Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics by Griffith R. Marie

Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics by Griffith R. Marie

Author:Griffith, R. Marie [Griffith, R. Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History, Religion
ISBN: 0465094759
Google: kkilDgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B06Y132SZD
Goodreads: 34848863
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2017-12-12T07:00:00+00:00


AS CALDERONE CONTINUED TO ENDURE attacks on her and on SIECUS by the John Birch Society and fundamentalists like Drake and Hargis, she grew wearier and angrier but no less determined to fight for access to sex education that would be accessible to all people. Once in a while, she responded in a tone that matched that of her opponents, as when she snapped at a reporter that the right-wing groups and “ignorant parents” who opposed SIECUS were “sexual illiterates.”88 More often, she struck a disconsolate note when discussing fundamentalist religion.

In a presentation at the International Congress of Sexology in Montréal, Québec, she reminded her listeners that the chief enemies of sex education had long been church leaders, who remained powerful obstacles in this field. “Historically, the prime contender for control of the sexuality of a person by an outside agency is, and continues to be, religion.” A deep suspicion of pleasure and privacy was at the root of religion’s repressive force, in her view: an “almost paranoid fear that exists, not only of sexual pleasure itself but also of the recognition of one’s body as a valid source of that pleasure.” Rather than noting, as she often had before, the many liberal Protestant and Catholic leaders who were working for change in this regard, she cited several studies to demonstrate that lay people were simply circumventing their leaders on matters ranging from masturbation and birth control to a wide array of sexual practices outside of marriage. Calling for “a coalition of strengths” to bring professionals together in service to a “universal approach to realistic sexual knowledge for all ages and socioeconomic groups” (emphasis in original), Calderone noted that religion “can be especially helpful in such a coalition,” but only if religious leaders were willing to agree with this statement: “That sexuality itself is morally neutral, but that how we learn or are taught to use it throughout life has heavy moral implications.” “Such moral implications,” she insisted, “should—and indeed must—transcend differences in religious dogma.” Working together in this way would turn what were internal sexual battlegrounds into “private peacegrounds.”89

As Calderone knew, however, her words were hardly religiously neutral. The fight over sex education had contributed enormously to the hardening of opposing views toward sex: the very idea that “sexuality itself is morally neutral” was the core notion that so angered her critics. Liberal religious allies could align with Calderone, yes, but their opponents were also coalescing to gird their loins for battle on the other side.

Weary though she was, Calderone was determined to continue her work. Every chance she could, she pointed out to audiences and readers that the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society were willing to “use totally unchristian methods,” such as outright lying, to achieve “a political end: control of public education.”90 In a journal aimed at Protestant pastors, she wrote that she was “one of the few persons singled out for the most ruthless attempts at character assassination. I do not know those who hate me, but I know their words.



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