The quadrennial pageant that is the US presidential election is a wonderful opportunity as an expat to catch up with the ongoings of my homeland in an entirely passive way. Even without really wanting to, I already know more about the main political players, the pundits, and their opinions - including their thoughts on women's reproductive rights and suchlike - than I ever wanted to.
But apart from the ins and outs of what Rush Limbaugh thinks qualifies as sluttiness, what Todd Akin thinks qualifies as rape, and what Paul Ryan thinks qualifies as a good marathon time, is the discovery that people do not appear to be all that bothered by the fact that the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, is a Mormon.
Romney is a strict Mormon
And if that's the case things have definitely changed in America. When I was a wee bairn, 'Mormon' was a word whispered among grown ups. It denoted something mysterious and unexplainable: they were a society apart, not unlike Scientologists, only with more wives and less predilection for applying tins to the side of your head to measure 'stress levels'.
When I got older I made some friends who were Mormons. Their religion, as I understood it, forbade all sexual activity outside of marriage (including masturbation). So far so fundamentalist guilt of any ideological stripe - total abstinence neither originated with, nor was perfected by, the heirs of Joseph Smith. Even their fondness for 'magic underwear' seemed more comical than threatening.
For all I know the underwear thing might just be bad press. I can't say as I've never managed to get a young Mormon into bed, or at least if I did, they'd managed to shuck the offending garment without my noticing first (hey, it was dark, OK?). And now that I am never likely to see one in the flesh I really am curious.
Most people heading to the polls on November 6 are probably not making their decisions based on whether their favoured candidate shops at Victoria's Secret or La Senza. (And the cultural moment during which boxers or briefs was a viable political platform passed sometime around the middle of Clinton's second administration.) But there is a point here - stick with me.
Sex, booze and caffeine are off limits
What interested me were the things that the Mormons I knew seemed to hold just as forbidden as sex and sexuality. In homesteads not unlike Romney's, up and down the land, as I understood it, alcohol was equally as verboten as touching yourself. What's more, coffee and tea were completely off limits too: instead of enjoying a foamy cappuccino during a work break, Mormons instead sipped a mystifying beverage called Caro.
With sex, booze, and Tetleys all equally likely to send you hurtling to eternal damnation, some of the Mormon kids naturally rebelled. But they didn't do it by propping up the bars of public houses - nor by haunting the local Starbucks. No, every Mormon teen I seemed to meet turned out to be caffeine-free, teetotal... and a prolifically shagging pervert. The reasoning seemed to be, if you can go to hell for a cup of cha, what's a little threesome anyway? And some of the Mormons teens who aren't, are apparently making their own (safe for work, but only just - you've been warned) DIY porn.
For all I know these kids returned to their roots in adulthood and put aside childish flirtations with rebellion with valuable lessons well and truly learned. But it taught me something that has stuck with me always; something I hope voters take to the polling booths with them this November: when a person rates all transgressions equally as extreme as the other is when true perversion prevails.
Whoever wins the upcoming election, let us hope it is a person capable of putting all things in their proper perspective. And who wears underwear made sometime in the last century.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbHLnp6rmaCde6S7ja6iaK%2BforKve9aopJ6mo2K9sLjIraCcq19ugnl8km1raI2DYrKtscKtoKimXZiur3nWnmSppJWWwKZ505qjpGWRl7y2wIyGoK2sXYe8rrrEsmSappRitaq%2FjKaYoKGTYsKvsMSrrp6ZomO1tbnL