Screwed Up, American Style

There was a fine article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine examining just how aggressively the religious right is going after--get ready for this--contraception. Apparently, going after abortion rights isn't enough for them. So wild are these folks that they are actually articulating that all sex should happen only in the context of conceiving a child. Which mean coitus interruptus will be back in its rightful place as the primary form of birth control.

The South Dakota legislature passed a law earlier this year banning almost all abortions. The law is presently stayed, pending legal challenge which means it ought to end up in the US Supreme Court. If SCOTUS hears the case and, in a couple of years, upholds the law, then women's right to an abortion is over in America.

That's just how successful the religious right has been in recent years. Oh, yes, almost forgot all those anti-gay laws that were passed in the 2004 general election.

But if you think that conservatives are the only threat to rights and freedoms in this country, then you are only paying half-attention. Liberals have been busy and perhaps just as successful through the lib-driven public health movement. There are now smoking bans in 12 states and hundreds of US cities. One of the craziest is in Washington State, where it wasn't enough to just ban smoking in bars, they had to ban it within 25 feet of the entrance to any building. It's just the start. What's more, the lefty nanny statists are going after food and soda pop, having declared war on obesity. They'll go after booze, too. You watch. (I wrote about this annoying drift in American life earlier this year.)

Not enough for you? Washington State just banned online poker, meaning anyone who lives in the state and gets nabbed playing hold-em online faces a Class C felony and up to 10 years in the joint--the same as for child abuse. Gee, thanks state legislature for helping run my life, and thanks to the Washington State media for not even covering the ban much less questioning it!

And, now the mayor of Seattle wants to enact some form of gun bans in our city.

Where will it stop? That's just my point. After 40 years of an increasingly-open society, America is dialing back the clock in any number of ways. Backers of these restrictions usually cite moral and health reasons. I don't trust such reasoning at all.

What's this got to do with the mental health world? Quite a bit. It's this same kind of nanny state thinking that wants to force all teens to be screened for depression at school, even if they show no outward signs of depression. Gee, I wonder how many of those kids will end up on anti-depressants simply for acting morose and gothy and having tattoos (which the public health crowd also considers a problem because they can link tats to kids with bad grades)? Advocates of this approach will cite community health as the basis for prying into teens' private lives and private feelings. One of these days the community is going to start pushing back against all this nonsense. But everyone is waiting for someone else to be the man or woman who does that.