Tag Archives: pro-choice

August 6, 2018 · 5:25 am

Why You Can’t Believe In Eternal Hell, Be Anti-Abortion, And Be Morally Consistent

The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium, from 'Paradise Lost', Book 1 ?exhibited 1841 by John Martin 1789-1854

Brace yourself because I’m about to talk about two topics that make people very uncomfortable. One is abortion, a heated political topic that is poised to get even more heated, due to recent political upheavals. The other is Hell, a distressing theological issue that makes us dwell/lament on our impending death. If that weren’t volatile enough, I’m going to tie both topics together.

Rest assured, I’m not doing this to combine a couple of controversial issues for dramatic effect. While I loathe talking about issues like abortion, I don’t avoid it when it reveals something important about a particular movement or can demonstrate important lessons about society.

When it comes to Hell, a topic that heats up any debate between believers and non-believers, the conversations are just as difficult. I still feel they’re worth having. This one, in particular, counts as one of them because there are certain implications that warrant a more nuanced discussion.

It’s no secret that those who are vehemently anti-abortion also happen to be religious. Anti-abortion protesters even cite bible passages to justify their position. Now, I can understand and even accept certain ethical aspects of the pro-life position. However, when religion enters the debate, that’s where some real disconnects emerge.

That’s because when those factors enter the pro-life equation, both the morality and the math break down. To understand why, it’s important to focus on an aspect of the abortion debate that the late, great George Carlin famously emphasized. He sought consistency in the anti-abortion debate and noted its rarity in the most hilarious way possible.

Consistency is important if your argument is going to have merit. Even with emotionally-charged topics like abortion, consistency is key to ensuring that an argument has some semblance of logic. Since logic and faith tend to conflict, especially in matters of science, bringing religion into the mix can easily derail that consistency.

This is where the issue of Hell enters the picture. It’s a very unpleasant, but very critical concept to certain religions, namely Christianity and Islam. It’s central to their theology, which emphasizes punishment for the sinful. It’s a very morbid, but very relevant concept because everybody dies and nobody knows for sure what happens afterwards, if anything.

In the abortion debate, Hell matters for the anti-abortion side because their most frequent refrain is that abortion is murder. Having an abortion is the taking of a human life and murder is an egregious sin. It’s one of the few sins that’s enshrined in both secular law and the 10 Commandments.

By holding that position, though, it raises an important implication for both the consistency of the anti-abortion position and the theology used to justify it.

If abortion really does take a life, then what happens to that life? Does it go to Heaven or Hell?

That’s a critical question to answer, but it’s here where both the consistency and the moral underpinnings of the anti-abortion debate break down. In fact, it doesn’t even matter which way the question is answered. It still has critical implications that make an anti-abortion stance for religious reasons untenable.

To understand why, we need to look at the possible answers to the question and examine the bigger picture. Say, for instance, that you believe the deity you worship saves the souls of aborted fetuses. They all get to go to Heaven because sending unborn children to Hell just doesn’t make sense for a loving God.

By that logic, though, wouldn’t abortion actually be the best thing a woman could do for her unborn child? If, by aborting a pregnancy, she guarantees that her child goes to Heaven, wouldn’t that be the greatest act of love a mother could give?

In that moral framework, any woman who gives birth is basically gambling with their child’s soul. By bringing them into a sinful world, they put them in a position to live a life that will eventually send them to Hell. It doesn’t matter if that chance is remote. It doesn’t even matter if the deity reserves Hell for the worst of the worst. Any child born still has a non-zero chance of damnation.

In that context, being anti-abortion is the worst position to take for someone who believes that their deity sends aborted fetuses to Heaven. If anything, they would have to be in favor of abortion for every pregnancy, planned or unplanned, because it means more souls in Heaven and fewer in Hell.

The implications are just as distressing if you answer the question the other way. If your deity sends aborted fetuses to Hell, then logic follows that this deity cannot be just or loving. A fetus, by default, has no ability to even contemplate sin, let alone commit it. Sending it to Hell implies that sin, itself, is an empty concept.

It also undercuts key aspects of Judeo-Christian theology, which says that someone must sin to warrant damnation. Holding both a fetus and a young child with a limited capacity to understand such concepts is untenable. Keep in mind, Hell is supposed to be full of torture and suffering. What kind of deity puts a child through that?

Even if the deity knows which fetus or small child is destined to sin and punishes them accordingly, that still renders the anti-abortion position pointless. If the deity already knows which life is damned, then why does it matter whether a woman opts to have an abortion? If that has already been determined, then abortion has no religious implications whatsoever.

Whatever the case, the very concept of Hell creates an illogical loop that is incapable of consistency. Even if you grant the most generous assumptions of a religious argument, it still falls apart as soon as you try to put it into an ethical framework.

While the very concept of Hell is subject to all sorts of moral complexities, it effectively supercedes those complexities in the abortion debate. Either Hell is full of innocent aborted souls or is devoid of them. In both cases, it reveals more about the deity and the adherents of a religion than it does the actual issue.

None of this is to say that those who make anti-abortion arguments on the basis of faith aren’t sincere. I don’t doubt for a second that they are. They genuinely believe that abortion is immoral and constitutes murder. However, when it comes to making a moral argument, consistency matters. Without it, the arguments are entirely arbitrary and there’s no winning that debate.

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May 4, 2018 · 5:25 am

Why Abstinence Only Sex Education Is Only Getting More Harmful

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There was once a time when it was possible, albeit cumbersome, for a parent to control the information and education their child received from the cradle up to and even a little bit beyond their high school graduation. Some even went further than that, attempting to control their children well into adulthood. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I’m not a parent yet so I’m not in a position to judge. I’m just saying it was possible.

A parent could, for the most part, prevent their children from watching certain TV shows, seeing certain movies, or reading certain books that contained information and messages that they didn’t want them consuming. Sure, every now and then one of their kids’ friends might sneak some “illicit” information past their guard, but they could still exert a fair amount of control over what and how their kids learned.

Without getting too deep into the logistics, it’s safe to say that those days are either over or numbered. In today’s world of ever-increased connectivity, along with cheap smartphones and easy internet access, kids are capable of accessing an unlimited wealth of information that no parent can hope to filter.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. Both the millennial generation and the emerging youth in Generation Z are the most educated cohort of people to have ever lived on this planet. Given that level of education, combined with access to so much information, why do some parents still believe they can keep their kids ignorant about sex?

I don’t deny that talking to children about sex is uncomfortable for parents, to say the least. It’s just as uncomfortable for the kids too. I still remember how awkward it was when my parents told me about sex. I still love and commend them for enduring that awkwardness because it made me more informed later in life. Other parents, however, insist on taking the opposite approach.

On April 23rd, 2018, there was a nationwide effort conducted by concerned parents who didn’t approve of how their children were being educated about sex. They called it “Sex Ed Sit Out” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Rather than directly deal with the information their children are being taught, they seek to prevent their children from ever learning about it.

The fact they’re doing this in an era where any kid with a smartphone can look up detailed information about anatomy, sexuality, sexual orientation, and transgender issues is pretty telling. The fact this is being done with support of socially conservative, sex-negative organizations like the Family Research Council and the Liberty Counsel should also be a major red flag.

