Use a condom, fight the patriarchy

This week in the New York Times Magazine, an article by Russell Shorto called "Contra-Contraception" details the growing anti-contraception movement in this country. While I was frightened by the article's implications for women's reproductive health, the teen birth rate, and our rights of reproductive choice, I was even more stunned by the clear subtext of this and other Religious Right movements. Under the rubric of "family values" (what a terrible thing that we have let the Religious Right define "family values" as basically only involving sexual morality instead of being about creating justice in our communities) they're reinstating the patriarchy. Check out this choice quotation from the article:

... she [Leslee Unruh, leader of the abstinence-only movement] sponsors "Purity Balls," which fathers attend with their teenage daughters. "We think the relationship between fathers and their daughters is the key," she told me. At the purity ball, a father gives a "purity ring" to his daughter — a symbol of the promise she makes to maintain her virginity for her future husband. Then, during her marriage ceremony, the daughter gives the ring to her new husband. Abstinence Clearinghouse's Web site advertises the purity ball as an event "which celebrates your 'little girl' and her gift of sexual purity."

Sound familiar? Dad controls his daughter's worth, measured by her virginity, until she gets married, and then transfers it to her husband. Women count as human beings only because their viriginity creates value in the "market" and because they are associated with a man. Women's autonomy and ability to make choices about their own sexual expression dissappear. Scary, right? There are apparently no "Purity Balls" for young men where their mothers give them rings.

No matter what the Religious Right may tell us, "Family Values" are NOT about sexual morality-- they are about returning to a time when men controlled women, when women's identities were reduced to their market value as childbearers and sexual objects and were subsumed into either their husband's identity or their father's.

I also noticed this subtext in another NYT Magazine article by Shorto from June 19, 2005, "What's Their Real Problem with Gay Marraige? It's the Gay Part." It was clear from that article that one of the major reasons gay marraige is threatening to the Religious Right is that it threatens their vision of what marraige is all about-- traditional gender roles being enacted in a relationship with an unequal power dynamic. If there are two men or two women in a relationship, who dominates who? Who controls the domestic sphere and who the public sphere? Who "wears the pants"? It messes up their whole idea of what marraige means.

Check out this excerpt from that article:

. . . the structure, with its architectural signals of tradition and power, was built in 1996 for its tenant: the Family Research Council, the conservative public policy center. . . . Beneath a large wall-mounted plaque emblazoned with the group's slogan -- Defending Family, Faith and Freedom -- and flanking a rather ferocious-looking American eagle statue are two large, museum-quality glass cases. The one on the left contains a complete groom's outfit -- tux, tie, fluffy shirt -- and the one on the right holds a bridal gown and all the trimmings, right down to the dried bouquet. Color snapshots of happy wedding parties festoon both display cases, and the back wall of the bridal unit features verses from the book of Genesis, King James version:
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. . . . And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Protecting civil rights for Gays and Lesbians is extremely important, as is protecting women's reproductive freedoms. However, the part of this trend that is really wigging me out is the insidious return to traditional gender roles and the oppression of women in the most systematic, deep-seated, and personal contexts. Lest we forget that we've won our rights recently. . .

Does this scare anyone else?