There’s a wicked rumor spreading throughout the right-wing media that Obama’s health care bill will REQUIRE every parent to teach their children that masturbation is a perfectly normal, healthy human activity.1 Yes, they’re going to push their SEXUAL agenda on everyone! I’m NOT KIDDING! They’re calling it “mandatory masturbation.”2
Okay, that’s the rumor. It’s bullshit. Now let’s talk truth for a moment.
The REAL text of the health care bill makes it plainly obvious what’s going on:
House Bill 3200, titled “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” section 2543 (b)(2) states:
ESTABLISHMENT OF CORE PARENTAL EDUCATIONAL ELEMENTS- The Secretary, in consultation with the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, shall establish core parental educational elements for a compliance program under paragraph (1). The elements will include written policies, procedures, and standards of conduct, a designated compliance officer and a compliance committee to ensure parental to child training and education pertaining to human underage masturbation; a confidential or anonymous mechanism, such as a hotline, to receive compliance questions; disciplinary guidelines for enforcement of standards; internal monitoring and auditing procedures, including monitoring and auditing of parents; procedures for ensuring prompt responses to detected offenses and development of corrective action initiatives, including responses to potential offenses; and procedures to return all identified violations to the programs under this title, title XIX, and title XXI.
Paragraph (1), as referenced above, states:
Parent to child training curriculum will include, at minimum, the following core lessons regarding masturbation:
1. Touching the intimate parts of one’s body except during normal washing and using the bathroom should be avoided, and during washing, should be limited as much as possible.
2. Children should never be left alone, as being alone increases susceptibility to temptation.
3. After bathing, children should not linger, especially in front of the mirror. Children should stay in the shower just long enough to clean themselves or be cleaned by a parent. As soon as the cleaning is finished, the child should dry off and get out of the bathroom as soon as possible to be in the presence of a family member.
4. Prior to sleeping, children should be dressed in full pajamas or clothes that are difficult to remove.
5. The Internet should be avoided entirely, or at least restricted and closely monitored. Oversight of television programs is recommended, as long as the programs are limited to programs displaying gratuitous violence without sexual content.
6. The topic of masturbation should be avoided. If a child brings up the topic, the parent should change the topic or remind the child that all sexual activity outside of marital relations, including masturbation, is unequivocally immoral and unhealthy, and can lead to addiction, infertility, mental illness, and, in some cases, prostate cancer in males.3
Despite the fact that the bill’s provisions are completely opposite of the rumors, Republicans and right-wing pundits keep pushing. When asked about the “mandatory masturbation” portion of the bill, “Joe the plumber” had this to say, “The politicians in Washington are spending trillions of dollars of our money to push masturbation on children. When are Americans going to stand up and say enough is enough?”4
Iowan Republican Senator Grassley has been a staunch opponent of the bill. “In the House bill, there is counseling for masturbation,” Grassley said. “You have every right to fear. You shouldn’t have pro-masturbation parental counseling. That’s something that should be considered only after marriage, if ever. We should not have a government run plan to decide for us whether masturbation is right or wrong. That’s a discussion only between parents and God.” Grassley obviously has not read the bill.5
Sarah Palin, estranged former governor of Alaska,6 notorious for her ironic sexual positions,7 had a lot to say about “mandatory masturbation”:
I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that requires parents to teach their children that masturbation is normal and healthy…..
As I noted in my statement last week, masturbation inevitably leads to pre-marital sex and mental illness. The mandatory masturbation system proposed by President Obama, advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff, would force every parent to talk to their children about masturbation, and, worse, would make those parents advocate for masturbation.
On the left side, Keith Olbermann had this to say:
Every poll, every analysis, every vote, every region of this country supports masturbation, and one of the most profitable businesses in America, the porn industry, backs that with all of their money and lobbying pressure. Cross us all at your peril.8
The effects of the negative punditry are varied, but one interesting situation is that Glenn Beck, another anti-masturbation proponent, has recently lost advertisers due to his stance. Vivid Entertainment Group pulled its ads from Fox News Channel’s “The Glenn Beck Program.” Club Jenna, Inc. has also declared that it will not advertise during the program.9
Here’s what Michelle Bachmann10 said regarding the mandatory masturbation clause:
[It's] under the guise of quote, volunteerism, but it’s not volunteers at all,” she said on the Bob Johnson radio show in July. “It’s the government forcing parents to force masturbation on their children. This provision is like creating re-education camps for young people, where young people get trained in the philosophy the government puts forward and then they have to go thinking that masturbation is acceptable and not morally corrupt.
