The Morality Patrol
Today’s theme is “Young People Outraged About Sex.”
First, let’s look at “Abstinence Makes Sense: A Common Sense Rationale ,” a piece at the Concerned Women for America site. It was written by one Jessica Anderson. “Jessica Anderson, a senior at the University of Northern Iowa, is an intern in CWA’s Ronald Reagan Memorial Internship Program.”
STDs pose a serious health crisis, yet liberals want to encourage our teenagers to keep having “safe sex”? […]
This approach makes about as much sense as encouraging teenagers to smoke, as long as they do it “safely” by perhaps smoking “low tar” or “light” cigarettes. Would we ever dream of launching a “safe smoking” campaign, advocating that teenagers be taught about a variety of cigarettes types, given free packs of cigarettes that are “safe,” and perhaps taught about alternatives such as chewing tobacco?
I like the part about how teaching teens about safe sex is like giving them free packs of cigarettes. So, I guess Jessica is claiming that Planned Parenthood is passing out reproductive organs to young people, and encouraging them to give them a try. (First penis is free, kid.)
Jessica’s piece has some other good bits, such as:
Regrettably, the left’s mantra is like a drippy faucet: The substance of their arguments goes nowhere but down the drain. The constant drip leaves a residue behind that others have to clean up, if they can.
[…]
Clearly, the dishonest accusations of liberals do not hold water. Their leaky faucets continue to drip, leaving behind social deterioration that erodes America’s economic and social well-being. Liberals, quite simply, need a good plumber.
Jessica doesn’t want kids taught about contraception — she believes that abstinence-only education “empowers teenagers to practice self-control to avoid the detrimental consequences that accompany sexual activity.” And if those teens with weak self-control end up with problems with their plumbing, well, they are just the residue that the conservatives have to clean up. (Probably by removing the offending pipe.)
Our next young Puritan is the ever popular VBen Shapiro, whom, as you probably know, has a new book out about how the liberals turned his his generation into the porn-seeking, “Friends”-watching, Britney-worshipping, sex-obsessed sinners that they are.
Here’s part of an interview Ben gave to FrontPage Magazine:
Shapiro: There were a few things that really pushed me to write “Porn Generation.” The first was the fact that I have three younger sisters, and I got sick and tired of having to drive them past pornographic Joe€™s Jeans ads on Sunset Blvd €“ the billboards depict naked rear ends with only the Joe€™s Jeans logo in the corner. My sisters can€™t watch TV anymore because of all the raunchy broadcasting. They can€™t watch most movies because of the oversexualization. They can€™t listen to today€™s popular music €“ even once-safe pop tarts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera now compete to see who can become the bigger cultural disgrace. They can€™t surf the Internet, for fear that a pop-up porn ad might attack. […]
FP: Sorry, I would just like to ascertain something. I grew up in quite a liberal environment, so I am a bit confused here. When you say your sisters “can€™t” watch TV or movies or listen to music, what do you mean? Why “can€™t” they? […]
Shapiro: My sisters are 18, 15, and 11. Of course, they “can” watch television in that they have the ability to. But if they want to avoid raunch and social libertinism, they shouldn’t partake of the pop culture, and they don’t.
The oldest of Ben’s sisters is 18 — and yet, she still has to be protected from all the raunchy programming on Animal Planet, PBS, The Family Channel, The Learning Channel, and the Golf Channel. Sad, really.
And if the Shapiro girls are getting attacked by pop-ups for porn whenever they surf the Internet, I’d hazard that they have been using the computer after Ben spent a session surfing for “Nude Ann Coulter Does Kinky Stuff” sites (you know, just for research purposes for his book).
Anyway, why doesn’t Havard Law Student Ben get them some pop-up blocking software and a V-chip for the TV? Or does Ben really expect society to become uniformly G-rated so that his sisters can live without ever coming across anything which might offend their (perceived) delicate sensibilities? Wouldn’t he feel better about just consigning them to the women’s quarters, where they could be protected from the soiling forces of the outside world?
