According to the online version of the Portland Oregonian newspaper yet another arch-conservative — this time the longtime chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition — has been accused of sexual perfidity — this time for sexually molesting three of his female relatives. Oh yeah, when they were pre-teens.

Two of the alleged molestations occurred decades ago and likely would not result in criminal charges because state law limits prosecution of certain crimes. For example, the statute of limitations on sex abuse expires after six years.

One case, however, may fall within statutory timelines, authorities confirmed. That investigation involves a female family member who was allegedly molested by [the alleged perpetrator] when she was in elementary school, authorities said.

Here’s the paragraph that’s important to me:

[The alleged perpetrator’s] family members told The Oregonian that they called the child abuse hot line last month after several women in the family said they openly discussed for the first time what happened with [the alleged perpetrator.] The names of the family members have been withheld because The Oregonian generally doesn’t identify alleged sex abuse victims.
[emphasis mine —fl] Read the whole thing here.

Ok, so here’s the deal. First of all, as Alfred Kinsey famously said, sexual repression turns ordinary desire into obsession — ordinary horiness with no acceptable outlet leads over and over to sexual activity with totally inappropriate and often defenseless victims. Second of all, sexual repression prevents victims of obsession from coming forward — the horrific consequences of saying anything allows predators to reoffend with near impunity. Finally, both victims and predators, mired in guilt, denial, and often trauma, adopt grotesque denial-based behavior and often agitate to have their grotesqueries forced down everybody’s throats.

Chances are extremely high that this gentleman would have strongly preferred to have ordinary, probably fairly vanilla sex with someone his own age had he been honest enough with himself and others about his ordinary, probably fairly vanilla urges. Instead, in order to maintain an objectively artificial standard of morality and to avoid a little embarrassment, he fucked little elementary school girls he was — by objectively legitimate standards of morality — he should have protected. And, evidently to compensate, he became the leader of a group committed to making our moral standards even more artificial.

Jane, of Unauthorized Bootlegging worries a lot that her attraction to BDSM alienates her from her church.

I was scared to tell any of my Christian friends. It would be 6 months before I told my two closest friends from church what was going on for me. They are still my friends, although they are not kinky and I think they still worry about me. After a few initial conversations, I have not continued to talk to them about my kinky journey.

But you know what? A) Because she’s confronting it in herself, restricting her expressioni to a certain extent yes, but not denying it to herself, finding outlets she can comfortably express her feelings, she’s not likely to do anything insanely stupid and destructive either to herself or others. B) She believes she’s “a minority within a minority” but since she can’t find anyone to talk about it with I don’t see how she can possibly know that.

I’ll repeat my favorite insight from Thoreau: “My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never [used] it” Where there’s smoke there’s fire, guys. No, I’m not saying that everyone who runs into the arms of ‘wingers are sexual monsters, and no, I’m not even saying that everyone driven into their arms is a victim of such a monster, but as far as I’m concerned radical antagonism towards sex remains, and should be treated as, a big red flag that something is terribly, terribly wrong.