America's War On Sex

Book Review: America's War On Sex by Marty Klein
Written by David R. Farthing
Published December 07, 2007

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign… he only purpose for which government may rightfully exercise power… over anyone is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”
- John Stuart Mill, 1859 essay On Liberty

“Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”
- H.L. Mencken


Do you have or want to have sex? If so, are you willing to limit your sexual expression to the missionary position within the confines of state-sanctioned marriage? If your answer to the first question is “yes,” and the second “no,” you ought to read Marty Klein’s book America’s War on Sex as soon as possible.


Since the onset of the second Bush presidency, we’ve all become familiar with the term “culture war.” (Although its roots go back as far as the Reagan era and the Moral Majority. Someone, I forget who, once said, “The Moral Majority is neither moral nor a majority.“) I’d always thought of this “war” in terms of free speech, prayer in the schools, displaying the Ten Commandments in government buildings or nativity scenes in public places, the separation of church and state, and abortion, contraception and family planning controversy.

The culture war has always been framed as the Right vs. the Left, Republicans vs. Democrats, Conservatives vs. Liberals, theocracy vs. democracy, and science vs. faith. It seems that over the last seven years, the conservatives led by George W. Bush and his faith-based initiatives appear to be winning.

It never occurred to me that President Bush wanted to eliminate the right of the American people to acquire dildos. That’s right. Dildos.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/07/184442.php

well, I don't think I have to draw you a picture.

They fear seeing or even accidentally rubbing against them, and women's, of course, are terrifying. Anyone having fun with them is a threat.

We're taught from an early age that sex is dirty, and private parts are filthy, too. This prevents public discussion of sex above the fourth-grade level.

I rest my case against these fucking adulterous, hypocritical, and incestuous scumbags.

this war will go as well as the wars on poverty and drugs have.

Just found it.

How They Do It

A coalition of nearly 80 politicians and community leaders such as James Dobson and Donald Wildmon recently sent a letter to President Bush asking him to expand prosecutions of sellers and buyers of "obscene pornographic material."

This provides a great chance to see their manipulative methodology in action. We've underlined (and responded to) a few phrases for your dining and dancing pleasure.

The letter said Bush's help was needed "because pornographers and sexual predators (a category mixing legal business people and criminals) are increasingly targeting (would business people target non-purchasers?) America's most vulnerable citizens: our children." The letter asked Bush to address the issue of obscenity (not the same as "pornography") publicly, adding that a meeting with members of the conservative groups (what about representatives of 50 million porn users?) would give him the opportunity to do so.

The letter also urged Bush to add resources to the Department of Justice's Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, and called for more involvement by the FBI. The letter claimed that a recent study (by whom?) showed that 33% of youth (including 16- & 17-year-olds) had been exposed (spam--which everyone discards) to unsolicited sexual material ("hot sluts want you!"...borrr-ing) on the Internet in the last year and that one in seven young people (primarily teens coming on to each other) had received unwanted advances for sex (yup, that's what teens do) during the same period.

There you have it: an apparent epidemic of dangerous people doing illegal things, threatening the safety of little children across the country. Obvious danger: sex. Obvious solution: repress it.

http://www.sexualintelligence.org/newsletters/issue80.html

fuck 'em

From my recollection of my now ancient teen years, I'd imagine something like 80% of teen girls could claim some sort of "unwanted sexual advance", most likely from a slobbering inept teenage boy (like me)

then it's something I can get behind. C'mon, these guys would never sell snake oil.

The number of people in poverty and who take drugs are nothing compared to the number of people having sex :rofl:

Like that War On Drugs.

Has this guy left his house in the last 20 years? Used the internet? Turned on the television? Read any magazines?

If there's a war on sex in America, then sex is winning in a big way. Many modern churches even use frank discussions of sexuality to lure new congregants.

This invariably plays a determining role in shaping the public mind, and it likewise serves authoritarian/Puritanical interests by allowing their ilk to sharply condemn "liberalism" for the surface results, when in fact, much of this cheap consumer culture titillation isn't grounded in genuinely liberal wants/needs/ideals, but media induced affectation which reinforces the prevailing superficial mindset - conformity, uniformity, apathy, indifference, instruction of what defines beauty, "sexiness," what to love, what to hate.

In other words, women burning their bras during the civil rights era, or even the hippies imbued in "free love" experimentation, are not on par with teen aged girls wearing Hooters shirts, and pants cut so low their pubic mound and butt crack is on display, stemming from a cultural monkey-see, monkey-do phenomenon. This likewise conditions young male minds to perceive women as being "cool" with this level of porno-esque sexuality.

Sexual liberation and sexual exploitation are not synonymous.

It's a culture that has turned sex into a cheap plastic trinket.

