Conjugal Lewdness

The Christian conservative views concerning abortion, marriage, and birth control are really nothing new. Going back to 1728, no less a personnage than the author Daniel DaFoe, author of the novel Robinson Cruesoe, authored a tract entitled "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom", which was a treatise warning about the scandalous state of marriage in his day. He later changed the name, at the suggestion of is editors, to "A Treatise Concerning The Use And Abuse Of The Marriage Bed". In the course of this book, he told of a young woan who turned to a neighbor for aid in preventing childbirth. The woman was aghast at what she considered the evil thing the woman was tryingto involve her in, which she assummed to be the seeking of an aborton. But the young married woman responded that no, it wasn’t an abortion she needed, she desired to prevent pregnancy to begin with, and continued to imploe the woman if she knewof any potions that might prevent conception.

DaFoes warning to the English society of his day involved what he considered the degrading effects of such a scourge upon the institution of marriage. it was, he considered, tantamount to a man, if he encouraged such practices, using his wife as no better than a whore. It was such attitudes as this, in fact, that eventually gave rise to the prudishness of the so-caled Victorian Era in English society, a strict code of morality which enlisted growingnumbers of adherents on both continents of Western society.

And this is pretty much what we are seeing today with the Christian conservative movement, in regards to objections to not only abortion, but in ever increasing cases to contraception and to any kind of reasonable, sensible and moderate sex education in public schools as far as anything other than an insistence upon the practice of abstinence. Also in regards to censorship, to intrusions upon art in television, movies, and literature.

And it also explains a good deal about such phenomenon as protests over portrayals of religion in literature and the cinema. It is related to why Christian clergy the world over, in Greece, Italy, Russia, and even India, are up in arms over The DaVince Code, so much so that the movie is for now yet unavailiable for viewing in India, and in other places outraged clergy are asserting that any who see the movie should be killed. A Vatican official has now gone so far as to insinuate that Dan Brown, the author of the novel The DaVinci Code, should be sued for insulting the Church. Scary beyond words.

Finallt, it is also the reason why religious leaders to such a large degree are insisting they be preeminent in all areas of life, including even in the teaching of Intelligent Design-just another euphemism for creationism-as a viable scientific theory as to the origins of life and the universe. Which is, of course, as any halfway sane person understands, insane.

But how else can you control peoples minds, if you cannot control first their educations. Only then can you control their morals, and through them, by way of guilt, the people themselves. It’s the same old story that caused heads to roll in Russia in 1917. And,if they ever get that degreeof power again, I am confident that they will fail to grasp the lessons of hisotry, and so eventually, as they become more and more pervasice, and corrupt, eventually their heads will roll as well. But not in a span of time that is suitable or acceptable to me.

If anybody wonders as to the whys and wherefores of the so-caled culture wars here in America, realize that it doesn’t really matter which side draws first blood. The only thing that matter is the rivers of blood that might well eventually result. And it is all really so very, very unnecessary.