When wingnut writer Dennis Prager writes about sex and relationships, you know you’re in for a full-on, misogynistic weakling display of ignorance. For instance, he wrote quite a bit a few years ago about how marital rape really doesn’t exist, and how it’s a wife’s duty to let her husband have sex with her any time he wants, as a thank you for the fact that he’s not having sex with other women. Dennis is quite a charmer.

Today he’s back with a column at the National Review, about how feminism and ladies having rights has destroyed everything. Let’s take a look:

Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and Christian clergy; women’s college sports teams are given huge amounts of money; and there are far more women in political positions of power. But the prices paid for these changes — four in particular — have been great, and outweigh the gains for women, let alone for men and for society.

Dennis Prager cares about the ladies, first and foremost! Let him man-splain to all of the ladies how making things better for them has really made it so much worse.

The first was the feminist message to young women to have sex just as men do. There is no reason for them to lead a different sexual life than men, they were told. Just as men can have sex with any woman solely for the sake of physical pleasure, so, too, women ought to enjoy sex with any man just for the fun of it.

Why should women be free to act as men so often have? Because Dennis says it’s not good for the silly ladies:

As a result, vast numbers of young American women had, and continue to have, what are called “hookups”; and for some of them it is quite possible that no psychological or emotional price has been paid. But the majority of women who are promiscuous do pay prices. One is depression. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat recently summarized an academic study on the subject: “A young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.”

Let us pause to consider Ross Douthat’s expertise in the area of sex and relationships. From his book:

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point–”Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t surewhat to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered–”You know, I’m on the pill…”

As Ken Layne remarked at the time, “Let’s see, misogynist passive-aggressive drunken jerk blaming his impotence on a woman having access to birth control? WE HAVE A WINNER.” Back to Dennis:

The second awful legacy of feminism has been the belief among women that they could and should postpone marriage until they developed their careers. Only then should they seriously consider looking for a husband. Thus, the decade or more during which women have the best chance to attract men is spent being preoccupied with developing a career. Again, I cite woman callers to my radio show over the past 20 years who have sadly looked back at what they now, at age 40, regard as 20 wasted years. Sure, these frequently bright and talented women have a fine career. But most women are not programmed to prefer a great career to a great man and a family.

Most women are not programmed to want careers, and it’s only the fact that they’re so easily led by feminists that causes them to pursue careers in the first place! Dennis instead presumably believes that women are programmed to stay pregnant and submissive, and again, to have sex with their husbands at all times, whenever the guy wants it.

The third sad feminist legacy is that so many women — and men — have bought the notion that women should work outside the home that for the first time in American history, and perhaps world history, vast numbers of children are not primarily raised by their mothers or even by an extended family member.

Ladies, you should not want financial independence or peace of mind! Why would you want to accomplish things on your own when a big strong man could do them for you?

Finally, though, is Dennis’s greatest concern for the women: how it affects men and makes him feel, personally. As it turns out, all you ladies with jobs and lives are making him feel like less of a tuff guy:

And the fourth awful legacy of feminism has been the demasculinization of men. For all of higher civilization’s recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family. That notion — indeed the notion of masculinity itself — is regarded by feminism as the worst of sins: patriarchy.

Men need a role, or they become, as the title of George Gilder’s classic book on single men describes them: Naked Nomads. In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father — of men as men, in other words. Most men want to be honored in some way — as a husband, a father, a provider, as an accomplished something; they don’t want merely to be “equal partners” with a wife.

You see, men like Dennis Prager need to be honored and worshipped, not on their merits, but merely because they have penises. It makes them uncomfortable to consider the notion that they are not better than other people, simply on account of being dudes. It makes them feel unsexy and stupid to consider the idea of an “equal partnership” with a woman. After all, in an equal partnership, nobody is bowing down and groveling at their feet simply for existing, and men might actually have to ask ladies if it’s okay if they have sex with them. In short, you ladies, whether you are Ross Douthat’s Chunky Reese Witherspoon, or someone else entirely, are ruining everything for poor fools like Dennis, who obviously aren’t smart enough to make a mark on this world with their actual ideas.

Is The New York Times’ Ross Douthat a shill for Tea Bagging Sugar Daddy’s, David and and Charles Koch?

In his column today, “Paranoid About Paranoia”, Douthat tries to downplay legitimate concerns about violent Tea Party rhetoric. He attempts to do so by having a professor say the movement is no worse or more paranoid than other movements  — particularly liberal ones.

But as the George Mason law professor Ilya Somin has noted, national opinion polls reveal support for numerous far-out or noxious-seeming notions.

In spinning the Tea Party’s inexcusable behavior, it was interesting that Douthat chose to quote a professor from George Mason University. Here is what New York Magazine said about the link between the university and the Tea Party’s secretive billionaire founders:

David and Charles both actively support Republican causes. Charles founded the conservative think tank the Cato Institute. Charles also funds an academic center at George Mason University called the Mercatus Center, founded by a free-market economist named Richard Fink. A 2004 Wall Street Journal article reported that out of 23 government regulations on the Bush administration’s “hit list” that got killed or modified, fourteen had been suggested by Mercatus.

Hmmm.

Douthat could presumably have found a professor to help him make his case  from hundreds of colleges and universities. Yet, he chose the one major school that is funded to the gills by the Tea Party’s founders.

This could happenstance. Or, maybe I’m just being paranoid, as Douthat  might suggest.

