Confessions of a closet conservative
Nov. 9th, 2009 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleI'm a liberal, right?
I'm pretty sure that I'm on solid ground saying that politically I'm very much a liberal. I manage to shock liberals by coming out with statements like "I really can't see the justification for keeping illegal consensual incest/bestiality/heroine. Where I feel less certain is in the non-governmental sphere. Increasingly I find myself thinking "well I could agree with that, but that's not a conservative position" about quite a few things. I'll go through a few.
Sex. I didn't have sex with my husband until we got married. That was due to his wishes more than mine, but I can definitely see the merits in having done this. It's nice to only have sex with someone you trust and are committed to. Someone you know will still be around if the sex results in a pregnancy. Someone whose sexual history you know. I know sex doesn't have to be a sacred transcendent expression of a spiritual bond and commitment, but why not have it as that? I can understand why other people want to engage in different life styles, but I'm not sure why a lot of people are so hostile about the idea of celibacy until marriage. I suppose it's because historically standards of virginity have been different for men and women, and they've been used to shame and hurt people, and been associated with homophobia. Still, I think maybe more people should take sex more seriously. I get the impression that more people are having regrettable sex than regretting not having sex.
So on to another topic, responsibility. I think that people should try, as much as possible, to look contribute more than they take, because some people need more than they can contribute. Put that way it sounds quite Bolshevik. It's probably a caricature of liberal individualism to characterise it as take take take.
I'm going to confess, walking through Cambridge on a Friday night makes me think that maybe the Iranians are onto something. This may be terrible hypocrisy as last Friday I got very drunk at a dinner and then had to host a pro-life event the next morning with a hang over. Having said that, I have never been so drunk as to vomit or urinate in the street. I have never been so drunk that I engaged in sexual behaviour with some random stranger. The whole idea of getting drunk without sober trusted friends to look after you nearby seems reckless. That's not victim blaming. People have fallen into the Cam and died because they were walking alone past it drunk.
Porn. I used to find burlesque and pole dancing cool. Now, not so much. I admire the aesthetics of burlesque and the abilities of some of it's performers, but it's just not my thing any more. I suppose I have increasing sympathy for a view expressed that sex like food is a good part of life. However, if people started paying to watch a a roast dinner being slowly revealed and eaten, you'd think something had gone wrong somewhere along the line. I guess a bit part of it is the way that sex has now taken on a meaning for me very much tied up to marriage which isn't conducive to watching it as a performance.
So, have I gone all the way through liberal and out the other side?
I'm pretty sure that I'm on solid ground saying that politically I'm very much a liberal. I manage to shock liberals by coming out with statements like "I really can't see the justification for keeping illegal consensual incest/bestiality/heroine. Where I feel less certain is in the non-governmental sphere. Increasingly I find myself thinking "well I could agree with that, but that's not a conservative position" about quite a few things. I'll go through a few.
Sex. I didn't have sex with my husband until we got married. That was due to his wishes more than mine, but I can definitely see the merits in having done this. It's nice to only have sex with someone you trust and are committed to. Someone you know will still be around if the sex results in a pregnancy. Someone whose sexual history you know. I know sex doesn't have to be a sacred transcendent expression of a spiritual bond and commitment, but why not have it as that? I can understand why other people want to engage in different life styles, but I'm not sure why a lot of people are so hostile about the idea of celibacy until marriage. I suppose it's because historically standards of virginity have been different for men and women, and they've been used to shame and hurt people, and been associated with homophobia. Still, I think maybe more people should take sex more seriously. I get the impression that more people are having regrettable sex than regretting not having sex.
So on to another topic, responsibility. I think that people should try, as much as possible, to look contribute more than they take, because some people need more than they can contribute. Put that way it sounds quite Bolshevik. It's probably a caricature of liberal individualism to characterise it as take take take.
I'm going to confess, walking through Cambridge on a Friday night makes me think that maybe the Iranians are onto something. This may be terrible hypocrisy as last Friday I got very drunk at a dinner and then had to host a pro-life event the next morning with a hang over. Having said that, I have never been so drunk as to vomit or urinate in the street. I have never been so drunk that I engaged in sexual behaviour with some random stranger. The whole idea of getting drunk without sober trusted friends to look after you nearby seems reckless. That's not victim blaming. People have fallen into the Cam and died because they were walking alone past it drunk.
Porn. I used to find burlesque and pole dancing cool. Now, not so much. I admire the aesthetics of burlesque and the abilities of some of it's performers, but it's just not my thing any more. I suppose I have increasing sympathy for a view expressed that sex like food is a good part of life. However, if people started paying to watch a a roast dinner being slowly revealed and eaten, you'd think something had gone wrong somewhere along the line. I guess a bit part of it is the way that sex has now taken on a meaning for me very much tied up to marriage which isn't conducive to watching it as a performance.
So, have I gone all the way through liberal and out the other side?
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-11 11:35 am (UTC)The sacraments (which I take to be an outward sign of an interior grace) clearly do have value and efficacy in themselves, but not on anywhere near the same level or of the same character as the inward grace. They are the nutshell rather than the nut's kernel. That is quite a protty thing to say - it is, for example, how baptismal regeneration can be regarded by 19th century evangelicals as conditional on faith: the external sign is a call to and promise of faith, but that faith must later be realised for the baptism to regenerate. On marriage my view is that the committment and relationship is what makes a marriage sacramental (i.e. graceful) in character rather than the outward sign of the beginning of that relationship (a church service).
It's also quite protty - puritan or dissenting even - to feel that a marriage ceremony isn't something that the church necessarily needs to control, or at least doesn't need to present in a ritualised context. That's also quite consistant with the practice of the early and medieval church, which doesn't always seem to have treated marriage as a sacrament.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-11 11:49 pm (UTC)I'm sure using the comparison "level" of sacraments can't be quite right :) I see what you're getting at, but have to acknowledge now that it does sound quite protty.
I wonder how I'd put it re. marriage... "Grace is demonstrated through the covenant of marriage; the covenant between God and mankind and the covenant between the two human beings. Such a covenant can exist where there has not been a ceremony through the couple's promise of commitment (whether spoken or not) and the couple's sexual union." Hmm... wonder whether that is too protty as well. Will need to think a bit more about this...
I do wonder whether thinking that God's grace is only effective once the ritual/practice element of the church service has happened is truly catholic. In one sense, it takes seriously the wedding of the body of a human with the body of the church (which the desert island view doesn't), but on the other hand... No, I'm not sure.
I figure that this is probably going to turn out to be another debate on justification!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-12 02:30 pm (UTC)Since I pretty much agree with this, it is probably pretty protty. Apologives for the plosive alliteration.
Limiting the ability of God's grace to be present in a relationship because that relationship has not been constituted/acknowledged in a liturgical setting is theologically problematic, and some might say uncatholic. However, it's also difficult not to feel that a statement of commitment is crucial to the creation of a relationship which is covenantal on the model of God/Israel and Christ/humanity. There was a hugely public acknowledgement of self-giving vulnerability in both those cases, and I think that marriage does demand a similar action.