It must be a rule of journalism I’ve never heard of…

You know, the rule that says no matter what a left-leaning columnist is writing about, no matter how well or intelligently he or she is writing it, there must, at some point, be at least two paragraphs of gratuitous, or stupid, or conscience-clearing criticism of Republicans or conservatives, even if the columnist’s topic really has nothing to do with same.

In Richard Cohen’s case, I’m thinking that his two paragraphs (in an otherwise important and straight-on column) are partly gratuitous – he simply cannot help himself – and partly a conscience-clearing mechanism. As a straight man admonishing gay men, before he can write his thoughts he needs to first prove that he couldn’t possibly be a homophobe, or be driven by any sort of gay-hatred because, as we all know, the he is the noble warrior who does battle against
the calculated homophobia or pathetic ignorance of several Republican administrations, which continues to this day. Just recently, for instance, the new secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, warned PBS against airing an episode of the children’s show “Postcards From Buster” because it showed a family headed by a lesbian couple. She undoubtedly will get a medal from the president for this.

How tiresome. Cohen may feel noble and tolerant, but he’s also being a bit disingenuous here. The episode he cites was pulled because some reasonable questions were put forward: is publicly-funded television supposed to promote or advocate ideas which are outside of the mainstream, or objectionable to a portion of the population? When does a presentation trip over a line and move from instructive entertainment into indoctrination? Those are NOT unreasonable questions. In fact, they are questions Cohen himself would ask if – for example – the same program suddenly presented a strictly conservative – or even a Christian conservative – view of marriage and family. There is room for, and probably a need for, programming that addresses same-sex parenting, but when you’re doing it with public money, you have to respect the other half of the country who doesn’t much like having their ideals steamrollered, no matter how unpleasant you find taking those unsophisticated, mouth-breathing yahoos into consideration.

Cohen could have just written (and given more space to) his information and thoughts on the appearance of this newer, deadlier strain of AIDS…but…no, he had to get the swipe in, had to prove his chops, and yes, he did take the obligatory two paragraphs to do it. The second paragraph propagated the whole dishonest idea that abstinence education is the continuing effort to keep young people as ignorant as possible about sex and, especially, contraception.

Still tiresome. I hate to break it to Mr. Cohen, but teenagers don’t need to be told how to have sex, or how to find and put on a condom. It’s not rocket science. And they know all about sex, condoms and AIDS prevention because it’s all over the television day after day, and modern parents are not the squeamish, skittish, euphemism-laden creampuffs they were 30 or 40 years ago. Most of us (every parent I know in my age group) have been talking to our children about sexual responsibility, and the difficult ideals that are worth pursuing, since they were very young.

Things have changed. It is not 1965 anymore. What Cohen, and so many others don’t get – willfully refuse to “get” – is that it’s EASY to throw a condom (and tacit approval) at a kid, it’s much more difficult to give them the social and informational tools they can use to abstain from sex until they’re more mature and (hopefully) commited.

We’re talking about kids, here. And kids need and want guidelines and boundaries and help in learning how to manage the feelings and pressures of the age. It’s harder to teach self-control, harder to teach the social means by which one can actually resist having sex at 16 (believe me, it can and is being done) but the fact that it’s hard is what makes it great. If you want easy…you pass out the condoms, thus giving kids a false sense of security and making it that much more difficult for girls to say “no.” After all…he’s got a condom…what bad could happen?

I realize I haven’t addressed the main topic of Cohen’s column – and as I said in the beginning, it’s an important topic; I’m glad Cohen wrote about it. But I’m sick to death of the obligatory-two-paragraph-swipe-at-the-right inserted into every column, no matter how important, particularly when the two paragraphs serve to promote misinformation, and prejudicial memes…or when they only serve to reassure and succor a smug illusion of superiority.