It seems the religious right is on a push to have as many kids born as possible, even if it kills the woman. I am not sure why? The went after same sex marriage claiming they couldn’t be real because they did not produce offspring / children. Now any childless marriage is not real because no children being born. Is that because less and less people are religious in the US. Are they worried that soon they will lose too much money in the collection plates if they don’t get the US to over populate? Do they need more sacrificial lambs to the altar of their god? And why do these people obsess with the marriages / sex lives of other people so much. Are they jealous? I just don’t get it. Hugs
Photo: ShutterstockIn July, the Supreme Court of Sweden ruled in a landmark case that a relationship doesn’t have to involve sex to be considered significant. In a case involving an asexual couple in which one of the two parties is deceased, the court emphasized that a relationship should be characterized by a close community in personal terms that normally occurs between married people and that sex doesn’t have to be involved for that to happen. It was a significant win for asexual people in Sweden.
However, in America, a darker reality exists for asexuals even on this Ace Week, as religious nationalist groups are actively trying to block the Respect for Marriage Act from passing in the Senate. Not only is the religious right seeking to ban gay marriage once again, but they have also signaled a future attack against asexual marriages.
As obtained by Politico, some 83 Christian nationalist groups (led by the Alliance Defending Freedom) released a letter in July imploring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to block the Respect for Marriage Act, because marriage equality somehow opens the door to further immorality, like platonic marriages.
“H.R. 8404 would require federal recognition of any one state’s definition of marriage without any parameters whatsoever. This would include plural marriages, time-bound marriages, open marriages, marriages involving a minor or relative, platonic marriages…”
It’s impossible to ignore calling out the perfidious groomer libel conservatives keep trying that is recycled garbage from the 1970s. However, we cannot ignore the religious right calling for platonic (asexual) marriages to be banned also!
There is an abundance of evidence to show asexual marriages are under threat, also.
The Ace Couple, an asexual married couple who runs a podcast discussing topics related to asexuality, did a four-episode series on the 83 religious groups who signed onto the letter to McConnell asking to block the Respect for Marriage Act.
Each group essentially states in no uncertain terms that asexuality is unacceptable to their religion and should be banned from having equal marriage rights.
The Witherspoon Institute, a right-wing think tank founded by Robert P. George (who founded the anti-LGBTQ hate group American Principles Project), came out with an op-ed entitled “Why We Should Push Back against Platonic Marriage.” The editorial’s author, Alan J. Hawkins, laments the idea of asexual marriages existing because he feels allowing asexual marriages will lead to a “marriage inferno.”
I think it matters deeply that we continue to define marriage as a sexual union. It matters because the continual pruning of marriage reduces its core purpose to something that does not really set it apart from other committed relationship possibilities. This ongoing thinning of marriage’s meaning leaves less and less of the concrete conjugal elements that can bind marriages together. Also, it seriously erodes the legal justification for the benefits, responsibilities, and protections with which the law endows marriage.
The Witherspoon Institute is not alone in this thinking.
No group stated this more than the Heritage Foundation, which wrote a 2016 article, “The Obligations of Family Life: A Response to Modern Liberalism,” in which they vocalized their hatred of autonomy and choosing not to have sex and procreate.
Autonomy has within itself the seeds of ever-greater radicalism because coercion can be given an ever-broader definition, beginning with physical coercion but ending with any external or natural consideration shaping one’s “choice.” Truly autonomous choices, on this ever more radical understanding, must be made without the influence of imposed habits, human reason, education, social pressure, legal pressure, cultural expectations, or any other external demand. Autonomous choices spring from within the individual, lest they be traceable to something oppressive or alien to the individual. One wonders, therefore, whether such choices are made in consideration of anything but selfishness.
The religious right views exercising freedom of choice as nothing more than being selfish. They view choosing individual happiness as somehow wicked and evil, and they want to remove the right to choose from us all, forcing us into sex on their terms.
It’s weird to me seeing the religious right come right out and attack sexless marriages.
Growing up in a purity culture right in the heart of the Bible Belt, all I heard as a youth were messages about abstaining from sex, with pastors and Christian leaders imperatively saying, “Don’t have sex! Don’t even think about it!”
Now, the commandment has apparently flipped, with the religious right commanding everyone to have sex.
The religious right states in no uncertain terms that anyone not entering into a sexual, procreative relationship should not be allowed to marry.
This has large ramifications on asexual people—many of whom desire companionship and love— as well as on asexual married couples who depend on the benefits marriage provides. The Respect for Marriage Act would be a vital help to asexual couples who now find themselves in the crosshairs of the culture wars.
Scottie's Playtime 
Scottie, the hypocrisy of statements like these is overwhelming. In short the authors of these comments are saying – don’t tread on me and tell me how to live, but make sure other folks are following what I believe in. You can’t take my gun, but you can make Susie and Bob Smith have sex – but, they better not enjoy it or that is a sin. Keith
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Hello Keith. It is stunning how clueless these people are in their intense bigotry. To hurt gay couples they would destroy not only gay couples marriages but they would destroy the marriages of straight couples that have no children. And Keith I find their focus on children very creepy considering that not a day goes by that I don’t have one to four stories of molestation of children by religious figures from one faith or another. At the same time that the right is attacking drag queens for sexualizing children and teachers for being groomers no mention of the actual molestation happening by youth pastors / church leaders. Hugs
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Scottie, this whole story feels like a blend of Handmaid’s tale and 1984. Even Atwood and Orwell could not have envisioned a plot where Big Brother’s storm troopers would burst into a married household arresting them for not having enough unprotected sex. Keith
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I have no clue what this is about. I still have what I’ve always thought was a common-sense question about this (I asked it so many times in the years before Obergefell was decided.) How on earth do they truly know what two people do behind their own doors in their own privacy? And will they submit to the same sort of observation (surveillance!) they’ll have to use to enforce their policies?
It sorta goes back to that thing about conservatism; there’s always got to be an out-group who is bound but not protected by conservative laws supported by those who are ‘protected’ without being bound. It’s wrong.
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I should have said “…what two or more people do…”. I apologize to anyone I may have omitted in my commentary; I’m angrier than it may read, and got careless. Again, I’m sorry and will be more careful.
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Hello Ali. I suggest you look up Lawrence v. Texas (2003). A jealous former boyfriend of one of the men called police claiming a man with a gun was in the house threatening the people there. The police broke in and found the two guys in bed having sex. They arrested them. But I get your point. I always wondered why these people want so badly to know what people are doing with their sexual parts and with how / how. That sounds icky to me. Some religious leaders spend more time thinking of gay sex than gay people do. But again I find their current focus on children to be creepy. Hugs
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Ah-OK. I recall that now. I was dumbfounded that they were arrested, but as things have changed, unchanged, changed some more and now may unchange back to the Crusades, I totally spaced that one out.
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These. People. Are. Nuts.
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Nuts who are dangers to themselves and others, and should be supervised!
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Hello Nan. I agree. But they are getting lots of donations and managing to push their views on the country. Hugs
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How soon after they get their way on this than they begin to push that only those marriages that are preformed by their rights are valid.
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Hello Muttpupdad. One state tried that trick. The republicans put forward a bill that would have made illegal all marriages not done in a church by the leader of that church. Civil marriages wouldn’t be allowed. The idea happened right after Obergefell. But it was dropped when some churches started to do same sex marriages. I just never have understood the hate these people have about this issue. It simply doesn’t effect them at all. Hugs
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