The Santorum Files: Hypocrisy and Moral Decency. (NSFW)

WARNING: This post contains pornographic images. Please forward them to Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich’s offices.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to do an in-depth post on the hypocrisy of the GOP and the religious right, an idea that stemmed from my viewing of the GOP primary debates. In the time since then, the situation has not improved. Sure, Rick Perry dropped out of the race, but conversely Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have ratcheted up their incendiary polemics, and Gingrich in particular has seemed to have found a gambit in a flippant, Eric Cartman style ‘fuck-you-I’m-gonna-do-whatever-I-want’ attitude towards addressing his “ethical” beliefs.

In addition, we had the battle of SOPA and the government takedown of Rapidshare, two events that are an indicator that our freedom of speech is indeed under assault by the powers that be and that are unseen (hello, MPAA, I see you). Which is why a frank discussion on what we are protecting - and who we are protecting them from - in terms of an ethical corruption of commerce and self is very much required.

The GOP (and the neo-conservatives that have sullied the ideology of the party) have long taken the stance of being the moral and ethical higher ground, something that they’ve brilliantly marketed as “compassionate conservatism.” Under this oxymoron, the GOP has waged a war against the ‘ethical corruption’ perpetuated by the left, particularly a woman’s right to choose, stem cell research, gays in the military, and the right for gay marriage. It’s a powerful platform that stirs up the puritanical pillars of the Christian populace, a largely middle-class voting segment that has been fed the belief that their fundamental rights have been attacked. (Tim Tebow is being ‘persecuted’ for not being allowed to have biblical verses on his uniform. He also signed a $12 million contract to play a child’s game). Ever since Bill Clinton found his demographic - the suburban soccer mom - the issue of security and a threat the the American (re: Christian) way of life has been the paramount issue.

This woman believes radial black Muslim lesbians are going to eat her baby.

The reaction to a threat is to protect, and the lighting rod is the innocence of children. Parents fear their children losing their core Christian beliefs to a liberal media and government that allows gays to fornicate, and (gasp) to marry. Sex onscreen encourages the behavior, and because contraception and abortion are not in the teachings of the Bible, better to have a kid not see sex (straight or gay) and get any, y’know, funny ideas.

But let’s be practical here, and let’s talk economics. It’s supply and demand. The drive and curiosity for sex is a God-given trait, it’s something we’re all hard wired with when we hit puberty. Can’t avoid it, because it’s part of our basic function - to mate and to pass our genetic code along. Perpetuation of the species.

So in terms of economics, the demand for sex is constant. As long as we have hormones, we’re going to want to feed our libidos. We have three options - go out and have sex, suppress that drive, or find another way to feed that libido. We have to supply that demand.

Abstinence is not feeding the demand, it is actually increasing it by reducing the supply. It’s like the War on Drugs. We can try to stop the inflow of marijuana in to the US all we want, but as long as there are suburban white kids that want to get high, then the cartels will find a way to get it to them. But if we legalized pot - thereby killing the ravenous demand - then the supply will peter out accordingly.

Back to sex - by virtue of a hyperbolic rating system (NC-17 and XXX), and the illegality of prostitution, along with the religious damning of homosexuality, the act of sex has been turned into an act of moral corruption. To even talk of sex publicly is an act of indecency. We’ve gone so far off the deep end that a woman breastfeeding her child in public is deemed as morally inappropriate. I’m sorry, if you get off on seeing a baby drinking milk, then you’ve got bigger problems.

This moral high-ground is manifesting itself in every aspect of our public life, and more dangerously, it’s making its way into our public policy. But it’s one thing to try to enforce ethics in legislature, but to do it while being a hypocrite is peeling back the curtain to reveal the religious bigotry beneath. Perhaps the best example of this is the MPAA and the standards for film.

It has always confounded me. In a film, I can show this and get released wide in theaters across the country on 2,311 screens without protest:

From ‘Event Horizon.’

But then if I show this, I’m deemed a corrupter of children:

I know the religious right will attack both films, but the former is allowed to be viewed as fantasy, while the latter is regarded as dangerous in reality. How so? Maybe for all we know it could be the portrait of a married couple trying to conceive a child, that most holy of purposes? For that matter if I made a movie about a married Christian couple trying to have a baby, and showed actual intercourse, would it be deemed as pornographic?

This is the root of the problem, Puritanism raising its ugly head. What we have to accept is that censorship by the neoconservatives is not about moral decency, it is about propagating an agenda of control. It’s about the profitability and sustainability of age-old religious institutions that have empowered men (not women) for centuries. The minute the masses start questioning, start taking control of their own bodies, and start applying the laws of rational human behavior, then the less power that the organized religions have. And it’s not just Christianity - it’s Islam, it’s Hinduism, it’s Judaism.

These powers are fighting back against free speech and free thought by making laws that make it illegal to express ourselves in an truthful and honest fashion. They draw up arbitrary lines of decency, but they are in fact highly calculated, done for perpetuating their own agenda.

Again, more hypocrisy. In one view, this can be seen as an expression of pure love between a man and a woman:

But then so can this be an equally meaningful expression of pure commitment and love:

Stoya is brilliant. Follow her Tumblr here.

Of course, which would a soccer mom prefer her daughter be doing? One is an institution, the other an intuition. Ideally, she should want both for her daughter. What parent wouldn’t want their children to be in a healthy, respectful relationship - emotionally and sexually? Zealots will argue to “keep it in the bedroom,” but then if that’s the case, then they must live by those words, and keep their religious beliefs out of everybody’s bedroom. Don’t tell me who I can and cannot have a relationship with, don’t tell me who I can and cannot have sex with, and if a guy wants to let his boyfriend blow a load into his mouth, then that’s his God-given right. And let’s not pretend that it never happens.

We’ve been trained to believe that all this is taboo, when in actuality it is our true nature. We’re made to feel ashamed of ourselves, all in the name of control. I’m not espousing a lawless society - there are always extremes of behavior and we have to do our best to educate on the consequences of our actions. But sweeping it under the rug and pretending it doesn’t exist only makes the situation worse. And making laws that force us to sweep it under the rug is downright totalitarian.

Being truthful takes work. I remember a quote from Louis CK about homophobia:

People try to talk about it like it’s a social issue. Like when you see someone stand up on a talk show and say “How am I supposed to explain to my child that two men are getting married? I dunno, it’s your shitty kid, you fucking tell them. Why is that anyone else’s problem? Two guys are in love but they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for fucking five minutes?

We’re not willing to take those five minutes, in large part because we’re led to believe that being honest about what goes on in the world is an affront to our religious beliefs and our moral decency. No. Being morally decent is loving your neighbor and being truthful. And that takes effort. Don’t let Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum guide your moral compass, because they themselves lack it, and they are hypocrites.