The effort, itself, was instigated by a North Carolina mother who called herself “The Activist Mommy.” She’s an extremely religious woman who espouses extremely regressive views on any form of sexuality that doesn’t fall in line with what popes, monks, mullahs, and rabbis deem moral. What set her off, though, was what she found out her kids had been learning in sex ed at their school.

It wasn’t just that they were teaching kids about contraception, safe sex practices, and the radical notion that sexual desires aren’t some disease that need to be cured or managed. It was also the idea that these programs had the audacity to inform children about LGBTQ issues relating to sexuality. It even had the gall to ask kids to think about and question how those issues effect them.

Assume that last paragraph was written with the utmost sarcasm, but that was a serious issue for these parents. This isn’t just about information that may or may not conflict with their preferred holy books. Some go so far as to call it “graphic, gender-bending, promiscuity-promoting sex education.”

They frequently throw around phrases like “the sexualization of our children” to get parents really uncomfortable. They treat such education as though they’re a how-to guide, complete with drills and a maintenance schedule. In reality, that’s not how the program works and anyone with an internet connection can verify that.

It’s still not enough for these parents, though. I don’t doubt they love their kids with all their hearts, but I think they’re seriously underestimating their ability to control both the inherent biology of children and the dangers of trying to preserve ignorance in an era where information is so easy to access.

It’s because of that same access that anyone can learn that abstinence only sex education programs don’t work. It doesn’t just bear out through data in peer-reviewed studies. Those programs even fail the basic tenets of common sense and logic. To prove this, just think of all the instances when not knowing about something made it not exist. Outside Freddy Kruger movies, that just doesn’t work in the real world.

Beyond simply being ineffective and a waste of taxpayer money, taking that same abstinence approach to LGBTQ issues is potentially more damaging. It’s one thing to tell children that having a strong desire to be intimate with someone is immoral, dangerous, and may doom their soul to damnation. It’s quite another to instill the notion that they’re somehow damaged for not having gender-based attitudes consistent with 50s sitcoms.

Like it or not, human beings are complicated, diverse creatures with a wide range of desires, attitudes, and identities. The idea that something as inherently powerful as sex can fit into the narrow scope of a 50s sitcom requires a gross misunderstanding of the chaotic, unpredictable nature of sexuality and biology in general.

Granted, this sort of repressive ideology is nothing new. Religious organizations have been protesting sex education in public school for years, favoring abstinence instead of any information that might hint that sex could involve something other than just two married heterosexuals making babies that grow into devout church-going tax-payers.

However, the rhetoric from people like the Activist Mommy is getting louder as gender-driven conflicts enter the conversation on top of the sexual components. It’s more than enough to get parents worried, outraged, and even a little anxious about what their kids are learning.

Whatever their sentiments, sincere and well-meaning as they might be, the abstinence approach still doesn‘t work. It was already ineffective in the era before the internet, as evidenced by the rates of teen pregnancy over the past several decades. However, that same inefficacy may be more damaging now than it was two decades ago.

To understand how, think back to what I mentioned earlier about parents being able to control what their kids learned in the past. Outside extremely restrictive religious communities, that’s just not feasible anymore. Today, just as during any other time period in human history, kids are going to get curious and/or horny. Unlike past eras, though, it’s easier than ever find the information they’re looking for.

That’s not just dangerous to the extent those kids learn things their parents don’t want them to know. It’s dangerous in the sense that there’s a lot of misinformation on the internet, especially about sex. That doesn’t just extend to the unrealistic depictions and expectations in the average porno either. It’s disturbingly easy to find bias sources of information.

Even if that information is accurate, there’s still more damage to be done by abstinence. Once a kid learns that information, much to the dismay of their parent, it’s hard to unlearn it. At the same time, it may also reveal to the kid just how much their parents have been lying to them on issues of sex, gender, and their own bodies.

Now, I get that parents have to lie to their kids every now and then, but some lies are more destructive than others. If the lie is too big or egregious, then suddenly that kid has a valid reason not to trust their parents. First, they say sex you can get pregnant by hugging someone. Then, they expect you to believe them when they say driving after doing tequila shots at a party is dangerous?

As a general rule, if keeping a secret from your kid involves something that can’t easily be uncovered with a couple internet searches, then they’re going to find out eventually. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to protect your kid from this information. If it’s out there and they’re curious, they’ll find it. That’s just the nature of the age we live in.

A child may or may not be capable of understanding sexuality or gender issues at a particular age, but most agree that it’s healthy for a child to trust their parents. Most people, kids and adults alike, can forgive small lies. For bigger lies that can claim natural, healthy desires are a disease, though, those are much harder to overlook.

For the parents to participated in this sit out, I hope they come to understand that at some point. Their children, which I’m certain they love with all their heart, are going to learn about sex, gender, and everything in between at some point. When that point comes and it’s too late, then the damage might already be irreparable.

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April 19, 2018 · 5:49 am

Hard Lessons About Abortion And Society (From A Failed Communist Regime)

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There are a lot of sensitive topics that nobody likes talking about. They make people uncomfortable, anxious, and downright angry at times. Sometimes, that’s a sign that we should talk about them. Then, there are times when discussions on those topics have gone horribly wrong, resulting in important lessons that we would be wise to heed.

Chief among those sensitive topics is abortion. In the pantheon of uncomfortable discussions, abortion is in a league of it’s own. I try not to talk about it too often, but I don’t shy away from it when it reveals so much about society, sexuality, and gender issues.

At the moment, the abortion debate is ongoing, but somewhat stagnant. Sure, there are a few extreme pro-lifers who favor the death penalty for women seeking an abortion, which is an irony in and of itself. As it stands though, abortion remains legal in the United States, but efforts to limit abortion access are steadily growing.

It’s hard to know what the future holds for the abortion debate, especially as advances in contraception continue to emerge. Until we perfect artificial wombs and completely decouple sex from reproduction, the debate will continue. Arguments about the ethics of abortion and when life begins will still generate heated and passionate discussions.

While I’ve tried to contribute to these discussions in a reasonable way, there are aspects of the abortion debate that tend to get overlooked. However, they have less to do with the ethics and more to do with the logistics of abortion, fertility, and managing society. It’s in that part of the issue, though, where there are lessons to learn from history.

That history sometimes comes from unexpected places in parts of the world that rarely make the news. For the abortion debate, one place and time period that warrants extra scrutiny is Romania under its old communist regime. For those outside of Europe who never lived behind the Iron Curtain, this part of the world is an afterthought. However, its history with respect to the abortion debate is one worth learning from.

That history is not a good one, as if often the case with repressive communist regimes. Up until the late 1960s, Romania had fairly liberal abortion policies. Most women who wanted one could get one and since access to contraception was so limited, it was the most common form of family planning. To pro-life supporters, it’s basically the nightmare scenario they dread.

That all changed in 1967 when the communist leader of the country, Nicholae Ceaușescu, issued Decree 770. This didn’t just outlaw abortion in almost every instance. It effectively turned every woman’s reproductive system into the property of the state. Women were required, by law, to carry every pregnancy to term and by required, I don’t mean through impassioned protests.

This is a communist country. The Romanian government enforced this decree with the utmost force. It had the secret police spy on women and hospitals to make sure nobody tried to evade the law. It even adopted a birth-focused brand of sex education that are extreme, even by Texas standards. Basically, Romania went from a pro-life nightmare to the a pro-life paradise.

However, Decree 770 had nothing to do with the ethics of abortion, the sanctity of life, or any major concerns about sexual promiscuity. For Nicholae Ceaușescu, this decree was done purely out of concerns for demographics, an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant for some societies.

