is speculation and I fully hope that my prognosis will be less than stage 4 and I will live to be an old lady.   But when you are in the situation of limbo, these are the thoughts that must be entertained.

Separation of Church and Hate

The Tea Party seems to have demonstrated time and time again that they lack both critical thinking skills as well as the ability to read.  Apparently they really don’t understand what their Christian faith is about and they have no clue about what our forefathers were really trying to accomplish when they founded this country.

Last night I was watching “The Tillman Story” (and if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend watching it).  They had radio interview from the lead investigator of the Tillman case, Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who felt that the family couldn’t “let it go” referring to their wanting answers regarding the death of their son, brother and husband Pat Tillman.  This is what he said:

“…I don’t know... these people have a hard time letting it go.  That may be because of their religious beliefs.  I don’t know.  I don’t know how an atheist thinks. But I can only imagine that that’d be pretty tough… If you’re an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die what… what is there to go to?  Nothing, you’re warm dirt.  It’s pretty hard to get your head around that.” 

The Radio Host then asks, “So you suspect that’s probably the reason this thing is dragging on?”

Colonel Kauzlarich replies, “There’s not a whole lot of trust… in the system… or faith in the system.”

And therein lays the gist.  If you don’t believe in God then you can’t possibly trust the system.  Yet the Tillman’s had good reason to NOT trust the system.  The system had killed their son, lied about how he died, used that lie to propagandize an unjust and immoral war and then refused to punish those who had been responsible for all of it.  I don’t see how a belief in anything would change those facts.  I don’t see how faith in a god would somehow make all of that okay.

There seems to be this myth in this country that Jesus was a warlord of sorts.  That Jesus wanted a strong army and if you are a good Christian you must support any and all war efforts of our troops because they are doing God’s work.  What’s interesting about this attitude is that by substituting the words Allah and Mohammed for God and Jesus respectively, you end up with what Muslim extremist with bombs strapped to their chests believe. 

Now I want to make one thing perfectly clear.  I think the vast majority of our enlisted soldiers are heroes, even though I don’t think the wars they are fighting in are just.  They are doing what they truly believe is their duty to country.  One of the problems with the wars we are in is private military contractors, and not our enlisted personnel, are doing most of the fighting (and getting paid much, much more than our enlisted men and women are). 

In addition, this invocation of religion and war is just wrong, regardless of the religion.  It is the reason why I have rejected nearly all religions.  But nowhere is it more offensive that with Christianity.  Jesus was a man of peace, who preached a message of love and turn the other cheek.  He preached distribution of funds from the rich to the poor.  He preached about feeding the hungry and he healed the sick.  And even when he was humiliated, beaten, nailed up on a cross and left to die, he forgave those unenlightened people who did this to him.  I am an atheist, and yet, if you asked me if I accepted the message of that man, I would totally do it in a minute.  But that’s never what Christians ask me to accept.

Yet when our government tries to actually implement those programs that Jesus himself would have been advocating for, it is those who call themselves Christians who protest the loudest.  Our government doesn’t do it because Jesus told them to do it.  Our government does it because it’s the moral and just thing to do irrespective of religion.  In addition it makes economic sense.  The same goes for putting in a national healthcare program. 
Either these right wing “Christians” don’t know how to read or are too stupid to think for themselves.  Regardless, they certainly are some of the most unChristlike people I’ve ever heard of.

I think it’s important to remember that when our country was founded, it was done by people who had come to the colonies trying to escape religious persecution.  Freedom of religion was a core fundamental tenant of their writings and belief system.  Regardless of what their personal faith was, they wanted a place that people of all faiths, including those of no faith, could come and seek refuge.  That was made particularly clear in the Treaty of Tripoli where John Adams, then president, signed in 1796 saying:

“Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of Americais not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself nocharacter of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act ofhostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that nopretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption ofthe harmony existing between the two countries.”

And as a result of this secularization of our government, religion proliferates.  There are more churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other houses of worship, per capita here in the United States than almost anywhere else on earth.  Because we have respected to totally personal nature of faith, faith prospers. 

