The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 103 Comments

Sex is about reproduction. This is the natural function of sex, biologically speaking, and it’s odd how the same liberal fanatics who enjoy endlessly lecturing us about Darwinism and global warming — “The science is settled!” — are so unscientific about sex. Instead, the sexual enthusiasms of liberals tend toward sterile non-procreative acts, while they react with horror at the idea that someone might engage in the normal act of reproduction with the expected result. If they can’t prevent pregnancy, liberals want to kill the resulting baby, apparently believing that motherhood itself is a weapon of patriarchal oppression.

This mentality is what I call “The Contraceptive Culture.” I’ve written about the subject occasionally for years (see “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday,” May 8, 2010) and my emphatic pro-life stance has sometimes led to readers mistaking me for Catholic.

Proudly Protestant, I nevertheless recognize that the encyclical Humane Vitae identified the fundamental problem with artificial contraception: It separates functions that naturally belong together. Whereas love, sex, marriage and parenthood are normally part of the same bundle, The Contraceptive Culture divides them up in a decidedly abnormal way, and once this strange way of thinking takes hold, it becomes difficult for people to understand what’s wrong with it.

My wife and I have six children, so we’ve heard all the anti-“breeder” jokes that are common to The Contraceptive Culture. Sometimes, however, you encounter truly hateful expressions of the anti-natal mindset, as when someone posted a photo of the Duggar family’s appearance at a Ken Cuccinelli gubernatorial campaign event in Virginia:

“Expansive meat tarp”? Such vicious and perverted comments are a product of the hostility to normal sex that has entrenched itself in liberal rhetoric. Democrats are now the party of sodomy and abortion, and outright hatred of normal people — especially, hatred toward Christian families — is considered entirely acceptable to so-called “progressives.” Consider a question Time magazine recently asked an NFL player:

Six kids? Regardless of your profession, it’s impossible to
be a good parent to six kids. Not enough hours in the day.

Really? Are you saying that my wife and I are bad parents? Do you have any idea how healthy, happy and successful our kids are? Molly Hemingway has an excellent take on this subject:

Since when did having kids become something that Americans irrationally fear and loathe?
The media remind us regularly that the most important cultural value relative to family life is what’s euphemistically called “choice.” The choice of whether to have kids or not is held so sacrosanct that our laws permit the decision to be made many months after a new human life begins. Some even advocate extending the choice to a period of time after birth. So why the weird reaction to people receiving children as a blessing instead of fighting them tooth and nail with hormones, chemicals, surgery and scissors? Do we need some remedial courses in how babies are made? It’s entirely natural, of course, for babies to be conceived when men and women have sex. Treating the entirely expected procreation of children as something to be avoided at all costs — and an unspeakable atrocity if one has, say, three children already — would be weird even if our culture weren’t obsessed with sex at all times, in all places, in every context, at every moment. . . .

Please read the whole thing.

 

 


Category: Abortion, Contraceptive Culture, Family, Marriage, Sex

Comments

103 Responses to “Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa”

  1. The Bearded Bastard of Babylon
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:20 pm

    And declining birth rates mean an aging population. In Japan now more disposable adult diapers are sold than nappies!

  2. George2
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:21 pm

    I understand what you’re saying but Quartermaster is of the opinion that if I choose not to ever marry I must abstain from sex.

  3. sokeijarhead
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:26 pm

    Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa : The Other McCain http://t.co/18HuesVqhB

  4. Mm
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:28 pm

    And you are of the opinion that he’s wrong, so what’s the big deal? Do you really think he’s going to change his mind because of blog discussions? Is it necessary for you to have him agree with you?

  5. Alessandra
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:50 pm

    Are you one of these deformed homosexuals eager to trample on the rights of every child to a healthy heterosexual mother and father?

    Enough of your gaystapo bigotry hidden behind so called “civil rights”

  6. tlk244182
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 7:54 pm

    The unitive and procreative aspects of human sexuality must not be separated. But this will be difficult or impossible to see without first becoming a Christian. A substantial mistake about the nature of God will re-appear over and over when one reasons about HIs creation. Unbelievers will almost always err in their moral reasonings, because their premise is flawed. And this is why they misunderstand and ridicule Christian teaching on sex. Like Bertrand Russell (my default agnostic, who had the most influence on me in my salad days), they think they can see all the way around believers.

