I gotta admit…I never really looked at it this way.
Karin McAdams, in response to Laura Scott’s column on family planning, poses an honest question about “what objections, perhaps biblical, perhaps otherwise” people have for discouraging artificial means of birth control (Letters 2/15).
Although many Christians may point to the Genesis account of Onan and many Catholics may point to papal encyclicals, most notably Humane Vitae, the whole biblical tradition reveals that God has intended for sex to be a marriage act that is open to, or at least not deliberately closed off to, the transmission of life.
By using contraception, you prevent God’s creative power in bringing forth new life. Sex is a complete self-giving love you pledge to your spouse within marriage, and contraception destroys the unitive and procreative qualities of sex. Pleasure is not the purpose of sex — it’s the motive or consequence.
Isn’t this a bit like saying that pleasure is not the purpose of ice cream, nutrition is?
Or, put another way, do human beings have no inherent need for intimacy and contact? Is absolutely everything about the zygote?
Half our country is insane.
Is it just me or does she come off as someone who probably doesn’t actually have any fun during sex?
Gotta admit, I can’t disagree with this:
yeah, I couldn’t disagree completely with that either.
well, hell, Martin, I already knew that answer! Yes half of our population is nuts! I really am not in any mood for these kinds of minds today or any old day, for that matter. Their questions or logic, is not healthy or good for living. Responsiblity for ones actions is what needs to be questionable here. What does the marriage want from the union? Some want children, some don’t. That is not for me to decide. Neither is it God’s, I think. I htink He gave us the choice and we have to use that old thing on our body called our minds to rationalize this out between the two of which are united. Oh for Heavens Sake, those religious nuts, anyhow…can they not let lying dogs lie. They continue to feed the fire, don’t they?!
If you inhibit fertilization during “the act” than obviously you are doing it for pleasure instead of procreation and that’s disgusting and sinful.
I will never understand why the Christian right in this country is so fixated on genitals and what people do with theirs.
Because they’re both obsessed with sex and absolutely terrified of a whole range of related issues. The loss of self-control. Focusing on something other than God. Really, honestly connecting with another person. I was good friends with some fundamentalists when I was younger and stupider, and they all had issues with these things in general, which is one of the many reasons why I’m not still friends with them.
I’m always crying out to him at end!
Me too… but in Italian: “Oddio!!!”
Oops! Come to think of it, I wonder if the Fundies consider that using God’s name in vain? What do THEY say? How do they avoid it — do they keep their mouths taped shut?
Oh, I forgot — they don’t have fun, so they evidently don’t say anything at all. Only the absolutely necessary physiological grunts from the male, I suppose.
our culture (and the christian right takes this to extremes) is pretty much opposed to enjoying our bodies in any way. imagine, for example, even having the idea that chocolate is “sinful” – i mean, on the scale of wrongdoing – eating chocolate?!! but no, bodies are there as a locus of suffering (see, “torture”) not enjoyment.
I’d be more impressed if they were churning out manuals for how to express intimacy without having actual sex. They seem to deny any need for a normal human being to experience love outside of a marriage contract, and outside of an effort to produce a new life.
I guess it is this fundamental disconnect that strikes me the hardest. They act like people can function normally without attention from other people. By focusing so much on the procreative potential of human sexual activity they just leave a (ironically) barren picture of humanity.
I wonder if they think foreplay is a sin?
Probably. Remember, to these people, God is EVERYTHING. Any non-superficial relationship with another human being is evil.
I think that’s a result of consulting the Bible for advice about sex – as I posted downthread. it’s sad really. re: your point, right there in the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 2 Eve is created as a partner for Adam, and in Gen 1 “male and female created he them” they’re created as equals. – I think it’s not just repression, but a lot of unhappiness in those circles. Sometimes I listen to those radio preachers and the marriage sermons seem to me to be about tolerating a lot of unhappiness, “being faithful” i.e. holding out for happiness after the rapture.
well that makes sense if your audience is already married and you consider it your job to keep people married. But it doesn’t have anything to say to the single.
I know. There’s really no “single” identity, it’s all about being part of a family unit (also very depressing).
I got into an argument once with a very close friend about “natural family planning” which she and her husband were going to try. It evolved from the standard argument over the use of contraceptives. I was in favor of it; she thinks its abortion in disguise.
Leaving aside the fact that NFP doesn’t work particularly well (if at all for some people) I said that I didn’t see the difference between it and contraception. In each case you wanted to have sex without getting pregnant.
After a while, when she couldn’t really come up with a difference she begged me not to say this in front of her husband because then he wouldn’t even go along with the NFP, being one of those “whatever god sends” kind of men.
The fact that NFP exists at all must mean tht somewhere, someone in the church hierarchy understands that people have sex for pleasure not just to procreate.