As a parent, I would have a very, very difficult time doing this to my children.
Rep. John Mica (R-FL) told a Florida radio station today that the health care legislation being considered by the House of Representatives will authorize the creation of “masturbation counselors.”
They create a whole new category. There are masturbation counselors. There is authorization for reimbursement for those counselors. You have a whole new cottage industry.
Obviously, the pundits and congressmen need to sit down for a few minutes and actually read the damn bill. Perhaps then we can get off on this topic.11
Everyone wants to do it, and it feels good, so it must be wrong. [<]
The Huffington Post reports that Mr Steele is now pitching the concept that gays will cost small business more money because of the extra costs in giving gay employees the spousal benefits of other straight employees. This concept Mr Steele is pitching is patently absurd because of the implications it conveys.
First, I am forced to conclude that small businesses in America are hiring gay employees over straight employees because the business owners would not have to provide spousal benefits, thereby saving money. This is absurd because most employees are straight, not gay. The increase in cost can only occur if gays are starting to outnumber straights.
Second, to subscribe to Mr Steele’s flawed thinking, the conservative Christians of the Republican Party must recognize and agree that the lower marriage rate of straight America is not a problem, so much so that it isn’t even happening. This defies the statistics that show an increasing number of Americans are choosing not to marry their own partners and are more often having children out of wedlock. Given the statistics for this trend, Mr Steele assumes that only gays will marry and straights won’t. Is this how gays are undermining straight marriage, when straights started giving up on marriage long before any gays could become married?
Third, if social concerns are to be entirely decided based upon the merits of lower expenses for small businesses, shouldn’t Mr Steele advocate that nobody marry? He should promote the idea that each person must work for a business to obtain health insurance, for example, eliminating the need to provide spousal benefits which will reduce costs. I don’t think the party that prefers traditional stay-at-home moms can logically engage in permanent non-marital relationships for the future of the party — hardly traditional.
I don’t know whether to consider the concept promoted by Mr Steele as prejudice or reverse-prejudice. Does Mr Steele think of the employment of (unmarried) gays as some modern form of slavery? It certainly smacks of a formal endorsement of apartheid. These consequential concepts are something Mr Steele, of all people, should understand, appreciate and strive to avoid.
Michael Steele continues to find ways to not only further marginalize the Republican Party into obsolecence, but to further marginalize himself into unemployment.
(click to enlarge – and no, that’s not innuendo. okay, fine, it is innuendo, but the hen heard “cluck to enlarge”)
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For those of you who are asking, “Isn’t that a bit mild for 4chan?”, you know this blog is family fucking friendly, right? Sheesh, you pervs. If you want some 4chan, just go there, already! Seriously, though, what you deem “mild” is, for these (at least public) Republican Prudes, a kick in the teeth of their prurient virginity.1
But, because I like you, I’ll make this into a contest! I spent many painful hours trying to come up with the best “furry sex” image that wasn’t actually pornographic, but that perhaps did a decent enough job invoking the 4chan meme. But, you know, I’m just not practiced enough at that sort of thing (which is probably a good thing), but I’m betting some of my readers are (no insult intended, of course, heh). So, here’s the contest: Send me a pic (but not a link!) of a better representation of the 4chan meme that would fit nicely in this comic (i.e., invoking the reactions you see by the prudes on the left), but that would not constitute pornography (i.e., nothing that would trigger the FCC’s nipple-slippage fines (not that I’m subject to them, but I am invoking my right not to show what I don’t desire to show — kids read this blog, you know!) ). You can send your entries to procrustes AT stateofprotest DOT com (make sure the subject line includes either “comic” or “contest”). I’ll judge the entries and I will post the winner’s integrated entry in this post and in the upcoming Carnival of the Godless! You have until midnight EST on May 16 to get your entries in. (submit as many as you want)
In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, ‘And the sun stood still … and hasted not to go down about a whole day’ (Joshua x. 13) and ‘He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time’ (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.
Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind 59 (1950), 443.
Monkey Girl by Edward Humes ISBN: 9780060885489, ISBN10: 0060885483 Ecco (imprint of Harper Collins) Hardcover 400 pages, $25.95
What does it mean when proponents of Intelligent Design say “teach the controversy”?