Now there are those who would throw away all of that just so that they can keep their religion in the majority.  And as Colonel Kauzlarich’s statement above would indicate, the government can use that majority to manipulate families into going along with what the government wants, no matter how immoral.  That is PRECISELY the thing our forefathers wanted to avoid. 

When candidates like Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry seem to be completely unable to separate their faith from their politics, it is precisely the people of faith who should run in the other direction from them.  It is the people who love their country who should be afraid of them.  They seek to destroy everything good with their misunderstanding of the relationship between God and Country.

Issa's Indecency

Last March it came to public attention that my congressional representative, Darrell Issa (R-CA 49), had earmarked almost $1 million in tax funds for road improvements to West Vista Way that would directly ease access to several properties he owns.  For me, this was a personal affront from a man who told me that such matters were not within his "jurisdiction as a Federal Legislature."

As it happens, I had written to Congressman Issa about the dangerous intersection directly in front of Monte Vista Elementary School, in which drivers were running the stop signs, while the crossing guards were out and children were in the crosswalks, had become a common occurrence.  On a personal level, my son and I had been in the crosswalk on one such occasion when a driver, most likely blinded by the glare of the sun on his/her windshield, impatiently drove through the intersection and had to slam on his/her brakes at the last minute, stopping literally 4 feet away from us.  My son had nightmares for weeks about it. 

After exhausting all avenues at the city level, I resorted to writing to Congressman Issa.  I still have the letter which explains that these matters are not within his "jurisdiction as a Federal Legislature."  And while I still maintain that anyone with a modicum of decency, upon hearing that children were involved in near miss traffic incidents while walking to and from school in his/her district would have picked up the phone to inquire as to why this was happening, but then no one has ever accused Mr. Issa of being too decent. At the very least Issa's assertion that such matters were not within his jurisdiction was a lie, as the earmarks he secured have proven. 

About the same time I received that letter from Issa, a friend of mine who worked at another elementary school told me about an incident in which a 10 year-old little boy became the victim of a hit and run while he was walking home from school.  Because the boy’s mother was undocumented, it went unnoticed and untold in the press, and swept under the carpet.  The boy ended up being in the hospital for 6 weeks. 

In light of the dire threat that our children are under as they walk to and from school it seems to me that the more pressing road improvements would be those that would save lives.  However, Congressman Issa doesn’t seem to feel that way.  His priorities appear to be about serving his own financial interest, even at the expense of lives of the school children in his district.  And to make matters worse, it is his judgment that is in charge of the House Oversight committee, deciding matters of decency and ethics in Washington.   Based upon his attitude and behavior on this issue, I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks there are other people in Washington better suited for this job. 

Update:  Sadly in October 2015, a father and his son were struck by a car in the same crosswalk that my son and I were nearly hit in.  It was the EXACT same situation.  The little boy was 6 years-old at the time and I do not know his current status.  Had Congressman Issa acted in this situation when I first brought it to his attention, this would not have happened.  

Traditional Values

 This was a blog I wrote on my personal blog a couple of years ago.  I thought with as many people as there are complaining about a return to traditional values, I would reprint it on the Liberal Diva blog.  Enjoy.

