Folk music and the sexual mores of the Right

[sabotabby]

Two completely unrelated topics, by the way.

zingerella and I went to see Eric Bogle last night. For those of you who are asking, "Who's that?" -- you probably have heard his songs. He wrote two of my favourite anti-war songs, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "The Green Fields of France." Apparently a lot of folks (including some who write for newspapers) think that he's dead. Anyway, he's not, and fantastic show.

After the show, we got to talking about a 400+ comment flamewar on Making Light (check it out!), which is vastly amusing and includes a few well-deserved disemvowellings. If you don't have time to read such hilarity, it involves the murder of the Nielsen Haydens' downstairs neighbour and mentions, in passing, the blog entries of a group of conservative girls who were slumming at the strip club where said neighbour worked. The girls, and their friends, none of whom have heard of Making Light and who are under the impression that TNH was trolling for more traffic by linking to their oh-so-popular blogs, descended en masse to decry the hypocrisy of liberals, etc., resulting in a fine moment of Inigo Montoya-esque "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Of particular note is this comment by Anarch about a brand of right-wing bourgeoisie with whom I have had very little real-life contact. By coincidence (okay, because I go searching for these things), I stumbled upon christianitysex. The majority of posters seem to believe in strict abstinence for everyone but themselves -- or rather, they claim to believe in abstinence for themselves, but then go into massive guilty contortions when they find themselves unable to actually live up to their own standards. The degree to which they openly struggle with their own repression is quite illuminating. These are primarily the old-school fundie types -- and I do see where they're coming from, even though I think it's sad and pathetic. What I find more befuddling, though, are the "Sth Prk Rpblcns" that show up in the Making Light thread and occasionally on conservatism. Is this really common -- people who want to control other people's sexuality (by aligning themselves with the Religious Right, by opposing reproductive freedom, etc.) but simultaneously flaunt their own? Or celebrate their own individualistic liberty (smoking pot, hanging out in strip clubs) while setting up structures that reduce the liberty of others?

Also, is it true that Young Republicans throw really good parties? Because I've heard from a firsthand witness that the Progressive Conservatives don't.

Discuss!

P.S. Dear CBC: I don't like the ELF any more than you do, but could you please restrict the term "violence" to describing acts of force against living creatures? Property destruction is not violence. It's property destruction. Kthxbye.

Comments

[lovableatheist.livejournal.com]

what the hell are "Sth Prk Rpblcns"?

[teapolitik.livejournal.com]

What do you have against the ELF?

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

A very old Poli Sci joke we used to tell was that you went to a Young Liberal party to get drunk, a Young Conservative party to get laid, and a Young NDP party to come away with ten pounds of assorted policy briefs. I guess it's all different now.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

What I find more befuddling, though, are the "Sth Prk Rpblcns" that show up in the Making Light thread and occasionally on [info]conservatism. Is this really common -- people who want to control other people's sexuality (by aligning themselves with the Religious Right, by opposing reproductive freedom, etc.) but simultaneously flaunt their own? Or celebrate their own individualistic liberty (smoking pot, hanging out in strip clubs) while setting up structures that reduce the liberty of others?

My guess is that they give themselves permission not to think it through, and achieve this by changing the subject in their own minds. One of the reasons I obsess over the writing of Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple), is that he's in very great danger of serving the same function for social conservatism that C.S. Lewis does for intolerant Christianity (i.e. as a sort of talismanic figure). One of his favorite tactics is to mention a mildly famous sexual liberal of the middle or upper classes, and their unwillingness to take an entirely laissez faire attitude toward their own adolescent children, drawing the conclusion that their reluctance or outright refusal to disapprove of teenage sex or out-of-wedlock births among the lower classes makes Marie Antoinettes out of them. This reasoning is obviously flawed, but who cares? So, one applies a double standard, yes, but it's only apparently unfair, and would do the poorest in society the most good, if only the 'liberals' and 'radical feminists' would get out of the way.

