Salon hates Catholicism the way vegans hate meat – loudly and ad nauseam. It’s latest anti-Catholic screed comes courtesy of one Valerie Tarico, who lists “15 Sexual Hangups we can Blame on the Catholic Church.”
Yep. It seems the “old men running the Vatican” don’t swing like they should, and they’re to blame for even enlightened cool kids like Tarico being “infected with noxious ideas that come straight from the Ancient Near East and Medieval Europe by way of the Church.”
According to Tarico, “The Catholic Church is obsessed with sex: who does it, when, how, with whom, and for what purpose.” So it’s a lot like modern liberalism, except that it worships God. Libs cut out the Middle Man and just worship sex. But back to Tarico’s argument, such as it is.
The Church “knows that forbidding something we crave—making it taboo—can make the craving even stronger. It’s the perfect setup for an institution trafficking in guilt and redemption.” Sneaky Papists!
“If you want to live by your own values when it comes to sex,” Tarico wrote, “it might help to ask yourself which of these ideas and messages have gotten inside you and need to be gotten out.”
Tarico really wants you to live by her values, which, once you’ve purged those diabolical Catholic notions, will amount to get freaky with who or what you like, when you like as often as you like.
Her 15 hangups are entirely predictable and not worth addressing. Any kind of governor on sexual behavior is either an Iron Age relic or an anti-woman plot.
“The Church is terrified of empowered women who take charge of their own bodies and destiny, and men who cherish creative equality, and queer folk whose mere existence invalidates archaic binaries.” (Yeah, I saw the Archaic Binaries open for Tom Petty back in the 80s.)
And what Tarico and the rest of the Salon gang are terrified of is anyone who believes in traditional sexual morality and actually practices sexual restraint. Christianity teaches that humans can be more than the sum of their animal urges. The Church of the Sexual Self teaches the opposite, so the existence of even one dissenter shows it for the hollow edifice it is.