Ceaușescu had seen that the population of his country had stagnated in the 1950s. He couldn’t have a strong, robust communist country without a growing population of workers. Decree 770 was intended to change that. It may have even made sense at the time, at least from the perspective of a ruthless dictator.

People were still having a lot of sex, as the high abortion rate indicated. By making abortion illegal, the Romanian government would benefit from a fresh influx of young, native-born Romanians who would help build the country’s glorious communist future. Given the country’s current standing in the global stage, it should be obvious how wrong that turned out to be.

To say Decree 770 was disaster would be like saying Ebola is a mild stomach bug. Sure, it might have reduced the amount of legal abortions being conducted in Romania, but the terrible impacts it had on women, society, and entire generations are far beyond my writing abilities.

Women today who passionately protest their right to not be harassed or denigrated would be wise to note the experiences of Romanian women under this regime. In their world, they didn’t just have sleazy Hollywood producers harassing them. Under the Romanian government, they were basically state-sponsored breeders. Any role beyond that was considered criminal.

The punishments for subverting Decree 770 were as harsh as you would expect for a communist society. Women and doctors were thrown in prison. Since contraception was also banned, it forced women to resort to dangerous extremes that added even more suffering. Take this little anecdote from the Irish Times.

“Out of desperation, women would resort to insane methods,” Dr Elena Borza told the Inter Press news agency in Romania recently. “They would use salt, detergent, or any other substance which they thought could help them get rid of the baby.”

This policy was horrible for women, to say the least. However, it’s the many children they gave birth to who may have suffered the worst. Beyond the issues of having larger families in a country that later got hit with a severe economic crisis, this surge in birth rates led to a surge of abandoned children that flooded streets and orphanages alike.

The stories of these children are not the kind that would make it into a light-hearted Disney movie. The conditions that these abandoned children endured were nothing short of traumatic. There was abuse, exploitation, and violence of all types. When there are so few resources to go around, but more and more mouths to feed, it leads to conflict.

I don’t want to belabor just how awful things got for the generation that Decree 770 created, but if you want to learn more or are just a glutton for dark parts of our history, check out a documentary called “Children Underground.” It’ll describe and depict the horrors these children endured in a way that’s graphic, but real.

Even if abandoned children isn’t proof enough of Decree 770’s failure, consider how Nicholae Ceaușescu’s regime ended. He was not hailed as the ultimate anti-abortion leader. He was brutally executed by his own soldiers, some of which were likely children born as a result of that policy. Some might call that irony. Other’s might call that fitting.

Whatever you call it, the legacy of Decree 770 is worth scrutinizing because it provides a case study in what happens when you take anti-abortion policies to the utmost extreme. I’m not just talking about the potential links between abortion and crime, which is still very controversial. I believe a much bigger part of that legacy is how it reduced an entire society to state-sanctioned drones whose only purpose was to work and breed.

It removed agency from couples who didn’t want children. It removed agency from pregnant women. It removed agency from families. It led to terrible situations that resulted in parents abandoning their children. Say what you want about a policy, but when it leads to child abandonment, then that’s a clear sign.

In many ways, Romania still hasn’t recovered from Decree 770. The effects this policy had on an entire generation and their parents left some pretty significant scars, to say the least. Those scars, however, can be critical lessons when discussing issues involving abortion, sexuality, and child rearing

That’s not to say that the experience in Romania completely discredits all anti-abortion arguments. Remember, and it’s worth emphasizing, Romania was a communist country where individual rights, freedom of choice, and personal liberty aren’t established traditions. Its situation is unique and subject to some pretty brutal circumstances.

Never-the-less, the experiences and legacy of Decree 770 provide a critical insight into the complexities of the abortion debate. It shows what can happen when one side is taken to extremes with brute, uncompromising force without first convincing the population of its merits. It’s not just tyrannical. It’s damaging.

At the moment, attitudes towards abortion are fairly mixed, but stable. The majority of people believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. The nature and extent of those circumstances vary, but they’re rarely conducive to extremes.

That’s why whenever a particular side gets too extreme in this heated debate, it helps to remember the lessons learned from Decree 770. Regardless of whether it occurs in a communist country or rural Alabama, those lessons are important to recall. They’re also the kinds of lessons we don’t want to re-learn.

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January 23, 2018 · 5:50 am

Pro Life, The Sanctity Of Life, And The (Literal) Value Of Life

People participate in the annual March for Life rally on the National Mall in Washington

As a general principle, I limit my discussions on abortion to a maximum of three per year with zero still being the preferred amount. Last year, I wrote a couple articles about it, but that was it. I tried to make clear on both occasions that while I don’t deny the seriousness of this issue, I generally have little to contribute.

It’s not just because I’m a man and will never need an abortion. Pretty much all the arguments surrounding abortion are intractable. Like debating creationism, there’s no way to convince someone who is set in their opinions to change them. You’d have a better chance convincing someone the sky is green, Mars is made of cheese, and “The Emoji Movie” wasn’t terrible.

All that said, abortion is still a serious issue that is evolving before our eyes both culturally and legally. This is one of those issues that affects everybody, either directly or indirectly. Regardless of whether you’re a baby, an old man, or an aspiring erotica/romance writer, abortion’s reach is vast because it involves life, sex, family, and the propagation of our species. The stakes can’t get much higher than that.

Even with those stakes, the only reason I’m talking about it now is because I live less than two hours away from Washington DC. When there’s a major protest, I generally know about it before it starts trending on social media. The latest gathering was the annual March For Life protest, a demonstration dedicated to decrying the ills of abortion and supporting “pro-life” legislation.

Now, I put “pro-life” in quotes for a reason that I hope will make sense in a bit. I’ve already criticized that term because there are those who use it to hide the fact that they care more about maintaining consequences for those who have more sex than churches, mosques, and synagogues prefer. I don’t intend to belabor that argument, but it is somewhat related to the point I want to make.

Having seen plenty of these protests, I notice a common theme that is at the forefront of the “pro-life” movement, but is rarely scrutinized. That’s the whole concept of the “sanctity of life.” I put that in quotes too for the same reasons I hope are obvious by the end of this article. Unlike the anti-sex crowd, this concept is central to the overall movement.

Beyond the intractable belief that life begins at conception and abortion is the taking of a life, the idea that there’s an inherent value to all life, regardless of what stage it’s at or how it affects the life of the mother bearing it. Without there being substantial value, then the whole arguments about when life even begins becomes meaningless.

I’m not going to make the argument that life has no value or that life, in general, should be devalued. I’m of the belief that we only get one life to live and that makes it valuable to some extent. However, I do want to take a minute to try and quantify that value, if only to provide some context to the “pro-life” movement.

I’m not first one to try this. The late, great George Carlin dug into this issue with more candor and brilliance than I or anyone else ever could in 1996. He dared to ask this question in a way that still came off as funny, yet insightful.

“Only living people care about it, so the whole thing grows out of a completely biased point of view. It’s a self-serving, man-made bullshit story. It’s one of these things we tell ourselves so we’ll feel noble. Life is sacred, makes you feel noble.

Well let me ask you this, if everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is going to die, where does the sacred part come in? I’m having trouble with that. Because even with the stuff we preach about the sanctity of life, we don’t practice it.”