Some very close (very religious, and Republican) friends are huge anti-choice people. They’re against birth control (“it’s like abortion”). They were very much into Natural Family Planning — the thermometer, the whole nine yards.
As long as they’re keeping it to themselves, I figure more power to them. Just don’t expect the government of us all to enforce your particular religious teachings simply because they “come from God”.
I think their success with NFP for over a decade reinforced their belief in it, and in all the theories of life and birth control they hold.
Then they found out they were infertile. Now they’re going to adopt from China. They’re good people, more power to them.
But I wonder how many adherents of NFP suffer from low fertility or infertility, and use their “success” to justify their drive to push to ban contraception.
And how many have no qualms about using fertility treatments that create a dozen embryos (because its so expensive to harvest eggs, they grab 2-3 implantations worth in one go), and implant a handful in the hopes at least one (but not all) survive? Is it okay to just leave the spares frozen for eternity, or discarded — according to their theology? Or is this something they choose not to dwell on.
I’ve got nothing against folks who use such means. I just wish those who did (and their family and friends who support them) would at least consider that others are entitled to the same decisions when it comes to birth control — and the right to make these choices without the intervention of the government.
I think anybody who really needs to limit the number of children they have and relies on NFP is crazy.
That being said I have a number of friends, including this woman, who say they use it and have the requisite three children and no more. I don’t know why it works for them. But it does. (And at least one of those couples appears to have a very healthy sex life).
What annoys me is the whole “contraception is abortion” argument. But many anti-choice people really believe that and as soon as “real” abortion is illegal — they’re going for contraception. (I find it hard to believe they’ll succeed on that)
If your friends are your age (ok, OUR age) her fertility has plummeted anyway.
Prevention = abortion, huh? I’m going to have to ponder that for awhile.
Does that mean not planting the cherry pit means you have killed a cherry tree?
It seems to be of the same sort of logic that says that not actively working against something is the same as working for it. It’s possible to not condone of something without wanting to see it eliminated.
These people live in a black and white world. They do not see gray anywhere.
nope
this was when she was in her early thirties.
And the couple I know that seems to have a great sex life — they got married in their early twenties and their three beautiful girls are grown. At this point they are probably beyond needing birth control and now that I think about it, they seem really cheerful these days 🙂
Since I stop listening when they go into the whole abortion thing I can’t explain it well -but it goes like this — some contraceptive pills actually cause the fertilized egg to not be able to be supported in the uterus and therefore it is technically aborted. I think that’s how the argument goes. LIke I said, I usually tune them out.
But they are against condoms and sponges and spermicides too. (Oh my!) Makes no sense to me.
yeah, that’s the position of my friends too.
They really believe “life begins at conception”. And some forms of birth control prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall, so it is naturally disposed of.
And by this simple logic, these rare cases caused by specific forms of birth control are added to the millions of natural occurrances of fertilized eggs not implanting, or failing to thrive and naturally aborting…
but since its “natural”, they have to assume its God’s will. So the “death” of a zygote isn’t a big deal to them… unless we caused it.
I’ve never pressed them on how they feel about industrial pollution which causes the death of children and the elderly. I know they’d say it was wrong. But if I were to suggest the govt needs to regulate toxic waste more strictly, they’d scream about how that would be oppressive and damage the economy and harm business.
So:
economy > business > pollution > govt regulation > lives
but
govt regulation > availablity of birth control
Got it. Doesn’t work out rationally, but “morals” don’t have to.
Hmmm… how many sermons did Jesus give on keeping the economy strong, anyways?
eye and my husband’s eye….and creates a harmonious atmosphere within our home that our children bask in joyfully! What a fruitcake this woman is! I bet she’s never had an orgasm (it isn’t uncommon for repressed women to never have experienced one and she has no idea what she is even talking about swearing off!)…..what do all the rest of you girls out there think? Being raised by married couples such as herself have sent legions of us to therapy and probably produced more than a couple of self hating sexually deviant serial killers. When my kids are all gone to college I can’t wait to lay around the house all weekend naked and just have sex all day long until I’m so sick of having sex I just can’t do it anymore! For good measure I think I’ll go grab my husband and throw him down right now, I hope he doesn’t protest too much…..the kids seem to all be busy at the moment!
Much more fascinating is a serious examination of the theological implications of this statement:
Really? So let me get this straight. The individual making this statement presumably believes in an omnipotent God. And yet she thinks that something as little as a few millimeters of latex can prevent God from doing something? Uh-huh.
A much more consistent explanation is that God intended both aspects of sex – procreation and pleasure – to be equally good, and left it up to the free will of the individual to choose to focus on either, both, or neither. But this implies that recreational sex could be healthy, fun, and moral, something these sex-fearing lunatics couldn’t possibly concieve of without their brains evaporating. Never mind the implications about homosexuality.