July 22nd, 2005 at 5:12 am
teaching teens about safe sex is like giving them free packs of cigarettes
Not really. Now, giving them hookers would be like giving them free ciggies. But teaching them about safe sex would be more like giving them Joe Camel t-shirts.
July 22nd, 2005 at 6:40 am
Thanks for your introduction to the Bush voter, I’ve always wanted to meet one.
July 22nd, 2005 at 8:24 am
Yada, Yada, Yada, like so many “helpless” conservatives, Ben not only wants to control his “poor helpless sisters” but being the man’s man that he is, and so much stronger and smarter than his helpless sisters (I mean c’mon, they’re just girls…what can we expect from girls!
he wants to control all girls, even the ones smart enough to change the channel on the TV, or know how to use pop up blockers on computers! The sad thing is that guys like Ben are even at Harvard instead of a Vo-Tech in Alabama learning how to do bodywork on “The General”. Taking back your planet is about YOUR planet, not mine, or anybody else’s. But the cons want to control us all…..and that’s what their problem is, a lot of us won’t drink the Kool Aid voluntarily, so let’s legislate a little morality….sounds very 30s….very German…I think I’ll pass thanks.
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:17 am
I don’t think Jessica is going to have too many problems with avoiding sex once the sex = drip equivalency thing she has going on in her head gets around.
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:17 am
My sisters are 18, 15, and 11. Of course, they €œcan€ watch television in that they have the ability to. But if they want to avoid raunch and social libertinism, they shouldn€™t partake of the pop culture, and they don€™t.
Ben will make a pretty good lawyer; he parsed that brilliantly. I’m not clear if his sisters don’t watch TV by choice or not.
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:36 am
Wouldn’t Sha-peerless be on safer ground if he talked about how *he* had been warped by “social libertinism,” a/k/a butt pictures? Because otherwise it seems like the message ought to be, let society get as randy as it likes, but if you’re A Good Boy like me, you can resist it — as opposed to We must act now to stop this ever-encroaching Porn Menace before it corrupts all our precious bodily fluids!
July 22nd, 2005 at 9:55 am
OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here….
I’m a die-hard liberal. However, I personally don’t like having to drive my sons by the 40-foot half-naked Rockstar Energy Drink billboard plastered to the side of a building next to the freeway. (We refer to it as The Boobs That Ate Portland.)
I’m trying to raise my sons to respect women. Everything around them tells them that women are boobs. It’s not easy. My 11-year-old is very confused. The 15-year-old is starting to exhibit some media savvy, although it’s usually of the form “Mom’s not going to like that.”
Howard Dean will tell you that our side’s post-election polling showed that a big reason that women deserted the Democrats was because they’re trying to raise kids in an oversexualized culture and they don’t perceive Democrats as trying to do anything to help. They’re scared…and of course, fear drives them right into the arms of the Republicans.
I do not believe in censorship. What people do in their own homes is fine. I just don’t want to have to look at a 40-foot sex goddess with impossible breasts every time I drive down the freeway. I don’t have a choice about it. It’s there, it’s huge, and it’s on the way to everywhere.
I found it offensive enough to have a conversation with Clear Channel’s outdoor media folks.
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:27 am
Hey, I would find 40 foot billboards of *anything* offensive! I don’t care what it is!
I’ve raised two boys, now 15 and 19, and they are quite respectful of women. I’ve never censored them from anything, and never had any problems with sex,drugs,alcohol, or pretty much anything else. They know about contraceptives, have no desire to try it out til they find a smart woman that they respect and love and want to get to know better, which will probably happen at about 25 or 30 at the rate they are moving.
If I had a girl, I would teach her about cotraceptiion, emergency and otherwise, and how to handle herself to avoid getting in trouble, like I have my boys. This mainly consists of telling them the truth about pretty much everything, and that some things are just stupid, which is, as they know, the worst curse I put on anything. If you raise kids to respect themselves and others, and to know that doing anything less is just plain stupid, they’ll turn out just fine.
