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February 10, 2012 at 12:34 pm 
Ed Brayton I have argued for many years that the real target of the wingnuts, the real goal they have, is not just to outlaw abortion — it’s to outlaw contraception too. That’s why they still rail against Griswold v Connecticut and attack the judiciary constantly. James Dobson and Jewish wingnut Daniel Lapin demonstrate this perfectly:
Dobson: How did we get in this mess? I mean, we can all see that something is going wrong, but why now? What’s going on right now?
Lapin: Again it is the tug of sexuality; it is not an accident. Future historians might say that the big dividing line between a time when American values really meant something and a time that we look today with unconcealed dismay at our own prospects, when do you think that began? Wouldn’t you agree that most people somewhere in the 1960s, back then in the ’60s perhaps one of the most notable events and I think its significance can hardly be exaggerated was the arrival of the birth control tablet in the early ’60s. What that did for the very first time is it created the possibility of perpetual male adolescence, it made it possible for the first time for men to really never grow up and essentially it transformed masculinity with all the implications of honor and respect and courage and the ability to defer gratification, everything that we think of as responsible masculinity, and got transformed into a very simple question, ‘did you remember to take your pill honey’?
Tonight they’re gonna party like it’s 1899.
Posted in 
I love how they made the introduction of the BC pill ALL ABOUT THE MEN.
Gee, condoms have been around a lot longer then the pill.
Yeah, they have, slc1, but the big thing about the pill is that (gasp) it allowed women to have control over whether they got pregnant or not. This was clearly subversive and will probably be responsible for the fall of Western Civilization.
Holy shit! He really can’t conceive of any reason that birth control might exist except to make sex more convenient for men?
(Oops! Pun not intended.)
I don’t get their political calculus. How can they win votes with that?
Maybe my views are clouded by watching too much Rachel Maddow, but the Beltway media also seems to be going on and on about the Catholic vote, but kinda ignoring the women vote?
It’s easy pelamun, their target audience want their neighbors to abstain.
Women elected Bill Clinton twice.
I can’t imagine why any woman would vote for religious extremists who would re-enslave them as a subjugated majority of the population.
Then again, I can’t imagine why any male would vote that way either.
Actually you are wrong in this one too. Their target is not abortion or contraception but Women. To these people there are only three types of women: virgins, mothers and whores. The first two categories don’t have sex, my oh my absolutely not! The third category is viewed by them as a necessary evil at best and lower than scrofula at worst.
So, to them, any woman who would willingly have sex for any reason other than to get pregnant, is a whore and deserves to be punished, severely.
So, what this is really about is assaulting women’s sexuality or more specifically, women who DARE to have a sexuality.
It is always interesting to me that so many of these people are opposed to things like Plan B or oral contraceptions (In addition to abortion) But many of the same people have little or no real issue with condoms (Mr. Ratzinger excepted of course).
Just more of the religious perversion of human sexuality.
oh, I’d say men have been able to ‘never really grow up’ as long as there have been men. That has more to do with power, whether it’s individual people, groups of people or entire countries. The immature ones are the ones who can just get what they want by brute force. I believe the colloquial term would be ‘bully’…
I think the problem these wingnuts have with the pill is not that it allowed men to not grow up, but that for the first time it allowed women to not be completely at the mercy of the men who haven’t grown up. In other words, men had to START growing up if they wanted to get something from the women.
It’s all a smokescreen to mask the real adgenda, that of returning women to the status of chattel
Since “lapin” is French for “rabbit”, I call him Rabbi Rabbit.
I mostly agree with my namesake @9. The target here is women’s rights. These men don’t want women to have a say in when they have kids. First they outlaw contraception. If, as a result, their wives stop having sex with them, I’m sure they’ll respond to that by legalizing marital rape.
I will go even farther that you:
It’s about making sure sure that sexual freedom remains a privilege for the upper-class: if abortion and contraception are legal and easy to access, if homosexuality is accepted in all its gloriously boring mundanity, if equality between genders becomes as certain as taxes and death, then a wholly enjoyable sex life will stop being a precious little treasure accessible only to a tiny group of rich happy few who can pay the system watchdogs to look elsewhere.
The only thing special about the 60s is that these bozos remember them [1].
For those of us who either remember WWII or paid attention to those who were around for it, the story is a bit different.
I’ve collected a fair number of memoirs of the young men who were actually in WWII as well as actually listening to my own parents and other elders. The big difference between WWII and the 60s is that by the 60s we actually talked about sex — but we weren’t much friskier than our parents.
Is the Pill more convenient than condoms and diaphragms? Sure. But condoms and diaphragms do the job, too. Read between the lines of Chuck Yeager’s Yeager, or the marvelous Serenade to the Big Bird, or Murphy’s To Hell and Back, or any of hundreds of other books on the subject.
The Greatest Generation, who as much as any generation in American history, did their best to live up to the British complaint: “Over paid, over sexed, and over here.”
[1] And, yes, that means that they weren’t there.
I think many of these men are deeply conflicted about sexuality, i.e., guilty about normal primitive impulses that can have destructive potential. Women are whores not simply to control women, but because blame is shifted to them (temptresses) and that alleviates some of the guilty sense of responsibility these men feel. I do think that this is, at least, partly about blaming women for their guilt-laden desires.
Secondly, I think these men sanctify sex to alleviate guilt. If I’m doing it to create babies with God, then my desire isn’t bad. If I do it just for the pleasure, I’m guilty.
Third, I think there are anxiety and envy components that fuel there desire to control other people’s sex lives. Anxiety because the freedom many have reminds them of their own guilty desires for sexual freedom, and envy because others appear to be enjoying sex, free of all the physical and psychological encumbrances that weigh on them.
Wait, they also want to outlaw honey in pill form?
