Conservative sexual fetishes: A hardcore guide / New to right-wing kinks? Violet Blue explains them all

Conservative right-wingers really know how to make the most of their sexual fetishes, but do they have to do it in public?

Indeed they do -- and it's a form of paraphilia just waiting for its own Wikipedia page. It's the way that Michelle Malkin dramatically draws out the word "smut" like a phone sex operator's tool of the trade. It's the deliciously deep sexual fascination that prompted former Sen. (and current Fox News contributard and senior advisor for Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center) Rick Santorum to state as fact to the Associated Press, "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

Pastor Ted Haggard and Jim West know that what's "wrong" feels oh-so-right. So do porn obsessed former Attorney General Ed Meese, porn-fixated current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. See the obsessively sexual agenda of the American Family Association. These people are way more fixated with sexual transgression than me and my porn star friends put together, and in a wholly apodysophiliac kind of way.

Extreme conservatives have cultivated their anti-sex obsessions into some highly refined, luridly sexualized fetishes. New to conservative fetish sex? Let's explore those fetishes, and what makes them so hot:

Homosexuality: easily caught on a toilet seat. This is the world's best excuse for dwelling on fags and bondage, and you're carte blanche to talk to as many people about it as you want when you "warn" them with lurid details about the homosexual menace and sexual torture. Just the threat of getting some on you is exciting all on its own, but it's even more titillating to imagine what these leather-clad people are doing with each other. Of course, what's imagined is as far from reality as possible, but that's the point: the homosexual scenario is where you explore your nastiest homoerotic fantasy (Fire hydrants! Great Danes! Ralph Lauren tablecloth weights!)

BDSM (or ess and emm) is for evildoers. The BDSM exchange is where you project your wildest edge-play ideas. (Serial killers, helpless victims, and pasty guys with mullets who give the name Mistress Bitchslap at Starbucks are all possible components in your fantasy scenarios.) Everyone at Fox News knows that BDSM where consenting adults get tied up and spanked for sex is one and the same with torture. (Like in Vietnam, NOT like Abu Ghraib because "we don't torture.") Except the outfits, that's the only difference, though uniforms are always optional alternatives to 1980s studs and leather. You can easily convince your minions and followers that your enemy du jour is a homosexual pedophile by bringing in the whips and chains; only bad people "force" others to do things. Especially sexual things, which you should linger over for as long as possible. Everyone knows that normal people never, ever have any hint of power exchange in their sexual encounters.

The computer is an evil voodoo box of pornography. The Internet is like the real world, except MUCH scarier. This type of edge play is for conservatives who like to feel out of control, who maybe have to be the person in charge in their everyday lives but fantasize about helplessness and surrender. It's also a fabulous punishment tool, as guilt can be a more powerful mistress than Fleshbot.com. Naughty thoughts you have can be guiltlessly channeled into public humiliation of your enemies (those bad sex people that give you those weird feelings) in gay cure blogs, anti-porn websites, anti-sex email campaigns against cable advertisers, and the occasional reporting/expulsion of a member from a social networking site for not "thinking of the children."

Sex is bad and wicked, so look for it everywhere. Until the whole world agrees with your versions of truth, justice, right and wrong, you're pretty much living in a world just like that great movie They Live where the evils of the alien invasion (in this case, porn/sex) were invisible to everyone until "Rowdy" Roddy Piper found sunglasses from the resistance that revealed the bad guys and their subliminal messages (for you, Pure Life Ministries?) and saved everyone (like Bush and Gonzales are saving everyone with abstinence education and obscenity prosecutions). You already have your secret decoder sex sunglasses in your head, so the pernicious evils of sexuality pop out at you like evil fun-house clowns from TV commercials and corner stores, except your sunglasses have no filter for normal healthy human sexuality, the myriad sexual expressions of love, or sex in bad taste so it's all out to get you and the innocents you must protect, whoever they are. I envy that you live in a more sexually thrilling world than I do. And I live in the Castro, okay?