It may sound cynical, but it’s relevant if the “pro-life” movement is to have any logical and moral validity to it. If it’s going to ascribe a high value to life, then that value can’t be too vague. There has to be some part of it that translates into real, tangible value. Without that, “pro-life” arguments are just empty rhetoric wrapped in inflamed emotions.

So in order to give that value to life, I want to pose a couple questions to the “pro-life” crowd. I don’t expect anyone to answer, but I think it’s important to put this question out there to put context into the anti-abortion arguments that seem so intractable.

“If you truly believe abortion is murder and want to save the lives of unborn children, are you willing to pay women to carry their unwanted children to term?”

That’s a simple yes/no question that shouldn’t be too hard to answer. I have a feeling many answers will be quick and brash, as most are in highly emotional debates. I expect the phrase “personal responsibility” to get thrown around a lot. That seems to be a catch-all word that conveniently provides an excuse to not help someone in a bad situation.

I’ll set aside the issues with that concept for now and ask the second question. This is where it gets more specific.

“How much are you willing to pay someone to not get an abortion and carry a child to term?”

I expect more variation with this question. I also expect more vitriol because I’m basically asking someone to put a price on a human life. I understand that very thought makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Nobody likes to think of themselves, a loved one, or a child as having some sort of number attached to it.

Then again, we don’t seem to mind that when we get our social security numbers, our addresses, or our paychecks. Like it or not, we’re all ascribed some amount of numeric value at some point in our lives. That doesn’t mean some lives are inherently more valuable than others, but it highlights the fact that we can and do link life to numbers.

Now, in order to help out those who may struggle with this question, allow me to do some simple math that should help make this question more palatable.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 652,639 legal induced abortions in the year 2014. In addition, the average total cost for pre-natal care according to the Kaiser Family Foundation is approximately $2,000. Since that’s only for healthy babies, let’s make it $2,500 to account for complications.

Now, multiply 652,693 by $2,500 and we get $1,631,732,500. For the sake of redundancy and accounting for other possible complications, let’s round that up to a total of $1.7 billion. So for $1.7 billion, you could conceivably cover the cost of pre-natal care to every woman seeking an abortion. For that price, there could’ve been zero abortions in 2014.

With that number in mind, would you be willing to pay that price? I know $1.7 billion seems like a lot, but in terms of the US economy, it’s pennies. The size of the US economy is measured in trillions these days. Even with respect to government spending, the defense budget alone in 2014 was $614 billion. A sum of $1.7 billion barely would’ve registered.

Even if you’re against the idea of the government spending money, on principle, that kind of money is out there in the private sector. According to OpenSecrets.org, the pharmaceutical companies alone spent over $3.7 billion in lobbying over a 10-year span.

Even religious organizations have money to spend on this issue. Back in 2015, CNN reported that the vehemently anti-abortion Vatican had over $8 billion in assets. That’s just one denomination, too. According to the Giving USA Foundation, churches received over $114 billion in tax-free charitable donations in 2014. Given that sum, is $1.7 billion really that much?

It gets even better than that, though. Abortion, as a whole, is on the decline. That means it would be even cheaper to pay the price to stop all abortions in 2018. Abortion still happens, though, and if you genuinely think abortion is murder, then there’s just one more question.

“If you’re NOT willing to pay any price to stop all abortion, then how can you say life is sacred and has intrinsic value?”

I understand that sounds like a loaded question after overly simplifying the issue. I concede that if stopping all abortions were as easy as writing a check for $1.7 billion, somebody would’ve done it by now. It’s not that easy an issue. Abortion wouldn’t be such a hot-button issue if it were.

What I’m trying to get at here is that a general unwillingness to put any tangible value on life essentially undermines the arguments of the “pro-life” movement. We’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a smart phone and more than five bucks for a latte. What does it say about someone’s stance on abortion if they say life is sacred, but won’t put up any actual money for the lives they’re trying to preserve?

The March For Life demonstration, as well as most anti-abortion demonstrations, didn’t stress measures like encouraging women to carry a child to term, lowering the cost of pre-natal care, or improving contraception access so that abortions aren’t necessary. Most of it centered on favoring legislation that would make abortion more difficult to obtain.

Never mind the fact that such legislation often has some fairly detrimental effects on women’s health, as John Oliver highlighted a couple years ago. That effort doesn’t vindicate the arguments of the “pro-life” movement, nor does it even accomplish their stated goals. It’s basically a way to claim they’re winning the debate and, as I’ve pointed out before, winning a debate isn’t the same as being right.

I feel like I’ve already talked enough about abortion for one day/month/year. If I want to make one point with this article on abortion and the March For Life protest, as a whole, it’s being “pro-life” and promoting the inherent value of life is a great emotional argument. However, if there’s no substance behind that argument, then it’s not a movement that can logically sustain itself in the long run.

Now, do you understand why I put “pro-life” in quotes?

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February 3, 2017 · 6:23 am

Pro-Life Vs. Anti-Sex: Why The Difference Matters

I promise I’m almost done talking about abortion on this blog. Again, I hate talking about this issue. I want to be very clear about that. As a man, I have nothing to contribute to issues of women’s health. I couldn’t be less qualified to talk about this issue if I were a disembodied squirrel.

With that said, there is one last component to the abortion issue I want to address. Unlike the various other complexities of this exceedingly controversial issue, this issue does affect me, albeit indirectly. It affects me because it involves attitudes towards sex and, being an erotica/romance writer, that’s kind of critical to my job.

Granted, sex and abortion are link. Without sex, abortion is a moot point. Abortion without sex is like a car without an engine. One doesn’t work without the other. It’s in this inescapable link that we find a stark divide in the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. It’s a divide in which one side is honest and the other has a mansion built upon a foundation of  wet horse shit.

There are those on one side of the abortion who can call themselves honest and genuine. These are the people who genuinely believe that abortion constitutes murder. They believe that the concept of personhood begins at conception. At the moment the sperm meets the egg in a woman’s womb, the issue ends for them. That’s a human life. Ending it in any way is no different than murder.

That’s a perfectly clear, easily understandable position. It passes through the Simpson Filter with ease. It makes ethical sense, even to our caveman brains. It appeals to both emotion and logic, a rare combination in any bit of political discourse. Granted, the actual science of when life begins is not at all settled, but as a clear position on an issue, this part of the pro-life is both clear and genuine.

If this was where the argument ended, then there wouldn’t be anything left to talk about. I could end this post here and go back to talking about the joys of sleeping naked. Unfortunately, there is another contingent of the pro-life crowd and they’re about as genuine as a Nigerian prince.

This contingent of the pro-life group will make the same claims. They’ll say abortion is evil on par with any notorious spammer. They’ll even march with others who sincerely believe that life begins at conception and abortion is murder. However, in the back of their minds, being pro-life is a form of glorified clown makeup. It just a convenient excuse to hide the fact that they’re anti-sex.

By that, I don’t mean they aspire to live in a world of nuns and eunuchs. By anti-sex, I mean they are vehemently opposed to any form of sexual expression that wouldn’t occur off-scene during a “Father Knows Best” rerun.

In their world, the only kind of sex that is permissible involves a married couple, a dark room, and a maximum of three minutes in the missionary position with the sole intent of producing a child who will grow up into a tax-payer. Orgasms are entirely optional in this case. Anything that deviates from this narrative even slightly is the moral equivalent of being sodomized by demons.