You may think you know what the controversy is about, but you’ll never get a more thorough and up-to-date analysis of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial than Edward Humes’ book Monkey Girl. The 2005 trial was one of the latest episodes of the seemingly never-ending struggle for the hearts and minds of public school students. This is a fight between those who feel that Science describes nature pretty well, and those who believe that anything other than a strict literal interpretation of the Bible deserves a trip to hell and excommunication from polite society. The trial itself was a gripping account of small-town drama unfolding over the course of a year, of parents and children enduring intimidation and humiliation. Witnesses from both sides turned the courtroom into a fascinating arena of scientific evidence versus faith dressed in science’s clothing. At least three books have come out of the case (see further reading below for details), and Ed Humes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writing style and even-handed coverage make Monkey Girl a compelling choice. Humes not only covers the case, he describes the town as the trial transforms it:
Dover sits firmly astride the front lines of America’s culture war, occupying the uneasy space between America’s religious faith and its longstanding fondness for scientific progress, between an idealized past and an uncertain future, between education and indoctrination, between the natural and the supernatural. For the next several months, the ninth floor courtroom in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building will belong to Kitzmiller et al versus Dover Area School District, an unintentionally epic lawsuit filed by a group of parents against their evolution-doubting school board. The case does indeed have much in common with the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial, a public spectacle in which Clarence Darrow and the American Civil Liberties Union unsuccessfully challenged a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution. But unlike its illustrious predecessor (which, popular imagination and classic films notwithstanding, had exactly no impact on the law or educational practice at the time), the Dover case is positioned to define (or redefine) for decades just what children are taught about where we come from. [prologue, Monkey Girl]
The controversy has shifted a bit since the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which first questioned the legality of teaching Darwin’s theory of Evolution in public schools. World War II and the Cold War demanded that the United States produce competent scientists. This demand seemed to effectively muzzle fundamentalists for a few decades. High School Biology classes approaching the Theory of Evolution would often involve an uneasy truce involving the words “changes over time” and neatly sidestepping the origins of life. Until reading this book, I assumed that all but the most extreme religious fundamentalists were fine with this truce. Humes’ book shows precisely how much this has changed.
While the book mostly focuses on the Dover trial, Humes also takes us to a similar trial in Kansas, the controversy involving the gift shop at the Grand Canyon, where Creationists have had some success in censoring information about the geological age of the national monument. Most importantly, Humes follows the trail of intellectual and legal deception to the pseudo-scientific think-tank called The Discovery Institute, a group of scientists who exclude any scientific evidence in conflict with Christian Scripture.
The Dover Trial is full of drama and bad debate, A Scopes Monkey Trial for the 21st century, or Inherit the Wind, Redux. Humes shows in the Dover case how Creationism in public schools, having been defeated in courts during the late 20th century under the Separation of Church and State clause of the First Amendment, evolved (pun intended) into the virtually identical Intelligent Design movement, to Dover, Pennsylvania among other places. Some of the most shocking moments of the trial feature the ironic displays of dishonesty which ultimately brought down the school board members who were trying to bring religion into the local biology classrooms. Humes covers the scope of the grand scheme of religious activists, who plan on infusing not only science classes with Christian dogma and bias, but History, Government, and other classes as well.
This very book elicits criticism from those whose definition of “Fair and Balanced” have been warped to Orwellian proportions by Fox News and today’s most hyperbolic propagandists. Humes compassionately portrays how the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs in this case, were attacked and their children mocked at school out of ignorance. The Dover case pitted one kind of Christians against another. Those who favored the separation of Church and State were attacked as “not Christian enough”, in a great example of how the separation of these two functions protects freedom of religion. Another surprising turn of events showed how the presiding judge, a Bush-supporting Republican was branded as a liberal judicial activist for defending the constitution.
While it is clear on which side Humes’ sympathies lie, the reader is necessarily confronted with the heart of the so-called controversy: regarding extreme religious views which by definition do not tolerate any opposing views, what are the limits of tolerance in society? How can a democracy defend pluralism from those whose religious beliefs clash so vehemently with the definition of reality itself by the rest of the world, both secular and religious? The Framers of the Constitution were historically not far away from centuries of religious wars in Europe which constantly threw governments into turmoil. They saw the value of the separation of church and state to both church and state. Back in those days religious persecution meant death or incarceration because of one’s beliefs, not what passes for persecution these days in the minds of some.
One gets the strong impression reading Humes’ insightful analysis, that this latest version of the old Darwin-vs.-God controversy is the product of the removal of Critical Thinking skills from the mainstream public school curriculum, and the lack of a Cold War Era push towards developments in Math & Science, supported by all but the most outspoken of Bible literalists, who constantly attempt to couch the debate as “God vs. Darwin”, when in fact, most religions don’t require people to choose between the two. In my opinion, this is a clear case of the old adage, “Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”. Young-Earth Creationists might benefit from not ignoring the history of the Catholic Church’s censorship of Copernicus and Galileo hundreds of years ago, and ask themselves why the Pope doesn’t have a big problem with Darwin’s theories today.