  7. RS
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 8:04 pm

    You’ve not been keeping up. The Progressives’ favorite programs–Social Security, Medicare/Medicade, and now Obamacare–rely upon subsequent generations being larger than the previous one, because the liabilities attached to those programs are unfunded. That means, they are “pay as you go.” To maintain those promised benefits while still providing the working generation with the incentive to work, you have to have a much greater ration of workers to elderly than a mere 1:1. It’s been widely known that all those programs are on a demographic death spiral and have been so for some time. Yet, the left still mocks people who have lots of kids. The stupidity is fascinating. It’s all part and parcel of the Lefts desire to jettison all personal responsibility from their lives.

  8. tlk244182
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 8:13 pm

    Putting the clenched fist back in “Church Militant.” Deus vult!

  9. tlk244182
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    Sex outside the marital bed isn’t fun, on balance. “He longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.”
    And if sexual joy (in the sacrament of marriage) makes Him sound like a sadist, what does His dying for you on the cross make Him sound like?

  10. RS
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 8:43 pm

    I agree with 99.999 percent of your statement here. My only, very, very small quibble, is that I think those who attempt to separate the love, marriage, sex, procreation bundle into its component parts as if each is independent of the other, do realize their error ultimately, regardless of whether they acknowledge the Truth of Christianity. It may take years and the realization may only be something nagging their subconscious, but it will be there. It will be a realization of happiness lost; of life’s purpose forgone. Those of us who once took a few steps down that path now realize in our dotage how close we came to ruin, simply because we didn’t see the beauty in the Creator’s ordained plan for Man and Woman.

  11. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 8:43 pm

    If you are, then you are proud in your depravity. There is a choice in life. We can say to God, “they will be done,” or, in the end, when we stand before Him before final judgment, He will say, “thy will be done,” and we will then be removed permanently from His presence and all that is good.

    No one will go to hell because of sin. They will go there because they rejected God’s provision for sin. If, after paying the price Himself so you don’t have to go there, you regard Him as a sadist, I would have to say you don’t know the meaning of the word.

  12. AmPowerBlog
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 9:02 pm

    RT @rsmccain: Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa http://t.co/nROqcvDOO3 Hat-tip @MZHemingway #tcot @FDRL…

  13. Garym
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 9:20 pm

    Nice!
    ; )

  14. Garym
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 9:33 pm

    Congrats!!

  15. Garym
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 9:34 pm

    This is true. Their own selfishness drives them.

  16. An odd fact about the Left | The Daley Gator
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 9:44 pm

    […] OK, to be perfectly fair, there are many odd things about the Left, but for the purpose of this post, allow me to focus on one, and only one. The Left has many sayings they repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and, well you get the idea, but one of their most grating is saying the “science is settled”. When they throw that out they are referring to global warming er climate change er global cooling, er, whatever they are calling it this week. They also have this quirky, and by quirky I mean obnoxious habit of saying that the Rights “hates science”. But, here is the thing, the odd thing about that, the Left completely ignores other science when it suits them. One example is how medical science has destroyed their argument that an abortion only gets rid of a “clump of cells”. Another example is, well, let me turn you over to Dr. RS McCain […]

  17. D.I.
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 10:00 pm

    Liberals would reserve the right to a post-partum abortion until their progeny graduated with a MFA from a good university.

  18. Coulter76
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 10:16 pm

    This the nonsense you SoCons want to talk about, birth control and abortion. Please start your own TheoCrat Party so we can focus on issues other than the uterus.

  19. Nan
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 10:35 pm

    As was pointed out above, as the uterus goes, so goes the nation.

  20. Mm
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 10:36 pm

    Isn’t that what you racist northerners want to talk about all the time? Sandra Fluke, anyone? Now, I’d best be gittin’ back to my grits and chewin’ tobbakey.

  21. M. Thompson
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 10:43 pm

    No, I’m talking about how it affects our societal approach to sex and reproduction.

    Furthermore, the de-linking of sex, reproduction, and parenting just strikes me as a bad idea. How many psychological maladies will become more common as a result of this?

    (And yes, these are questions to be pondered, not answered.)

  22. 1389AD
    October 23rd, 2013 @ 11:31 pm

    I strongly suspect that leftists hate kids because their own parents hated them.

  23. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 12:53 am

    You talking about Phil Butcher? You’re going to hurt her feelings.

  24. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 12:55 am

    shut up you Malthusian twatwaffle.

  25. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 12:57 am

    Oh please enough of your foppish, pseudointellectual pile of dog dirt. You’ve wasted precious seconds of our lives and said nothing of note.

  26. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 12:59 am

    I heard that’s what your boyfriend, Frieda the blow up doll, two gerbils and your hand said

  27. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 1:00 am

    Biology lesson, Georgie, kinky voyages up the chocolate channel don’t produce babies

  28. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 1:02 am

    who invited you to the party?