I think shit like Britney is more a product of the conservative, reactionary mind than the liberal, "permissive" mind.

...indirectly delves into this, which, again, serves as a scheme that promotes chauvinist, rightward corporate "values" {centered on superficiality, social status, emotionless "sport" sex based on affectation}, quite antithetical to the genuine spirit of sexual exploration/liberation, while simultaneously affording the rightist movement plenty of opportunity to condemn the hedonistic culture for its rampant lasciviousness. Yet it's projectively from the right that so many crusading closet freaks hail.

"The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the... passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life."
(Bertrand Russell / 1872-1970 / Marriage and Morals)

"...mental disorders and unwholesome views of life." A perfect description of America.

Could it be we are hated for that and not our "Freedoms?"

I'm going to have hot, interracial sex today, completely outside of marriage, and possibly involving some toys from us.

Canadian Prime Minster Pierre Elliot Trudeau
December 22, 1967

Sid

to love our neighbor to the north!

"Sexual liberation and sexual exploitation are not synonymous"

as the left fight the right for their sexual freedoms they ignore the problem that are in our society with our youth. as the right fights the problem with our youth they go after the lefts sexual freedoms.

there is no mature handling of this issue.

it is both sides being extreme in their demand in battle and it is hurting our children. fuck the adults that are being hurt, exploited, damaged ect..... it is theirs to experience, figure out, fix. but we are shoving the adult world in our children's faces and the children are just one big ole hormonal mess

What they are doing is fighting individual freedom and claiming that they are fighting for our youth.

Its the same with everything the right does. They always claim they do one thing and do another. They fight for tax cuts, but don't mention its only for the rich. They fight against free education on the account of personal freedom, but neglect to say that only the rich benefit from it. They fight against a smoking ban, not because they care, but because they lobby for tobacco companies. They advertise that they fight for the "middle class" so that everyone can identify with it, but fail to mention that in their book "middle class" is someone who owns a company with one hundered employees.

The "moral" condition that our youth sometimes seems to be in, is directly connected to the spread of poverty. Neglect of children is directly correlated with the fact that parents are struggling. If the right was interested in fighting for our youth they would fight poverty. Instead they seek to impose restrictive measures which further pushes children of the lower class into their role as the underdogs of society, and seek to spread religious ideology as a tool of controling the minds of the proletariate.

Sexual exploitation can only end, when exploitation ends in general. The right fails to acknowledge this, since ultimately they are the spokespeople of those benefitting from exploitation.

As they tend to set more overt examples of monkey-see monkey-do for others to emulate within their peer groups/cliques.

They don't do it because they have to, they do it because they want to and they are much more likely to be on the better end of it. They can afford clean drugs and certainly will not have to offer themselves to others for them. If they get busted, they will face much lower penalties. Since they are the future ruling class, it is hard to see them as victims of any kind. Most of them will grow up to be just fine. They will have a college education and a high paid job. The fact that they set examples that others strive to follow perhaps just shows even more, that they belong to the "better" half of society. If you want, the "moral condition" of the rich is also an effect of a seperation of classes IMHO.

edit: typo

"Wanting" to do it doesn't mean the choice is made free of cultural coercion and/or social manipulation, nor ending up on "the better end of it." The naive, attention starved girl who is coaxed into servicing a group of jocks at a kegger can come from either a wealthy or poor family; it's the cultural/environmental conditioning that programmed them into objectifying her, and her into not being capable of finding any fault with her own willful sexual subjugation. Naturally different people will perceive the details of such murky waters differently.

Also, if a wealthy kid grows up to be part of the "future ruling class," they may appear to be "just fine," as many indicated they'd prefer to, say, have a beer with Bush over Kerry, but may indeed harbor some rather frightening, de-humanized views of humanity.

Just out of curiosity.

If interested, there is an interview with Dr. Klein.

http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/222-sex-love-and-intimacy/episodes/2889-dr-marty-klein-america-s-war-sex-attack

It could be more than corporate culture values at play.

literally stuffin it down their throats..... one side saying no sex period, the other say embrace the whore you are.

there is a middle ground.

healthy adolescent sexual exploration that is age appropriate. kids dont even have a clue today what that is.

Or "being away from the middle ground" as a source of distress. I think there is alot of truth in that.

1. Fox: More Sex in the "Liberal" Media

This is funny, with a dark side. Or vice versa.

Morality groups and conservative religious leaders have done a brilliant job creating a Liberal Media Conspiracy. You know, the leftwing-homosexual-jewish-aclu entertainment industry that's forcing Americans to watch "smut burgers," "lewdness," and "indecency" on TV (see MoralityInMedia.org). Back in 1992 Republican Party chair Rich Bond even acknowledged that their frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of their strategy. Thousands of groups and churches now raise hundreds of millions of dollars each year to fight this horrifying liberal trash.

