You There! Get Out Of That Vagina!

Kathryn Jean Lopez explains the sexual liberation for us.

Women weren’t liberated when they were told they could act like men sexually, because anyone who lives in the real world knows that biologically and practically, such a thing is impossible. And if you doubt that, watch Jennifer Aniston’s character in He’s Just Not That into You. It was the sexual revolution that made her misery possible — living into her 40s with a guy who didn’t have to think about real commitment thanks to the Pill. If you think that’s just a movie, talk to the girls coming out of the theater after any showing. They’ll tell you it just about perfectly depicts the social scene they live with in 2009 America.

Yes, the intellectual underpinnings of Lopez's argument is a Jennifer Aniston movie. God knows what she'd come up with if she had just seen a Jack Black movie. But the point is that women can't live like men because they have a womb. It's just impossible because, uh, they have a womb. Having a womb means that you are miserable unless you live like a woman, that is, married with children. (Speaking of which, what would Lopez think about the Bundys? He works and doesn't cheat on his wife, she stays home and pretends to care for the children--they are the perfect family! But let's not get distracted.) Women can't act like men sexually because biologically they can't have sex without wanting to marry and reproduce. Practically speaking, of course, they can't have sex outside marriage because when women have sex they want to marry and have babies and you can't marry and have babies and work and have sex. Or something, it makes no sense even when I try to think like Lopez, which is quite painful.

And of course it's all the fault of the sexual revolution, which encouraged women to have sex like men, that is, when they choose to have sex. Women aren't supposed to choose to have sex. Sex is for one reason only, according to the Catholic Church; to have babies. If you have sex for any other reason you are committing a sin. The church would prefer to outlaw sex altogether, but that's not really practical, so they inserted a loophole to keep the congregations from fleeing.

Lopez links to Travis Kavulla, who explains the church's perspective.

But the Vatican’s message on preventing HIV in the first place is often muddled. So here, for the record, is a summation of the Catholic argument. It begins with the premise that while the AIDS epidemic is the result of a virus, it is as much a social as a viral illness. It is not something one catches merely by inhalation or shaking hands or other passive contact. The transmission of HIV in the vast majority of cases can be traced to an elective and deliberate act of sexual intercourse.

Thus, the Catholic logic goes, the disease should be treated essentially as a social ailment. The goal should be to promote widespread delays in becoming sexually active among young people and, when they grow up, encourage them to form committed relationships. Merely mediating a risky behavior with mechanical prophylaxis is wrong because it gives tacit permission to the sex act, and undercuts the moral authority of these larger social goals.

"The sex act." Oooooh, nasty, nasty sex. This sin is is choosing to have sex instead of controlling one's desire to have sex, since that is what God wants--to control sex. Sex is bad, you see, unless it is employed for the creation of more children.

Condom use in these seemingly “trusting” relationships is very low and, in any case, would rob them of one of their primary purposes: to produce children, the risk of HIV infection notwithstanding.

Using condoms in a marriage would prevent the couple from having children, the only reason for having sex in the first place. Therefore there is no instance in which the use of condoms would be okay. Only God can give or take a life, and humans must not interfere with His choices. Unless a man becomes ill; then he can go to the doctor and save his life, despite the illness God gave him. That's okay. Or a couple can choose to not have sex to prevent childbirth; the rhythm method is okay too. But the couple can't do anything to say no to God's desire for them to procreate ("Go forth and multiply") except say no to God when they don't want to procreate. As long as they say no to God in the One Particular Way it's okay to say no to God. Although it's not okay to say no to God regarding His Little Bundles of Blessings at all.

Got that? Me neither.

Back to the spiritual dangers of birth control, via The Virgin Lopez:

As it happens, it was the Vatican — this time, the pope himself — that warned in the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae that artificial methods of birth control would do our culture a disservice. Humans being human, Pope Paul VI said that the availability of the Pill could “open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards” and that “a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.”

Because that never, ever happened before birth control.

Yes, Lopez, if it weren't for all those sluts having sex, men and women would have to marry and have babies if they wanted to have sex. Everyone would have to be just like Kathryn Jean Lopez. Which would suit her and the pope just fine, even if the rest of us look, shake our heads, and go on with our lives.