In Extremis Santorum

No sooner had the news hit that Rick Santorum had finished in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in Iowa than the sexual liberation emergency alarm system sirens began going off throughout the land. A columnist at Salon.com screeched that "Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control." At National Review, another columnist shrieked back that No he isn't. In fact, Santorum himself screamed (okay, not literally) to Bill O'Reilly that he didn't want to illegalize contraception:

Someone asked me if the states have the right to do it? Yes. They have the right to do it, they shouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t vote for it if they did. It doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to do it. As you know, Bill, you’re a Catholic, [the] Catholic Church teaches contraceptive [sic] is something you shouldn’t do. So when I was asked the question on contraception I said I didn’t support it.

It's easy to get lost in all the "its," isn't it? The first 'it' presumably refers to a hypothetical state attempt to outlaw birth control, which I take Santorum to mean that if it happened in his state, he would oppose the effort. The second 'it' probably refers to the use of such control, which Santorum doesn't support because of his Church's prohibition of 'it.' (To which the Catholic Bill responded that this prohibition was "made by men," bringing to Santorum's face a look of incredulity but no interruption.) The third 'it' is the 1965 Griswold decision itself, which Santorum does not support, believing that the Supreme Court made up a new constitutional right to privacy not previously known to exist outside the emanations of the penumbras which point to 'it.'

Now, a president cannot outlaw anything all by his lonesome, so I presume what really exercises the liberals at Salon and the HuffandPuff Post is not that he could actually effect such a ban but that he thinks it would be a good idea. They wish to marginalize him by characterizing him as an extremist. No right-thinking American of any political persuasion can possibly believe that artificial birth control is anything but a blessing to the integrity of the American family, and especially to the hopes for happiness of all those poor people whose rates of reproduction left Margaret Sanger aghast.

But I think they're misreading Santorum. If they really want to take advantage of this political opportunity, they should label him not only 'extremist' but also 'hypocrite.' He thinks Griswold was wrong, but he wouldn't vote to outlaw contraception? We already know that he thinks Roe v Wade wrong and would vote for any restriction on abortion up to and including its eradication. Why not the same with the use of contraception, which many moral conservatives have argued bears a straight line, cause and effect relationship to the abortion liberty? Charles Cooke, the NR columnist, offers Santorum assistance with his rationale: that "to acknowledge that one’s legal opinions can be separate from one’s moral convictions" is not hypocritical but sophisticated; that "Santorum’s true position demonstrates that it is eminently possible to argue for public policy that yields outcomes of which one disapproves;" that, as "William F. Buckley Jr. famously argued, what 'is legal is not necessarily reputable;'" and finally, that, "while he may well believe that the states have the right to ban condoms and sodomy, that is not the same thing as advocating that they do so."

Voila, some might say, problem solved, while others, like me, see only a perpetuation of the hypocrisy, since separating "one's legal opinions...from one's moral convictions" sounds like what we conservatives say about liberal Catholics all the time, and inclines us to ask, "Why can't we ban condoms and sodomy? I mean, we did ban them once upon a time. What's so obviously legally and morally superior about the current, and very recent, state of affairs?

As suddenly as Mr. Santorum rose to prominence, he may quickly fall back into obscurity. But just for fun, let's pretend that his ascencion continues, and that his nomination for the presidency pans out. He will then find himself in debate with Mr. Obama, assisted by his sycophants among the media moderators, who will ask Santorum the following question:

"Senator Santorum, it has been noted in various press reports that you believe the Griswold and Roe v Wade cases were wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. Is it true, as some of these reports claim, that you would advocate outlawing American women's access to all forms of artificial birth control, and to their right to abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity, and thus that your desire is to meddle in the very private lives of American citizens - to bring into their bedrooms, no less, the police power of the American government? Your opponent in this election, most Americans, and even some in your own party, say that these are very extreme, even draconian positions, verging on the totalitarian. How would you respond?

The question is mildly loaded, but that's only what Santorum expects. On the supposition that he would not immediately run for butt-cover as he did with O'Reilly, he might try the following response, which I offer free of charge. He will need either to memorize it or use note cards. A teleprompter is acceptable:

Totalitarian? What an absurd charge. Contraception was once illegal in this country and no one called us totalitarian, but rather a nation striving to meet our virtuous ideals. Abortion was once illegal in this country, and no one called us totalitarian or draconian, but rather a nation of exceptionally humane concern, in our love for those least among us, and who remain most dear to us, even while hidden in their mothers' wombs. There was a time when the fruit of the womb was our future. No longer. Now our future ends with ourselves, for we have granted that self, not God, power over the life and death of the most innocent. If I am draconian, how would you characterize my opponent, President Obama, who would not vote to pass a born alive infants protection act when he served as senator from Illinois? He gave what he hoped were good reasons, about which he was later found to be dissembling. President Obama did not feel it necessary to compel, by law, medical personnel to try to save the lives of babies who survive abortions at whatever stage of development. Yet I'm draconian.

