Moralism

Martha Coakley, failed Senatorial candidate and Attorney General of Massachusetts, darling of pseudo-Liberals, has once again shown her true colors as a moralist. Her response to the overly hyped suicide of a psychopathic medical student in jail, pending trial for murdering a prostitute, whom he contacted on Craig's List, is to shut down the adult services on Craig's List, a largely free Web site for consumer-consumer and consumer-provider transactions.

Why attack Craig's List? Well, Ms. Coakley may just be simplistically moralistic. A Carry Nation figure, railing against sex for sale. Or, Ms. Coakley may also be responding to pressure from wealthy commercial interests who resent the power of Craig's List and other on-line vendors, now significantly cutting into their sales in a depressed consumer economy. Pure speculation on my part.

Ms. Coakley, while ostensibly supporting LGBT marriage rights, has been clear in representing herself as a conservative moralist in the case of Craig's List. Under her supervision, Craig's List has been pressured to compromise user confidentiality in order to cooperate with the (morality) police on their site. This may have been part of her poor showing in her battle with Scott Brown, a former nude pin-up himself, in the contest for Ted Kennedy's seat. One assumes she thinks gay sex is alright after marriage...only after marriage...just like the other kind.

Rather than proposing a law to legalize prostitution and afford protections to sex workers, which would make them less likely objects of violence and criminal exploitation, Ms. Coakley prefers to assault the freedom of on-line communication, which is, coincidentally, how non-prostitutes often hook up for sex these days. It appears to me that Ms. Coakley is more anti-sex than anti-adult-services. If she succeeds at shutting down the adult services on Craig's List, she may well go after the sexual hook up sections of Craig's List as well, since they do not promote sex in the confines of a marriage, sanctified by God and Government.

The schizoid nature of sexuality in the current American culture is obvious. Alcoholism, meth addiction and HIV/STD transmissions flourish as young people get inebriated to have promiscuous sex behind the scenes, while acting out the public lives of born-again Christians or Shariah Muslims for conformist approval. As someone who believes in the fundamental worth of healthy living to achieve personal peace and mindfulness, I support those laws and social programs which promote a healthy, responsible and active sexuality for adults of any sexual proclivity.

A New Puritanism is not the way. Open discussion of sexuality in schools, combined with thorough sex education, is the way. Perhaps Ms. Coakley could get to work with Governor Patrick and the Massachusetts State Legislature on compulsory sex education in all the Massachusetts schools, public and private, including Catholic schools. Decriminalizing prostitution would eliminate the power of pimps and organized criminals over poor, vulnerable men and women. Cutting off their access to Craig's List will not help these men and women. It punishes them for the crime a privileged male predator committed against one of their own.