I’m not against religion in general – quite the opposite, in fact – but modern Christian theology is just whack.
The Church’s argument would be a bit more convincing if they were at least consistent.
If all that tripe is true, then artificial insemination (with donor sperm) is simply adultery of the worst kind, and should result in immedidate excommunication.
And if life is sacred, then it doesn’t belong in the science labs of man. So all medical assisted pregnancies are abhorent to God. If God gets to make the final call on the creation of life, why is man tinkering? That’s got to be an abomination too.
Funny, we never hear the Church’s position on that aspect of the equation. Guess the public can only stomach idiocy in small doses.
I don’t know if that was rhetorical, but I think its very perceptive.
The “zygote” seems to be the stand in for all morality. We can project all that is good about humanity onto the “unborn baby” — all our hopes for the future, the potential of mankind, the best aspirations. The zygote is a proxy for the future, a positive agenda for everyone to rally around.
I think that’s the problem with fighting the abortion wars — we’re fighting for the right of self-determination, of self-sovereignty, of individual human dignity.
Those are all great and noble things. But our opponents believe they are fighting for greater and more noble things.
It doesn’t matter that our position is the more practical position, with the fewest negative consequences for society as a whole and individuals in particular. Because its really NOT a fight about the zygote vs the woman.
Its a fight over the embodiment of “goodness of being”. So what if its an inaccurate proxy? Its what they think they are fighting for.
Sure, its comforting to say they’re fighting for the control of women. And in effect they certainly are. I have no doubt that some are aware that’s exactly what they’re doing, and others are acting on such subconscious desires.
Still, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective in the long run to give them a new proxy to fight for, than the unwanted zygote. Most people believe in some right to abortion, but the Church and the media are constantly reframing the debate as good vs vile. They’re using the zygote as a proxy for larger moral issues. And it feels like support is slipping away. People are trading something they don’t feel they personally need (the right to choose for themselves if they wish to have an abortion) for something they desparately do need (a feeling of hope for humanity, of human goodness, of some sort of real morality).
And in this current world of globalization, of limiting our interests to ourselves because there is neither time nor energy to really care about others, at some level we all long for a better world. We have our liberal notions of fairness, justice, goodness to fall back on.
They’ve got the zygote.
I think you are on to something here.
The “zygote” seems to be the stand in for all morality. We can project all that is good about humanity onto the “unborn baby” — all our hopes for the future, the potential of mankind, the best aspirations. The zygote is a proxy for the future, a positive agenda for everyone to rally around.
Not, I think, morality but ‘innocence’, at least relative innocence and brainlessness appears to be extremely attractive to religious fundamentalists as long as said ‘life’ is not a burden on the tax payer or community. Apparently actual children aren’t adequate for the projection (and it is this rather horrifying fact that convinces me that the entire ‘pro-life’ movement has some deep seated sickness because there really, truly isn’t a plan for a more hopeful life for the children they insist be born and there really, truly is a sort of loathing for, indifference towards and hatred of poor single mothers, whatever the color of their skin.) And along with all this there is the sentimentalization of the zygote/fetus and an almost pornographic, self reinforcing and deeply creepy assumption of ownership/possession of every woman’s uterus which has reached hysterical proportions.
has long been at the forefront of the charge to instill fear of sexuality (enjoying it seems to be their dirty little secret. There is a provocative look at just how widely that fear has penetrated mainstream America, dragging us into the maze of insanity, in Sexual Fascism in Progressive America: Scapegoats and Shunning.
The thing I’ve never been able to figure out (not that I’ve spent a lot of time trying) is this:
“Artificial” contraception is a sin because you can slip one on or in (or whatever)and have sex for pleasure without worrying about breeding.
NFP is acceptable because people spend hours with thermometers and graphs and such trying to find the times when they can have sex for pleasure without worrying about breeding.
The object of the exercise remains the same, though I guess if you’re into the thought you could argue that by doing all the paperwork you’ve actually EARNED the sex….
It seems to me that this is amazingly legalistic thinking, on the order of angels doing a tango on a pinhead. It’s not “willing submission to the Will of God ™,” it’s trying to find a way to get OUT of doing the will of God without getting caught.
I can’t see how this is evidence of a more advanced morality; it reminds me more of a 3 year old trying to shift the blame to the 2 year old sibling, or a Republican Congressman at a press conference. “This was NOT bribery, I was gonna vote that way BEFORE I took his money…”
What am I missing?
My thoughts exactly. I don’t think you’re missing anything. It doesn’t make sense.
And the funny thing is — my friend’s husband who is pretty fundy actually seemed to agree that it made no sense, hence his “whatever god sends” theory. But since his wife is very religious also he decided to go along with it — because it was “allowed”.