In that context, it’s easy to see why some use the pro-life movement as a cover. History has shown that even in the most repressive periods in history, human sexuality is difficult to contain. Being anti-sex is a losing battle on par with being against blue skies on sunny days. With the pro-life crowd, they can claim, “We’re not against sex! We’re against dead babies!”

This doesn’t just make their position inherently dishonest and insincere. It also has implications that go far beyond those I’ve discussed before on this issue. It’s easy to craft a message that passes the Simpson Filter, but sometimes the implications of that message go far beyond the content of that message, so much so that it’s in the same zip code as basic fraud.

For the anti-sex crowd, it means that abortion is less about dead babies and more about controlling sexuality in general. Make no mistake. This does happen. Some even go so far as to admit it outright. Major presidential candidates have even gone on record as saying they oppose contraception because it permits evil sexual practices, namely those that people might enjoy.

This is the part of the pro-life movement that has zero moral authority. They are about as honest and sincere as hungry lion running a hospital for wounded zebras. They may use politics or religion to justify their sentiment. That doesn’t make it less invalid.

In some cases, it makes parts of the pro-life crowd into outright hypocrites. As I’ve said before, we tolerate a lot of bullshit in our society, but hypocrisy is one of the few lines where the stench cannot be ignored.

In the case of the anti-sex crowd pretending to be pro-life, they cement their hypocrisy by also being against contraception. While most pro-life people don’t oppose contraception, those that do are akin to being football fans who hate contact sports. It’s just not possible for the position to make any sense, logically or morally.

This is where a lot of religion gets into the mix. The Catholic Church is, by far, the most famous entity for opposing both abortion and contraception. Again, it’s the implications that make this position wholly dishonest. To understand those implications, just do the same thing reporters do with lobbyists and follow the money.

For a church, or any religious organization, to thrive it needs money and adherents. Since most religions don’t sell anything tangible, they need to rely on adherents giving them money. Naturally, this creates an incentive to want them to procreate. The more babies they have, the more future adherents the religion will get. More future adherents means more money. In the end, wanting to control sexuality is all about money.

Imagine for a moment that someone claimed that killing puppies was wrong because it cost too much money to bury them. If someone bases their puppy-killing morality on that foundation, we wouldn’t think very highly of them. Hell, we’d probably train our dogs to use that person’s yard as a toilet.

It’s for this reason, and many more that I’m woefully unqualified to explore, that it’s so vital to distinguish those who are genuinely pro-life and those who just don’t want people having sex in ways they don’t like. One has a moral basis for their position. The other has a web of excuses, deceit, and hypocrisy.

If good, decent people truly wins out in the end, then it should be clear which side has the moral authority. There are those who deserve to march in support of their believes and there are those who should be marched over, spit on, and left to whither under the weight of their hypocrisy. In the end, no matter what excuses some people make, hypocrisy will never be appealing or sexy.

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February 2, 2017 · 6:42 am

My Reaction To The March For Life

When you live within a short drive of Washington DC, you tend be numb to all the demonstrations, protests, and what not. Talk to most folks who live in and around the DC area and they’ll tell you the same thing. Protests and detour signs are hard to distinguish.

That said, when protests are so big they enter the six or seven-figure range, it’s a lot harder to ignore. In fact, it’s a clear sign that it shouldn’t be ignored. This was the case with the Women’s March that took place last week. I’ve already reacted to that. However, there was another march right after that, namely the March For Life.

For those in the DC area, two big marches are like two all-night drinking benders. One alone is hard enough to handle. Two is really pushing it. At some point, you run out of energy and your body runs out of vomit to adequately process something. In the interest of fairness, though, I think I should react to this march as well because, like the Women’s March, it had a powerful message.

This means I have to talk about abortion again. I know. I don’t want to do it either. Nothing makes people less horny than talking about abortion, but it’s kind of hard to avoid when you’re reacting to a pro-life/anti-abortion march.

Again, even though it has come up before, I hate talking about this topic. I’m a man. I don’t get pregnant. I have nothing to contribute to this issue. This is one of those issues that affects women. Therefore, policies and decisions on abortion should be made by women. The fact that men make these laws is kind weird when you think about it.

I say all this with the hope that everybody uses this opportunity to brace themselves. I know this topic sucks and it riles people up in the worst possible way. Comedian Dennis Miller once commented that if America fights another civil war, it’ll likely be over abortion. Sadly, I think he’s right in the least funny way possible.

It’s controversial. It’s emotional. It literally deals in matters of life and death. It also deals with the most fundamental of freedoms in being able to make decisions on the most important issues affecting your life. This is not protests and outrage over the season finale of the Walking Dead last year. This is a powerful issue that affects women, children, and the most fundamental aspects of our society.

It’s for those very reasons that a major protest is entirely warranted. Abortion is an unresolved issue in this country, to say the very least. Some parts of the country are so vehemently anti-abortion that their state only has one functional abortion clinic. Overall, abortion clinics are being closed all over the country, sometimes directly and sometimes through shady TRAP laws.

In that context, the pro-life crowd is winning the war, even though Pew regularly reports that a majority of people are pro-choice. In some sense, the March For Life last week was a celebration of their recent victories and a push for more victories. For the pro-choice crowd, they are on the ropes. They are losing and, given the current regime in DC, those losses will continue.

Given this situation, it’s hard for someone like me to make sense of it. Again, I’m a man. I have next to nothing to contribute to this topic. However, being an erotica/romance writer, it does kind of affect me because abortion is linked to sex. For an abortion to occur, sex needs to occur. It’s just basic biology. Granted, it’s a sexy kind of biology that I love exploring, but it’s still biology.

So when I see these anti-abortion protests and the gains made by the pro-life movement, how do I react? How can I react? Well, I’ll let Steve Carell take convey the sentiment better than I ever could with words.

That, my friends, is a professional level blank stare. I’m only an amateur. My blank stare can only be so strong, but it’s enough to get the point across.

What exactly is that point? What sort of sentiment does a blank stare convey in the face of such a sensitive, emotionally charged issue like abortion? Well, allow me to explain.

A blank stare is not the same as being confused or ignorant. Think of Jenny McCarthy’s reaction to a quantum physics lecture. That is confusion. That is ignorance. A blank stare is the look we all give when we expect something more from a conversation.

It’s the natural response to something that we feel is incomplete. Someone ends a conversation mid-sentence, we’re going to be somewhat frozen in place, waiting for that final piece of the puzzle to come into place. It’s how our brains work. It makes connections and recognizes patterns.

With the abortion debate, which is very much incomplete, the pro-life side of the argument has a difficult oversight that’s hard to ignore. It’s easy to say you’re pro-life. It’s easy to say you’re against abortion. It’s easy to say you think abortion is murder and dead babies are wrong. These are all simple, basic sentiments that check every box of the Simpson Filter. It’s easy for everyone to understand and rally behind.

The problem that makes this issue so incomplete are the implications. These implications are reflected in the actual practice of abortion. In liberal states, there’s more abortion, but fewer unplanned pregnancies and fewer divorces. In conservative areas, it’s the reverse. There are fewer abortions, but the extra unplanned pregnancies create unstable family structures and are highly correlated with poverty.

In both cases, the people are subject to the same forces, namely the desire to have sex and procreate. This is the only unifying factor in the abortion debate. This force remains in place, regardless of whether abortion is punishable by death or available on every street corner. It’s also the factor that the pro-life movement cannot circumvent, although it sure as hell tries.