@DrX
Women are whores not simply to control women, but because blame is shifted to them (temptresses) and that alleviates some of the guilty sense of responsibility these men feel. I do think that this is, at least, partly about blaming women for their guilt-laden desires.
Yep, I agree, and it’s not a far leap to get to the hijab from here.
It’s also an effective method of being able to ignore their own god/son’o'god’s words about “cutting out your own eye” when you lust after a woman. Instead of the sound of popping eyeballs, you hear the sound of hissing and “You whore! You MADE me think about sex, it wasn’t choosen by my free will. So I’m not going to cut out my own eye but our all-loving god requires a punishment, so guess who gets it?” (That is a paraphrase…)
Re #14:
And the American GIs answer to that British complaint was:
The Brits are under paid, under sexed, and under Ike.
–W. H. Heydt
Old Used Programmer
Not only is Lapin’s screed an ugly smack-down of independent women, it’s an insult — fightin’ words — to men who are responsible and mature. Men who are loyal to their wives/lovers, take care of their families, take care of their kids, respect their mates’ decisions and communicate and compromise. Despite Lapin’s blanket characterization, there are a lot of men like that, for whom birth control in any form is an opportunity for women they love and respect to be free to decide what to do with their bodies. There are men who recognize — cherish — women’s right to this freedom. Lapin and his ilk on the right seem to be carrying out a scorched-earth policy, with which they seek to leave no segment of society unalienated.
It’s fightin’ words to women who are responsible and mature, too. One of the many unspoken assumptions in that exchange between Dobson and Lapin is that women are basically under the control of men, even men who might “let” “their” women take a birth control pill. To me, “Honey, did you take your pill?” reads less from the religious right like a reminder than an order, or at the very least, the sort of not-exactly-order that you might get from a well-intentioned caretaker.
And frankly, as a mature, responsible woman, I don’t want a man caretaking me. Having an equal partner who can pick up the slack from time to time is one thing, but a caretaker? Pass, pass, pass, pass, pass.
And that is what they really hate. They want us all to be completely trapped in what you might call their Great Chain of Ownership: The State belongs to God. Men belong to God and the State. Women belong to God, the State, and Men. Children belong to God, the State, Men, and Women. And nobody really owns their own bodies, but since men write the laws and God doesn’t exist/answer his e-mails, men are really basically off the hook.
Of course, that was a complaint from British men. WWII was a time of unprecedented freedoms, including sexual freedoms, for British women.
“If we are to ask our youth to surrender their lives, then we should not ask them to surrender joy – or the possibility of joy! And, if along the way, we cause too many people to congregate in the street, who gives a fiddler’s fuck?” as Judi Dench might say. :)
Dingo
tfkreference writes:
Exactly. I see social conservatives as being hyper-rule-followers. They are the type of people who staple the rules of a board game to the game’s box-top, not because it is prudent, but because they could not conceive of playing the game without following every specified rule to the last letter. In life, they realize how great sex is but find themselves in a position, due to marital vows or other religious rules, in which they have to deny themselves freely obtainable sex, at which point they become consumed with ensuring that all others are forced to observe a similar level of abstinence. “If I can’t have fun, then no one else can.” That’s why there’s no uproar about condoms. It’s an acceptance that, if someone else is going to cheat, then at least it’s going to be awkward and unstimulating.
Easily. You pander to the miserable old farts who long for the imagined “good old days” when everything was clean, perfect and Caucasian-run and every man and woman of virtue waited for their honeymoon. You also reach out to the parents terrified at the idea of their precious teenage children (particularly their daughters) having sex and think that banning contraceptives will discourage that (yeah, good luck).
Very interesting and revealing. My first reaction, like Forbidden Snowflake’s, was to be struck by how they made it all about the men. But my second reaction was that this is a perfect example of “families make adults” thinking. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here:
http://www.masson.us/blog/?p=6501
What I still find difficult to understand is why anyone would consider the “red state” approach to be an attractive lifestyle.
Akira,
admittedly I should’ve phrased my question differently:
How do they expect to win elections? I’m well aware that votes can be won by this BS, but seeing that 99% of American women have used contraception, it would be a net loss. As raven said, Clinton won the women vote, and I think Obama did too.
pelamun – It puts me in mind of:
Somewhere in my pile of detritus from many lives ago, I still have the flyer from my women’s group in Dallas that revealed how contraception has been the real target of the woman-hating anti-abortion scumbags.
So this isn’t news to old feminists like me. We’ve known about their ultimate agenda for decades now.
These wastes of DNA simply can’t stand it that people actually enjoy doing anything but sucking up to their scumbag deities 24/7. Your whole life is supposed to be about jayyyyyysssuuuuus, nothing else, and they’re doing everything they can to make that reality for all of us.
That’s what all of this is about, ultimately.
They don’t give a shit about the baaayyyyyybeeeeez, really. They care about someone actually enjoying their life outside of their worthless imaginary friends. They can’t stand that.
Ever.
“…it created the possibility of perpetual male adolescence…”
What a weird way to view things. Let’s extend Lapin’s, ahem, “logic” here to other areas:
Banks created the possibility of bank robberies.
Cars created the possibility of another murder weapon (i.e., one person intentionally hitting someone else with the former’s vehicle).
Heck, using Lapin’s “logic”, you can, ironically (given that Lapin is a rabbi), even make an anti-theistic argument (God giving people vocal cords created the possibility of individuals disturbing the peace).
Aquaria@28, I think they do care a little bit about the babies, but in a rather ugly way. Remember Ross Douthat’s column a few months ago in which he lamented the lack of white babies available for adoption now that the mothers who used to be forced into maternity homes have the right to abortion? A lot of conservatives spend a lot of times worrying about the dirty dark foreigners outbreeding “us” now that “our” women aren’t simply brood mares for the Master Race.