Glenden BrownWe’re just a bunch of slutty puritans
In his commentary on the film Kinsey, Bill Condon quotes a Kinsey biographer who wrote “America is most the licentious culture since Rome and the most puritan culture ever invented.” Condon muses that these two poles in American culture seem to alternate between periods of being quiescent and periods of being active - in our era Condon says we are much more polarized around these extremes. The McCain campaign tried, in a clumsy way, to take advantage of that in their Britney/Paris/Barack ad; the subtext of the ad was all about sex.
Kinsey’s research demonstrated a tremendous divide between what we as American think everyone is doing and what everyone is in fact doing. Research today produces similar results (for instance last years Guttmacher report showing that 95% of American engage in premarital sex).
A few years ago, I was with some High School friends. Our discussion brought up the same issue; at the time we weren’t aware that any of our peers were sexually active, but looking back it is obvious that they were, we simply assumed that as nice Catholic school kids that they weren’t. My niece’s small town Utah public school is awash in sexual activity, but the parents refuse to acknowledge it. At graduation a few years back, my niece and my mother counted the graduating seniors who were pregnant and/or already parents and arrived at nearly half the graduating girls. Ask the parents, though, and they will say it doesn’t happen in their town.
I often hear from BYU graduates that the majority of BYU students obey the honor code but a larger number don’t than you might expect. At my own alma mater, sex was treated with a combination of matter of factness and casualness. I think many people experience college as the garden of sexual delights explored in the Song of Solomon - an honest, frank, forthright place in which sexuality is not scandalous, salacious or taboo; it simply is.
We Americans are easily scandalized and we can’t get enough of the salacious details. Whether it’s Larry Craig’s bathroom antics or John Edwards recently revealed affair, we want to know the details (and given half a chance, we’ll recycle them into TV shows). Law and Order and Law and Order: SVU have done great episodes on things like bathroom pickups and African American men on the DL that reflect on the tension between our licentiousness and puritanical attitudes.
I don’t have any answers this morning. But, ending where I started, there’s a sequence in Kinsey where they are showing “clips of interviews” and they end with several people asking “Am I normal?” When it comes to sexuality, so many Americans wonder exactly that: Am I normal? The value in what Kinsey started and what his intellectual heirs continue is an effort to assure us that most of us are perfectly normal. But so many of us go and do what is normal and then spend all this energy feeling bad about it. We are still living Hawthorne’s scarlet letter in our own minds - shocked and offended at our behavior and urges, convinced that simply having the thoughts is going to send us to hell but afraid, terrified even, to ask if anyone else is doing since, if they’re not, we’re really in trouble. Making the topic itself taboo has guaranteed it has become a totem we cannot let go.
August 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Paris Hilton may be licentious, but she has some standards. No sex with the “old, white-haired dude.”
August 10th, 2008 at 9:50 am
That may be the area where Paris and I are in full agreement.
August 10th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
A good friend of mine brags about all the BJs he got at BYU.
August 10th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Holy cow, watching the twelve year old Olympic gymnasts tonight makes me happy!
Am I normal?
August 11th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
This comments at ksl.com was just too good not to share:
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=3987016&comments=true
Here it is, below:
August 11th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Oh! (Boggus 20:08)
August 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Albert O:
Obviously, the commenter is thinking too much, Boy would I ever love to have Paul Mero answer all of those questions!
Paul?
August 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I hope it’s satire. I mean, commenter: ‘end of an error’. Very witty though.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Me thinks Lev set forth the above rule re menstruation to require man to bolt during that moment of time - period, if you will - just prior to the uncleanliness - i.e., that moment of time when man otherwise be walking on egg shells trying to dodge woman’s unreasonable, albeit periodic, wrath and rage. My guess is Lev probably have bottle strong drink in desk drawer during such period for assistance.
August 12th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Guess I forgot about the “careful what you ask for” rule.
Kind of glad I did!
August 12th, 2008 at 9:40 am
There is also scriptural admonition to not cast pearls before swine. You wonderful folks want me to respond to what? To satire…to a lame attempt at humor?
Ridicule is your hallmark now?
Perhaps you fellows can help me? Albert’s hero above, whom he quotes at length, clearly couldn’t care less about the LDS Church or the religious “questions” he poses…and yet the entire exercise is couched in one of those “got ya” kinds of conclusions. Again, here you guys go with the “consistency/inconsistency” thing.
The truth is that the author (and most of you) is the victim of his own sophistry. Because, of course, the answer to every one of those questions is The New Testament, the Restored Gospel, and priesthood authorityto give modern revelation. But for the sophist these “truths” are meaningless, the objects of ridicule.