  29. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 1:03 am

    Especially the ones conceived by a wino’s semen in a turkey baster and a 300 lb. dyke

  30. Dana
    October 24th, 2013 @ 6:38 am

    Liberals don’t approve of finance . . . unless it helps them, of course.

  31. JadedByPolitics
    October 24th, 2013 @ 7:01 am

    Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa http://t.co/XzhMnOnRoy I wouldn’t have 19 kids but if you can afford them have them!

  32. itheLOUniverse
    October 24th, 2013 @ 7:13 am

    @w9sky my little twitter feud got me suspended for the evening… Here’s that article about yours truly http://t.co/dj67EXO0vl

  33. ZION'S TRUMPET » Liberals Just Want to Do Their Own Thing, Consequences be Damned!
    October 24th, 2013 @ 8:08 am

    […] Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa […]

  34. robertstacymccain
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:02 am

    Are you illiterate? To say that the biological purpose of sex is reproduction is not the same is saying that “sex should only be for procreation.”

    A due respect for nature (and, as the Declaration says, for “nature’s God”) requires us to ponder profundities beyond our own desires. I remember the first time, immediately after the birth of our first child, i watched my wife nurse, and it was like, “Oh, breasts aren’t entirely ornamental.” A very beautiful and profound moment.

    To acknowledge the biological purpose of breasts is not to say that breasts are not beautiful in their own right, but rather to acknowledge nature as superior to our own subjective feelings.

  35. rsmccain
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:03 am

    ICYMI: Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa http://t.co/nROqcvDOO3 #prolife #tcot

  36. albertoapardo
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:10 am

    That’s what we gotta remember – it’s all naturally deeply linked, and when we screw around (bad pun!) with our brains, it’s a recipe for disaster.

  37. George2
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:24 am

    And of course Alessandra’s true, hateful colors come out as soon as her bigotry is challenged. You’re not even worth the debate and the response to the pile of dog shit you keep shoveling online should be a simple: FUCK YOU, CUNT. Thats about all your despicable self is worth.

  38. George2
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:26 am

    Yeah, like you got anything better to do in retirement than piss and moan about “how it used to be”. Fuck off, dummy.

  39. PensativeGuy
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:26 am

    RT @rsmccain: ICYMI: Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa http://t.co/nROqcvDOO3 #prolife #tcot

  40. BobBelvedere
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:33 am

    Bob Recommends: Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa by @rsmccain http://t.co/AHRomSmVlk

  41. rsmccain
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:40 am

    RT @BobBelvedere: Bob Recommends: Contraceptive Culture: Normalizing the Abnormal and, Also, Vice-Versa by @rsmccain http://t.co/AHRomSmVlk

  42. Mm
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:45 am

    You just lost any credibility you may have earned. It’s easy to call a woman a “cunt” behind the veil of anonymity, isn’t it? You must not be a liberal. After all, they never demean women that way.

  43. Alessandra
    October 24th, 2013 @ 9:52 am

    The only thing you display is your true, hateful colors.

    You’re incapable of debate because you have such a deformed mind.

    Your virulent insults are proof of what a despicable human being you are.

    It’s garbage of people like you who are destroying what is wholesome in society – all because of your perversity.

  44. trangbang68
    October 24th, 2013 @ 10:04 am

    Oh Georgie, did your feelings get hurt. I’m not retired. I’m still over at your mom’s house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Its a drag her price went up from 50 cents to a dollar though.

  45. Alessandra
    October 24th, 2013 @ 10:46 am

    hehehehee

  46. Alessandra
    October 24th, 2013 @ 10:48 am

    Ethics is the first thing that goes out the window!

  47. Dana
    October 24th, 2013 @ 10:48 am

    From his wombatness on Live at Five: Teachers Unions Fight Bill Barring Sex Offenders From Schools. Pretty much fits right in!

  48. Dana
    October 24th, 2013 @ 10:57 am

    Most people excoriate Humanae vitae, but if they had ever actually read it, they’d realize that he was prescient:

    Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and
    especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

    His Holiness the Pope didn’t foresee things like the internet and video sharing and all of that, but if he had, he’d have predicted girlfriend revenge porn sites and all of the other things our esteemed host has written about concerning how modern society is objectifying our oh-so-liberated women of today.

  49. tlk244182
    October 24th, 2013 @ 11:13 am

    Absolutely.

  50. Alessandra
    October 24th, 2013 @ 11:22 am

    may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for
    the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

    ==================

    This is exactly the kind of attitude that is promoted in dozens of sitcoms and TV series every day and night as normal. along with porn and prostitution.