Think Progress.org has this piece on the latest attempt by the Bush Administration to put into place a political nominee who holds beliefs directly contrary to the mission of the office to which that appointee is being sent. Like John Bolton being sent to a United Nations he despises, Eric Keroack, appointed to oversee family planning at HHS, is against birth control. Like the congressional Republicans putting a pedophile pradtor in charge of the committee to write laws to protect children from predators, this is the kind of nonsensical thing one reads and then shakes one's head at.
One point that is often brought up when Keroack's nomination is mentioned is that he has worked for Christian-based groups in efforts to bring down teen pregnancy rates. A noble venture indeed. At the same time, his oppposition to birth control is also mentioned as part and parcel of his Christian faith. Of course, we all recognize that most Christian conservatives are opposed to abortion, but the opposition to contraception is a little-known fun-fact of right-wing Christian sexual thinking. Now, before we start humming "Every sperm is sacred" from Montym Python's The Meaning of Life it is important to remind ourselves that the wide availability of contraception did not just bring about a certain freedom for women to compete in the social, cultural, and economic spheres with men, it also, to conservatives both Christian and secular, allowed them - and by extension, I guess, men as well - to have as much sex as they wanted. This is often discussed as "sex without consequences", the consequence being pregnancy. For many - not all, but many - Christian conservatives - the main role for women is to be a baby factory, a regular assembly line for future soldiers in God's Army. There is also an insidious, quasi-racist undertone to this view as well; we need to be out-producing the less worthy. Some groups even oppose vasectomies and tubal ligation for the same reasons; it is interference with the divine decree to go forth and multiply.
Now, we can argue back and forth over whether or not this is or is not proper Christian teaching on sexual ethics. All I want to say is there are many wonderful ob-gyns who are Christians who hand out pills, condoms, daiphragms, do tubal ligations, and generally counsel women on proper contraceptive practices. Why? Because it is their job (a), and (b), they are not so blinded by silly ideas that they think they can trump science and professional practice with assertions having no merit whatsoever. A person who refuses to allow reality to interfere with his or her way of seeing and interacting with the world - at least to some extent - is not a religious nut of whatever variety (a Christofascist, a Zionist zealot, an Islamofascist terrorist, whatever the label du jour happens to be) but is an ideologue.
When ideas replace reality, that is kind of the definition of ideologue.
Virtual Tin Cup
