Sex and Politics

Dagmar Herzog is a historian of sexuality, who in 2005 published a history of sex in modern Germany: Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (deutsch: Die Politisierung der Lust: Sexualitaet in der deutsche Geschichte des 20. Jahrhundert). In this important work, the professor at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City presented a complex view of sexuality during the Nazi period in Germany.  The Nazis combined a brutal suppression of homosexuality and of any sexual relations with non-Aryans with an open licentiousness when it came to propagating the Volksgemeinschaft. She traces the development of sexual attitudes in Germany from the repressive and prudish 1950’s, through the open rebellion of the 1960’s to the disillusionment of the 1970’s and presents some ideas for how the interpretation of the Holocaust both influenced and was influenced by sexual norms.

In an article in the Tageszeitung, Professor Herzog turns her attention to the political landscape in the US, and how sex is influencing the midterm elections. The key to the Republican Party’s success, according to Herzog, is its endorsement of the repressive sexual stance of the evangelical Christian movement. The Republicans stand for sexual abstinence of the unmarried; sex is only permissible (through vaginal penetration) between a (male) husband and (female) wife ("Penis in Vagina, liebevoll in der Ehe"). This strict insistence on heterosexual sex between married couples was combined with a demonization of homosexuals.  The spectre of "Gay Marriage" drove many evangelical Christians to the polls in 2004 to vote for George W. Bush, who promised to amend the US Constitution to prevent same-sex marriage.

What has thrown this (un)holy alliance of right-wing Republicans and evangelicals into disarray this election cycle is the Mark Foley scandal: a Republican congressman was discovered to have been preying on teenaged boys.

" Plötzlich hatte diese Partei einen wenn nicht sexuell kriminellen, so doch sexualmoralisch nicht gerade sauberen Mann in ihren Reihen."

The evangelicals were scandalized and demoralized. The Republican leaders know they have no chance of winning without the evangelical voters, and so they have been using sex in their political ads, accusing Democratic candidates of "advancing the Gay agenda", or, in the case of the African-American senate candidate Harold Ford in Tennessee, using nude white female actresses to imply a sexual liaison between races (abhorrent to southern evangelicals).

Professor Herzog points out in her piece that – even if the Democrats win the election – the influence of the religious right on sexuality in America will be powerful for many years to come. For example, sex education has been eliminated from most American high schools, so teenagers are not aware of birth control options. Bush and the Republican senate appointed two ultra-right wing Supreme Court justices who are committed to overturning the abortion rights in America.

Die religiöse Rechte hat es in einem Vierteljahrhundert stetigen Ringens erreicht, dass der US-Diskurs zu sexuellen Themen gewaltig nach rechts verschoben worden ist. Auch wenn die Demokraten in zwei Wochen gewinnen: Die gegenwärtige Gesetzeslage auf Bundes- sowie Bundesstaatenebene wird schwer zu verändern sein.

Professor Herzog doesn’t discuss this, but I believe there are two consquences that flow out of the repressive sexuality that the religious right has imposed on America:

1. Repression of sexuality often leads to violent bahavior in men. This can be seen everywhere in American culture, from the glorification of the military, to violence against women such as the "battered wife syndrome" often seen in rural areas, to hate violence against gays and lesbians.
2. Repression of sexuality leads to self-destructive behavior.  The predatory actions of Congressman Foley mentioned above is but one example. Just today the leader of the largest evangelical group in the US – Pastor Ted Haggard, advisor to President Bush – was implicated in a long-term relationship with a male prostitute.  This is the same "righteous leader" who led the movement to ban same-sex marriages in Colorado.  I wrote about his church over a year ago.