How sex drives the religious extremists batty.
---
Sex, Lies, and Moral Panics
By Cindy Kuzma, TeenWire
Posted on September 28, 2005, Printed on September 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/26131/
Don't panic, but if your child is a college student, she or he is likely
to be having lots of casual sex with a random string of partners. That's
according to Dr. Joe S. McIlhaney Jr., founder and chairman of the
Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, TX, who recently warned
Washington Times readers and parents of the "sexual chaos" on college
campuses today. Similarly, Loyola College in Maryland theology professor
Vigen Guroian compares college to a sex carnival in a January article
for ChristianityToday.com titled "Dorm Brothel."
Their exaggerated rhetoric and fear-mongering strategy seem designed to
inspire a moral panic. Sociologists define a moral panic as mass
hysteria generated by exploiting people's worst fears, often for the
sake of an underlying political agenda.
For example, remember the furor in the 1980s over the supposedly
widespread satanic ritual abuse of children by daycare workers and
parents? It turned out to be a series of hysterical events that have
since been entirely discredited -- although some of the accused remain
in prison.
Moral panics have taken place throughout history. From 1730 to 1731, for
example, scores of homosexuals were burned alive in a sex panic that
rose out of the fear that God would punish "sodomy" by allowing the
North Sea to break through the dikes that defend Holland. Two hundred
and fifty trials were held, and 75 men and boys were executed --
frequently burned alive.
Every moral panic has a few essential elements, most of which were first
outlined and named in British sociologist Stanley Cohen's 1972 book Folk
Devils and Moral Panics. One or more groups -- researchers call them
"moral entrepreneurs" -- start the panic when they fear a threat to
prevailing cultural values. For example, the civil rights and sexual
liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s, which dramatically altered
society's rules about sex, race, and gender, inspired a fearful moral
panic among many conservatives who believed the outcome of these
movements would be the total dissolution of western civilization.
Driven by anxiety, the moral entrepreneur identifies a person or group
that embodies that threat -- the "folk devil." Mary deYoung, a professor
of sociology at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, says, "The
goal of the moral panic is then to identify, restrain, and punish those
folk devils." In the Middle Ages, social outsiders, such as religious
non-conformists, lepers, homosexuals, and Jews, were commonly considered
folk devils. Centuries later, the list of groups that inspire moral
panic remains frighteningly similar.
For example, when President Reagan took office in the 1980s, he began to
focus on what his administration perceived as a growing threat to the
moral order -- teen pregnancy. The extreme right then identified one of
its folk devils: the older man who supposedly victimized and impregnated
the innocent teen girl, writes author and professor Carolyn Cocca.
Fueled by exaggeration and misinterpreted statistics -- there was little
evidence that teen pregnancy was a crisis perpetrated by older,
predatory men -- this moral panic eventually culminated in harsher
statutory rape laws in many states. In one California case, a
22-year-old was prosecuted when his 17-year-old fiancee went to the
doctor for her first checkup, which revealed that she was pregnant. (The
two were married by the time he went to court, Cocca writes.) More
recently, a 17-year-old boy was sentenced to 17 years in prison for
having oral sex with a 15-year-old-boy.
Throughout its panic about older guys preying on teen women and making
them pregnant, the administration largely ignored policies that might
actually prevent teen pregnancy, such as comprehensive, medically
accurate sex education and expanded access to birth control.
Truth aside, the image of a slick, manipulative older man lying in wait
for his young prey is compelling; sex sells, and legislators were
clearly buying it. Numerous other sex-related issues -- including
abortion and same-sex marriage -- have provoked moral panics in more
recent decades. Moral entrepreneurs often focus on sexual issues because
they stand in proxy for deeper structural and ideological issues, like
gender and power, that test the boundaries of what is considered normal,
deYoung says.
"Sexuality evokes very strong emotions, whether it's arousal, anxiety,
ambivalence, discomfort, or a mixture of all of those things," says
Deborah Stearns, associate professor of psychology at Montgomery College
in Maryland. "It's just one of those things that it's hard to be neutral
about." A
At the end of the 20th century, the rise of the extreme religious right
in the United States fueled particularly high-anxiety conflicts about
sex.
These public furors tend to ignore the subtle nuances or root causes of
social problems. In the case of abortion and same-sex marriage, moral
panic has led to the passage of laws that restrict both practices, while
ignoring underlying issues like family planning and family stability
that have real a impact on the number of unintended pregnancies and the
general health of our society.
"Moral panics about sex don't often deal with issues like the
availability of contraceptives to people based on their economic level
or racial background," deYoung says. "They don't deal with the
underlying complexity of abortion or teen pregnancy. They're a
remarkable diversion from very real problems that affect human beings,
and they can divert attention and resources away from those problems."
Little research has been done on the prevention of moral panics, and no
one has discovered the magic formula to predict where and when they will
arise.
"Once you've been identified and demonized as a folk devil, your power
and credibility diminish, and it becomes much harder to fight back,"
deYoung says, noting that the momentum of a moral panic can build
quickly. "Being proactive and rational and tied to facts and data is the
best antidote."
In other words, ask your daughter about her experience at college before
sending her to the nunnery.
---
http://www.alternet.org/rights/26131/
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
.
|
