You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (20 page)

9.
        An abstinence enthusiast said, “I have personal friends who have preached abstinence to their kids for a lifetime, and several of them now have teenage kids who are pregnant. And every single one of them tells me that if they had to do it again, they would not do it any differently. Because what they were teaching their kids was right. They had taught them the right values.” Esther Kaplan,
With God on Their Side
(2005), p. 197.

10.
      More than ninety percent of Americans lose their virginity prior to marriage, and parents “overwhelmingly favor” the comprehensive sex-education approach. David Crary, “Most Americans Have Had Premarital Sex” AP, 19 Dec. 2006; and Debra Rosenberg, “Battle Over Abstinence,”
Newsweek
, 9 Dec. 2002, pp. 67–71.

11.
      A 1987 survey of 1,438 teenage members of eight “born again” denominations revealed that, by the age of eighteen, forty-three percent had had sexual intercourse and sixty-five percent had participated in some form of sex play with another person. “Kids Will Be Kids,”
Fam. Plann. Perspect
., Sep.–Oct. 1988, p. 204.

12.
      Marjorie Heins,
Not in Front of the Children
(2001), p. 147.

13.
      Ibid., p. 142.

14.
      Ibid.

15.
      Over the course of a year, the chance of a pregnancy occurring with correct condom usage is two percent. Christopher Lee, “Condom Information in Abstinence Programs Called Inaccurate,”
WashingtonPost.com
, 28 Apr. 2007.

16.
      Heins,
Not in Front
, pp. 145–146.

17.
      Esther Kaplan,
With God on Their Side
(2005), p. 196.

18.
      §510(b), Title V, Social Security Act, PL. 104–193.

19.
      The average age of marriage is 26. (U.S. Census, 2002).

20.
      CDC, “Surveillance Summaries,” 21 May 2004, p. 18.

21.
      Martha Cornog,
Big Book of Masturbation
(2003), pp. 68–69.

22.
      David Crary, “Most Americans Have Had Premarital Sex” AP, 19 Dec. 2006.

23.
      Edward Laumann, et al.,
Social Organization of Sexuality in the United States
(1994), p. 293.

24.
      “Prevention of HIV/AIDS, Other STIs and Pregnancy: Group-based Abstinence Education Interventions for Adolescents,” CDC,
TheCommunityGuide.org
, June 2009, ret. 22 Sep. 2010.

25.
      The FCC defines broadcast indecency as “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.” “FCC Consumer Facts: Obscene and Indecent Broadcasts,”
FCC.Gov
, 24 Sep. 2007.

26.
      It was later declared unconstitutional. The Court ruled that some safe harbor was necessary for broadcasting so that adults were not completely constrained to the language of children.

27.
      134 Cong. Rec. S9912 (26 July 1988).

28.
      
Action for Children’s Television v. FCC
(ACT III), 11 F.3d 170 (D.C. Cir. 1993).

29.
      Examples include pop star Madonna in the 1980s and early 1990s, with her sexually-themed songs and music videos that included “Like a Virgin” and “Erotica” and her book,
Sex
(1992), as well as rapper Lil’ Kim, who has songs like “How Many Licks” (2000), in which she boasts about men who gave her oral sex.

30.
      Pedophiles are frequent murder targets. “Experts: Convicted Sex Abusers Face Grave Danger in Prison,”
FOXNews.com
, 23 Aug. 2003.

31.
      Jeannette Angell,
Callgirl
(2004), pp. 8, 13. Also see Norma Jean Almodovar,
Cop to Call Girl
(1993), p. 325.

32.
      “Long after I had dealt with my addiction to drugs, I still fantasized about my years as a sex worker. I never had such power before or since as I did in those moments just before a man would come. For those five minutes, watching his knees shake and turn to jelly, I had him. He was mine. I was in total control.” Margo Caulfield, “Empowered Sex Workers: Do They Exist?”
Research for Sex Work 3
, June 2000.

33.
      Ronald Weitzer, “New Directions in Research on Prostitution,”
Crime Law Soc. Change
, 2005, 43, p. 218.

34.
      Just as some feminists, like Andrea Dworkin, argue that heterosexual intercourse is inherently violence against women, prostitution is similarly categorized. “When prostitution is understood as violence, however, unionizing prostituted women makes as little sense as unionizing battered women.” Melissa Farley,
Violence Against Women
, Oct. 2004, p. 1089.

35.
      Ronald Weitzer, “Moral Crusade Against Prostitution,”
Society
, Mar./Apr. 2006, p. 35.

36.
      Kate Kelland, “Disease Risk Higher for Swingers than Prostitutes,”
Reuters.com
, 24 June 2010.

37.
      M. Seidlin, et al., “Prevalence of HIV Infection in New York Call Girls,”
J. Acquir. Immune. Defic. Syndr
., 1988, 1(2), p. 150.

38.
      Almodovar,
Cop to Call Girl
, pp. 321–322.

39.
      Jerry Markon, “Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence,”
WashingtonPost.com
, 23 Sep. 2007.

40.
      There were 653,500 prostitution related arrests from 2000–2007.
“Easy Access to FBI Arrest Statistics 1994–2008”
OJJDP.gov
, 2011, ret. 7 Apr. 2012.

41.
      Ronald Weitzer, “Flawed Theory and Method in Studies of Prostitution,”
Violence Against Women
, July 2005.

42.
      Melissa Farley and Victor Malarek, “The Myth of the Victimless Crime,”
New York Times
, 12 Mar. 2008; and ibid.

