In a move to show their commitment to valuing overprivileged weeniehood above talent, the New York Times has hired Atlantic writer and blogger Ross Douthat as their new conservative editorial writer.  He begins in mid-April, and Douthat watchers wait with bated breath to see if the new job will incline him to back away from some of his more colorfully false beliefs about the world of people who aren't filled with fear and loathing when we contemplate sex.  Luckily for us, his blogging at the Atlantic shows that he's not about to back down from entertaining wildly amusing beliefs about the scary outside world of people who aren't disturbed by human sexuality.   

A recent piece about the AIDS crisis in Africa is instructive.  Douthat plays a "will he/won't he?" game about supporting the Pope's insistence that condoms make the spread of HIV worse, but in order to deflect attention from his own weird opinions, he, well, basically insinuates that the health community is somewhat overenthusiastic about our supposed mission to turn the world into an unwashed, hedonistic cesspool of doing it. 

What's more, I have a hard time believing that the public health and foreign aid community's longstanding preference for condom promotion has nothing to do with ideological biases of their own. Yes, the Catholic Church's conservative position on sexual morality determines which public health interventions the Vatican willing to support, and limits the willingness of Catholic institutions to simply follow the data wherever it leads. But what's true of Catholics is true of other groups as well. And when you read Epstein on how slow the AIDS establishment was to acknowledge the importance of partner-reduction - or when you read about Bill Gates getting booed at an international AIDS conference when he mentioned abstinence and fidelity - it's awfully hard to escape the conclusion that the combination of a liberationist view of sexual ethics and a post-colonial unwillingness to critique existing African patterns of sexual behavior has seriously hampered the international community's efforts to curb the spread of HIV. 

One hopes that the editorial staff of the New York Times doesn't have a limit on how many false assumptions you can build an argument off of, or Douthat's really going to lose that special something that gives his writing its punch.  This paragraph packs so many in that it's hard to pick my favorite.  In lieu of that, I'll just count the false assumptions underlying this delightful musing from the Times' new columnist. 

False Assumption #1: There's an "African" pattern of sexual behavior.  To be fair to Douthat, even people who aren't ideologically committed to dogging on contraception make the racist mistake of thinking there's a single African culture that can be spoken of.  But in this context, for reasons I'll soon spell out, this is especially racist.  This is like saying there's a single standard of sexual behavior in the Americas, except that the Americas have less cultural diversity from Argentina to Canada.  Africa has 53 separate nations, with all the diversity that implies.  And that's just national diversity--obviously different people from the same culture can have wildly different standards.  Take Jenna Jameson and Ross Douthat, for instance. 

False Assumption #2: Westerners are in a position to scold Africans to embrace sex-phobic, patriarchal religious beliefs.  I'm not sure what kind of religious beliefs Douthat thinks the single group he calls Africans holds to, but the continent actually has no shortage of exactly the sort of religious traditions Douthat and the Pope think will cure AIDS.  Most residents of the continent are Christian or Muslim, so whatever religious beliefs Douthat wants to impose appear to already be held.  Unless he's ready to insinuate they hold their beliefs less dearly than Westerners, I'm not sure what his point is.  In fact, the reason the Pope's comments caused alarm with the non-doofus community is that we know that many people in AIDS-ravaged regions are Catholics and will listen to the Pope, putting themselves in danger.  

On the flip side, I have to point out that even if you wanted to get on the scold train, what sort of authority do Westerners bring to the table?  Douthat is usually in a snit because Westerners don't obey the miserable sexual norms he'd have us obey, which means that scolding others to live by those standards would make us automatic hypocrites. The unquestioning assumption that we have something to tell them about sexual chastity standards is rooted in ugly stereotypes about the promiscuity of people from different racial backgrounds. 

False Assumption #3: That those chastity standards aren't dangerous in and of themselves.  "Partner reduction" is just Douthat's way of trying to use some science-y language to decorate his same old beliefs about how a very strict definition of monogamy should be followed by everyone at all times.  The straightjacket model where two virgins marry, never cheat, and stay married no matter what.  Using fancy language doesn't change that this is the same old Christian right nonsense that has no relationship to people's actual health and welfare needs, regardless of their national identity.  The chastity model is not supporting your health needs if it keeps you inside an abusive marriage, makes your sex life so dull you cheat out of desperation, or causes you to forgo safer sex practices that expose you to disease (not all partners are faithful!) or unintended pregnancy.   It also neglects to acknowledge that it's much healthier for people to feel free to leave relationships that are making them unhappy for relationships that make them happy.  Stress and depression caused by unhappy relationships are health issues, too. 

False assumption #4: The pro-choice community is the inverse of the anti-choice community in every way.  Douthat appears to think that the audience that booed Gates did so because they're so ideologically committed to screwing around and racking up high numbers of sex partners that  they'd sacrifice people's health for this goal.  He has to assume this, because the anti-contraception crew has made it clear that they prioritize stopping people from using contraception over lives.  You see the same kind of inversion myth when it comes to abortion.  Because anti-choicers oppose any pregnancy ending in abortion, they assume incorrectly that pro-choicers wish every pregnancy to end in abortion.   

Truth is, there's no ideological commitment to slutting it up in the health activist community.  Just as pro-choicers support your right to have or not have a baby, the health activist community generally supports your right to be or not be in a permanent relationship with any one person, depending on your personal needs.  If you meet the love of your life in high school and never even think about sleeping with anyone else, I'll be the first in line to send you flowers.  But that's just not realistic for most people.  If there's any ideological commitment to detect here, it's the commitment to being realistic about how people really are so you can help real people where they're at, instead of setting impossible standards and then just letting the majority of people who can't meet them suffer.