Except this liberal Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist. Fox TV, for example, has the top four programs on the Parents Television Council's list of 2005's "worst TV shows for family viewing on primetime broadcast TV." You know, the Fox network of "liberals" Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, and Trent Lott ("If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Lott said in 2001). Somehow, conservative viewers insist they're being fed immoral crap by a liberal media conspiracy. Sorry, wrong conspiracy.

Now let's talk news.

Since Christmas, three women in Daytona Beach, FL have been killed in unsolved murders. So on March 23, Fox News did what it often does: it talked about murder for no reason, and used a news peg involving sex--in this case, Spring Break. Several news personnel took turns talking in a corner of the screen, while salacious cameras gave us generous heaps of girl-flesh: drinking, dancing, stripping, cavorting young things. Listening to tut-tutting about murder was the admission price for watching lovely coeds dressed in the full range of female garb, everything from thongs to bikinis to one-pieces.

Fox committed dozens of media crimes in the three-minute segment. They flashed gratuitous sex while trivializing murder. They paired the two. They told people to worry, as if worrying would protect them. They discussed irrational violence while filling the screen with irrational pleasure. And, of course, intoned their concern with Really Serious voices and frowns.

Along with other mainstream news organizations, Fox rarely misses an opportunity to titillate us, even resorting to the lame excuse of "didja hear about that awful sexual thing over there?" They showed the Janet Jackson nipple moment 4.3 jillion times.

True liberals? Sure we want to see sex on TV. We just don't think you need the excuse of murder.

Thanks to the Daily Show for bringing this to everyone's attention. To see the clip, with Jon Stewart's hilarious commentary, go to www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=60827.

http://www.sexualintelligence.org/newsletters/issue74.html

You may quote anything herein, with the following attribution:
"Reprinted from Sexual Intelligence, copyright © Marty Klein, Ph.D. (www.SexEd.org)."

being brainwashed by her fox new watchin father. we had a conversation on the manipulation using the degradation of women for the fat old men in the recliners guzzlin their beer as entertainment while lecturing us on morality.

so to be a liberal i want to watch sex on tv? is that what it is to be a liberal?

That must have been an interesting conversation and I suppose you aren't fat and weren't guzzlin beer.

I think the point was that FoxNews needed the serial killer excuse, or used that excuse, to air a lot of T&A. Found the link to the Daily Show video:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=118775&title=intro-manhunt

I love my generation ("Y"), but it's developed an outlook on sex that seriously pisses me off. As many know, Gen-Y is profoundly anti-fundie. The surge in young people identifying as Pagan (I admit to this one), or Humanist, or New Atheist, is part of it... and that's fine, because religious tolerance and plurality are good things, and a mass exodus should also prompt the Christian churches to assess how they managed to alienate a whole generation. But with this has come a reaction to every view fundies hold. "I am the anti-fundie, and everything they are for, I'm against." The end result is that it's considered "uncool" and "lame" to not be sexually active, and if you're average or better in looks, then the assumption for choosing not to be sexually active is that you are a fundamentalist.

asexual, ugly, puritan, fundamentalist or some other shit to intimidate into embracing.

i have kids and nieces and nephews, watching them trying to figure this crap out. it is not easy.

It's your choice. I think his point is that uninformed choices are too often unhealthy choices.

Even if you AREN'T interested in sex. The right-wing fundamentalists are all about sexual conformity, period -- they even go after people who identify as asexual.

They just want a mindless ignorant patriotic baby making horde to fight their wars of imperialism and slave away in their fucked up economic oligarchy.

We should organize a group the runs around and pelts Republicans with rubber penises :evil:

There are, sadly, many on the left just as willing to poke their noses and judgments into others choices of conscience. Sex is just one of them.

The curse of puritanism is still strong in the United States.

Unless it motivates consumers to buy more Chinese crap (including commercial hamburgers made from assorted beef-bearing animals) sex has no decent moral purpose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P1TTJrho58">YouTube - Sexy Paris Hilton eating hamburger

That attitude is common - even among many here at DU. We're apparently all supposed to be offended and pissed off all the time. A (busty *gasp*) girl on a hamburger is enough to send some into spasms.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

watch what happens if they even attempt this "war on sex". They tried the whole "no dildo's" thing in Texas, it didn't last long. You want to see Americans come out in force together, start a war on sex. Believe me, there are a lot more people fucking than there are people complaining about it.

and the other point is they're winning

but if you look at the TV, sex in popular culture appears to be entirely geared towards 14 year old boys. :shrug:

... that the straight arrow, Republican voting men that you find in church oon Sunday are the ones you find in the strip clubs on Friday night.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."