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:30 am
Since when were Britney Spears and Xtina ever “safe”? Britney had to be one of the most explicitly sexualized ex-Mouseketeer virgins out there.
July 22nd, 2005 at 3:37 pm
So, Jenny Greenleaf gives us a connect-the-dot account suggesting that the billboard she dislikes came from Clear Channel. Presumably the same Clear Channel that pushed Bush so hard. IOW, offensive billboards coming from the Bush camp didn’t offend our angry housewives, but the failure of the Dems to do anything about it did.
Have I got that right, Jenny?
July 22nd, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Pop ups, what are those? Firefox is great.
July 22nd, 2005 at 10:15 pm
Another good reason to avoid Rockstar Energy Drinks: it was started by Michael Savage’s son.
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:32 pm
serial catowner–yup, you got it! Bush billboards didn’t freak ‘em out. News reports about sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto did. They’re not worried about what effect Bush will have on their kids; they’re worried about MTV and misogynistic, violent themes in rap music.
Lest anyone think I’m some sort of closet fundamentalist–I’m not. I’m a good liberal atheist and a feminist. Just somewhat distressed at the sexism rampant in the oversexualized “pimp” culture that’s so popular these days. I have no problem taking my boys to the Oregon Country Fair–an annual time-warp hippie fest where many women decide to go topless. It’s kind of the National Geographic “bodies come in many shapes and sizes” lesson. Very different context.
And, to address the Clear Channel connection, I quoted their creed at them in an email along with my complaint. I did get a response within minutes and then had a follow-up phone conversation with the president of the division in Seattle. He’s looking into it, but I don’t know the results yet. I have to admit, he was very pleasant and not defensive.
Clear Channel’s weird. They do some obnoxious things, but yet they broadcast Air America here in Portland. Obviously, there’s money in progressive radio here.
July 23rd, 2005 at 2:48 am
I find sex-sells marketing fairly crass, myself. It doesn’t warp my values, it’s just unattractive. I find most marketing to be pretty crass, though. The thing is, to my mind there’s quite a difference between a gigantoboob billboard and “Desperate Housewives”.
One is something I can’t avoid seeing without drastically changing my commutes, and the other is something I can avoid seeing unless I actually get up and turn the TV on after checking the schedules.
I understand that parents get tired of having to watch their child’s TV viewing habits and internet habits, but the whole “guardianship of a child” thing is something you sort of signed on for when you took the responsibility for the kid, just as others end up with hard jobs after becoming doctors or teachers.
What startles me is, I didn’t realize that vigilance fatigue extended to eighteen year old sisters. I’m somewhat surprised to discover that Ben’s eighteen year old sister needs him to keep her from accidentally stumbling onto a Trojans commercial or a Britney Spears album.
Why exactly do I have to start acting like any given child, which apparently includes eighteen year olds for some reason, is in fact a fainting goat who will be traumatized for life if I try to act like an adult in public?
I don’t swear on playgrounds or troll children’s chat rooms to tell them the Easter Bunny is a hoax, and I don’t try to explain sex to even the eighteen year olds who apparently must be protected from it. I don’t wear vulgar t-shirts to the zoo, either.
But my own vigilance fatigue sure kicks in when a small kid comes up to me in a store and tells me that I shouldn’t say “heck”, because it’s a cuss word, and only bad people talk like that. And when his mother glares at me like she agrees. (Honestly, the least you can do is tell me not to “swear” in public yourself–but to send the kid to lecture me? Man.)
I’ll try my best not to infringe on your theoretical child’s right to be a child, Ben, but maybe you could try to keep your theoretical child from infringing on my right to be an adult.
If nothing else, having to glance furtively around to make sure there are no innocent children present before I ask my friend what she thinks about the latest horror novel is going to have a lot of paranoid people convinced I’m a terrorist trying to plant something nefarious in a copy of “The Descent” without being spotted.
July 23rd, 2005 at 7:55 pm
I’m sure if Ben’s sisters have anything resembling functioning brains, they all snicker at him behind his back when he says stupid shit like that. Even the 11 year old.