"Why Monogamy Matters"

That NY Times article is based on a wire service story our shop ran last week. When they talk about 28 percent of young adults being "virgins," I believe that meant they have refrained from ALL sexual activity.

I also found this bit from the NYT article interesting:

Maybe what's causing the decline in happiness is not more or less sex, but a definite decline in intimacy (in the larger sense).

 

I never said abstinence led to an uptick in anything.

But pregnancy prevention is certainly not the operative concept among white middle-class suburbanites. It's some PromiseKeepers notion regarding the preservation of virginity.

Are cultural forces at work? Of course they are.

What does the teaching of "abstinence" hand teenagers to deal with those cultural forces? Nothing.

The teaching of "abstinence" in most cases seems to mean "no sex education at all."

Teach sex ed. Teach abstinence and moderation. Teach hygiene and infection prevention.

But teach them something.

 

God Says So is no better or worse a reason than "my Mom always believed" or "I learned at my first political job."

I mean, what authority, really, exists to say what's good and what's bad? So (in your example) single mothers drain theoretically public dollars. Big deal. So what? You think that's too bad, and this guy over here thinks it's great. He'd like to see more single mothers in fact, more public dollars, more degradation of government services. You think he's a bad guy. He thinks you're a bad guy. Who's right? Why? Are you going to have a "good person" standoff? A fistfight? Who gets to decide the terms of "good?" And how come they get to decide those terms and not somebody else? And why isn't "bad" actually "good?"

You can do this all day. In fact, TV shows makes millions off of recycling those very questions, again and again, convincing the masses relativism is an absolute truth.

If that seems off course for this discussion, I don't think it is. We're talking, essentially, about why it's better to have fewer sexual partners, and your argument is based in, what? Utilitarianism? Why's that better than feeling good? Sex feels good in the moment. Can that great feeling outweigh any public good that could be gained by denying the pleasure?

I know millions of drug addicts make that choice every day. I want the feeling despite the greater cost of what happens because of it. Sex isn't all that different. We presume, somewhat hilariously, that, on the one hand, kids can't control the impulse to screw. They have to do that, and denying it would be like, well, denying their very existence. <i>But</i>, in the same breath, we presume they'll have reasonable desires. In other words, they'll want to have sex, they need to have sex, but possess an equal desire to have "safely," with condoms and birth control and HPV shots and whatever. Again - I find it hilarious that reason can't blunt the initial desire but somehow acts a "muse in the moment," as if "well, gee, Lydia, I've never seen breasts before and I'm feeling things I never have, but I also know, in this moment of fear and longing and primordial urge, I must blunt that urge ever so slightly to slip on this rubber thing I've never put on before so as to fit the ideal of how real teen sex is done." By the grace of whatever God you do or don't believe, this actually occurs sometimes. But to think we could make it a systemic groupthink is a shoulder-shuddering revelation into what we really think about people...if we really thought about it.

 

"Motives don't matter" and "I just want results" are each independently one stiff breeze from "the ends justify the means."

 

That notion of virginity, however quaint and poorly-worded as it may, directly refutes the cultural forces at work. Culture says "do this" and the notion says "culture is wrong." It may be a narrative argument at best - and people don't like narratives today, they like numbers, because at the root of those numbers, somewhere, is money - but it is an argument.

Contraceptive sex education simply says - well, culture is pretty much right, but, once you get in the thick of your sexual heat, remember to slip one of these on. Or perhaps not take it in your mouth.

It's applying the Band-Aid of reason to matter of desire. It's what we've been doing for more than a century on all matters of issues. It doesn't fucking work.

 

When I say I only care about the results, I don't just mean that the ends always justify the means. For example, forced sterilization of poor people would probably end a lot of welfare. But the cost has to factor in, not just the result. The social cost of such a policy, paid in people's civil rights, make it bad policy.

I just don't care about Mike Huckabee's motives. I don't. Bad policy will reveal itself. The motive doesn't matter.

P.S. How do you measure "civil rights"? I don't know. I completely acknowledge that I tend to venture into "assume a can opener" territory.

 

I'm not sure why someone so smart thinks the teaching of morality and the teaching of practical hygiene are mutually exclusive.

And people were fucking just as diligently and randomly 100 years ago. And 500 and 1500 and all the way back into the dark.

 

You can call it that. Social costs vs. social benefits.

And I recognize the flaws of pure utilitarianism. (Extreme Example: Justifying a wrongful execution.)

 

Your argument presumes the contraction of a STD somehow violates a moral precept. If it did, then the matter would presumably have a sliding scale of morality. At one end you'd have, perhaps, "you are Tommy Morrison's girlfriend." At the other you'd have: "You don't have sex at all." As a precept, if you want to avoid STDs, not having sex is the very best way to do it.

Kind of like saying: "If you want to avoid credit card debt, do not get a credit card."

I think it boils down to Americans - mankind in general - holding sex as a tool for pleasure to such a high regard that restricting in any way is considered a fool's errand. Thus the call of "well, just don't have sex then" is met with catcalls and boos where "just don't have a credit card" would be met with, I suspect, a lot of nodding heads.

 

Sorry Alma, but you're the one using morality - by implying that if only it were taught correctly, or used to dismantle some postmodern cultural apparatus, it would be a sovereign weapon against desire or pregnancy or infection.

I agree that the teaching of morality and restraint is important. But teach condoms, too, because in all the human history preceding the invention of mass media, morality and restraint batted about .250 against desire and human weakness.

 

Who defines costs? Who defines benefits? And why do "they" get to define them?

I admire you starting the thread, but you have a daunting task: Using reason and facts - which can be disputed both for their gathering and their value when pitted against other facts - to resolve a moral issue. I mean, everyone kinda secretly knows that fewer sexual partners is a good thing on pretty much every level. It reduces the potential for immediate abuse and abuse byproducts, it promotes a world where sex has an important-but-not-exaggerated place in culture, it promotes two-parent families (less adultery=less divorce=more happy kids) it promotes emotional and verbal intimacy over physical intimacy, it helps address body image issues, etc.

We all kinda know that. But it's not quite we <i>want</i>. We want all the above stuff - but we want to have a little <i>more</i> fun, a little <i>more</i> sex, take a little <i>more</i>. So we redraw the line. <i>Well, this is OK, too. And this. And this.</i> Until we feel kinda bad when we say that isn't OK. Because who are we to be hypocrites? So we include this and this and that over there and we keep redrawing line, all somehow adhering to some universal standard everybody apparently agrees upon that moves on a yearly basis.

It's called being a lemming. It's right where cultural leaders want you: Afraid of being labeled a hypocrite, and thus susceptible to attitudinal reprogramming.

And you think they don't have those conversations at HBO and Viacom and BBC and Al-Jazeera and Fox News, they do.

 

I mean, this is kind of the whole idea, right? You present your costs and benefits. I present my costs and benefits. Then let the public or the legislature or the public decide.

I don't see how spending time ferreting out Mike Huckabee's motives is particularly useful when there is so, so, so much measurable information out there on this and any policy decision. (Like I said, I understand that a lot of the measuring is assuming a can opener. But certainly there is enough measurable information on cause and effect to make some pretty education policy decisions).

All right, I've got work to do. Later. I leave you with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham