My father worked with a man once who made a big deal out his religious conviction regarding abortion and birth control, roundly condemning both. He based this on his self-professed Catholicism. It evidently got to the point where weekly there would be a virtual sermon at lunch time on the evils of promiscuity and the horror of contraception. Finally, my father had had enough.
“How long have you been married, Bill?” my dad asked.
“Fourteen years,” the man responded proudly.
“How many kids do you have?”
“Three.”
“Three? Where are the other eleven?”
The point was made—publicly, in front of several co-workers—and the sermons ended.
Had anyone suggested to this man that the state should have a right to knock on his door, request records of his sexual activity, and then, warrant in hand, search his house for condoms, and upon finding them indict him for wanton disregard for life, he would have been horrified. More than that, he would not have taken it seriously. And yet when pronouncing on the should-haves and oughts of other peoples’ private lives, it never occurred to him that what he prescribed would necessarily include him along with some unintended consequences.
It’s never about the person doing the condemning, it’s always about Other People. There is evidence showing that a goodly percentage of the women dutifully picketing abortion providers end up in those clinics, availing themselves of the very option they then resume trying to deny every other woman. The mirror fails to show them the nature of their hypocrisy. They prefer to be seen railing against something they feel is evil rather than sit down and do the hard work of looking inside and understanding that this thing has nothing to do with them—and everything to do with them.
Among people who often stridently take the position that None Of Your Damn Business is the unwritten law of personal liberty in this country, it is amazing how many of them assume this—and this alone, really—is very much their damn business, when of all the things that might be this one surely isn’t.
We’re seeing a spate of anti-choice legislation in states across the country right now. Judging by the reaction to large numbers of Americans, these are not as popular as the legislators apparently assume they are, and will cost them. It makes no sense really…
Unless they are actually thinking longterm and assume that it will be harder for their replacements to repeal these laws because they won’t want to appear unchristian or immoral or, gawd forbid, Progressive. The same with the so-called religious liberty bills passing in the South. These are traps, perhaps, cudgels in waiting to beat up on any politician with the temerity to suggest they be repealed. If so, I think the legislators passing these monstrosities are even dumber than they seem to be.
But it’s all about appearances, isn’t it? Things don’t get done because people are afraid to look a certain way. In the film Kinsey about the sex taxonomist Alfred Kinsey there is a scene where Kinsey, desperate for funding, is appealing to a millionaire for support. The millionaire is clearly in his sixties, maybe seventies, and has at his side a young wife, at most in her early thirties. This aged and privileged sybarite refuses Kinsey’s plea because “If I do that, people will think I support sex.”
A beat. Look at the young bride. Another beat. Look at the ridiculous man afraid of what people might think. Wait another beat. Realize that “people” really would react that way, even while pursuing sex with all the ardor nature has given them, and denying that they approve the act for anyone else.
But really, it’s None Of Anyone Else’s Damn Business and it’s about time we stopped all the posing and posturing about this. Before those ominous men with warrants start showing up at your house looking for those other eleven kids.
