GARRISON: Planned Parenthood’s latest subsidized exploit

So I am preparing for the show one recent morning when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a story at Breitbart.com about a new PR campaign being launched by Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. The subject? Bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism for “active teens.”

I’m not kidding. I opened the YouTube link and there she was: a pert, mid-teen-looking little lady breathlessly singing the praises of just that—“BDSM.”

First, she defined the letters in the acronym so all our excited and acquisitive teens would have the proper vocabulary, then she returned to the BDSM thing as blithely and lyrically as if she were saying “PB&J” instead.

Yup, several minutes of breathlessly inciting the kids to try it on for size, at the end of which she did prescribe some “rules for the road” if you intend to let your boyfriend handcuff you to the headboard. Of course, it has to be someone you trust so you don’t get hurt.

(Now I feel soooo much better. At least when Billy chains my granddaughter to the radiator, he will first ensure that the thing’s not hot. Oh, and as for the handcuffs—that’s not Garrison being cruel; they actually have an image of a pair of cuffs on screen at least once.)

Now for all you parents who are about to chuck your IBJ across the room, stand by. It gets worse.

The PPNNE gets about $4 million in federal tax dollars to pay for this swill every year. Much like the National Endowment for the Arts paid out your funds to underwrite that Serrano “artwork” depicting a crucifix dipped in a beaker of urine. And like the multiple America-hating screeds published and aired by NPR by such luminaries as Bill Moyers, etc.

So we don’t just permit indecency and vitriol; we subsidize it.

Long ago, Jack Kemp presciently said that “you get what you subsidize.” Ol’ Jack hit that one out of the park of proverbs.

Now we have to step back a bit and view what has happened—no, what we have permitted, even paid money to occur.

Oh sure, it’s been a long time since Ozzie and Harriet wore their PJs to sleep each night in their twin beds, and the days of “My Three Sons” are long gone.

Of course it was my generation—the baby boomers—that witnessed and, unfortunately for all, participated in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, so I should not be surprised. Our kids are “educated” and encouraged to engage in perverted sex acts; it’s huge news when one guy decides to make news by announcing his homosexual choices. Michelle Obama thinks he’s a hero.

I think his sex life is neither news nor my business. But we see all over the landscape that cries of censorship now trump even the most modest attempts at returning to some hint of decency in public discourse.

We are made to wonder—only in private lest we seem old-fashioned, where this is all going. Well, this much is pretty clear: The results are not good.

But the rub most cruel? We pay for it. Just as awful, our elected representatives have done it while we have sat silently by, afraid of being called some bad name for being so rigid as to object when our teens are invited to tie each other up before a good long session of rough sex.•

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Garrison is a partner in Garrison Law Firm LLC in Indianapolis and a talk show host on WIBC-FM 93.1. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

Correction: The artist who depicted the crucifix in a beaker of urine is Andres Serrano.