You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (17 page)

74.
      For a tragic story of one religious man’s struggle to deal with his homosexuality that ended in suicide, see Mark Miller, “To Be Gay—And Mormon,”
Newsweek
, 8 May 2000.

75.
      Studies have shown between twenty and forty percent of gay adolescents have attempted suicide. R. Kitts, “Gay Adolescents and Suicide,”
Adolescence
, Fall 2005, pp. 623–624.

76.
      A suicide note left by a gay man read, “I know God will forgive me for doing this thing but that God could never forgive me for having another homosexual thought.” Taken from the documentary,
One Nation Under God
(1993).

77.
      In America’s dozen largest cities, the men identifying themselves as gay jumps to 9.2 percent, compared with only 1.3 percent in rural areas. Edward Laumann, et al.,
Social Organization of Sexuality in the United States
(1994), p. 305.

78.
      The use of the word “amiss” is not meant to imply a value judgment. Amiss is used to mean dissimilar compared to what normally occurs.

79.
      2.8 percent of men and 1.4 percent of women self-identify as gay. Laumann,
Social Organization of Sexuality
, p. 293.

80.
      Moir,
Brain Sex
, pp. 114–116.

81.
      About seventy-five percent of boys exhibiting “extremely feminine” behavior are gay as adults. About ten percent of girls exhibiting “extremely masculine” behavior are lesbians as adults. J.M. Bailey and Kenneth Zucker, “Childhood Sex-Typed Behavior,”
Dev. Psychol
., 1995, 31(1), pp. 43–55.

82.
      J.M. Bailey,
Man Who Would Be Queen
(2003), pp. 80–81.

83.
      Ibid., pp. 77–78.

84.
      Ibid., p. 84.

85.
      It is also found in the gay slu r “girl top,” meaning a feminine gay man who pretends to enjoy being the penetrator.

86.
      Bailey,
Man Who Would
, pp. 69–76.

87.
      Ibid., pp. 120–121.

88.
      J.M. Bailey and Richard Pillard, “Genetic Study of Male Sexual Orientation,”
Arch. Gen. Psychiatry
, Dec. 1991, pp. 1089–96.

89.
      Paragraph from Bruce Bagemihl,
Biological Exuberance
(1999), pp. 31, 58, 126, 340, 603.

90.
      Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan,
Mean Genes
(2000), pp. 149–150.

91.
      Bagemihl,
Biological Exuberance
, p. 182.

92.
      Homosexuality is not a modern concept. In cultures where there is not a stigma on homosexuality people are more willing to cross, and hence blur, the lines, however there have always been a small minority of effeminate men who strongly prefer male sexual relations: for example, the ancient Greek
kinaidoi
and the ancient Roman
cinaedi
. Bailey,
Man Who Would
, pp. 124–138. Lesbians also have been present throughout history (for example, Sappho) but they went relatively unrecorded because of the undervaluation of the female experience and the male view that sex had to involve penetration.

93.
      Daniela Altimari, “Refusing to Hide in the Closet,”
Hartford Courant
, 20 Feb. 2000.

94.
      C.J. Patterson, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,”
Child Dev
., Oct. 1992, pp. 1025–1042.

95.
      Study from Bailey,
Man Who Would
, pp. 48–49.

96.
      Jeffrey Satinover, “How Might Homosexuality Develop?” National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH) Collected Papers, 1995, ret.
NARTH.com
, 15 July 2006.

97.
      M.E. Tomeo, et al., “Comparative Data of Childhood and Adolescence Molestation,”
Arch. Sex. Behav
., Oct. 2001, p. 535.

98.
      One study found only seventeen percent of sexually abused boys were victimized by women: a remarkably low number considering how many more straight women there are than gay men. David Finkelhor, et al., “Sexual Abuse in a National Survey of Adult Men and Women,”
Child Abuse Negl
., 1990, 14, p. 22.

99.
      Edward Laumann, et al.,
Social Organization of Sexuality in the United States
(1994), p. 293.

100.
    This is changing rapidly. In the 1980s the mean age at which homosexuals identified themselves as gay was twenty. By the middle of the 1990s this age had dropped to fifteen. Daniela Altimari, “Refusing to Hide in the Closet,”
Hartford Courant
, 20 Feb. 2000.

101.
    Paragraph from Bruce Rind, “Gay and Bisexual Adolescent Boys’ Sexual Experiences,”
Arch. Sex. Behav
., 2001, 30(4).

102.
    Ibid.

103.
    Ibid.

104.
    Judith Levine,
Harmful to Minors
(2003), pp. ix, 185.

105.
    Betsy Rothstein, “Rep. Heather Wilson,”
Hill
, 30 Mar. 2004.

106.
    Janet Hyde and John DeLamater,
Understanding Human Sexuality
(2008), pp. 106–107.

107.
    Next two paragraphs from Betty Gordon and Carolyn Schroeder,
Sexuality
(1995), pp. iii, 2–6.

108.
    Suzanne Frayser,
Varieties of Sexual Experience
(1985), pp. 202–203.

109.
    Diederik Janssen,
Growing Up Sexually, Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum
(2002), ret.
www2.hu-berlin.de
, 7 Oct. 2010, p. 233.

