Posted on 05/07/2006 11:05:36 AM PDT by mathprof
Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, "Robinson Crusoe," but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom." After apparently being asked to tone down the title for a subsequent edition, Defoe came up with a new one — "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed" — that only put a finer point on things. The book wasn't a tease, however. It was a moralizing lecture.[snip]
The sex act and sexual desire should not be separated from reproduction, he...warned, else "a man may, in effect, make a whore of his own wife."[snip]
The wheels of history have a tendency to roll back over the same ground. For the past 33 years — since, as they see it, the wanton era of the 1960's culminated in the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 — American social conservatives have been on an unyielding campaign against abortion. But recently, as the conservative tide has continued to swell, this campaign has taken on a broader scope. Its true beginning point may not be Roe but Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception. "We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion," says Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, an organization that has battled abortion for 27 years but that, like others, now has a larger mission. "The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That was a VERY interesting article, about a mindset on contraception which I have found difficult to understand. Unfortunately, a lot of people here won't read it because they pride themselves on never reading anything from the New York Times.
I also read it in toto. Intersting, not that I agree with it.
A law that was never enforced. The real reason Griswold pushed against it was to create a "right to privacy."
Anyone who is for outlawing contraception gets nothing but scorn for me. Aside from the Romans and the Greeks, what major Christian denomination hasn't repealed the ban on contraception for their congregants. Even most married Catholics use artificial birth control these days.
Sure it makes sense to be against both abortion and contraception--if you are are a new arrival from a distant planet and have no concept of the ways of these creatures called humans.
Bump!
Very perceptive linda.
They also pride themselves in a thing called personal responsibility, having the intellectual ability to recognize that their individual sexual habits are a private matter, and that they are unable to save the entire world all in one day.
I agree that one's "sexual habits are a private matter", so I'm not too thrilled to read about the people in the article who don't share that opinion, but who think their "morals" should drive what everyone else does.
I take issue with your use of the word "modern". People have been trying to find ways to separate sex from conception all the way back into antiquity. It's a constant. I'm married. I have two children. I'm religious and do everything I can to live a moral life and raise my kids to do the same. There's no way I'm going to only have sex when I want to have a child, and I find it completely impossible to believe that God woul create me in such a way that I should feel what I feel for my wife, physically and emotionally, and also have to raise an unlimited amount of children, an amount of children beyond my ability to support them, beyond the amount that I want to bring into the world. Respectfully, I believe that the moral position that limits sex to procreation, even within marriage, isn't a moral stance, it's zealotry.
I agree.
Of course having no morals would lead to a very uncomfortable existence. It would encourage such things as homosexual parades, people killing people in the streets, masses of illegal aliens crossing our borders, rapes, and false rape charges ... Oh ... wait. These things are going on.
Inasmuch as most all recognized religions (even in Islam) have in them, or something similar to the Christian "Ten Commandments" (Decalogue), perhaps they should be taught and an attempt to follow them be encouraged?
It's rather outside the topic of this thread, unless any of them have specific decrees on contraception.
I was commenting on your "morals" statement in post # 9, not the thread.
For the longest time, one of the highest goals of civilization was to raise the human race above the status of the lower animals, especially in their social behavior.
This is what led to art, architecture and the academy.
Men and women alike reveled in their ability to move around in complex geometric ways, shunning the paths to the baser pleasures in order to define a systematic plan for community living and interaction.
But there were those who sought more control and laid down rules on what art and architecture should be and what the public square should see and we ended up with the Victorian age.
Now we crowd the randy dogs out of our way, kick the wallowing pigs to the side and leap into the trough of gluttony and the bed of iniquity with all our appetites in raging force to gorge and rut and muck about with unashamed gusto.
Now we crowd the randy dogs out of our way, kick the wallowing pigs to the side and leap into the trough of gluttony and the bed of iniquity with all our appetites in raging force to gorge and rut and muck about with unashamed gusto.
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Sounds like fun!
So you think the Founding Fathers of this country were like Lenin, because they didn't put a right to privacy in the Constitution?
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