Argh

I had a whole rant about how angry it's making me that a certain set of conservatives are trying to argue that the torture in Iraqi prisons is wrong because sex is wrong. And therefore torture is not. I took it down; it was just too rant-y. I was just too furious. And I'm still furious.
Look, lady, just because you find sex torturous doesn't mean sex is torture. Sex can mess up your hair, it's true. And that might be the height of torture in Townhall, but I myself am more concerned about the people who were beat to death and torn up by dogs and raped and humiliated.
If the morons out there screaming about how sexual openess is the issue here think that porn is the cause of war-related rape really do believe that, then they need a quick education. Luckily, there is a book that they are all super-proud to have in their homes that will demonstrate that long before the Evil Internet Porn Craze, soliders raped conquered people to humiliate them. Yep, sit down and start reading that Bible and very carefully read what happened to conquered peoples. After that, crack open a book or two on the Trojan War and examine carefully what happened to the women of conquered peoples. Those who lived got to be raped and kidnapped. Where would our ancient ancestors get an idea like that? Must have been all the porn they were watching. (Granted, in alot of that old literature they use euphemisms for rape. We just say it now, which is because we know now that euphemisms protect victimizers.)
Of course, our ancestors didn't get the idea to take pictures. Maybe it is the pictures, and not the torture that offends Hagelin so much. But a quick walk through a museum will demonstrate that recording visual images of the ugliness of war is hardly a new invention and hardly the fault of pornography.
Of course, the conservatives making this argument know they're full of shit, but they don't care. This is an opportunity to chip away at the legal concept of consent and they're taking it, period. The world started going to hell when the legality of a sexual act was defined away from marriage and sexual proprietary rights and towards the idea that adults should be free to make their own choices as long as they don't hurt anyone else. After the legal concept of consent was introduced, the barn door was opened. Men didn't legally own women anymore and all of a sudden, homosexuality, divorce, birth control, premarital sex, women voting and working, daycare and your adult daughter openly disobeying you all became legal and even acceptable. So the concept of consent has to go. (Of course, the concept of consent is also the reason that our culture was able to acknowledge and crack down on child abuse, but they'll just pretend that's not true.) That's why this woman and Rich Lowry and Rush Limbaugh are pretending that the issue isn't that these soliders fucked prisoners up but that sexual behavior was happening outside of marriage.

For more, Pandagon.