Their response to this issue is as simple as it is misguided. They just shrug it off by saying, “Then don’t have sex!” That approach might work for kids who eat paste, but not for one of the most fundamental drives in nature.

This best manifests in how many conservative, pro-life communities champion abstinence-only sex education, which has been proven time and again to not work. It turns out teenagers are very horny. For some reason, this is news to the pro-life crowd.

This is the reason why I have a hard time reacting to pro-life arguments and the overall spirit of the March for Life. I agree. Life is great. Life should be protected and cherished. However, this isn’t just about life. This is about abortion. There are two lives involved, the potential child and the mother. When you focus too much on one, you undermine the other.

I could process the rhetoric to some extent if the pro-life crowd was also the most vocal proponent of contraception and effective sex education, but that’s not part of their message. If anything, they make every effort to gloss over that part of the message, as though human sexuality can ever be truly glossed over.

Many have tried in that effort, attempting to circumvent human sexuality. All have failed. Human beings are wired for sex. They’re also wired to enjoy it, shockingly enough. Until the pro-life movement confronts this issue, then their current victories will not last. At some point, the human desire to just make love will overpower them. It won’t be sexy for them, but it will be for everyone else.

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January 31, 2017 · 6:27 am

My Advice To The Women’s March

As a general rule, I try to avoid giving advice on things I know I’m not qualified to explain. You want advice on writing erotica/romance? Sure, I’ll help, even though I’ve yet to achieve much success in that endeavor. You want advice on comics and superheroes? Hell, I’m your guy. I should be the first person you call.

In terms of complex sociopolitical issues, though, I’m as qualified to explain those topics as I am to perform brain surgery while blindfolded. I am not an expert. I’m not even in the same hemisphere as an expert. Then again, it’s not like experts have a perfect track record of explaining these issues either so it’s not like their voices are somehow more pure. At the end of the day, their farts stink as much as mine.

I establish this context because I’m going to make an exception to that general rule I mentioned earlier. I’m going to offer some advice to a group that I think needs all the help they can get. Specifically, I’m talking about the fine citizens of the United States who organized the Women’s March.

I’ve already given my reaction to this mark. I hope I made clear that I mostly agree with their policy positions at every level. They stand for principles that I don’t believe the current regime in Washington is going to protect. I support them in their efforts, even if I think their approach is lacking in substance. That’s exactly why I’d like to lend whatever help an aspiring erotica/romance writer can offer, however limited that might be.

What follows is a list of simple tips that I hope will help the people behind the Women’s March. What they seek is admirable and respectable. However, I worry that they will undermine their message by using a flawed, misguided approach in pursuing their goals. I hope with these tips, they’ll be better able to achieve those goals.

Tip #1: Acknowledge The Breadth Of The Audience You Seek To Influence

You see that map above? That’s a picture of how every county in the United States voted in the 2016 election. Notice anything unique about it, other than how it looks like a jigsaw puzzle designed by a brain-damaged orangutan? There’s a lot of red and only a few spots of blue. Why is that?

Well, the blue parts are the ones containing America’s largest cities. The red are largely rural, low-density areas full of small towns, tight-nit communities, and exceedingly few vegan restaurants. These areas make up a good chunk of the land, but less than half the population. That’s because the cities, which contain the urban crowds, draw in more people with more diverse economic opportunities.

Why does this matter? That’s because it’s these rural, under-developed areas are the ones who gravitate towards the conservative side of the political spectrum. They do this because their way of life is dying. It’s dying and the conservative crowd knows how to appeal to them, selling them false hope while the other side basically ignores them.

The Women’s March deals with issues that affect everybody, but they basically overlook this part of the country entirely. These are people whose lives are devoid of hope and issues like LGBT rights, speech codes on college campuses, and soda taxes aren’t going to affect their lives.

These are people who the Women’s March largely ignores, but they still vote. They still have hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Without acknowledging them or reaching out to them, they’re basically ignoring a huge part of the Country that desperately needs hlep and hope.

Tip #2: Abandon Political Correctness, Kill It, And Bury It In The Deepest Hole

I cannot stress this enough. It needs to be belabored, reinforced, and beaten down with a two-ton anvil. In order for the Women’s March to make their message resonate on the widest scale possible, those involved must abandon, kill, and disavow political correctness in all its forms.

I cannot be polite or funny about this. Jerry Seinfeld has tried, but even he can’t find the humor in it. That should tell you everything you need to know. If someone like Jerry Seinfeld can’t find humor in it, then nobody can.

By political correctness, I mean everything from speech codes to gender identity politics to people protesting the name of a football team. A big reason why the current regime is in power is because the vast majority of the population has heard the rhetoric of the politically correct and they hate it with a vitriol that rivals every Mortal Kombat character ever made.

If you really want to appeal to more people, you need to ditch the excessive PC bullshit that has alienated an entire generations from an entire end of the political spectrum. Either abandon it or watch as the new regime coaxes its way through election after election.

Tip #3: Focus on Justice For Everybody And Not Just For A Select Few

This seems obvious and most in the Women’s March probably agree with this sentiment. However, the problem with their style is that they focus too much on justice for one particular group. They focus on LGBT, women, minorities, and refugees. That’s all well and good. These people need justice too. However, don’t focus so much on them that you forget about everybody else.

Believe it or not, injustice knows no political party. It knows no political ideology. An LGBT person is vulnerable to injustice. A straight white man living in rural Alabama is vulnerable to it as well. If you want both of those individuals on your side, keeping mind that both vote, don’t focus on a few specific trees while ignoring the forest.

By focusing too much on one group or another, you get cases like the Duke Lacrosse case and the UVA false rape case. It also means that groups like radical feminists skew the message, throwing around toxic terms like “patriarchy” and “rape culture.” These terms poison the well and alienate others, all in addition to being mostly bunk.

It may be tempting to focus exclusively on minorities who are vulnerable, and they are, but alienating others in the process helps no one in the long run.

Tip #4: Be Serious (And Ditch The Goofy Hats And Costumes)

This directly address those who wear the goofy vagina costumes to these rallies. Look, I love vaginas as much as the next straight guy. I admire the beauty of vaginas all the time as an erotica/romance writer. However, when you make these costumes and use them in protests, you’re not sending a message of justice and inclusion. You just look like you came back from a Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion.

There’s a time and a place for comedy in politics. Those times should be few and targeted. It also helps to leave them up to the professionals, such as John Oliver and Trevor Noah. These are people who know how to inject humor into an issue for the right reasons. They are also funnier than 99 percent of the population.

Let them handle the humor. For everyone else, leave the goofy costumes at home. When you wear that stuff, people who don’t agree with you aren’t going to be swayed. They’re just going to roll their eyes and think it’s a joke. If you want to reach these people, this is not how you want to get their attention.

The same goes for those goofy pink hats. Those hats aren’t cute or convincing in any way. They just look goofy. If you really want to appeal to everyone, you need to come off as real, honest people. Believe it or not, people respond to others who they can relate to. What a concept, right?

Tip #5: Appeal To Feelings While Avoiding Insults

This may sound dishonest to some because shady car salesmen use the same tactics. They’ll come up to you and make you feel like the most important person in the world while trying to sell you shit on four wheels. It may be dishonest, but it works. There’s a reason why used car salesmen still exist.

