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Blood And Roses
On the sting of the lash and the hatchet's sharp edge
davidr@thisisdavidr.net, 2/19/2002
Are you a "cult member?" Or a member of a "deviant minority?" Are you "dangerous to children?"
No?
Are you sure?
In Attleboro, Massachusetts, an unlucky Christian couple sits jailed after feeling the hatchet's sharp edge. Their crime - practicing home birth without the Commonwealth's consent or involvement. Charged with contempt of court for refusing to answer questions about whether she had given birth and what its outcome was, Rebecca Corneau and her husband David are described in the Boston press as "cultists" who "reject modern medicine". Prosecutors charge that the Corneaus' theological insistence on herbal medicine and home birth led to the death of a previous child during birth. The Corneaus have proven "uncooperative", even "hostile" to the Department of Social Services, which forcibly imprisoned Mrs. Corneau in a hospital for her last delivery and confiscated her baby at birth. The "cultists" have even resorted to such unsavory techniques as hiring legal counsel and remaining silent.
Welcome to the hatchet's edge.
My mother, who studies with the Jehovah's Witnesses and has a blood illness, refuses to accept any transfusions, regardless of need. I suppose an unfriendly reporter could say she is a "cultist" who "rejects modern medicine". Writing becomes alchemy; the writer can change public perception by merely replacing some words with others, or juxtaposing concepts to taint by association. Theoretically, journalistic training steels one to resist the tempting misuse of this power and present both sides of the story. In practice, reporters from all political affiliations often give an unpopular minority the sharp end of their stick.
The last Attleboro group to hang on the Boston Globe's crucifix came from the opposite end of the political spectrum. In the "Paddleboro" affair, warrant-less Attleboro police raided a private gathering and caught S&M practitioners with their pants down. Prosecutors levied charges of assault and battery against a woman for allegedly paddling another woman's behind with a wooden spoon. Lurid headlines ran over stories detailing the pictures, names, residences, and occupations of the accused partygoers, and local residents described their disgust with the "perverted" acts.
Here we see the hatchet's true power - double-edged, it cuts both ways. Ask a conservative about liberal goals, and you will learn how the liberals want to interfere in business, religion, family matters, in children's education. Ask a liberal about the conservatives' plan, and you hear fears of theocracy's rise, of the conservatives' desire to control entertainment and education and even people's bodies. Viewed through a more libertarian political lens, the world divides more neatly into those who want to be left alone and those who wake with a burning, driving need to control other people's behavior. The latter crowd always comes armed with rationalizations. We must control people "for their own good", or for "the good of the children", or "because it's not decent." As a civil rights advocate for the Pink Pistols, a national gay-friendly shooting group, I encounter all sides of the political spectrum. And everywhere I go, the busybodies are at work.
In a recent WorldNet Daily article, Allyson Smith skewered the "Vicious Valentine 5" S&M convention at the Rosemont, Illinois Ramada Inn. Giving extensive coverage to the "Concerned Women for America of Illinois" and no coverage to the event organizers, Allyson presents a view of the event that would leave the good Marquis de Sade green about the gills. In ruthlessly explicit prose, she quotes the most detailed safe-sex literature and describes the use of tarps to catch blood spatterings, then quotes the "Concerned Women" asking why the Ramada would "allow live nude demonstrations of sexual torture on its premises" at a "family friendly hotel".
From Allyson's article, one would expect conference participants to be taken home in several separate garbage bags. But, while I am not an S&M practitioner, I have often promoted the Pink Pistols at Boston's counterpart event, the Fetish Fair Flea Market. And, while S&M conventions are certainly only for those who are comfortable with the unusual, I have seen no garbage bags. In truth, S&M events are orgies of capitalism more than carnality. Trendy suburbanites and giggling couples snap up expensive corsets, leather paddles, and PVC outfits. Vendors joke that "S&M" means "stand and model". Workshop presenters detail subjects from the racy to the impossibly technical. Events typically occupy an entire hotel wing; organizers comply with local ordinances and restrict access to conference participants of legal age. Health organizations do give out explicit safe-sex information, and people can get thwacked on the bottom, but I think that most Roman emperors would leave unfulfilled.
Ironically, the Pink Pistols promote at S&M conferences to reach hotbeds of freethinkers who often care deeply about the Constitution and civil liberties and are willing to fight for them. The highly conservative Massachusetts News recently called for a "return to Puritan ethics". But Massachusetts' own history shows that those who fare worst under theocracy are other religious conservatives. Entire states formed from those conservatives who fled Puritan persecution to worship a slightly different dogma. Be careful, conservatives. The population you oppress may be the last group willing to fight for your rights. Watch that hatchet; it's sharp on both sides.
Copyright 2002 davidr; all rights reserved.
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davidr is president emeritus of the Bisexual Resource Center in Boston and is currently working as a civil rights activist with the Pink Pistols. His decade-long record of work for civil rights, social justice, and equal protection under the law serves as an inconvenient embarrassment to those who would like to dismiss him as a right-wing zealot.
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