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The Rout and the Honeymoon

It was a short honeymoon. Barely a week. If you’re in bed with George Bush it’s long enough.

On the day following the rout of November 7, George held a press conference in which he announced he’d lied to the public the preceding week when he said Donnie Rumsfeld and he would be best friends up to the end of Mr. Bush’s stay in the White House. He told a startled American public that he and Don were no longer best friends and his new best friend was one of his daddy’s friends, Bobbie Gates. He also said that he was going to be a nice playmate with the Democrats and get along with them even though two days earlier he’d as good as said a vote for a democrat was the equivalent of sending a weapon to a terrorist. Not that he actually said that.

In his press conference the morning after the election he said: “The American people want their leaders in Washington to set aside partisan differences, conduct ourselves in an ethical manner, and work together to address the challenges facing our nation”. Those conciliatory words notwithstanding, as soon as the Democrats gathered in the Washington playpen, Georgie threw sand in their eyes just to let them know that defeated or not, he was still the bully he’d always been. The first thing he did was resubmit to the Senate the names of a bunch of guys to become federal judges who he knew had no chance of being confirmed since they’d not been confirmed when those ruling the playpen were his friends.

Among the people whose names he resubmitted to the Senate was William Haynes II, who authored detainee policies that justified the use of torture when talking to people who may be terrorists. Another was William Myers III who said that the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act’s wetlands protections are examples of “regulatory excesses.” He compared government management of public lands to King George’s rule over the American colonies. Not content with re-nominating patently unqualified persons to serve as federal judges, George thought it a good time to let folks know that some one opposed to contraception and abortion was a good choice to lead the federal Office of Population Affairs.

The office “collects, develops, and distributes information on family planning, adolescent pregnancy, abstinence, adoption, reproductive health care, and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS” according to its webpage. In Mr. Bush’s mind, for reasons others might find hard to understand, that purpose fits in neatly with the purposes of “A Woman’s Concern” an organization headed by his nominee, Eric Keroack, a Marblehead, Massachusetts Obstetrician and gynecologist. According to its webpage “A Woman’s Concern” helps “women escape the temptation and violence of abortion”. It is opposed to contraception because, among other things “it increases out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion rates.”

According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, in a 2003 lecture at the International Abstinence Leadership Conference held in the unlikely venue of Las Vegas, Nevada, Dr. Keroack said that “PRE-MARITAL SEX is really MODERN GERM WARFARE.” He didn’t just say that and go on to some other topic letting the listeners wonder why that was. He said that teenage sexual activity blunts the brain’s ability to develop emotional relationships. He explained that oxytocin, the hormone produced by the brain after orgasm, “will eventually diminish a person’s ability to form emotional attachments” and “premarital sex can lead to overproduction of oxytocin.” He did not explain why people who are married and have lots of sex do not overproduce oxytocin. Of course, it’s possible they do and that would explain the high rate of divorce.

In a 2001 paper for Abstinence Medical Council the doctor wrote: “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual. . . . Just as in heroin addiction. . . the person involved will experience ‘sex withdrawal’ and will need to move on to a . . . new sex playmate.”

The doctor’s finding is based on research on prairie voles, a type of rodent. One variety is monogamous and another is not. The non-monogamous one can be cured by insertion of a gene into its brain, thus converting it into a monogamous mole. Dr. Keroack may soon begin recommending insertion of the magic gene into the brain of people consulting with the Office of Population Affairs who have children out of wedlock. Given the Orwellian proclivities of this administration that would only surprise someone who, like George Bush, has been disconnected from the real world for the last six years.

CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. Visit his website: http://hraos.com/