So she was going to hear the same argument from her liberal friend (me) and her ultra conservative husband.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems the longer a marriage lasts, the closer to Godliness it is ;o)
there’s a problem if one consults the Bible for advice about sex because very few verses in the entire Bible concern sex per se, though it does contain a fair amount about lineage, and marriage in relation to family lineage (especially the lineage of King David). If one combs the Bible for advice about sex, one’s pretty much going to conclude that marriage is about procreation only (i.e. establishing a family lineage). On the other hand, in Gen 2, Eve was created as a partner for Adam, not as a mother for future children.
Yes, but the Bible also has very little to say about, say, interior decorating. Does this mean that feng shui is inherently immoral?
but that’s exactly my point. In the “mainstream denominations” i.e. Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodists, etc, the place of human sexuality in a christian life is discussed by theologians not biblical scholars for precisely that reason . but re: interior decorating – don’t underestimate the significance of the passages on sick houses in Leviticus. (will add citations later, after Academy nonesense)
Leviticus on diseased houses – Leviticus 14:34-53!!!
is a most interesting read. Go check it out.
By using contraception, you prevent God’s creative power in bringing forth new life.
What? Are they saying that I, a mere mortal, can stop the power of an omnipotent God with something as trivial as a condom?
You know, although I have long since converted to a very different religion, I was raised Southern Baptist, and even my frothing-at-the-mouth fire and brimstone preacher wouldn’t have tried to sell that nonsense to the congregation even if Baptists were opposed to contraception. We were always quite clear in a trembling, sinners in the hands of an angry God sort of way, about the difference between defying the will of God (possible, if ill-advised) and thwarting God (flat-out impossible). No one “prevents God’s creative power” in anything.
And while, as Baptists, we were taught that life begins at conception, there was really no thought given to the countless sperm and eggs that die every day without having met up with each other. Whether all those sperm died in their millions waiting around in one’s testicles or died in a condom or elsewhere wasn’t an issue as long as the participants were married. But then, as far back as the Puritans, there has been a strain of protestantism that put a strong emphasis on the value of a healthy, active sex life in marriage. The Puritans, as it happened, actually gave a wink and a nod to premarital teenage sex. Of course, it was immediately followed by a hasty marriage, but that’s another story.
Needless to say, I never really got Catholicism or the protestant sects that sometimes aligned themselves with it on reproductive matters.
This doesn’t make any sense:
Because you’re doing God’s will, it’s pleasant. Or pleasure is an encouragement to do God’s will. But the purpose of the activity – the reason it’s permissible – is not the pleasure. It’s sort of like the old “a good deed isn’t a good deed if you’re doing it because you want to feel good about yourself” saw. Incredibly twisted, but…
Too twisted for me to follow. Don’t know how you did!
I was Catholic most of my life, but could never wrap my mind around this thinking. However, I disagree that what you have quoted here means “Don’t enjoy it”.
I also don’t think it’s just “about the zygote”, but has a broader meaning connected with how women are viewed, how pleasure “for its own sake” are viewed, and, yes, about sex.
I confess, I don’t get it. I think it’s a miracle if someone can find someone to show them some love, and it’s almost insane for anyone to listen to someone who is judgmental about whether the love is ‘for its own sake’.
Life is hard enough without people disqualifying the validity of affection for wide swaths of humanity.
Maybe I just never absorbed the alleged dirtiness of one person showing another person affection.
I can’t recall–think maybe sex for pleasure was seen as too “animalistic”.
Interesting sermon on sexuality and spirituality I once heard can be found here
http://firstuucolumbus.org/sermons/mb20010121.htm
“Every Sperm is Sacred. . . “
Michael Palin, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
I couldn’t resist – sorry if it was mentioned upthread, I looked but didn’t see it!
OK, seriously: I think the writer of that letter/column is Catholic. Many fundamentalist groups are not opposed to birth control, though they may be vehemently against abortion. It is wrong to tar Baptists, for example,as being against birth control. I think what Baptists don’t want is unmarried people using birth control, but most would have no problem with married adults using birth control. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’ve never seen a lot of teaching or preaching from most fundamentalists against birth control as they do abortion.
But the Catholic view is that sex is for procreation. (How very old-fashioned, almost Darwinian of them. Not a more modern interpretation of evolutionary theory, but whatever, I won’t be picky.).
I’ve had more than one friend who had real trouble dealing with having a sex life once her body refused to produce any more babies.
Terry Jones should also be credited.
Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.
Karin McAdams is obviosly a founding member of the Iron Hymen. http://www.ironhymen.com/
Thanks to the liberal girl next door link in a howieinseattle diary for the link to this bit of hillarity and truth.
Such a doctrine does not exist in any other religion, to the best of my knowledge, and whether it is a biblical injjunction I assume must be a matter of interpretation, since the Protestant sects, as far as I know, do not subscribe to it, and neither does the Eastern Church, if memory serves me correctly.