Too Long

I'm reading this article called "Students of Virginity" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/magazine/30Chastity-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=127b604e2236107e&ex=1207627200&emc=eta1) and I couldn't help myself - the running commentary in my head was too loud to ignore. My opinions might be objectionable, my facts might be wrong, but oh fucking well. P.S. - thanks R for sending this to me, I'm not sure this post was in your plan; I apologise in advance.

Quotes are from the article... [Q]
Thoughts are from me... [T]

Q: "It seemed to Fredell that almost no one had sex in Colorado Springs."

T: Did Fredell ever google "sex colorado springs"? Because I just did and I found (in ten seconds):
An escort service
A swingers night club
A list of the 610 registered sex offenders in Colorado Springs

Q: '“The hookup culture is so absolutely all-encompassing,” she said. “It’s shocking! It’s everywhere!”'

T: Self note: remember that this quote is from somebody who went to a high school where '“literally everyone,” wore chastity rings'...

Q: "...calling themselves True Love Revolution. They were pushing, for reasons entirely secular, the cause of premarital sexual abstinence..."

T: Quick: what secular reasons? Not any of these: Promote scientific accuracy, prevent the spread of disease, increasing the proportion of sex acts which are "safe", actually reducing the number of sex acts [all these things were gleaned from page 2 of the online version of the article]. Perhaps Jesus could ride a cloud down to earth and whisper the answer in my ear?

[Breakdown of Q/T convention...]
Ahhh god and by the third page of the article the whole fish is cooked. Now we are into the crux of things! Apparently these groups (at least at the Ivys) have a mascot! Elizabeth Anscombe! No jesus freaks here, just some good old philosophy of ethics; Anscombe even hob-nobbed with Wittgenstein! But in other Anscombe-related news, read this:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.shtml

That article is straight from the horses mouth, as they say, and if you finished it, and thought it was reasonable, then congratulations: you are a fucking idiot! The woman uses a nasty combination of personal attacks, guilt by association, assumption of facts, the "snowball" effect (for lack of a desire to look up the proper term) to blow her implications way out of proportion, and many many appeals to the sanctity of the Catholic church when the logical ice she's skating on gets too thin.

Obviously the person who did this report believed all this bullshit, given the degree of respect she afford's these abstinence clubs. Look, just because you go to Princeton or Yale or Harvard, doesn't mean your off the hook when it comes to endorsing ass-crazy cultist wackos. Like Will Smith said in "I, Robot": "Does believing you're the last sane man on the planet make you crazy? 'Cause if it does, maybe I am."

What follow are some choice quotes. I'd love to take them out of context to make them worse, since I'm really here to slander those who disagree with me, but frankly trying to make these quotes sounds worse than they do in context would be more work than it would be worth:

"There always used to be a colossal strain in ancient times; between heathen morality and Christian morality, and one of the things pagan converts had to be told about the way they were entering on was that they must abstain from fornication... ...Christian life meant a separation from the standards of that world: you couldn't be a Baal-worshipper, you couldn't sacrifice to idols, be a sodomite, practice infanticide, compatibly with the Christian allegiance."

"People quite alienated from this tradition are likely to see that my argument holds: that if contraceptive intercourse is all right then so are all forms of sexual activity. To them that is no argument against contraception, to their minds anything is permitted, so long as that's what people want to do. Well, Catholics, I think, are likely to know, or feel, that these other things are bad."

"For we don't invent marriage, as we may invent the terms of an association or club, any more than we invent human language. It is part of the creation of humanity and if we're lucky we find it available to us and can enter into it. If we are very unlucky we may live in a society that has wrecked or deformed this human thing. "

[Return of Q/T convention]
Q: "early sexual activity is strongly associated with all manner of terrible outcomes, from increased risk of depression to greater likelihood of marital infidelity, divorce and maternal poverty"
T: Justin Murray, when I think about the mistakes you made when you used these numbers to support your cause, I actually get stupider. Here are two great reasons why your reasoning makes no fucking sense (they work together and seperately for [nearly] twice the destructive power!):
1) correlation does not imply causation!
2) causation is bidirectional!

Q: 'Since True Love Revolution did not condemn gay marriage, Murray hoped no one would feel “personally attacked.” “We just wanted it to be kind of humorous and lighthearted,” he said.'
T: Look, more sychophantic bullshit to cover up wanton suppression! Now I'm actually getting pissed off. Seriously, True Love Revolution: go fuck yourself. Not that I care, but is sychophantic even the right word? Anyway when I read sentences like the one above, I get a sudden blindingly clear image of an overflowing portapotty with one of those little scented pine trees hanging from the ceiling.

In the end I'm just confused - why can't abstinence and contraceptives groups work hand in hand? The abstinence groups draw the line in the sand. They protest education about sex. In a strange way, while I was reading Anscombe, I recieved the same impression. It's a feeling these people emit which is hard to pin down, but it definitely is nostalgic for the times when we were more ignorant about our bodies. Anscombe finds all contraception indefensible except the rythm method - citing numerous times the purity of the "laws of nature", and the impurities of human inovation (especially as it applies to forcing rewrites of Church doctrine). When True Love Revolution mailed those Valentine's Day cards just to woman, it could be thought of as merely a tactical error; when Fredell commented repeatedly that men only want sex, and that woman only acquiesce, the comments could have intepreted in light of her own limited sexual experiences. But, again the actions and comments of the people in the True Love Revolution could be said to be, slightly, willfully ignorant of the way the world is now, and thus, regretful that things are not now like they used to be.

Oh, and fuck spellcheck.