And so Albert actually wants me to answer those questions? While I appreciate the confidence in my abilities (or don’t appreciate the not so subtle ridicule in taunting me), my answers (the ones I just gave in the previous paragraph) are inherently unacceptable to you all.
Why do unbelievers insist on crossing religious swords with believers? Wouldn’t it just be a better use of time for you to call us crazy and get on with the us vs. them struggles of life? Seriously, now that I think about it a little more, it is quite humorous that you are so obsessed with your “missionary work” of ridicule. You guys are like the blog version of the anti-Mormons standing on the perimeter of Temple Square during conference. If your objective is to influence others, then you’re clearly not doing that. And this is why I labeled (most of) you misanthropes.
Like I have said to you previously, you guys can leave the Church, but you just can’t leave it alone. (And that must be nearly unbearable for you…I do feel sorry for you.) Honestly.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Paul:
Just face it, man. You pick and choose bible quotes right along with the best of ‘em. If the Bible - Old or New Testament included - says something to support your cause of the moment, then you will run with it to no end - the church position on homosexuality is illustrative. But if the passage produces an absurdity given modern standards, you make excuses why it should or does not apply (I refer you, for example, to your own comment above). In fact, Paul, you are down right hypocritical!
As to the following question:
An equally valid rhetorical question is: “Why do believers insist on injecting their moral standards upon non-believers?” Give it some thought, Paul, and ponder about it, and then perhaps the answer to your own question will be revealed to you!!
August 12th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Albert, you’r testing my patience. I don’t pick and choose anything. First of all, I am not the LDS Church. I’m one guy commenting on this post. As a Latter-day Saint I believe that my Church leaders receive revelation on a variety of subjects. If that is picking and choosing so be it. But your fight is with then over their, and your, religion…not with me.
You obsfucate like no other.
I suppose the answer to your question, and mine, is the natural war between believers and non-believers, often settled by keeping our governments limited in scope, but sometimes unavoidable. My earlier point was simply to say that I find it humorous that you guys try to make religous arguments to defend anti-religious arguments…again, like anti-Mormons who quote from the Book of Mormon to try to disprove the Restored Gospel. That approach is pathetic.
I might be an unintending hypocrite. But you are certainly a dishonest sophist (if that is not redundant).
August 12th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Paul:
If I am testing your patience, then apparently I am succeeding in my task, which is to make you realize how utterly void, pathetic and hypocritical your arguments appear!
Having said that, I will rest comfortably today knowing that I am a sophist, and a dishonest one at that.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Larry, I hate you, Grr. In the future will you please put a lid on it? Paul’s generalizing is most tiresome. Makes me just wanna holler “Baaaaa!”
August 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Paul:
Hypocrites are funny! They were funny when Mark Twain wrote about them and still are. You don’t have the option of throwing out the Old Testament if you continue to use the abomination rule to go after homosexuals.
If you ever decide to live in the real world, the KSL post and the following one by “Obama the Paul” will be funny to you, otherwise, the joke’s on you. Maybe you can someday claim to not remember whether you were ever religious, the way you claim to not remember you were ever on television defending Tom Delay or even that you were on Chris Vanocur’s show.
If that tests your patience, well then so be it. Go listen to Hannity make fun of liberals at my expense!
August 12th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Paul - you’ve used the word “sophist” a lot - I don’t think it means what you think it means. :)
I realize that for you the theology of Mormonism - including ideas about the restored gospel and priesthood authority and modern revelation - is persuasive and authoritative. But, for a general audience it lacks validity. The assertions made in the Book of Mormon (concerning for instance the origins of Native Americans) have not been proven by science and archeology. Such lack of proof to a general audience by itself invalidates claims of authority made by Mormon leaders so the usefulness of claims from those leaders is extremely limited.
This is ancillary but if someone could explain I’d be interested; the Mormon use of the term Gospel seems very different than the way the term is used in other Christian churches. In Mormon terms it seems to connote a broader concept involving specifically membership in the LDS church, following the Word of Wisdom, and other proclamations from church leaders; but within most churches it is more specifically used to mean the “good news” of Jesus. Thus, you hear mormons speak about “the gospel rules” or “following the gospel” (I think those are the terms I’ve heard) and it clearly means something different than is meant when other Christians use the term Gospel. So what do mormons mean by the term gospel?
August 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Paul,
How convenient to call it faith and revelation when confronted with the shortcomings of religion to make you right.
I do believe you have some free agency somewhere. Where might that arise?
August 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Albert and Larry…how am I hypocritical? Specifically.
Cav…how have I generalized? Specifically.
Glen…sophistry…a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.
Cliff…how have I relied on an answer of faith to cover shortcomings in my argument? Specifically.
August 12th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
And, Albert, the patience you test regards my willingness to spend this much time answering and re-answering, and re-answering points when it seems very clear that you’re not interested in understanding anything except whatever fits your misanthropic and cynical worldview.
I have answered everything you guys have thrown at me…and I don’t mind the multiple-to-one odds (it almost makes us even). But I can respond only so far (and you with me) because we share different worldviews.
The wearysome part is when we hit that wall of insurmountable difference and you can’t see it…and, typically, that’s when you guys go into “street preacher” mode. By then, the discussion is over.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Cool. Now, I am a dishonest sophist with a misanthropic and cynical worldview.
As to answering everything thrown at you, Paul, I would say a better characterization is discombobulated obfuscation with a dose of barely controlled hand-waving.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Us wonderful folks cherish ridicule. But of course. Should not the sheep be shorn?
You guys, Believers / unbelievers. There are never, ever more than two choices! That would just be wrong.
Get snipey Paul. Aren’t you Obama the Paul? That was pretty good. And yes, Paul, we’re almost even, you lead by a whopping -8 points. Congradulations!
August 12th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Take heart Albert O.. I too, am a missenth(what he said) cynic!
August 12th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Nope not “obama the paul”
August 12th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hmmm. Guess I am going to have to get out the Merriam-Webster tonight!
I think Paul called me an insect or something. But it still sounds cool!
August 12th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Misanthrope…a hater of humankind…kind of like an insect. :)
August 13th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Paul:
I wasn’t speaking of you specifically when I brought up the hypocrites, but you espouse all of the worst ideas of the modern republican pop culture which are totally hypocritical and antithetical to everything Jesus taught.
I linked you to an article about a group that keeps changing it’s name to remain unseen, but has generally been known as “The Family.” This group was started by a man who saw God back in the 1930’s and was told that everybody had Jesus wrong. He was inspired to think that Jesus actually liked people who were very, very rich and thought followers of his congregation should lead by using examples set by people such as Stalin, Hitler, and the such. Weird huh?
Ever heard of “The Washington Prayer Breakfast.” Same group! Here’s the strangest thing. Although this is mostly an organization for men only, Hillary partakes of this nonsense along with many powerful Republicans who deny participation, like Ed Meese and Sam Brownback. This group doesn’t just wildly interpret the Bible to their own means, they just make shit up entirely!
I perceive our side to be the people who don’t make shit up for other people to live by, (you included), thereby giving us the moral high ground needed to win other peoples hearts and minds around the world. That makes us safer.
My thoughts about that idiot that shows up with the sign that proclaims hatred of everybody in Jesus’s name in front of the Temple is that he is paid by some fake republican grass roots scumbag/s to make a mockery of the ACLU by pushing free speech limits which the ACLU is forced to protect, but you might know that when Rush Limbaugh got in trouble for using illegal heroin on the public airwaves, he ran crying to the ACLU for help also. Fred Phelps is also a suspect in this theory of mine.
Do you think I’m on to something here, or do you know something you could tell me about my observations in this comment?
August 13th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Hmmm! No answer. I must be on to something!
August 13th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Sorry, between earning a living and a new server that is interrupting email flow, I didn’t see this until now.
Funny you say that…I always thought Fred Phelps was funded by Tim Gill or Bruce Bastian or some other rich gay guy, to make religious people look bad. I even said this in the “gay dialogue” I had with Stephen Clark (on our SI website)!!
Your initial words…”you espouse all of the worst ideas of the modern republican pop culture which are totally hypocritical and antithetical to everything Jesus taught”…certainly no generalizations there!!
Again, from a few comments prior, could you (and the others) be more specific in your accusations?
August 13th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well it looks like we agree about one thing anyway. Fred Phelps is not of this earth and represents nobody. I still think my theory makes more sense because everybody knows most of the money being spent to screw up our society and our minds is spent by right wingers.
Again, I’m not connecting any direct hypocrisy to you Paul, but Tom Delay, (whom you won’t condemn for some reason), told a man who was shipping in young Chinese girls to be used as slaves that he would make sure America did nothing about it, and then claimed a connection to God when he stepped down in disgrace from the congress. Those girls had to commit to having abortions to even get the opportunity to work as slaves.
Come on Paul, show some values and condemn this beast [Delay]. Loyalty is not always a good thing. Just ask another Paul, (O’Neill)!