But, it does raise legitimate questions about the jounralistic independence of Douthat. Does he work for the Billionaire Brothers — or the New York Times? We will be watching his column closely to see what sources he uses to make his rather flimsy arguments, and to note if his sources present a conflict of interest with the subject matter.

Clearly, quoting professors from what has essentially become Tea Party U., without identifying the funding link to Koch was poor journalism and did a disservice to readers.

This morning, I read New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s meandering and incoherent op-ed, “The Marriage Ideal”. It may have been the worst column written in the history of newspaper, and maybe dating back to stone tablets.

Douthat begins by pretending to be fair. He deftly debunks the baseless arguments used by opponents of marriage equality. He points out that “traditional marriage” is not universal across societies worldwide and that monogamy may be the exception, rather than the rule.

Next, Douthat writes that heterosexuals have generally screwed up the institution of monogamous, life-long marriage by participating in “less idealistic” no fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

Having said that, Douthat gives condescending lip service that feigns respect for gay relationships, but concludes that separate-but-equal treatment is the only way to preserve the heterosexual marriage “ideal”.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

What a bizarre conclusion.

I call this the “Jesus Christ argument” to prohibit marriage equality. Douthat is basically saying that the constitutional rights and personal dreams of gay couples, although noble, must sacrificed at the altar to repent for heterosexual sins against the institution of marriage.

If society just stops marriage equality, all the heterosexuals who carelessly trample over marriage will miraculously change their ways over time. Thanks to the sacrifice of the good ole gays, there will be a resurgence of the marriage “ideal”.

Give me a break.

What bothers me is that Douthat printed this drivel without looking at real life examples of places that already have marriage equality. There is the District of Columbia and five states — Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut — where LGBT couples can already marry. All of these places are within a short drive from New York City, so Douthat could have jumped in the car and seen for himself that the affect on heterosexual marriage is nil. Instead, Douthat makes erroneous assumptions without a shred of evidence to support his conclusion.

The truth is, a gay couple marrying does nothing to influence or impact what happens to the heterosexual couple next door. Douthat’s absurd column was nothing more than a slippery attempt to assert heterosexual supremacy. But, it was written in a milquetoast and pseudo-intellectual way so he wouldn’t be scorned as a bigot by gays and enlightened heterosexuals at fancy New York cocktail parties.

What a sad, transparent attempt to justify discrimination. Who does he think he’s fooling?

The embarrassment of the New York Times, Ross Douthat, seems to think that liberals are at least partially to blame for the fact that Catholic priests have been raping the hell out of children for decades:

Liberal Catholics, echoed by the secular press, insist that the whole problem can be traced to clerical celibacy. Conservatives blame the moral relativism that swept the church in the upheavals of the 1970s, when the worst abuses and cover-ups took place.

In reality, the scandal implicates left and right alike. The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’ overemphasis on therapy. (Again and again, bishops relied on psychiatrists rather than common sense in deciding how to handle abusive clerics.) But it was the church’ conservative instincts ‚Äî the insistence on institutional loyalty, obedience and the absolute authority of clerics ‚Äî that allowed the abuse to spread unpunished.

Wait, when in the 1970′s was child rape part of the “permissive sexual culture”? Just curious!

No.

Here’s why this is happening:

1. Enforced celibacy is not only weird, it’s completely unnatural. Hetero- or homo-, we have bodies and brains that are wired for intimacy with other consenting human beings. Normal human beings can go through non-sexual dry spells, but that’s entirely different from “You may not have intimacy with another person.”

2. Because of the rape culture environment of the Catholic church, people are pressured and shamed into relegating their sexuality to the strictures of, oh what do you know, celibate men:

Rape culture crops up when male power over women and children is exalted, when sexuality is demonized, and when men are encouraged to think of women (and children’) bodies as their property. All these aspects of patriarchy aren’t only part of the Catholic church, they’re celebrated. The exuberant love of male dominance that is the Catholic dogma is going to turn men into rapists who get a rise out of sexually dominated people they believe are lesser than them.

Duh.

(…)

Rape culture specifically likes to make big distinctions between different kinds of rape. Part of this is innocent enough—attacking children is a special kind of horror, after all. But when we put rape of women in one category and rape of children in another and rape of men in another, we’re discouraging people from seeing the connections. But there is a line between tolerating the abuse of women and tolerating the abuse of children. In a culture where male sexuality is assumed to be domineering and debasing, then some men will, for various reasons, skip right past raping women on to raping children.

3. Likewise, because sexuality, and along with it, sexual paraphilias and disorders, are taught to be good and evil and, again, in need of reconciliation with the ruling men in dresses and fancy hats, those with psychosexual issues often end up signing up for the only life they think might protect them from themselves: the celibate priesthood. The underlying issues, however, remain unaddressed.

4. Finally, this thing has festered for decades because the dominance of the Catholic church is hanging on by a thread in the developed world, and they care much more about protecting the church than they do about any pesky 10 year old rape victims. Educated people are leaving the church in droves, and though the church is having some success in recruiting starving people in the third world by giving them false hope for a better life, they’re also doing their part to kill those very same people with their discredited, sex-shaming policies on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. So the faster it becomes public knowledge just how widespread the Catholic child rape problem is, the more people (including their own parishioners) will realize that the jig is up and that they really don’t need to be opening their souls and their pocketbooks to men in white frocks who just might have been diddling their children thirty minutes ago.

So there you have it. Maybe one day the Times will realize what a disastrous mistake they made when they hired Douthat, but I’m not holding out hope.