43.
      “I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic . . . her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions. For example, Dr. Farley’s unqualified assertion in her affidavit that prostitution is inherently violent appears to contradict her own findings that prostitutes who work from indoor locations generally experience less violence,”
Bedford v. Canada
, 2010 ONSC 4264 (CanLII).

44.
      Leslie Bennetts, “The John Next Door,”
TheDailyBeast.com
, 18 Jul. 2011.

45.
      These include Amanda Brooks, Robyn Few, Elena Jeffreys, Carol Leigh, Susan Lopez, Maggie McNeill, and Audacia Ray.

46.
      Most professionals place it between one and three and one and four. Kathleen Faller,
Child Sexual Abuse
(1993), p. 16.

47.
      Ronald Weitzer, “Flawed Theory.”

48.
      Alexandra Murphy and Sudhir Venkatesh, “Vice Careers,”
Qual. Sociol
., June 2006, p. 137; and Weitzer, “Flawed Theory,” p. 944.

49.
      Jeannette Angell,
Callgirl
(2004), p. 6.

50.
      “Belle de Jour Drops Her Anonymity,”
BBC.co.uk
, 15 Nov. 2009.

51.
      Comment left on March 16, 2008, at blog entry “Prostitution 2.0,” Bound Not Gagged, 15 Mar. 2008, ret. 3 Sep. 2008.

52.
      Amy Fine Collins, “Sex Trafficking of Americans,”
VanityFair.com
, 24 May 2011; and Katie Hinman and Melia Patria, “Girls Sold for Sex Online,”
ABCNews.go.com
, 24 Apr. 2012.

53.
      Melissa Farley, “Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations,” 2 Apr. 2000, ret. ProstitutionResearch. com, 5 Sep. 2008.

54.
      Mimi Silbert and Ayala Pines, “Victimization of Street Prostitutes,”
Victimology: An International Journal
, 1982, 7:1–4, pp. 122–133; and D. Kelly Weisberg,
Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution
(1985), p. 94.

55.
      Melissa Farley,
Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress
(2004), p. 191.

56.
      Martin Cizmar, Ellis Conklin, and Kristen Hinman, “Real Men Get Their Facts Straight,”
VillageVoice.com
, 29 June 2011.

57.
      Ronald Weitzer, “Moral Crusade Against Prostitution,”
Society
, Mar./Apr. 2006, p. 36.

58.
      Multiple studies have had similar findings. Weitzer, “Moral Crusade,” p. 37.

59.
      Leslie Bennetts, “The John Next Door,”
TheDailyBeast.com
, 18 Jul. 2011.

60.
      Laura Agustin, “Big Claims, Little Evidence: Sweden’s Law Against Buying Sex,” TheLocal. se, 23 Jul. 2010, ret. 8 Apr. 2012.

61.
      Weitzer, “Moral Crusade,” p. 37.

62.
      Nick Davies, “Inquiry Fails to Find Single Trafficker Who Forced Anybody Into Prostitution,”
Guardian
, 19 Oct. 2009.

63.
      Houston in 1975 and New York City in 1979. Julie Pearl, “Highest Paying Customers,”
Hastings Law J
., Apr. 1987, p. 789.

64.
      Christian Caryl, “Iraqi Vice,”
Newsweek
, 22 Dec. 2003, p. 38.

65.
      CEDAW, (1979), Article 11, §1(c).

66.
      “Report of the CEDAW,” A/54/38/Rev. 1, UN, p. 30.

67.
      Linda Lowen, “Why Won’t the U.S. Ratify CEDAW?”
About.com
, 1 Mar. 2012.

68.
      For example, Pennsylvania’s reads, “Whoever, being of the age of 18 years and upwards, by any act corrupts or tends to corrupt the morals of any minor less than 18 years of age . . . commits a misdemeanor of the first degree.” 18 Pa.C.S.A. §6301.

69.
      
Barnes v. Glen Theatre
, 501 US 560 (1991

SEX III

I
TS
O
RIGIN

D
ISTORTING
J
ESUS

Our current era is presented as an “X-rated age,” one in which sex is “everywhere” “like never before.”
¹
It is claimed that sex inundates our media,
²
teenagers are having way too much sex,
³
and that sexual “perversity” and sexual problems abound.
⁴

This outlook is extremely skewed because these commentators are comparing us to an erroneous interpretation of 1950s America. The America of the 1950s was not devoid of sex, but as one of the most censorious eras it is easy to portray it that way.
⁵
In the public arena sex was invisible. When compared to the full gamut of societies throughout the world and throughout history, America’s prudishness is revealed to be not normal, or natural,
⁶
but radical.

Before the West colonized the world, enforced monogamy was a rarity. In one study of 185 human societies, less than sixteen percent formally restricted their members to monogamy, and fewer than a third of those disapproved of both premarital and extramarital sex. Thirty-nine percent of the societies not only tolerated but actually approved of extramarital sexual relations.
⁷

To get to this surreal state was quite a journey for mankind. To understand what our “natural” sexual habits are we must go back millions of years ago. Our evolutionary forebears lived in the African jungles. Although no one knows the sexual habits of these early humans, called
Australopithecus
, it is reasonable to assume they were similar to one of our evolutionary relatives who remained in the jungle—the chimpanzees.
⁸

Chimpanzees are promiscuous. A female in estrus will attempt to seduce every male available except for her sons and brothers.
⁹
Sometimes the males will simply line up as long as eight deep and wait their turn. These females are sexually aggressive and will tweak the flaccid penises of males who are not interested.