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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / South Carolina: You Can’t Be a Republican if You’ve Had Premarital Sex

South Carolina: You Can’t Be a Republican if You’ve Had Premarital Sex

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SCOFF.

 Here’s a nugget of ridiculous for you.

The Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina is chastening it up, requiring aspiring party members to pledge that they’ve never had premarital sex, and that they will never look at porn again.

No, seriously:

Before you can join the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina and get on the primary ballot, they ask that you pledge that you’ve never ever had pre-marital sex — and that you will never ever look at porn again.

Last Tuesday, the LCGOP unanimously adopted a resolution that would ask all candidates who want to get on the primary ballot to sign a pledge with 28 principles, because the party “does not want to associate with candidates who do not act and speak in a manner that is consistent with the SC Republican Party Platform.”

Among the principles, according to Vic MacDonald & Larry Franklin of the Clinton Chronicle, is standard fare like opposition to abortion and upholding gun rights, as well as “a compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy” and “a high regard for United States Sovereignty.”

But then they get even more specific. From the Chronicle:

You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage.

You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.

You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.

Taking a swipe at gays, adulterers, and premarital sex offenders?  Classic.

Please let the LCGOP force potential candidates to submit to a lie detector test. Please oh please oh please.

[via TPM]

[cross-posted at ABLC]

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  2. 2.

    Martin

    You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.

    They just mean tits and hoo-ha’s right? Because if that’s the case, I think it’ll work out fine for the GOP.

  3. 3.

    YellowJournalism

    I’d be interested in know what their definition of pornography is. I mean, beyond the hard core XXX. Do the nude scenes in an R-rated movie count? What about context? Or do members have to rent movies from those companies that take the nudity out of movies like Schindler’s List?

  4. 4.

    YellowJournalism

    And can born-again virgins join? Or just the real virgins and V-to-M couples?

  6. 6.

    Mark S.

    Though at first the resolution would have required candidates to sign the pledge, Smith clarified in a statement Monday that “due to various legal issues” the LCGOP cannot require that the candidates sign the pledge if they meet all of the other qualifications for a run

    I was wondering. That certainly didn’t sound legal.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    They do realize by this standard they have to throw their sitting governor out of the party amirite?

  8. 8.

    YellowJournalism

    Don’t know if it’s pornography, but I need brain bleach just the same.

  9. 9.

    Grover Gardner

    This just in:

    “COLUMBIA, SC – The South Carolina Republican Party has cancelled this year’s primary, due to the fact that no qualified candidates were available to run for office.”

  10. 10.

    Suffern ACE

    @yutsano – that is probably the point. I like how the porn pledge is only from “this point forward.” otherwise they probably wouldn’t be able to find any honest candidates.

  11. 11.

    YellowJournalism

    Also, too, do anal and oral count as premarital sex? I mean, after abstinence class, I heard from my best friend that her sister’s lab partner’s older brother said that their cousin told her it didn’t count. Plus, I hear there was a debate over whether or not oral counted when this one guy in a high-ranking position in the government got caught some years back…

  13. 13.

    pseudonymous in nc

    “South Carolina: making North Carolina feel good about itself since 1788.”

  14. 14.

    Spaghetti Lee

    Also, no one who has consumed the flesh of an unclean animal or has unclean marks on the skin larger than-oh, crap, wait a minute, need to check that part.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @YellowJournalism:

    Sports Illustrated annual swimsuit issue.

    Hard Core pr0n.

    These people will need surgery to get the broomsticks removed from their asses.

  18. 18.

    Warren Terra

    Please let the LCGOP force potential candidates to submit to a lie detector test.

    Sorry, no. I really, really hate “lie detector tests” (see Bob Park on the subject) and don’t want them accorded any credibility. Not even if the whole show involved offers the potential to pierce these cretins’ veneers of prudery.

  21. 21.

    AA+ Bonds

    I don’t understand how one more lie on this count would trouble any of them; pair up the religious identification numbers with pretty much any numbers on reported sexual activity, STDs, pregnancy, etc, and then consider what these folks have had to claim about their thoughts and deeds during religious assemblies since they were children – and without a Sacrament of Reconciliation

    If they weren’t capable of signing this pledge and a dozen like it and maintaining the contradiction in their minds, they’d all tear each other limb from limb

    The human self-image is surprisingly resilient and contradiction is its foundation

  23. 23.

