This Guy Actually Writes For the New York Times, Huh?

 Op-Ed Columnist

Why Monogamy Matters

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Shouldn't there be bigger issues for a Times columnist to be covering? Like Libya, or Afghanistan, or the economy, or what Sarah Palin is re-tweeting today?

Social conservatives can seem like the perennial pessimists of American politics — more comfortable with resignation than with hope, perpetually touting evidence of family breakdown, social disintegration and civilizational decline.

Yes, they can sometimes seem like that. Just like lions can sometimes seem like large cats, or policemen can seem like law enforcement officers.

But even doomsayers get the occasional dose of good news. And so it was last week, when a study from the Centers for Disease Control revealed that American teens and 20-somethings are waiting longer to have sex.

But you social conservatives have been howling for years about the "hook-up" culture, and the ":friends with benefits" phenomonen among today's teens. Is it possible that these sexual bogeymen might have been the masturbation fantasies of the unwillingly celibate? Or maybe just made up to keep the donations flowing from the church ladies?

Why is this good news? Not, it should be emphasized, because it suggests the dawn of some sort of traditionalist utopia, where the only sex is married sex. No such society has ever existed, or ever could: not in 1950s America (where, as the feminist writer Dana Goldstein noted last week, the vast majority of men and women had sex before they married),

But not after!

But there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.

Oh, you are going straight to hell with that kind of attitude, son! Everyone knows that sex is dirty and evil unless it makes a baby! That's why we can't let the gay people marry each other.

This distinction is crucial to understanding what’s changed in American life since the sexual revolution. Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.

Or at least that's what we told the ladies to get them into the back seat of our dad's Packard. That or "I'm shipping out tomorrow."

And they may have been happier for it. That’s the conclusion suggested by two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.” Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.

Among the young people Regnerus and Uecker studied, the happiest women were those with a current sexual partner and only one or two partners in their lifetime.

So, the whole "abstinence before marriage" argument? Maybe not holding up so well? Shouldn't the happiest young adults be the virgins?

Virgins were almost as happy, though not quite

Hmm, what could be missing from their lives to make them less happy? Hmm, what could it be?

 

I just can't think of anything.



Yep, it's a mystery, all right.

When social conservatives talk about restoring the link between sex, monogamy and marriage, they often have these kinds of realities in mind. The point isn’t that we should aspire to some Arcadia of perfect chastity

Since when? What the hell were all those abstinence-only classes about, then?

Rather, it’s that a high sexual ideal can shape how quickly and casually people pair off, even when they aren’t living up to its exacting demands. The ultimate goal is a sexual culture that makes it easier for young people to achieve romantic happiness — by encouraging them to wait a little longer, choose more carefully and judge their sex lives against a strong moral standard.

Romantic Happiness? Is that what's at stake?

This is what’s at stake, for instance, in debates over abstinence-based sex education. Successful abstinence-based programs (yes, they do exist)

No, they don't.

Successful abstinence-based programs (yes, they do exist) don’t necessarily make their teenage participants more likely to save themselves for marriage.

And successful Driver's Ed classes don't necessarily make teens into competent drivers. That's some definition of success you got there, Douthat.

. But they make them more likely to save themselves for somebody, which in turn increases the odds that their adult sexual lives will be a source of joy rather than sorrow.

The joys of unwanted pregnancies and STD's? Those kinds of joys?
And while we're on the subject. . .

Abstinence-Only a Failure, Latest Research Shows
Douglas Kirby’s study, “The Impact of Abstinence and Comprehensive Sex and STD/HIV Education Programs on Adolescent Sexual Behavior,” reveals that most abstinence programs did not delay initiation of sex

 another federally funded study of four abstinence-only programs by the Mathematica Policy Research Inc., published in April of 2007, revealed similar results. The research group found that “participants had just as many sexual partners as nonparticipants and had sex at the same median age as nonparticipants.”

