Do witches masturbate?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Christine O'Donnell. We know the type, don't we? Once a "sinner," now a moralist. Something at some point must have gone wrong for her, just as it usually does for those who end up seeking religious redemption in the form of born-again fundamentalism. (O'Donnell is Roman Catholic, but she exhibits all the signs of evangelical Protestant fundamentalism.) Maybe it was an overwhelming sense of guilt that finally got to her, guilt implanted through her Catholic upbringing. Maybe she found herself alone and without purpose, unable to cope, longing desperately to belong. This is how cults, including organized religions, find their followers. Maybe it was a guy who dumped her. Whatever the case, something turned her into what she is now, a Christian theocrat who, as many of her kind do, obsesses about masturbation and pornography, wallowing in the "sin" she abhors. (What strikes me about these moralists is how they seem to be fascinated by, and perhaps turned on by, the details of "sin." They traffic in stories of redemption and conversion, but those stories depend on detailed accounts of the "sin" that is being left behind. This, I would argue, is their pornography, just as much as the blood sacrifice that is the core of Christianity.)

Anyway, we should hardly be surprised that O'Donnell's past is, well... colourful. For example...

As Think Progress is reporting, last night on HBO's Real Time, host Bill Maher played a previously unaired clip of O'Donnell from the October 29, 1999 episode of his former show, Politically Incorrect (on which O'Donnell was a frequent guest). Let's just say the clip was rather revealing:

I dabbled into witchcraft -- I never joined a coven. But I did, I did... I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]

One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that... We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.

Now, do I care that she "dabbled" in witchcraft when she was younger? No, not really. It might bother me if she were a witch now, but people do all sorts of things when they're young, some of them quite stupid. But I find it interesting that this anti-sex Christian extremist, who is now all about self-control (but really self-denial, the denial of human nature) dabbled in just the sort of "sin" she now condemns. This doesn't make her special. I suspect that many such moralists were rather adventurous in their pre-moralistic days. But it does make you realize that her whole campaign against sex (other than the procreative sex authorized by the Vatican) is really about herself, about her guilt and about doing everything she can to avoid slipping back into the "sin" of which she partook. It's about denying who she really is as a human being (and denying her nature, which, I suspect, would very much like to pleasure itself) and lying to herself about right and wrong. This is what all religion is, of course. With her, it's just so obvious.

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And it's no wonder she's running for cover, backing out of scheduled TV appearances tomorrow, on CBS's Face the Nation and even Fox News.

One suspects her campaign didn't have withcraft-related talking points ready.