One of the things I hear my Conservative friends wax nostalgic about is the America of yesteryear and its traditional values that are all but lost to us now.  My Tea Bagger relatives will always cite "I Love Lucy" as the example of the America they want back.  A black and white version of dilemmas solved in a half hour and sealed with a heart and a bow.  These people don't need reality TV because for them, Lucy was it.
I must admit.  I too would love to live in the Ricardo's midtown apartment, married to the dashing Cuban band leader with my best friend living downstairs.  However, I'm not so sure I would want that dashing Cuban husband to tell me that I wasn't allowed to get a job.  Nor do I think I would want to have him give me an "allowance."  I know for sure that I wouldn't like it one bit when he took me over his knee and gave me a spanking.  Although, like Lucy, I too would insist on separate beds after that.
The irony of the Conservatives line of reasoning is that the reality of the time was much different than Lucy would have us believe.  Unlike the Ricardo's, the Arnaz's didn't live in Manhattan, but the San Fernando Valley.   Not only was Desi an alcoholic, but a philanderer as well.  Unfortunately, the beatings were all too real.   And in fact, the true "traditional value" that was practiced back then was the value to keep a secret.   When I question my "traditionalist" friends about these things that's when they play the "it wasn't reality" card. But  I won't deny that there were some really good things about that era.  Schools were outstanding- although, they could select which students attended just by virtue of the color of their skin.  Jobs were plentiful- if you were a white man.  And you rarely saw a homeless person on the streets in America- and most certainly they wouldn't have been veterans.  All the people who lament about how far America has fallen are the very same people who scream about taxes.  Yet the America that they all yearn for was bought and paid for by our parents and grandparents.  Under Eisenhower, the wealthiest 1% of the population were taxed at a rate of 90%.  That money went to pay for the outstanding schools and hospitals and treatment for the mentally ill.
In addition, a 90% tax rate for the uber-rich  helped stave off corporate greed.  If a CEO were in the position to fall into that category, instead of paying the money to the government, he was probably more likely to give his employees a raise or expand the company by creating more jobs.
I'm certainly not advocating a complete regression back to era of the sock hop, especially on a social level.  But for people who think that restoring America to the heyday of the 50s is a goal, they can start by getting the funding to bring back the good stuff.  The rest will come naturally.

Who's Entitled to Tax Cuts?

Nothing gets my Tea Party friends going quite like the perceived “Entitlement” programs.  They will go on ad nauseum about how they have to work their behinds off, but some “lazy” people sit on their butts collecting checks and getting rich off the system.  And believe me, as a hard working American myself, I do understand their ire.  But as usual their reaction is founded on the misunderstanding of what’s really going on.  For the sake of brevity and argument, let’s say we are only talking about people who are able to work, but don’t.  If you watch the Showtime show “Shameless,” this would be the character played by William H. Macy on the show.  The fact is that a comprehensive per person cost of welfare programs is very difficult to research and I was unable to get that information in time for this blog.  However, from what I was able to gather and glean from several state sources, I don’t think an average range of $8,000- $12,000 per person per year is an unreasonable estimate (that would include housing and food stamp programs).  Now if you don’t provide these services to people who refuse to work, then they will find a way to get what they need, and it most likely won’t be through work.  The alternative is that they can (and usually will) commit crimes to get money to survive on.  The cost of imprisoning that same person, who was content with being provided for at the $8,000 - $12,000 level, is $30,000/year.  So while the principle is still wrong, it is more cost effective to pay for welfare than it is to pay for prison (not to mention the emotional toll a crime ridden society takes on its citizens).   

The real entitlement program exists in the form of the current tax laws which greatly favor the ultra-rich.  Without even getting into the costs of this tax program, I need to point out that the United States offers opportunities that are not available anywhere else in the world.  The people who get rich in the U.S. do so through a combination of working hard, working smart and a certain amount of luck.  If those same people were living in any other country in the world, they would most likely not enjoy the same level of success that they have been afforded here in America.  So why do they think they are entitled to keep a larger share of their money without paying any back to the people and government which afforded them the luxuries they enjoy today?  Surely, a person with common decency and true patriotism would gladly be willing to give back to the government and people who have been so instrumental in their success. 

Today all the programs that gave the rich their opportunities to rise are in disrepair.  Programs like our education system, our SBA programs and our libraries are quickly becoming phased out.  The opportunities that allowed our forefathers to immigrate here and start small businesses so that we may have a better life are going away.  While a tax increase won’t fix all the problems, it will fix most of them  and should be the easiest to implement.   Proponents of the trickledown economics theory have completely missed the part where all the jobs trickled all the way down to the Philippines and India and all the money trickled down to China.  Perhaps they need to change the name to trickle outsourced economics.  What we need now is a way to make those jobs trickle back up to America.  And the millionaires and billionaires who have outsourced all these jobs so that they can cut costs and increase their profits, also have the tax cuts which allow them to keep a larger share of those profits with no incentive to bring any of those jobs back into America.  There is no incentive to provide others the same opportunities that they were afforded. 