-Philadelphic
Further reading on the Dover Trial: (after the break…) (more…)
Republicans, backed by the Christian right, have made it clear that they oppose the pro-contraception provisions in the stimulus package that allow states to cover family planning services and supplies to low-income women who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid, and give states the option to provide such coverage without obtaining a waiver. 1
Apparently, the “Christian Defense Coalition calls Speaker Pelosi’s decision to add contraceptives to the economic stimulus package bigoted, racist, elitist and anti-child.”2 And that “The Christian Defense Coalition will do all within its power to see that hundreds of millions of dollars are not used for contraceptives.”
Eugene, at the Daily KOS, thinks that this is a battle Democrats need to insist on winning for three primary reasons:
1. Contraception, because it reduces unwanted pregnancies, is essentially economic stimulus.
2. This is an attempt by the conservatives to destroy the Obama administration early on, and if Obama gives in, it’s a major victory for Republicans.
3. This is not only a conservative effort to attack abortion rights indirectly, but also primarily attacks contraception and the right to privacy, which effectively keeps pushing this nation’s reproductive freedom and progress back decades to when contraception was illegal. 3
On the other hand, Benintn, at Daily KOS, thinks that instead of toiling over what amounts to a tiny amount of federal funding (0.24% of the total stimulus package, according to Benintn), efforts should be redirected to reproductive freedom in the arena where it has a good chance of success — donations to Planned Parenthood, for starters.
Benintn suggests that citizens focus on organizing in communities to discuss the impotence of Republicans, focus on private-sector efforts to provide family planning funds (donations to Planned Parenthood, for example), and focusing on stabilizing and improving state and local health departments. Rather than merely handing out condoms, says Benintn, “let’s invest in sex education and counseling that helps empower people.” 4
Benintn also refers to a potentially disturbing set of facts laid out by TPM, that Democrats were not always the front-runners for family planning rights, and that the provisions of the bill allowing state waivers are cumbersome, at best. Not only that, but many states already supply Medicaid money for family planning, and Republicans from those states opposed the stimulus bill’s family planning provisions as being pro-abortion, but apparently have not tried to get the already-existing funding in their own states nixed (which makes me think that this behavior may be more in line with what Eugene suggested, being an attempt to undermine Obama’s administration from the start). 5
Regardless of whether you favor Benintn’s or Eugene’s view, there’s no harm in donating to an organization like Planned Parenthood and working for better family planning and sex education in local and state-level communities. As far as the lack of impact of the provision in question with regard to the total stimulus package, I don’t think we should be looking at it as a comparison to the rest of the package, and then allowing ourselves to discount it based on that. I think any federal funding is beneficial, and is also an indication that the federal government doesn’t cave in to right-wing religious extremism. If I were negotiating this deal, and the Republicans tried to insist on dropping the family planning provision, I’d agree on the condition that we drop some much-desired Republican-promoted tax cut, and we’ll see if the Republican legislators are driven more by their alleged fiscal conservatism than their tired religious rhetoric.
This is not just a test for the new administration, but it is also the first in what will be many tests of whether the Republican Party will continue to exist as is with such a distinction between the fiscal conservatives who don’t mind the concept of separation of church and state and the religious extremists who have a lot of support from religious organizations and who would probably enjoy having Palin in ‘12. During the election, I hypothesized (like many others) that the Republican Party would split along those lines, and that the less extreme, but fiscally and governmentally conservative offshoot would succeed on its own merits (and likely get along much better with the Blue Dog Democrats and other moderates in Congress), while the financially powerful but cultish party of religious extremists would, although potentially powerful in some respects, hopefully go the way of the dodo.
The bill, although passed by the House, is not nearly in its final draft. It’s still under review by the Senate, and will likely endure multiple changes by both before being signed into law by President Obama. In the meantime, Republicans need to start seriously thinking about why they’re loyal to a party that doesn’t practice the core values of conservatism and small government (i.e., are they Bush Republicans?), and whether it’s worth it to continue to exist with the taint of religious and political extremism. And Democrats need to start thinking about why the people voted for a Democratic majority in Congress, and perhaps start getting to doing some of the things we hoped would have been done years ago. Remember, Obama can’t do everything himself, and he’s far from omnipotent or perfect.
Rachel Maddow asks a pertinent question: If Obama’s attempt at bipartisanism ends up with no Republican votes for his stimulus package, and if he can pass the bill without those votes, why make concessions on huge tax cuts or anything else?
