Let me ask you a question. Is there any way to read the following tripe from Mark Steyn without coming to the conclusion that he values sexually transmitted diseases for their deterrent effect on promiscuity and that he does not want to reduce the transmission and occurrence of STD’s?

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?” “I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.” Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved. The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing “syphilis” every time she says “stimulus.”

There are probably many appropriations that would be more directly stimulative to the economy than money that goes towards the prevention of STD’s, but treating STD’s does cost money and states will save money if they have less cases of STD to treat. I’m not concerned with Steyn’s critique of the efficacy of STD prevention as a stimulus. What concerns me is that he seems to think that preventing STD’s will lead to a culture where women (not men, interestingly) will feel free to have sex with whomever they want. Steyn would much rather have STD’s occurring with significant enough frequency that women feel constrained in picking their partners and display much less promiscuity.

He’s quite open about this. And, even if we posit that there is some socially beneficial advantage to less female promiscuity (beyond lowering the incidence of STD’s), we have to wonder about a person that wants people to get a disease as a lesson for others. Isn’t is possible for people to be less promiscuous without the threat of STD’s? And why doesn’t any of this apply to men?