The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 103 Comments

Sex is about reproduction. This is the natural function of sex, biologically speaking, and it’s odd how the same liberal fanatics who enjoy endlessly lecturing us about Darwinism and global warming — “The science is settled!” — are so unscientific about sex. Instead, the sexual enthusiasms of liberals tend toward sterile non-procreative acts, while they react with horror at the idea that someone might engage in the normal act of reproduction with the expected result. If they can’t prevent pregnancy, liberals want to kill the resulting baby, apparently believing that motherhood itself is a weapon of patriarchal oppression.

This mentality is what I call “The Contraceptive Culture.” I’ve written about the subject occasionally for years (see “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday,” May 8, 2010) and my emphatic pro-life stance has sometimes led to readers mistaking me for Catholic.

Proudly Protestant, I nevertheless recognize that the encyclical Humane Vitae identified the fundamental problem with artificial contraception: It separates functions that naturally belong together. Whereas love, sex, marriage and parenthood are normally part of the same bundle, The Contraceptive Culture divides them up in a decidedly abnormal way, and once this strange way of thinking takes hold, it becomes difficult for people to understand what’s wrong with it.

My wife and I have six children, so we’ve heard all the anti-“breeder” jokes that are common to The Contraceptive Culture. Sometimes, however, you encounter truly hateful expressions of the anti-natal mindset, as when someone posted a photo of the Duggar family’s appearance at a Ken Cuccinelli gubernatorial campaign event in Virginia:

“Expansive meat tarp”? Such vicious and perverted comments are a product of the hostility to normal sex that has entrenched itself in liberal rhetoric. Democrats are now the party of sodomy and abortion, and outright hatred of normal people — especially, hatred toward Christian families — is considered entirely acceptable to so-called “progressives.” Consider a question Time magazine recently asked an NFL player:

Six kids? Regardless of your profession, it’s impossible to
be a good parent to six kids. Not enough hours in the day.

Really? Are you saying that my wife and I are bad parents? Do you have any idea how healthy, happy and successful our kids are? Molly Hemingway has an excellent take on this subject:

Since when did having kids become something that Americans irrationally fear and loathe?
The media remind us regularly that the most important cultural value relative to family life is what’s euphemistically called “choice.” The choice of whether to have kids or not is held so sacrosanct that our laws permit the decision to be made many months after a new human life begins. Some even advocate extending the choice to a period of time after birth. So why the weird reaction to people receiving children as a blessing instead of fighting them tooth and nail with hormones, chemicals, surgery and scissors? Do we need some remedial courses in how babies are made? It’s entirely natural, of course, for babies to be conceived when men and women have sex. Treating the entirely expected procreation of children as something to be avoided at all costs — and an unspeakable atrocity if one has, say, three children already — would be weird even if our culture weren’t obsessed with sex at all times, in all places, in every context, at every moment. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

 

 


Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Family, Marriage, Sex

Comments

103 Responses to “Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa”

  1. DNW
    October 24th, 2013 @ 11:34 am

    ” Sex is about reproduction. This is the natural function of sex, biologically speaking,…the same liberal fanatics who enjoy endlessly lecturing us about Darwinism and global warming — “The science is settled!” — are so unscientific about sex.”

    You’re only neglecting the embrace of nihilism aspect, in order to show how the apparent contradiction resolves itself in the psyche of the progressive.

    Darwinism “as science” may be lens through which the progressive interprets biological phenomena, but these phenomena are held to be intrinsically meaningless anyway. They are certainly not taken to be normative in any imperative mood.

    They would say then, that “function” is a “purpose word” and purpose is a psychological habit projected onto the world; all teleological, or even teleonomic [Mayr] perceptions being illusions anyway.

    Take a look at philosophy professor Ed Feser’s blog discussions on philosopher Alex Rosenberg’s position. (Yes that is Rosenberg of Duke – and yes again, the same Rosenberg as the notorious Rosenberg signatory to the Group of 88’s attempted railroading of the Duke lacrosse players)

    http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/07/open-letter-to-brodhead.html [See Wiki too]

    And then, after you have performed the necessary reductio in accordance with progressive “metaphysics”, stripping away meaning and purpose as illusory and assuming that all of the things the progressives say they believe are really believed by them, and you look for the residuum, the resultant; what is morally left of the “progressive operator” itself? You existentially confront what, exactly?

    It, whatever it is, moves. It wants. It appropriates. But all without objective purpose. All without intrinsic meaning. All without ultimate point. And all is liable to consumption or use by it without regard to ontological status. No limits, no point, nothing there but … what?

    Now ask: how could your relationship with it possibly develop?

    As you probably suspect already, you haven’t seen the half of it yet.

  2. tlk244182
    October 24th, 2013 @ 11:35 am

    ” The Faith had not only been true all along, but it had been true to the first and the last things, to our unspoilt instincts and our conclusive experience….It had condemned nothing but what we ourselves should have come to condemn, though we might have condemned it too late.”
    GK Chesterton

  3. itheLOUniverse
    October 26th, 2013 @ 3:45 pm

    In this blog, @rsmccain explains how he became the voice of decency and appointed himself joke police and I’m in it! http://t.co/dj67EXO0vl