110.
    Judith Levine,
Harmful to Minors
(2003), p. 57.

111.
    In a Virginia survey, the majority of mental health and legal professionals believed that parents who hug a ten-year-old too frequently, kiss a child on the lips, or appear naked before a five-year-old were “professional intervention” candidates. Ibid., p. 56.

112.
    Gordon,
Sexuality
, p. xi; and G. Hornor, “Sexual Behavior in Children”
J. Pediatr. Health Care
, Mar.–Apr. 2004, pp. 57–64.

113.
    Gordon,
Sexuality
, p. 7.

SEX II

T
HE
T
ABOO

S
EX
I
S
B
AD

The sexual taboo still exists in America due to fundamentalist Christian clout. Although Jesus Christ condemned only one sexual practice—adultery— fundamentalist Christians still strongly believe all extramarital sex is a sin. Not only is it a sin, but it is a sin responsible for most of society’s problems.
¹
For these people the taboo’s maintenance is imperative.

The “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s did weaken the taboo on sex, and because of this there is currently a generational divide regarding the appropriateness of its discussion. Generally, detailed sex talk is still considered an inappropriate topic for conversation outside of close friends. In addition, there are still legal ramifications for those who transgress America’s sexual mores.

The ignorance of sexual mechanics stems largely from the censorship in our school systems. Whereas mild social enforcement has been enough to keep the subjects of nasal mucus and excrement out of our schools, sex education is fiercely contested by religious conservatives, whose three main arguments are discussed below.

(1)
They wouldn’t
know—The first argument is that sex education shows kids how to have sex.
²
This is laughable because sex is an instinctual human drive. When they hit puberty, kids will naturally want to have sex
and be able to figure out how to have sex
, whether they are taught how to do it safely or not.

This argument not only counters common sense but scientific studies as well. It has been found that explaining the sex act does not incite sexual fantasizing in children,
³
and over half of kids who masturbate learned how to do it on their own.
⁴

(2)
It’s the Hippies’
Fault—The second argument is that sex education and the “sexual revolution” have created an adolescent pregnancy crisis that requires a radical return to the good old days of the 1950s when sex was not in our schools or media.
⁵
This is flawed reasoning because the 1950s had the highest rate of teenage childbearing in twentieth-century America.
⁶

Additionally, if sex ed and our “sex-saturated” society have created this “disaster,” the Netherlands should be falling off a cliff. The Dutch start comprehensive sex education in preschool and have legalized prostitution. However, Dutch teens begin having sex almost two years later than their American counterparts,
⁷
and boast a birthrate seven times lower.
⁸

(3)
Family Values
—A third argument, which gets less promotion, is that practical consequences do not matter. It is the teaching of “family values” that is the overarching concern. Of course, these are Christian fundamentalist family values. The dark side of this argument is that those that do not follow these values should get the consequences they “deserve.”
⁹

As will be seen in the next section, this argument is part of a thinly disguised use of the government to establish religion. However, the government’s role is not to teach the populace values—in this case, values that counter the practice and beliefs of the majority of Americans,
¹⁰
and which are not even practiced by the fundamentalist Christians themselves.
¹¹

Despite the flawed arguments of religious conservatives and their lack of public support, they lobby vigorously, and politicians have responded by censoring sex education. The Constitution bars the federal government from regulating for the public good—this is supposed to be the states’ domain. However, even in an area traditionally left to the states—education—the federal government flexes its influence through monetary grants.

In 1996 the federal government allocated $250 million to the states for five years for the exclusive purpose of teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by completely abstaining from sexual activity. Not surprisingly, all the states but California accepted the money and the accompanying restrictions. There were a few local holdouts, like Charleston County, South Carolina, who rejected the money, its school board chairman saying, “Let’s not live in a fantasy land . . . [or] play Russian Roulette with the lives of our students.”
¹²

The fantasy land to which the chairman was referring was the Congressionally-mandated sex education curriculum. Sex education now could
only
teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage was likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects. Even worse, contraceptive and safer-sex techniques could not be discussed, except to emphasize their failures, and discourage their use.

One of the sex education curricula that meets this conservative standard is “Sex Respect,” created in the 1980s with federal money. Its founder, Phyllis Schlafly, protested in 1981 that, “nearly all existing sex education curricula . . . taught teenagers (and sometimes children) how to enjoy fornication without having a baby and without feeling guilty.”
¹³

“Sex Respect” pushes abstinence based on grossly exaggerated fears of emotional devastation, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and death. Its religious basis is barely hidden, as it has advised kids to attend worship services regularly, and has said, “nature seems to be making a statement about the wisdom of keeping sex within marriage through the current epidemic of STDs and teen pregnancy.”
¹⁴

Other questionable assertions have included, “there’s no way to have premarital sex without hurting someone,” the chances of getting pregnant while using a condom are one in six,
¹⁵
and a film in which a student asks an instructor, “What if I
want to have sex before I get married?” The instructor’s response (which has surely garnered cackles in classrooms across the country) is “Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.”
¹⁶