If you learn nothing else from last year’s election, then at least learn this. Facts do matter, but they’ll always be secondary to feelings. When it comes to perception versus reality, perception wins 99 times out of 100. I’ve already written about this. I don’t want to belabor it, but I think it needs to be belabored.

This goes back to caveman logic. The human brain is not wired for truth and understanding. It’s wired for survival and reproduction. It doesn’t come to decisions based on facts. First, it has us react to the proverbial lion in the bushes. Then, our brains come up with a reason to justify our reaction. From a scientific perspective, it’s ass backwards. It’s also the only way you can relate to people.

If you can make someone feel like they matter to you, then they’re more likely to help you. That needs to be the first step. For the Women’s March to reach others who don’t already agree with them, they need to tap into those feelings that led them to vote for the other side in the last election. Those feelings are key. If you want to convince them of anything, you must first confront those feelings first.

Tip #6: Focus On Hope Over Outrage

This should be fairly obvious, but it’s one of those issues I think the Women’s March glossed over at times. Hope is a powerful message. Hope is what got Barack Obama elected twice. Hope is the ultimate motivator and rallying cry. That’s what got people off their asses and to the polls during the last election. Naturally, they chose the candidate that gave them the most hope.

Right now, the Women’s March is focused less on hope and more on outrage. That’s completely understandable. There’s plenty to be outraged about and I’m not just talking about grabbing women by the pussy. However, outrage is only slightly more meaningful than whining. It’s too easy for one to turn into the other.

The time for lamenting over losses is over. The election is over. The new regime is in. They’re already at an advantage because they’re going to find out that delivering hope is much harder than actually promising hope. This is where the Women’s March has the advantage. Instead of focusing on the failures of the past, they need to focus on the hope for the future.

What does that future mean? What can they offer that the current regime cannot or will not offer? Give people something to look forward to. Give them something to aspire to. It works for Superman. It works just as well for what the Women’s March seeks to accomplish.

Tip #7: Pick The Right Battles And Choose The Right Allies

This isn’t as important as hope or abandoning political correctness, but make no mistake. A movement will be judged on the allies it chooses. In the last election, the losing party chose poorly. How do I know this? Off the top of your head, who was the most reputable ally they chose?

Can’t think of anyone? I rest my case. You see, in addition to being big on feelings, the human brain is also big on association. If you associate yourself with something good, then that’s going to affect how others perceive you. If you don’t, then you leave yourself vulnerable to wild accusations that some people in the FBI can exploit.

If you want allies, make sure you pick the ones who will also fight your battles. You want someone who will fight for minority rights, religious rights, and the rights of women? Well, those organizations do exist. They’re easy to ally with and they accept donations. They include the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Habitat For Humanity.

Once you have allies like this, then you’re better able to pick the right battles. It’s a losing endeavor trying to shame, scorn, and scold others into accepting your views. By showing support through legitimate legal avenues, it shows you’re serious and people do react when they sense someone is putting in the effort.

Tip #8: Inspire Rather Than Demean

This is more a general rule than advice. Inspiration is every bit as powerful as hope. In the last election, one side inspired an entire population who had grown resentful of uptight, politically correct intellectuals who demeaned and denigrated them for the crime of not being a marginalized group. When you demean entire groups like that, you lose allies and send them running to your enemies.

Those people, however, can be swayed back. Doing so means changing the approach. It means changing the perception, style, and substance behind that approach. The people behind the Women’s March must show the college-educated urban elite and the poor white rural people that they matter. They think they’re good, decent human beings and they want to build a future with them.

All too often, a movement devolves into a classic “us against them” mantra. That may win elections in the short term, but it drives people apart in the long run. The people behind the Women’s March need to think about the long term. They need to think beyond the next election.

There are entire generations who believe that the people behind the Women’s March are only fighting for a few select minorities. They need to show that they will fight for everyone. It’s only when you can appeal to everyone that you can overcome everything. Remember that and you need not fear the outcome of any election.

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January 30, 2017 · 6:32 am

My Thoughts On The Women’s March

As a general rule, I try not react too quickly or too callously to major political events. My years of experiencing in arguing about Wolverine’s love life on comic book message boards have taught me that some subjects just can’t be discussed rationally. Add politics into the mix and you might as well swim naked in a pond full of hungry snakes.

However, I realize that some events are too big to just ignore. Make no mistake. I’m aware of all the upheaval, outrage, and shit storms that have erupted since the apocalypse that was Election Day transpired last year. I’ve chosen to minimize my discussions of it on this blog. I want this blog to make people horny, not hopeless.

That said, I also understand that there’s a difference between avoiding a subject and purposefully sticking your own head up your ass so that the most you’ll ever hear about a topic has to compete with the echoes of your own farts. I don’t want my head in such a dark place.

This brings me to the big event that transpired on January 21, 2017 in Washington, DC, a city that’s less than a two-hour drive from my house. It was called the Women’s March on Washington. On the heels of Inauguration Day, it flooded the streets of DC with thousands of men, women, and children protesting the new regime in Washington. Given the kind of people who support this regime, they definitely had plenty to protest.

It was a powerful display, unlike anything we’ve seen that didn’t involve a Super Bowl parade. It’s certainly the largest, most organized protest I’ve seen in the past couple decades. This isn’t some fringe protest of hippies claiming there are shape-shifting lizard people running banks and covering up the truth about UFOs. These are people who are genuinely afraid that their lives are going to be at risk because of this new regime.

I can understand that fear. I certainly sympathize with it. There are people in my immediate family who discussed joining this protest. I certainly support their effort to do so. I think this is worth protesting, much more so than pet issues marijuana or fur coats. Our society works best when we only seek to screw each other in ways we enjoy.

I say all this as a preface of sorts because my overall reaction to it probably won’t win me any awards from hippies, vegans, priests, mullahs, or anyone who voted for Rick Santorum. In my youth, I usually came down fairly hard on one particular side of the political spectrum. Then again, in my youth I thought UFO insurance was a good investment. That should reveal the extent of my political expertise.

With all that in mind, I thought I’d take a moment to just write about my reaction to this protest. It is a big deal. It is something that’s worth paying attention to. Even if I’m just a struggling erotica/romance writer, this is something that can and will affect me, both directly and indirectly. It already has in some respects. So how, in the grand scheme of things, am I supposed to react.

Well, my reaction can best be summed up in one way and I think my friend, Spongebob, says it best.

Please put the pitchforks down and stop for a moment before you start busting my balls. Give me a chance to explain myself because I’m trying to be both honest and helpful here, two concepts that might as well be alien to political discourse these days.

A part of me really was moved by these protests. I even support pretty much all their stated mission, as well as their stated principles. In terms of their values and policies, we are both on the same page. We’re on the same team. That’s beyond dispute. It’s the methods that leave me feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a house where whining was about as productive as licking a toilet seat to clean it. Whatever the reason, I just look at these protests and see too much style and not enough substance. Seeing people wearing vagina costumes didn’t help.

Don’t get me wrong. I think those costumes are funny and topical. If someone wore those to a Halloween party, they’d definitely liven things up. In a serious protest though, it just makes me roll my eyes. It gives the impression that the issues at hand aren’t as serious as they should be.

As I’ve already said, these are serious issues. They’re issues worth fighting for and they’re worth protesting. However, there’s a right way to protest something and then there’s a shocking way to protest. More often than not, those methods are mutually exclusive.

