Sullivan and the anti-masturbator

Christine ODonnell, the Sarah-Palin lookalike who is the Republican nominee for senator in Delaware, she who considers being gay an "identity disorder", famously is known for her opposition to masturbation. While it's easy to mock such repressed delusion, Andrew Sullivan points out that this (along with the "mating" of proper-man-woman couples) is all of a piece with the theocon view of human sexuality. The ONLY reason they don't propose criminalizing masturbation is they realize it would be impossible to enforce.

O'Donnell's stance against masturbation is related to the new natural law that is central to the theoconservative project ...(that is at the core of the Republican party base). It is rooted in the notion that any sex that is not self-giving in a lifelong marital bond between a man and a woman is destructive of the human soul and also of the community at large.....

O'Donnell...believes that masturbating has social ramifications, because it reduces sexuality to what used to be called self-abuse, and this itself corrupts society as a whole and weakens the family. This is exactly and explicitly the same rationale for the thoecon refusal to acknowledge gay relationships, their opposition to contraception and pornography, and, in part, to abortion.....

O'Donnell is an important figure not because she is a flake, as Bill Kristol says. She is important because she is as yet too guileless to lie about her real views, or to conceal the reactionary worldview that animates them. She is not an outlier. She is a very powerful way to understand what the theoconservative project is really about - and what the GOP base truly believes in.