CARNAL NATION

This month's column is by Alicia Lewis, member of the Woodhull Board of Directors and the Executive Director of Boulder Pride. A long-time activist for queer community and equality, she has also served on the boards of the Legal Marriage Alliance of Washington and the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture.

The politics of personal choice around sexual expression are frequently countered by arguments wrapped in a concern for the future of our society and the safety of our children. I could start with the normal arguments against this (most sexual crimes involving children are committed by straight identifying white males, often in heterosexual relationships and attending church regularly) or point out that having admirable personal habits like vegetarianism and abstaining from alcohol didn't keep Hitler from being one of the more efficient mass murderers of the last century. While these are fun and lively conversations, they detract from the complexity of the issue. As my board colleague, Carol Queen, pointed out in her July essay, the movement for sexual freedom is a multi-prong endeavor, encompassing our understanding of choice, family, self-determination, pleasure, and identity, to name a few.

As a female parent, I find myself in the unenviable position of feeling that my children are being used as pawns in a power struggle for my life choices.As a female parent, I find myself in the unenviable position of feeling that my children are being used as pawns in a power struggle for my life choices. Unsolicited feedback has been that I am behaving selfishly, making choices with no guiding thought beyond my own pleasure. These choices are bound to have a life-altering and (by implication or outright assertion) damaging effect on my offspring. It is therefore my duty to make decisions based on this unsolicited feedback and to choose paths that will limit my children's exposure to change and impress upon them the importance of cultural norms.

When I was in college, 150 years ago, there was a national uproar over a woman whose nanny had allegedly shaken and killed her baby. While the jury convicted the nanny of murder (and has been recently shown to be in error) socially, blame for her baby's death was laid at the mother's feet. As a mother, it was ultimately her responsibility to be home with and care for her child. The consensus being if a woman doesn't need to work for financial reasons, then she shouldn't work (leaving aside the idea that parenting is work). The father's career and presence in the home as a parent was rarely touched on.

When I left my Mormon community to date my girlfriend, my best friend vehemently denounced me for bringing the woman who would become wife into my children's lives. Too much change for them. It would ruin them to be raised by two women. They would feel their father had been replaced by my wife. They would have unnatural ideas of life and relationships. She wasn't alone in her assertions, but she was most direct. And she was flat-out wrong.

Culturally, we've got religious conditioning to remind us that moms have kids, not sex (think Mary, mother of Jesus). In Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood she explores the financial impact of motherhood as compared to fatherhood, as well as the personal cost. "The feminist movement has dropped the ball on this issue," she says. "The movement liberated women, but not mothers." Crittenden says that full-time working mothers are viewed as neglecting their children, while mothers who stay at home are accused of lying around all day eating bon bons. For a society that touts the benefits of hands-on mothering, Crittenden says it has yet to put its money where its mouth is and value the work that all mothers are doing.