The Tea Party wants to cut entitlement programs, meaning programs that you and I have paid into our entire lives with the promise of receiving a benefit in our old age.  And those are in deed entitlement programs but I can’t understand why they’d want to cut them.  After all, weren't we promised those benefits when our taxes were taken out?  What they should be looking to cut are the false entitlement programs like these tax cuts for the rich and the corporations.  I’m all for cutting those.

The Morality of Sex (Part 2)

By putting sex into the category of a biological need it neutralizes the morality of it.  When combined with modern technological advances like birth and disease control, there then becomes a need to clarify where issues such as celibacy, promiscuity and teen sex come into play. 

Celibacy

By this new categorization, prolonged celibacy then would be the abnormal state.  And I do think that people that have deviate sexual appetites (meaning any form of rape, be it pedophilia, bestiality or any sex act in which one of the partners is either unable to consent or is actively protesting the act) are going to be attracted to a lifestyle that would mandate celibacy.  Now I want to be very clear here.  In no way am I insinuating that everyone who lives a celibate life is a rapist, but rather, people who are rapists are going to be attracted to this lifestyle.  People choose to live celibate for all sorts of reasons, including biological ones where there just is no sex drive.  And as long as the person is psychologically fit and healthy there is nothing wrong with living celibate, but likewise, there’s no virtue in it either.  In addition, often when a biological need is ignored, many people begin to fixate on it.  This, again, can give rise to deviate and harmful behavior.  At this point it would seem that celibacy would become immoral.  Staying celibate for some greater purpose, while harming others as a result is definitely wore than engaging in sex with a willing adult partner.

Promiscuity

So does this mean that all the single people can just go out there and start screwing anybody they like?  The answer is a little complicated.  From my own personal perspective, I think sex, being the creation of another human life, should be treated with a certain amount of reverence, and is best when confined to committed relationships.  Likewise, I also think that people who live their entire lives having sex with strangers are probably not very psychologically healthy, and missing a key element of happiness.    But from a purely moral standpoint, I cannot come up with an argument as to why this would be wrong (provided the criteria of consenting adults and prevention of pregnancy and disease transmission were met). 

Teen Sex and Abstinence

Once upon a time 13 year-olds in our society went out, got jobs, got married and raised families.  Then they usually died by the time they were 35 years-old.  Of course back then quality parenting consisted of keeping the kid alive long enough to work out in the fields.  Psychological well-being and happiness were not even fathomed with regard to parenting.  We now have longer lifespans and appreciate the well-being and happiness of our children.  Parenting has become more complex and therefore, we have been able to afford our children longer childhoods.   In short, this means that most 13 year-olds would not make good parents.  However, their bodies are those of a fully grown human being.  Remember that we humans are supposed to be able to procreate at a young age.  The teen years are when most people experience some of their strongest sex drives.  So to tell these people that they are supposed to just ignore those biological impulses and fight against such drives is completely unrealistic.  We are talking about the psychological equivalent of children and sex does have an emotional component to it, especially for girls.  Not to mention the responsibility of prevention.  In the hands of children sex needs to be treated very carefully. 

In fact, I would venture to say that we adults have a moral responsibility to the younger people in our society to arm them with everything they need to make decisions that do the least harm.  It’s been prove time and time again that abstinence only programs in our schools don’t work.  We can’t just ignore a biological need like sex by telling kids not to do it.  Kids have been doing this since the dawn of humanity.  Nevertheless, I would never say that 13 year-olds having sex in our society is a good thing.  But it’s going to happen.   Society has made it a moral mandate for eons and we’ve always had teen pregnancies.  That is why being realistic about this issue is the only moral way to deal with it.  Kids are going to have sex.  What we need to accomplish is to get them to understand all the responsibilities that come along with a sexual relationship, so that they are sure when they enter into that phase of their lives, they are ready for it.  We need to give them the honest dialogue about it and the tools to use to prevent tragedy should they choose to engage in it sooner rather than later.  What we need to stop doing is making abstinence seem like it’s a normal thing, as if there is something wrong with kids who have these desires.   These drives and desires are completely normal and natural.  Acting on them, is not a bad thing in and of itself.  Not taking the proper precautions is a bad thing.  However, who has committed the wrong when we as a society do not give our teenagers the necessary tools to prevent the tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy or STD?  We condemn the pregnant teen mother with all sorts of names and insults when all she did was act on her instincts—her very strong instincts.  The pregnant teen mother needs to be treated with sympathy and solutions.  Her friends need education and birth control.  We as a society have a moral obligation to provide those elements for every teenager. 

