In Afghanistan, the Taliban-led government is banning contraception for women, claiming it is part of a Western conspiracy to limit the growth of the Muslim population. In America, the Christian Right, also known as the Republican Party, is attacking sex in general.
A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.
Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.
The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills.
In the old saying about the dog catching the car, I’m not sure what is supposed to happen. Does the dog come out on the losing side of a collision or does he succeed in taking possession of the car and simply not know what to do with it?
The Republicans assembled an army of anti-choice activists and became reliant on them for political victory. But now that they’ve succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade, they increasingly do not want to discuss abortion because it has become a political liability for them. But that doesn’t mean the activist army will simply dissolve. They need to new issues to occupy their time, and the GOP can’t afford to lose their organizing prowess.
Of course, there are still many venues open for anti-choice activism, whether it’s pushing for a federal ban or its enacting restrictive laws on the state level. But the party strategists want little to do with these efforts. They want to redirect the energy to areas that might still prove popular. In other words, they caught the car and suffered a collision with political reality, and now they’re searching for the next thing to do.
If that’s banning nipples in advertising, it probably doesn’t have much promise. I’m not sure banning sex toys and romance novels will be a winner either. Maybe they’ll do better creating a new crew of martyrs like Lenny Bruce by policing the sexy talk at comedy clubs.
With or without a car, a dog is still a dog and does what a dog does.
There’s still some mileage in attacking educators for talking frankly about race and human sexuality, and that’s where the strategists would prefer the Christian Right maintain their focus. If they can keep them on task going after the least popular groups to the straight white majority, then they can still hope to win legislative majorities. But the Christian Right is too much like the Taliban to take disciplined instruction.
They will maintain their strange mix of anti-sex, pro-reproduction politics, and they aren’t going to change for political advantage.