It’s also what’s at stake in the ongoing battle over whether the federal government should be subsidizing Planned Parenthood. Obviously, social conservatives don’t like seeing their tax dollars flow to an organization that performs roughly 300,000 abortions every year. But they also see Planned Parenthood’s larger worldview — in which teen sexual activity is taken for granted, and the most important judgment to be made about a sexual encounter is whether it’s clinically “safe” — as the enemy of the kind of sexual idealism they’re trying to restore

.Yeah, fuck safety! The only judgement young people should be making sex-wise is "Are we having the sort of sex of which Ross Douthat would approve?"


 Mmm, probably not!

But realism can blur into cynicism, and a jaded attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social conservatives look at the contemporary sexual landscape and remember that it wasn’t always thus,

 
You just said it was! Remember "No such society has ever existed, or ever could: not in 1950s America (where, as the feminist writer Dana Goldstein noted last week, the vast majority of men and women had sex before they married)" That was you, like three paragraphs ago.  
So, anyway, the subject of Today's column was what, again? "Why Monogamy Matters?"
We're still waiting for an answer.
 
 

Stray Caturday

Weirdest Thing I've Ever Seen (slightly NSFW)

So there is apparently now a thing called "Bible Burlesque."

Some characters make sense, like Eve, the most famous naked lady since Lady Godiva.



Name: Magdelena Fox
Costume: Eve

Others are a bit more puzzling:

Below is Victoria as sexy Joseph, whom she chose to portray because she's "used to wearing itchy, fake facial hair."






I'm not sure to whom that is supposed to appeal.


But on the "disturbing scale," that barely ranks a 4 or 5. And that scale goes up to 10.


This is an 11:




Name: BB Heart
Costume: Jesus Christ 


What the What? Jesus as zombie geisha? As a zombie geisha portrayed by Marilyn Manson?


 I think there's nothing left to do now but sit back and wait for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to come riding in.



The cast, after interpreting the Book of Revelation and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. 

Oh, dear God! How am I supposed to sleep now?

Mike Huckabee Is Our Generation's Dan Quayle

Huckabee Attacks Natalie Portman For Glamorizing "Out Of Wedlock Births"

March 03, 2011 5:41 pm ET by Eric Hananoki

 In a radio appearance on Monday, Mike Huckabee attacked actress Natalie Portman for having a child "out of wedlock." 

 MEDVED: . . . there was one moment where a very brilliant and admirable actress named Natalie Portman won Best Actress, and she won for a movie which I loathed called Black Swan. But in any event, she got up, she was very visibly pregnant, and it's really it's a problem because she's about seven months pregnant, it's her first pregnancy, and she and the baby's father aren't married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, 'Oh I want to thank my love and he's given me the most wonderful gift.' He didn't give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.

What a horrible message to send, that babies are precious gifts! And from Natalie Portman of all people! You know there's no one impressionable teen girls look up to more than Natalie Portman, or as they refer to her, "who?"

By the way, not that it matters, necessarily, but she and the father are engaged.

 

Check out the ring finger on her left hand. Unless someone already knew a lot about her personal life, one would probably assume that she was married, until a couple of blue-nose prigs decided to point out otherwise because they need someone at whom to tsk-tsk to assert their moral superiority. Just like Jesus always said to do!

HUCKABEE: You know Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine.' 

Well, since, as Medved just mentioned, Ms Portman's first child has yet to be born, she could hardly have boasted about it "doing fine." Also, she is not the one who mentioned her marital status, that was you two.

But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. 

No one could possibly understand that millionaire movie "starlets" can afford things that most of us can't. That's why Ferrari dealerships are so inundated with teenagers trying to purchase a car with their allowance money. Go by any Ferrari dealer and just watch the disappointed teens filing out, heads down, dreams shattered. Oh, what a rude awakening when they finally realize that life is different for the very rich!

Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock. [sic]

  

You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids -- across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering. 

And 99% of those babies were conceived by couples who had just watched Natalie Portman's acceptance speech.

Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States!

By Way of Apology for those last videos

Here's Loretta Lynn: