It just occurred to me what it means to take some of the right wing’s wackier policies literally.

Among their most visceral phobias are gay marriage and “illicit” sex.

Across the nation, “abstinence only” policies are increasingly mandatory, and they are the official policy of the George Bush administration (beginning with his term as governor of Texas). Christian groups are increasingly outspoken against sex of whatever form – outside lifelong monogamous heterosexual marriage, that is. (Among other crusades, “abstinence” is the major part of the administration’s official policy on AIDS in Africa: they believe it is their business to tell adult Africans whether they may or may not have sex, not just legal minors in the US public school system. There is also some sort of weird vengeance movement afoot to nullify Michael Schiavo’s Catholic marriage to his long-time fiance, apparently as revenge for having thwarted the right wing’s designs on his late wife’s healthcare.) The point is clear enough: nobody falls outside their authority to dictate – mostly to prohibit – sexual behavior, and only religiously-defined marriages within the conceptual purview of their understanding of the “meaning” of those marriages is a valid context for sex.

And, of course, gay marriage is right out – no way, nohow, no circumstances.

Add them up and it means that the official policy on sexual relationships for adult gays – throughout their entire lives, no matter the circumstances or the relationships in which they find themselves – held by the evangelistic right wing is identical with that held by the Catholic church hierarchy: no sexual behavior of any kind whatsoever at any point in one’s life is allowable or deserving of respect or protection. (Note that this is Scalia’s position as a matter of Constitutional law.) You can only have sex if you are married, and gays may not get married – in both cases because the right wing wants it that way.

Aside from the perverse psycho-sexual discomfort and simple bigotry this betrays, its arrogance is breathtaking. It is astounding to imagine that other people’s most personal life choices are regarded as fair game for intrusive and coercive policymaking based upon nothing more than one’s own personal preference. Of course I realize how naive it is to say this – this is exactly the way policy has been made for decades, if not centuries, in the areas of heterosexual sex, birth control, abortion, gay sex, inter-racial sex or marriage, and on any number of other issues. It is obvious how much “irrational animus” drives the anti-marriage movement. It is surely no discovery of mine to carry those policies to their logical conclusions.

But when you consider the breadth of breathless Nosey-Parkerism the right wing considers its god-given mandate, the results can sometimes leave you reeling. The United States of America has, as its official foreign policy on one of the most significant international crises the world has ever faced, the position that adult Africans must be encouraged not to have sex? The US has any policy on whether adult citizens of other countries should or should not have sex? Who dreams up this crap? Who goes into foreign policy with the intent of regulating the sex lives of adult citizens of other nations? And finally, is there not a hint of “sex-crazed African savages” stereotyping caught up in this policy? At the same time, why is it the government’s business whether its gay citizens have sex or not? Why is it the government’s business, at all, whether or how anyone has sex? Is this an appropriate exercise of constitutional democracy in a liberty-loving country? Should we not ask why the functionaries of our government – in the midst of a budgetary crisis of their own making, a looming Social Security shortfall they are actively deepening, and the never-ending quagmire of what they persist in calling a “war” – are spending time and money dictating people’s sex lives?