In a move to show their commitment
to valuing overprivileged weeniehood above talent, the New York Times
has hired Atlantic writer and blogger Ross Douthat as their new conservative
editorial writer.  He begins in mid-April, and Douthat watchers
wait with bated breath to see if the new job will incline him to back
away from some of his more colorfully false beliefs about the world
of people who aren’t filled with fear and loathing when we contemplate
sex.  Luckily for us, his blogging at the Atlantic shows that he’s
not about to back down from entertaining wildly amusing beliefs about
the scary outside world of people who aren’t disturbed by human sexuality.   

A
recent piece about the AIDS crisis in Africa is instructive.  Douthat plays a "will he/won’t
he?" game about supporting the Pope’s insistence that condoms make
the spread of HIV worse, but in order to deflect attention from his
own weird opinions, he, well, basically insinuates that the health community
is somewhat overenthusiastic about our supposed mission to turn the
world into an unwashed, hedonistic cesspool of doing it. 

What’s more, I have a hard
time believing that the public health and foreign aid community’s longstanding
preference for condom promotion has nothing to do with ideological biases
of their own. Yes, the Catholic Church’s conservative position on sexual
morality determines which public health interventions the Vatican willing
to support, and limits the willingness of Catholic institutions to simply
follow the data wherever it leads. But what’s true of Catholics is true
of other groups as well. And when you read Epstein on how slow the AIDS
establishment was to acknowledge the importance of partner-reduction
– or when you read about Bill Gates getting booed at an international
AIDS conference when he mentioned abstinence and fidelity – it’s awfully
hard to escape the conclusion that the combination of a liberationist
view of sexual ethics and a post-colonial unwillingness to critique
existing African patterns of sexual behavior has seriously hampered
the international community’s efforts to curb the spread of HIV. 

One hopes that the editorial
staff of the New York Times doesn’t have a limit on how many false
assumptions you can build an argument off of, or Douthat’s really
going to lose that special something that gives his writing its punch. 
This paragraph packs so many in that it’s hard to pick my favorite. 
In lieu of that, I’ll just count the false assumptions underlying
this delightful musing from the Times’ new columnist. 

False Assumption #1: There’s
an "African" pattern of sexual behavior.  To be fair to
Douthat, even people who aren’t ideologically committed to dogging
on contraception make the racist mistake of thinking there’s a single
African culture that can be spoken of.  But in this context, for
reasons I’ll soon spell out, this is especially racist.  This
is like saying there’s a single standard of sexual behavior in the
Americas, except that the Americas have less cultural diversity from
Argentina to Canada.  Africa has 53 separate nations, with all
the diversity that implies.  And that’s just national diversity–obviously
different people from the same culture can have wildly different standards. 
Take Jenna Jameson and Ross Douthat, for instance. 

False Assumption #2: Westerners
are in a position to scold Africans to embrace sex-phobic, patriarchal
religious beliefs.  I’m not sure what kind of religious beliefs
Douthat thinks the single group he calls Africans holds to, but the
continent actually has no shortage of exactly the sort of religious
traditions Douthat and the Pope think will cure AIDS.  Most residents
of the continent are Christian or Muslim, so whatever religious beliefs
Douthat wants to impose appear to already be held.  Unless he’s
ready to insinuate they hold their beliefs less dearly than Westerners,
I’m not sure what his point is.  In fact, the reason the Pope’s
comments caused alarm with the non-doofus community is that we know
that many people in AIDS-ravaged regions are Catholics and will listen
to the Pope, putting themselves in danger.  

On the flip side, I have to
point out that even if you wanted to get on the scold train, what sort
of authority do Westerners bring to the table?  Douthat is usually
in a snit because Westerners don’t obey the miserable sexual norms
he’d have us obey, which means that scolding others to live by those
standards would make us automatic hypocrites. The unquestioning assumption
that we have something to tell them about sexual chastity standards
is rooted in ugly stereotypes about the promiscuity of people from different
racial backgrounds. 

False Assumption #3: That
those chastity standards aren’t dangerous in and of themselves. 
"Partner reduction" is just Douthat’s way of trying to use some
science-y language to decorate his same old beliefs about how a very
strict definition of monogamy should be followed by everyone at all
times.  The straightjacket model where two virgins marry, never
cheat, and stay married no matter what.  Using fancy language doesn’t
change that this is the same old Christian right nonsense that has no
relationship to people’s actual health and welfare needs, regardless
of their national identity.  The chastity model is not supporting
your health needs if it keeps you inside an abusive marriage, makes
your sex life so dull you cheat out of desperation, or causes you to
forgo safer sex practices that expose you to disease (not all partners
are faithful!) or unintended pregnancy.   It also neglects
to acknowledge that it’s much healthier for people to feel free to
leave relationships that are making them unhappy for relationships that
make them happy.  Stress and depression caused by unhappy relationships
are health issues, too. 

False assumption #4: The
pro-choice community is the inverse of the anti-choice community in
every way.  Douthat appears to think that the audience that
booed Gates did so because they’re so ideologically committed to screwing
around and racking up high numbers of sex partners that  they’d
sacrifice people’s health for this goal.  He has to assume this,
because the anti-contraception crew has made it clear that they prioritize
stopping people from using contraception over lives.  You see the
same kind of inversion myth when it comes to abortion.  Because
anti-choicers oppose any pregnancy ending in abortion, they assume incorrectly
that pro-choicers wish every pregnancy to end in abortion.   

Truth is, there’s no ideological
commitment to slutting it up in the health activist community. 
Just as pro-choicers support your right to have or not have a baby,
the health activist community generally supports your right to be or
not be in a permanent relationship with any one person, depending on
your personal needs.  If you meet the love of your life in high
school and never even think about sleeping with anyone else, I’ll
be the first in line to send you flowers.  But that’s just not
realistic for most people.  If there’s any ideological commitment
to detect here, it’s the commitment to being realistic about how people
really are so you can help real people where they’re at, instead of
setting impossible standards and then just letting the majority of people
who can’t meet them suffer.  

False Assumption #5: That
dangling out this juicy accusation will distract us from the fact that
you’re supporting the Pope in his anti-condom statements, though you’ll
never come right out and say it, instead using insinuation and misdirection
to make his point.  Dude, we noticed.  Your opinion about
the advisability of condom use came through loud and clear.  You’re
against it, probably for the same reason you’re
grossed out by women who use the pill.