Safe sex is the same as hardcore pornography. Talking about condoms and explaining STDs and STIs is tantamount to describing the finer points of bukkake -- to children. Abstinence is the cleanest, purest, closest-to-God way to talk about sexuality, from the classroom to the news desk. Promoting abstinence as a truism over accurate sex information actually acts as a magic golden force field carried by beautiful fairies (the straight kind) to prevent you and everyone who agrees with you from getting HIV/AIDS. Only dirty, filthy people promote safer sex, because they clearly enjoy talking in detail about all those nasty sex parts. Think about it. A lot.

Meet me in the closet. Pretend that porn, fetish, homos and female sexuality used to live "on the fringes of society" rather than in everyday life because it's hotter that way. What's great about insisting that any sexual expression outside heterosexual missionary position needs to stay marginalized (or that there was a reason for staying in the closet) is that it reinforces the taboo. And we all know how hot taboos are. Plus, pretending that something naughty wasn't there all along (even if it was) makes (re)discovery so much more fun.

Obsessing about porn "for the children" is better than going to confession. Kids shouldn't see porn, but that doesn't mean you can't get your rocks off trying to keep adults from seeing it too (while you do lots of "research", of course). You can pretty much screw anything -- like the First Amendment -- if you're doing it for the children. Kids are convenient patsies because they're young and dumb and probably wonÕt remember you boinking their personal freedoms and privacy rights into oblivion. They can easily be used as a foil for your porn consumption, and your compulsive preoccupation with sexual peril combined with visual stimulation. Forget reason, forget filtering software, and definitely forget about talking to your kids about sex or teaching them the difference between healthy sexual expression and not. This is a great way to think about porn a lot, and to enact nonconsensual power play with other adults. Bonus! Uniforms and schoolgirl outfits are optional for any related "for the children" role-play scenes.

Aside from this very snarky guide, and having recently researched and authored Fetish Sex: An Erotic Guide for Couples, I can honestly tell you that sexual fetishes are not bad, wrong or harmful -- they're just human sexual expression. And despite right-wing conservative pundits' best efforts to convince us otherwise, adult sex and pornography is not bad, wrong or harmful either. Homosexuality and trans identity are normal -- and are in every American community from coast to coast and in between, no matter if you think you see them, or not. And all that "for the children" smokescreen? There is no evidence that kids encountering sexuality in healthy contexts, or teaching them about understanding sexual expression, is bad. Disney movies have shown my friend's 4-year-old how to strike freakishly provocative poses, yet give her no tools to know not to do that in front of strange men at the mall. How about instead of "OMG sex!" in the media and hiding sex "for the children", instead we give accurate sex information, and provide kids with tools to navigate the sexuality they're already encountering in the world?

There's nothing wrong about a conservative with a sexual fetish, as long as they're enjoying it with someone who consents. If they could only take a page from harm reduction; accept human behavior and the world we all live in, with each other, and provide tools for individual to reduce the risks (and maintain their values without stepping on anyone else's rights or values). Except, I know, that would be way less hot.

Now if we could just get them to keep their fetishes to themselves.

Violet Blue is a Forbes "Web Celeb", notorious blogger (Laughing Squid), high-profile tech personality and one of Wired's "Faces of Innovation." She writes for outlets ranging from Forbes.com to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive pundit in mainstream media ( CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show) and is interviewed, quoted and featured prominently by major media outlets. Violet has many award-winning, best-selling books, a famous podcast, is fun to follow on Twitter, and is a San Francisco native.

Blue headlines at conferences ranging from ETech, The Forbes Internet Leadership Conference, LeWeb and SXSW: Interactive, to Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. Her tech site is Techyum; her audio and e-books are at Digita Publications.

For more information and links to Web sites discussed in Open Source Sex, go to Violet Blue's Web site, tinynibbles.com.