The ones who really puzzle me are the 'libertarian-conservatives' who think it's fine to have all the sex and side effects one can afford, and so make no arguments for a stricter sexual morality on principle, and reject proposed legal and institutional restrictions on dating and birth control, but who also see no reason for government funding for abortion, welfare, child care and health insurance: that would mean subsidizing other people's choices, making them less free (or something). Cathy Young, for example.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_ex_cowboy/]

http://www.livejournal.com/community/christianitysex/104745.html

"I see no problem with people having consentual sex with animals or relatives"

erm... hmm...

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

On an unrelated note, I think I have discovered the pulpy orange goodness that we enjoyed at the Bourgeois Pig Cafe in Chicago. It's the "Grove Made / High Pulp" selection of Simply Orange. Unfortunately, I think they are also owned by the Coca Cola Company. The Bourgeois Pig may have squeezed their own; or, true to their namesake, they may have had some bottles of these in the back.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

As I clarified in this post on the Jeff Gannon scandal, conservatives excuse sex for money:

You see, for conservatives, commerce is a mitigating - if not sanctifying - factor. That's why they want to privatize everything. Everything goes better with business. Just as evil social programs like Social Security are redeemed by privatization, turning tricks is not so bad if it is also turning a buck. Fat cats who think money can buy everything are fond of saying, "Every man has his price". Well, in Gannon's case it is $200 an hour and $1200 a weekend.

I discovered this conservative ideological principle in the process of reading the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who owns The Washington Times (Ronald Reagan's favorite daily) and who also once bailed out Jerry Falwell's failing Liberty University. Moon says, "The country that represents Satan's harvest is America, the kingdom of extreme individuality, of free sex." Now, of course, Moon may mean overtly expressed sexuality rather than the fact that commerce is being neglected; but in another quote, he calls American women "worse than prostitutes," which begs the question of how they are worse than prostitutes? What do American women do that prostitutes won't? And, naturally, the answer is that they give it away for free. In this light, conservative acceptance of Guckert's hustling makes much more sense. Moralists frown on fun and smile on work; and in Guckert’s case, it is technically work.

Commerce sanctifies sexuality. It's a strip club where the underage dancers have to service their boss to get the job, so it's okay.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Eric Bogle is alive??!

I guess it must be something to do with the fact that his best-known songs are about WWI - and not only that, but they both mention a date in the first verse - 1916, and 1915 respectively. So I guess I associate those dates in my mind with Eric Bogle. Hence the assumption of deadness. I wonder if that might be what's going on with others who make this mistake. Anyway, cool!

I think probably a majority of Christians (self not included, though I used to), certainly a majority of Evangelicals, stick to a fairly clear "no sex before marriage" view (with "marriage" referring to a man and a woman), but within that I find there are a range of attitudes. At the best, there's the acknowledgement of universal sinfulness and need for forgiveness (starting with oneself), that sexual sins are far from being the worse sins, and that one should not judge a person as being worse because they commit some particular sort of sexual sin, without condoning the sin. Motes and beams and all that. At the worst, there is the ugly sort of judgementalism and condemnatory attitudes that alas seem to be becoming increasingly prevalent in both the Evangelical and RC churches (at least at the top in the latter case). Somewhere inbetween are attitudes like the ones you describe in christianitysex along the lines of "yes we're sinners but at least we're trying and repenting of it after we do it (again and again and again...) unlike those wicked heathens." I must admit I've never come across that "we can do it because we're priveleged but it's very bad for poor people" attitude, but then I've led a very sheltered existence.

Of course the problem with even the best versions of the no-sex-before-marriage line is that it leads to wads of unnecessary guilt, repression, anxiety and even despair.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

Check out my ethnography, the indented block text on page 23. That's not family-value like, that sounds like me when I watch Harry Potter 3+, except I'd have enough decency to not date-rape Daniel Radcliffe. Sheesh.