The morality brigade worries about fetuses, but not what happens to children after they’re born. They and other conservatives have been cutting funding for child nutrition, healthcare for infants and their mothers, and schools…. What people do in their bedrooms shouldn’t be the public’s business. Women should have rights over their own bodies. Same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. But what powerful people do in their boardrooms is the public’s business. Our democracy needs to be protected from the depredations of big money. Our economy needs to be guarded against the excesses of too-big-to-fail banks.
If you find discussions of sex, sexuality, and sexual acts distasteful or offensive, you’re going to want to skip this post, because it’s all about sex. Well, not so much about sex in and of itself, but more about how a certain segment of the Far Right deems it perfectly acceptable to define “small government” as “small enough to fit into your bedroom.” They see nothing wrong with providing ever larger tax breaks for the wealthiest among us while completely ignoring the least among us. They demand that government get off our backs…evidently so they can reassign it to our bedrooms. That may sound comical- and it is- but it’s exactly what Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has in mind.
Cuccinelli loves to use “natural law” as the basis for his hatred of and distaste for any sex act that doesn’t involve males and females in the missionary position with the express intent of procreation. Though Cuccinelli’s definition of natural law seems to be “whatever I define as natural and therefore appropriate,” there’s a very real problem with the concept of “natural law.” The definition of natural law is at best fuzzy and at worst akin to trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. Cuccinelli’s version of natural law happens to oh, so conveniently dovetails with his prejudices. Whodathunkit?
natural law
noun
a principle or body of laws considered as derived from nature, right reason, or religion and as ethically binding in human society.
Cuccinelli’s argument against non-procreatve (recreational) sex is based on a line of legal reasoning lacking a firm footing. That “the Cooch,” as he’s known in Virginia, is using natural law to buttress his argument shows just how weak and difficult to defend his position is. It boils down to “I oppose all nonprocreative sex because it means people might be having fun,” or “I oppose homosexuality because it’s…well, ‘icky.’”
Cucinelli is fighting to preserve a Virginia law which criminalizes sodomy…despite the Supreme Court having already ruled (in Lawrence v. Texas) that such a law is clearly unconstitutional. It might be easy to think Cuccinelli isn’t being unreasonable, particularly if you subscribe to the “gay sex is icky” school of thought. Here’s the problem, though- sodomy isn’t just about “gay sex”. The legal definition of sodomy also includes oral sex in all its various iterations.
Yes, America…Ken Cuccinelli wants to criminalize blow jobs. Think about that for a moment. How can an alleged “small government” Conservative justify a law which would criminalize a sexual act that most of us (including, I’d wager, “the Cooch”) engage in with varying degrees of regularity?
Ma’am, if you put your mouth there, I’m going to have to arrest you….
And how does “the Cooch” suggest that government enforce his ban on blow jobs? There’s simply no way to do it without inserting government into our bedrooms, back alley, broom closets, and anywhere else oral sex is given and/or received. And what penalties would he dish out? How about a firing squad? Surely, “the Cooch” understands that Virginia simply can’t afford to incarcerate a sizable portion of its adult population? And there’s the impact on the state’s legal system, which would be bogged down by the volume of sodomy cases (Answer the question, Mr. Johnson; you’re under oath- DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT PERFORM CUNNILINGUS ON YOUR WIFE?)
This sort of thing is easy to make fun of. The moralizing of the sort Cuccinelli is willing to engage is as silly as it is hypocritical. He proposes to maintain the prohibition of sexual behavior that most adults engage in regularly. Recreational sex is not a bad thing…except in the hypermoralistic minds of intolerant (and usually hyper religious) sorts like “the Cooch.”
So…what have we learned today that we might not have known before? How about that “small government” doesn’t mean nearly what you might have thought it does. “Small government” means shrinking every aspect of government except the military, law enforcement, and any apparatus necessary to enforce the ignorant, narrow, and fear-based morality of the Far Right. Remember,
WHEN BLOW JOBS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL RECEIVE BLOW JOBS.
