The important thing is keeping women in the backseat

Okay, I stole the joke from Janeane Garofalo. Anyway, because it was in the comments section at Pandagon, this really great point might get lost our constant blogosphere babble. Topic: Jack Ryan's scandal. Point: This isn't just about snickering at another mean hypocrite caught with his pants around his ankles. This man is a mean bully.

What Ryan did has less to do with sex than it does to do with bullying. It's related to the bullying stunt Ryan pulled by sending a kid with a videorecorder to get in Obama's face and listen in on his conversations with his wife. And it's also related to Ryan's pro-life stance and his opposition to gay marriage. He's not a free spirit swinger type. He wants to control other people, particularly their sexuality. This is a major character issue, and this kind of man cannot be elected.
I guess I'm really troubled by everyone's inability to recognize the real problem here. This man treated his wife as chattel, and this is the kind of behavior that's rampant throughout the Republican Party at the same time that they're screeching to the high heavens about the sacred institution of marriage. It's the (perfectly legal) behavior of people like Jack Ryan within marriages that is helping cause the breakdown of the institution, not non-procreative marital sex. This is the kind of thing that should help spur a new look at the whole platform of family values. And I'm really, really disappointed at the liberal men out there who aren't speaking up about this but are instead focusing on the fact that Ryan *lied*.
-tully monster

Point more than taken--alot of conservative thought on sexuality has less to do with morals and more to do with subverting the sexuality of others to the whims of the tiresome straight white males.
But I do have a problem with the idea that treating one's wife like chattel somehow violates the "sanctity of marriage". For a good number of people, that's exactly what defines "sanctity of marriage"--the idea that a husband has proprietary rights to a wife. And that's why homosexual marriage undermines said "sanctity"--if marriages can be made between two men or two women, how do we determine who gets to treat who like chattel?