The Morality of Sex

This is my two part blog on the Morality of Sex.  I was interviewed on Colin Lively’s radio program several months ago and talked about this.  I think it’s important to open the discussion of this issue because it seems to be so important in our society.  Politically, we legislate on it and judge our politicians and leaders by it, but are we doing it fairly?

The mention of sex will always elicit a reaction from people.  The gamut runs from snickers and giggles to outright rage from others.   In certain parts of the world people are executed because of sex.  Be it engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex or sex with a person of the same gender, in many places, people take their lives into their own hands when they engage in sex. 
Most of these laws are based upon an archaic understanding of the world, as well as the realities of the harshness of existence on a planet which is in constant flux.  However, as we’ve been able to understand the world and control certain aspects of our existence, through modern science, many of the laws and principles driving our ideas need to be reevaluated. 
The existing premise about sex in the United States is that it is somehow bad, unless you do it with one unspecified, yet specific person and you make a formal and legal commitment to only have sex (and procreate) with that one person.  There are people who think the entire breakdown of society is because of sex.  Even if society were breaking down, I’m not so sure I would blame sex.  After all, sex has always been there and people have always engaged in it, so if it’s taken all these thousands of years until now for society to break down, I hardly think sex is the reason. 

Small History Lesson
While I’m not an anthropologist, it would seem to me that the issue of sex being a moral issue began in a time when life spans were about 30-40 years.  If a woman had a baby without a partner to help her raise it, the chances that she would die before the child reached the age to fend for him/herself was pretty great.  A child who perishes because s/he is not able to survive on his/her own is a great tragedy.  And even if someone takes the child in and provides for it, the child can still be viewed as a burden on society so the tragedy is not avoided, but merely minimized. 
However, because of the short lifespans, the impetus to procreate at a young age became greater.  This means that the drive to have sex became even stronger during the younger years.  And in fact, those instincts are so strong that I feel sex is a biological imperative.  Because of this, sex itself is NOT a moral issue.  There certainly are moral issues surrounding sex, just as there are with all other biological imperatives, but the act itself, from a moral standpoint, is completely ambiguous.
A lot of people (mostly very religious conservative people) don’t want to hear this.  It upsets their entire world view.  But then so did Galileo once upon a time and the result was advancements in science and technology that have improved life for nearly every human on this planet (at least for the time being).   I say to those people, the world is in flux.  Get used to it.

Where does that leave morality? 
Sex is not an “option” but rather a need.  So where exactly does that leave morality and sex?  They still share a close relationship, but just some of the nuances have changed.  For example, if a person makes a commitment to only have sex with one person, s/he still has a moral obligation to honor that commitment.  If a two consenting adults, with no prior obligations take every precaution (and re-read that clause again because the requirements there are adults, consent and no other commitments) to prevent the transmission of an STD or cause an unwanted pregnancy then no moral wrong has been committed if they have sex with each other.  Notice that there is no mandate for the people to be of different genders?  That’s because homosexuality is not morally wrong.  It is just the fulfillment of a biological need.  And because pregnancy is not possible between the same gender, there never has been a rational argument for the prohibition (other than religious arguments which are not very good arguments because of the logical inconsistencies that are contained within such texts). 

This blog will be continued on Friday where I will touch directly on the morality of Celibacy, promiscuity, Teenagers and Sex, and Religion and Sex.