The quite-right, conservative PJ Media has an article reviewing the Sandra Fluke storm stirred up when Rush Limbaugh used the s-word, slut to describe this abortion activists premeditated promiscuous sex life, and demand for free abortions at her convenience. Cassie Fiano writes “In Defense of Slut-Shaming“.
A couple of disclaimers, here. First, Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, he describes himself as an entertainer, and not a political or an ethical shining light. That said, I found, the years I did listen to him, that Rush was pretty consistent with my Lutheran, protestant Christian upbringing. But I haven’t been commuting in recent years, and that is the role, commute entertainer, that Rush filled for me.
Next, from the clips and quotes I have seen, my impression is that Rush uses the term “slut” in a Biblical/social context — a single woman, engaging in sex outside of a community-recognized family.
The Family
If we are a nation of faceless entities, individually answerable to the government, then there is no such thing as a slut.
But I think that our communities are made of families, primarily. I consider a family to be child(ren) raised by adult(s) in a life-long mated relationship. Myself, I don’t count genders or number of adults that make up a family.
I think a family is important. A marriage or handfasting or other ritual or ceremony that introduces a combination of adults to their community as a family is critical. The ceremony, regardless of the type of ritual or event, redefines the relationship between that new family and their community. Each of the adults acquires a new and honorable change of identity. Instead of individuals, each is now known to be attached to a single family, and the community opens new opportunities and levies new responsibilities on those adults because of their family ties. Parents, for instance, are presumed to be responsible with other children the same age as their own; often individuals must establish character and history to achieve that kind of acceptance.
It is the formation of a new family within the community, the change of identity of those combining within their community, that sets a marriage or handfasting apart from couples that live together. Even though a couple share their lives lifelong, they would still be shunning the way a married couple builds their community, one family at a time.
Adults bring to a family the home they grew up in. They know the culture of their homes, the rituals and observances, the values, rules, and procedures. When a couple (or other number of adults) come together as a family, they combine those home cultures into a unique blend, tempered by their community. A community, I contend, is build of the families that make it up.
The purpose of a family is to then transmit that culture and lore onto their progeny. The family consciously produces, nurtures, and develops the next generation of their community and family.
Promiscuity
For better or worse, family ethics in the Western world tend to consider a family to be a chaste unit, sexually. That is, sex with those not an adult family member is a serious breach of character. Sexually active singles weaken the community. They provide more opportunities for family members to “stray”, they distract adults from forming the families that form and nurture the next generation.
More fundamentally, sex outside the family requires one to develop life skills in attracting new partners, requires one to think of other adults in terms of possible sexual recreation. These habits are dire threats to the notion of a chaste family. If too many prospective partners are already sexually active, then those wanting to form a family are often left choosing someone with a detrimental life skill for considering sex with others to be mere social recreation.
I do not hold that one must only have sex within a sanctified marriage.
What I do hold to be true, is that anyone contemplating making a family, taking a mate, should be alarmed at and be avoiding everyone that is “popular” among those that consider sex to be mere social recreation. No, sex isn’t limited to procreation. But a partner with a mind set and life skills that doesn’t make chaste sex and the family a permanent and lasting part of their identity is going to result in the disaster communities, and families, are in today.
Media
Advertising, entertainment, and the government each support the notion that individuals, not families, are the target consumer, that sex is a matter of office politics and angst and gossip among friends and not-quite-friends. That is, that sex is social recreation that should be and is exploited for gains in wealth, market share, and power.
The Slut
This isn’t a word that I am comfortable using. A slut, to me, is someone that is not only promiscuous in sexual activity, but lacks most common morals and ethics. Just as there are few truly evil persons, there are very few people with no ethics or morals. I get the point that a slut is a relative term, meaning lower class in terms of social class, in terms of wealth, in terms of resources and social connections. And it is pejorative, it is name calling, and thus usually hurtful without helping anyone to communicate or to . . help anyone.
Cassie’s PJ Media article goes on and on about Sandra Fluke’s advocacy for casual and frequent sexual encounters, and dwells at length on the exposure of so many sexually active people to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). She points out that one in five adults has chlamydia, meaning that if you have been with five partners, then the odds you have been exposed are better than half. And HPV, etc.
The Italians invented the notion of the virgin bride back in the Renaissance (when they were inventing the notion of courtly love, or “romance” as we call it today. Pretty recent, huh?) as a means to slow the spread of then-untreatable venereal diseases. Do we need to be that extreme (I would hope, knowing more about medicine and disease today, this would include all adults in the ‘virgin’ isolation category)? I doubt it.
But what if we chose to restrict ourselves, before marriage, handfasting, or other form of mating, to those we expect to form a family with? What if every sex partner measured up to the attitudes and aptitudes, the character, morals, and values, we expect of a mate and co-parent?
There will always be those that use sex as social recreation, or that prey on others for sexual partners. There will always be those that use sex as an expression of power, of wealth, and of decadence. But if the families of today and tomorrow, and the honorable people of our communities, embrace the notion that we just don’t have the time or use for those that aren’t suitable life-mates, we can restore our communities, rebuild our public health and reduce the number of attempted families that end in divorce and violence.
Commitment
I see the need for commitment to be in selecting those we are willing to get close to, personally and socially. Choosing to marry or to make a “relationship” a “long term relationship” sells magazines, but it comes way to late to build a functional family.
The danger of the sexual “freedom” that Sandra Fluke, activist, advances, is that it damages the fabric of America, of the states, of communities and families. Abortion is the very least of the consequences.
Unwanted Pregnancies destroy lives
I don’t really like the “pro-choice” approach, but I abhor the “pro-life” stance. This is putting the cart before the horse. Before we end the medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy, we must end unwanted pregnancies.
None of the pro-lifers are standing in line, claiming, “I will pay for medical expenses for every unwanted pregnancy, and I will employ every reluctant single mother for life. I will compensate for every social and economic barrier that a woman faces over an unwanted pregnancy, or take in that child and rectify the time the pregnancy took from her life if that is her choice.” Merely choosing to make the medical procedure illegal is, in my view, abhorrent and intolerable.
An unwanted pregnancy is often devastating to the life of a woman, and costs family and community a lot. Abortion is never a good choice, but can sometimes be a lesser evil. Back when abortion was made legal, the argument was not about whether there should be abortions, but whether the procedure should be underground, criminal, and killing too many women. The current prohibition attempt on abortion is most likely going to revive that underground butcher industry, and I fear that greatly.
Sacred life
For those that consider abortion to be abomination, that life begins at conception, then they must feel free to live as their conscience dictates. But that does not mean their religious views must be imposed on those that don’t find comfort in their faith. Let the Catholics and Protestants explain why they still celebrate a child’s first “communion” rite, a time that the Church held in the past to be the first day that that child possessed a soul, was actually a person and “alive”.
As far as Fluke’s testimony goes — hogwash. If a person attends college, and has to pay for textbooks and meals and lodging, then costs like collecting stamps and coins, and buying beer and contraceptives, is a choice when you have the resources to spend. Basic health care should be affordable; elective surgeries for cosmetic procedures, or for abortions, should be available but charged to those that can afford it. If you cannot afford the toll, don’t step on the bridge.
Listen to the lawyer, and take her words with a grain of salt. Or three.
We have to remember that Fluke is in law school. How embarrassing it would be for a future lawyer, to claim less than she might win? Thus, she looks to make her name and fortune even before earning a diploma. Not that I mean to disbelieve every word out of her mouth, and doubt the sincerity and ethics of any notion she promotes, but actually, I kind of do.
