One Utah

In her usual trenchant way, Elizabeth Wood summarizes the problem with discussion of sexuality in our society:

I keep thinking about this discussion we’ve been having about “protecting” people from sex, or sexually explicit material. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that quite often our efforts at protection do more harm than good.

. . . Because we, as a society, as a culture, and as communities, cannot talk rationally about sex, we create policies that do more harm than good. Because we are unwilling or unable to remember our own sexual curiosity as children, and because we are so invested in denying childhood sexuality, we create policies to protect children — often from themselves — and we do them more harm than good.

I do not dispute that children need protection from those who would do them harm. But we are casting much to wide a net. It lets through most of the people who do actually harm kids — people who are known to them — and it creates these unreasonable and unintended outcomes that ruin the lives of people who do not seriously do harm to anybody.

Elizabeth cites two cases where teens engaged in consensual sexual behavior with other teens that results in crimes because of the ways the laws were written. Technically, in Utah, an 18 year is guilty of statutory rape if she/he has intercourse with their 17 year boy/girlfriend - even if they were having sex before the older partner turned 18. What was legal for two 17 year olds, is suddenly a sex crime when one of them turns 18. As Elizabeth points out, and as I have said before, the problem isn’t children and teenagers - it is adult anxieties about sexuality.

Which brings me to a great comment from Debra Haffner:

“The Higher Power of Lucky” is this year’s winner of the Newberry Medal, the award in children’s literature. Lucky apparently is the consumate eavesdropper, and she overhears someone saying that a rattlesnake had bit his dog on the scrotum.

That word “scrotum” is causing some school librarians to ban the book. A librarian from Colorado was quoted as saying in the NY Times, “you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature. At least not for children.” Another in New Jersey said she wouldn’t want to explain that word.

. . . I’m guessing that the uproar really isn’t about protecting the children. It’s about protecting the adults from having to answer a child’s question about a body part honestly. But isn’t the role of the school librarian to provide information? And since when are proper names of the part’s of the body worthy of censorship?

I haven’t read the book in question - as a child I absolutely devoured children’s books, even the ones with swear words. Judy Blume was a particular favorite - she has an amazing ear for children’s problems and solutions and ways of understanding and relating to the world. But Judy Blume is regularly targeted for consership and banning - as are a host of other children’s authors. Consider the masterpiece, Bridge to Terebithia - it has been challenged time and again because one of the main characters swears. Adult fears about sexuality far too often drive the discussion about sexuality, rather than the actual needs of children and teens for accurate, complete age-appropriate information.

Time and again, as adults panic about children and sexuality, the outcome is denial of life-changing information to young people. The outcomes can be difficult, even devastating.

This post has been bothering me, and other readers, all day (h/t to feministe!). An evangelical Christian recounts his experience and lays out the problem: he and his wife have absolutely ended any intimacy in their relationship out of fear of pregnancy. His wife has had three dififcult pregnancies and three c-sections and wants to avoid a fourth. He was denied a vasectomy by a doctor

I made an appointment for a vasectomy. When I went in for my initial consult, the urologist asked me why I wanted to get a vasectomy. I said, “Because my wife wants me to.” He told me that was the wrong reason.

The post ends with this summary:

Here is the dilemma I face:

If I get a vasectomy, we’ll be sinning if we have sex, and unlike using a condom, the sin will be permanent (or extremely expensive if not impossible to reverse). Practically speaking, there’s no repentance if indeed contracepted sex is a sin.

But if I don’t get a vasectomy, and we have to abstain until my wife reaches menopause, we’ll be sinning by not having sex. Couples are only supposed to abstain briefly but to come back together to avoid temptation (see I Corinthians 7). And it seems that the NFPers and the Quiverfull folks would agree that abstaining for the purpose of avoiding children is also a sin.

Beyond the concern about offending God, if I opt for abstinence over a vasectomy, our marriage will suffer. Love will diminish because we’ll be avoiding physical affection and because my wife will be offended that I am not complying with her wishes.

This is not a trick question, this is not a hypothetical, this is not a rhetorical trap. This is a real-life dilemma. I have a real-life decision to make.

What would you do if you were in my shoes?

This couple’s relationship is a disaster because of antiquated ideas about contraception and sexuality. They’re being driven apart by three thousand year old notions of biology when they could simply embrace the medical technology that is presenting itself to them. A vasectomy is easy and quick. Other forms of contraception are available and using them consistently and correctly is easily learned. This couple is suffering because of attitudes toward sexuality informed not by compassion but dogma. Contracepted sex is hardly a sin and certainly, the greater sin seems to me to be condemning one another to emotional pain because of objections to contraception that are based on a freestyle mixture of dogma, lies, and misunderstanding (despite the special pleadings of anti-abortion activists, contraception isn’t the same as abortion - it prevents pregnancies).

I hope the the Christian couple in question realize they’ve been lied to and spiritually mislead. They deserve better than this treatment from one another and their faith. In the end, I’m reminded of an ancient latin saying “Gloria Dei, Homo Vivens” - the glory of God is humans fully alive. Refusing to use contraception isn’t a path toward being fully alive - it has separated this couple and no doubt millions of others. Despite right wing blowhards, contraception and the responsible use of contraception are a way of honoring the procreative potential of heterosexual sex. It does not dishonor one’s partner or one’s self. Instead, it asks us to honor the possiblities of life and to make responsible healthy choices.

In this couple’s case, there’s no sin if their choices build a stronger, more lasting relationship between the two.

This entry was posted Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Bigotry, Contraception, Equality, Homophobia, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Society, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, Utah Politics, censorship. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.