If the goal of the Women’s March was to get attention, then they definitely succeeded. In terms of provoking change, that’s a good first step. Remember the technique pitched by this guy, albeit in the most vulgar way possible?

The first step of that process is to get attention. Some argue that’s the most important step and the Women’s March did just that. It’s the other three steps, namely interest, decision, and action where they come up short.

You see, my experience on comic book message boards has wired my brain to process a situation in a backwards sort of way. By that, I mean that when I see a situation like this, the first thing I do is ask, “Okay, how is the other side going to twist this in their favor?”

When you deal with a lot of dogmatic comic book fans, that’s an important question to consider because 99 times out of 100, that’s how discussions go. Someone makes a point and those who don’t agree with it will twist it in a way that makes them feel smart, superior, or whatever other emotion Lex Luthor feels when he wakes up every morning.

What manifests in message boards often manifests in political discourse as well. Some see the Women’s March and they see a huge group of concerned citizens, making their voices heard on issues that matter to them. Others, namely those who are inclined to lump protesters with hippies, see this protest as one giant act of whining. Neither side can be right, but both sides can be wrong.

This is why I can’t help but feel indifferent to these protests. They seek attention. They seek meaningful goals. They have so much style, but not nearly enough substance. For someone like me, who needs both in order to become a successful erotica/romance writer, lacking either really undermines the message.

Now I want the Women’s March to make for meaningful discourse. I want it to provoke real, meaningful change. However, based on what I saw, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Our collective attention span is too short and the powers that be are too callous. I’m not saying the Women’s March was a waste of time, but I don’t think it’s going to change much in the long run.

 

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January 14, 2017 · 7:57 am

An Interesting Debate I Had With Someone (On Abortion)

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned time and again that there are few greater wastes than arguing with people on the internet. It’s right up there with spitting in a lake to refill it. Nobody ever changed their minds about anything because they argued about it with someone on a message board. That’s just an inescapable fact.

So why do we do it? Why do we have these online debates that are about as formal as meth-fueled orgy? There are many answers to that question. Not all of those answers are entirely misguided either.

People want to connect with each other. People want to share their views with the world, no matter what they are or how crazy they may be. Look up discussions of lizard shape-shifters to see what I mean. There’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing such views. So long as nobody raises the flags of the NSA, it’s one of those wastes that can help us with the basic human need to connect.

Being an erotica/romance writer, I’m all for activities that help us meet our basic needs. However, I’ve learned from experience that it’s not a good idea to have too many debates with folks online. I was once the kind of guy who spent hours crafting elaborate, detailed posts, complete with citations and footnotes, to prove my point. I’m pretty sure I put some grad students to shame.

I put in a lot of effort to make my arguments. I really did think I would stump, confound, or convince other commenters that I was right. In the end, that effort might have been better spent trying to find new ways to deep fry donuts. It took me way too long to realize that people don’t change their minds based on what online debates. They only ever change their mind when there’s a damn good incentive.

Until the day comes when saying something stupid online earns you a painful shock to the spine, nobody should debate anyone online with the expectation that you’ll change someone’s view. That’s not to say it’s a complete waste of time. If you set reasonable expectations and focus on less divisive issues, then you can have real, honest conversations with people.

This brings me to abortion. I’ll give everyone a second or two to unclench their assholes. Bear with me. That’s not a complete non-sequiter. When it comes to my least favorite topics to discuss, abortion is right up there with explosive diarrhea. I’m a man. I don’t have babies. I can’t get an abortion. I bring absolutely nothing to this conversation and, as a principle, I generally avoid it.

That said, I did end up having an insightful conversation with someone online, which was related to abortion. It occurred on a site called Townhall.com, which is basically the complete antithesis of the Huffington Post. If you have any kind of liberal or moderate inclinations of any kind, expect the content on this site to piss you off.

I go to it because I find it helpful and insightful to visit sites that present views you don’t agree with. Townhall offers that in abundance. The rhetoric here can be downright venomous at times and not just because Ann Coulter writes regular columns. Some of the commenters on this site would make Nixon himself look like a hippie.

Naturally, that means you’ll find a lot of pro-life, anti-abortion discussions here. You’ll also get no fewer than 20 Nazi references when discussing it. As a general principle, and in respect to those with a weak stomach, I try to avoid these discussions. However, one discussion in particular revealed something that’s worth sharing.

In a column I won’t cite, just because I don’t want to give the writer more exposure than he deserves, I got into a discussion with someone who was vehemently pro-life. He or she was the kind of person who would probably force women who’ve had abortions to tattoo a fetus to their forehead to shame them for their choice.

Debating with people like this is usually an exercise in futility, right up there with teaching quantum mechanic to a chimp. However, I tried to dig a little deeper into this person’s rhetoric. I asked them to try one of my little thought experiments, which I’m so fond of on this blog. It went like this:

Imagine that tomorrow morning, someone announced they’ve created the perfect form of contraception. It’s easy to use, it’s effective, it’s relatively cheap, it has no side-effects, and it functions in a way that ensures an egg and a sperm will never meet. No conception ever occurs. As such, no abortion ever occurs or is necessary. Would you, a pro-life advocate, be in favor of making this contraception mandatory for all of breeding age in order to end abortion once and for all?

This is one of those thought experiments that’ll either derail a conversation or just get you blocked. It’s also an experiment that has the possibility to become relevant one day because the technology to perfectly control our fertility, male and female, may very well emerge in our lifetime.

It’s a possibility that I find exposes a dirty secret in the pro-life crowd. While there are a few who genuinely believe that abortion constitutes the murder of an innocent life, there is also a sizable chunk that is vehemently anti-sex. They see abortion as just a means for people to have consequence-free sex and that doesn’t sit well with them.

I can understand why, especially from religiously-motivated arguments. Anything that leads to consequence-free sex is going to get the clergy of any religion up in arms. However, that’s another issue altogether. We expect religion to oppose anything that might distract people from giving them tax-free donations. It’s the other chunk of the pro-life crowd that are a bit more transparent with their sentiment.

For this particular person, however, I actually got a pretty insightful response. Not surprisingly, this person was not at all in favor of mandating that this perfect contraception be mandated as a means to end abortion entirely. Initially, I thought this exposed the person as one of those repressive anti-sex types. I turned out to be wrong. This was the person’s justification:

Once you start limiting peoples freedom for their own good you get slavery.

This weren’t against the use perfect contraception. He or she even said they’d gladly take it. However, the idea of forcing people to use it to end abortion just exchanged one immoral act for another. Regardless of how you may feel about abortion, I think we can all relate and respect that sentiment to some degree.

I tried probing a little deeper. I compared making perfect contraception mandatory to requiring seatbelts. Apparently, this person was against that as well. He or she did not make an exception between contraception and seatbelts. These are the exact words from the response.

So the answer to your last two questions is, of course it is immoral to force people to wear seat belts and forcing people to stop at red light is for the protection of others.

I really couldn’t go farther than that. I think the person effectively made their point. This person is an ardent libertarian. Coercion of any kind, even the kind that would end abortion completely, is every bit as immoral.

Again, I can really understand that. This person showed some consistency in their rhetoric, which is somewhat rare on the internet, as anyone who ever visited a Twilight message board can attest. I admit it was somewhat refreshing because most don’t even attempt the thought experiment. This person made an effort and for that, he or she has my respect.

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