As to my "extremism" regarding contraception, let me repent by singing its manifold praises, and delineating in brief what it has done for us. Between 1965, the year of the Griswold decision, and 1980, the divorce rate in this country more than doubled. How can this be, since the justices based their decision on a wish to enhance the stability of marriage? How can it be that no sooner do the judges start enhancing than marriages start falling apart? It couldn't be - could it? - that once you make cheating easier, a bunch of people might decide to give it a try. Let me also praise the increased incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which, among the black population, rose from 26.3 percent in 1965 to 69 percent in 2000, and among the white population from 4.0 percent to 27 per cent. But don't worry about all those children born into fatherless families.. Most will adjust, some by joining gangs, others by repeating the pattern in their own lives. And some will be aborted to preserve the mother's life, health, financial viability, and her figure in a swimsuit, though that seems to me a rather "draconian" way of coping with the difficulty.

At first thought, a premarital pregnancy might seem to signal a failure to use contraception, and often it does. (People are foolish, aren't they?) But back in our extremist days, premarital sex often meant exactly that - sex before marriage. It doesn't anymore. Back then, a girl would ask of her one true love, "What happens if I get pregnant?" And he'd reply, "Why, I'll marry you, of course." And often he did. How do I know? The leftyish Brookings Institution tells me so: "Until the early 1970s, shotgun marriage was the norm in premarital sexual relations." Now, we're lucky if the question even comes up, because the girl is as likely to be having sex with someone she hardly knows as with her future husband, which makes what they're doing not really sex before marriage but sex before morning.

Does this mean that there has, on the whole, been an increase in the percentage of young single people, from teenagers on up, engaging in premarital sex? Just based on my observations of human nature, I'd bet real money the answer is yes. If you make it easy for people possessed of poor impulse control not to control their impulses, my guess is they won't. And if we bother to look it up, we find out that "The percentage of white women married from 1960-65 who were virgins was 43," which is, I admit, not a good figure from an extremist's point of view, but then you'll be comforted to know that in our more normal times the figure has dropped to 14%. I forgot to mention that there was another Supreme Court decision extending the contraceptive liberty first to single people and then to very young single people, even to minors, and without their parents' permission. But don't be alarmed. This is just normal behavior. Why? Because only 35% of the people in the country think that such sex is always wrong. About 75% have sex before marriage.

I sometimes wonder what our country could have been thinking back in those days of Comstock laws and illegal contraception. It was illegal under those laws because contraception was considered one of several "obscene" materials that were not allowed as legitimate items of commerce or education. Those laws must have been the relics of Luther, Calvin and the Catholic Church, all of whom thought the frustration of fertility an abomination. (Those entities still do; it’s only individual Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics who do not.) I wonder what those judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court were thinking when they overruled a lower court in 1939 that had tried to nullify the prosecution of two doctors and a nurse who ran a birth control clinic. Well, they were thinking that "The police power could be employed 'in aid of what is ... held by the prevailing morality to be necessary to the public welfare'." And further:

"[w]hatever may be our own opinion regarding the general subject, it is not for us to say that the Legislature might not reasonably hold that the artificial limitation of even legitimate child-bearing would be inimical to the public welfare and, as well, that use of contraceptives , and assistance therein or tending thereto, would be injurious to public morals; indeed, it is not precluded from considering that not all married people are immune from temptation or inclination to extra-marital indulgence , as to which risk of illegitimate pregnancy is a recognized deterrent deemed desirable in the interests of morality."

In fact, the extremist Connecticut court "quoted with approval" a similar case from Massachusetts in which it was made clear that the "plain purpose behind restrictions on birth control" was (prepare yourself):

"...to protect purity, to preserve chastity, to encourage continence and self-restraint, to defend the sanctity of the home, and thus to engender ... a virile and virtuous race of men and women."

My, such language issuing from a court in our land, such deference to the legislature. But don't worry. It's all gone now. The Court rules and Griswold is revered precedent. You get to keep your birth control. We - the vast majority of Americans - have separated sex from the having of children and from the confines of marriage, and yet some of us bother to complain about this newly respectable, sterile concoction called "same-sex" marriage. We have lent lust a new legitimacy, and yet we complain that with a click of a mouse our children can access its pornographic simulation in living color and high definition, all the while maintaining our intellectual self-respect by abhorring censorship. We hold in high regard our notions of a right to sexual autonomy, but are horrified to find that our sons and daughters are living in sin at best, are sluts, rogues and cads at worst. Our national womb is barren, yet we complain that our Social Security taxes might be raised, our retirement age postponed, and the whole program might go bust because there won't be enough children around to foot the bill. We have turned our bodies into amusement parks, the romping grounds for a society of playful hedonists whose understanding of what sex is really for got stuck at the stage of juvenile delinquency. We'd get hauled into court if the judges weren't in on the scam.

So, yes, if all that's normal, I'm an extremist. If I were president and the congress sent me a bill proposing to outlaw contraception, I'd sign it. But we also know that that will never happen. We love our contraception too much because we love our childless sex. We are a dying society, soon to be rotting in our graves. On our tombstone someone will inscribe an ancient wisdom, that the circumstances of sex ought to be swallowed up in the permanence of love, that it is a sacred thing because so too is the life that comes from it. But it won't matter because when you're dead it's too late to learn.

But be of good cheer and vote for me anyway in November. I may be an extremist, but whatever you get from me can't be any worse than what you've got now.

He won't get elected after giving this speech, but it will have the benefit of consistency, and he will be able to go home with his principles intact.