    AA+ Bonds

    @Yutsano:

    They do realize by this standard they have to throw their sitting governor out of the party amirite?

    It’s my belief that a lot of extremely repressed people really, truly thought that one benefit of the Christian Coalition seizing the Party back in the 1980s would be the practical elimination of sex scandals in the GOP

    These folks believe in magic and this pledge is exactly the sort of magic I mean, “if we make them sign this, then that will never happen again, or if it does, we won’t be harmed by it”

  24. 24.

    MattF

    So much for the big tent. In fact, so much for the itsy-bitsy tent. In fact… um… “Hello?”… “Any body home?”… (echo)

  25. 25.

    Dr. Loveless

    Fortunately for them, shame-filled blow jobs in public men’s rooms don’t count as sex.

  26. 26.

    tjproudamerican

    Alas! This news rules out Fatso, the Family Values career hedonist, drug addict, and half billionaire, four-times married, no children, not even an adopted one because having children might require him to do something besides eat, smoke, and take sex tourist-like viagra fueled vacations to Third World Sex Tourism Hot Spots.

    Limbaugh has admitted he is a jerk-off, who cannot wait for more hot Coed law School porn to reach over his pathetic gut, grab himself and jerk off to internet porn.

    I feel sorry for Limbaugh’s fourth wife. Most men would fight if you called them a jerk off, Limbaugh wears his masturbatory ways proudly.

    Sorry about South Carolina ditto turd! In case Fatso’s defenders wonder about what is wrong with being a hedonist devoted to one’s penis, ala Hugh Hefner. Nothing. But at least Hefner had the commitment to life to have children. We know Limbaugh’s mysterious war wound, boils on his ass, kept him from battle, and it is easy to imagine him not getting it up, but a half billion dollars he could have adopted a kid, but he is that selfish and devoted to pleasing Rush Limbaugh.

  28. 28.

    AA+ Bonds

    @Dr. Loveless:

    Fortunately for them, shame-filled blow jobs in public men’s rooms don’t count as sex.

    It is funny I admit but what is not particularly funny is that when you are a woman who is not wealthy within that belief system, you are told by the moral leadership in your community that you are not allowed to leave your husband if he is gay and in fact are 50% responsible for making the marriage work anyway

    Add the current economic climate where those women may already be dependent on their churches to feed and clothe their children and you have the full picture of what that means

  29. 29.

    piratedan

    well, now that this is so in vogue, I expect aspirin sales to increase as they’ll now be dual purpose products for headache remedies and birth control devices inserted between knees. Do ministers get back into the game confirming a woman’s virginity prior to marriage too?

  31. 31.

    gex

    @Suffern ACE: That’s standard conservative fare. Shut the door behind you. It’s okay for you but not for anyone else.

    @YellowJournalism: Abstinence only standards have led to a lot of Saddlebacking amongst Christian youth, so I’m guessing those things are okay.

  32. 32.

    AA+ Bonds

    I guess I’d just like to point out the uncomfortable fact behind the bathroom-blowjob jokes: not every man who likes to have sex with men comes out or becomes liberal on any level or is prevented from becoming extremely poorly adjusted and taking it out on people around him

    If you are a wealthy Protestant Christian woman, you can just leave him and sue him and take up with your aerobics instructor or something

    If you are a poor Protestant Christian woman with children whose choice is either social support from your church through accepting your husband back into your home or social punishment as long as you refuse to “reconcile”, you are choosing with a gun to your head, and sometimes that becomes more than figurative

  33. 33.

    R Johnston

    @Warren Terra:

    Sorry, no. I really, really hate “lie detector tests” (see Bob Park on the subject) and don’t want them accorded any credibility. Not even if the whole show involved offers the potential to pierce these cretins’ veneers of prudery.

    Agreed that lie detector tests are about as useful as the Republican National Committee ethics advisor, but you’re missing the good here. Laurens County Republican Party people will take the lie detector tests, pass, then have the truth come to light. This will cause them no embarrassment as they’re Republicans, but it will discredit lie detector tests.

  34. 34.

    gex

    @R Johnston: So naive. What will happen is that the phrase “depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” will suddenly be a very pertinent and interesting question the answer to which has been stumping us since the dawn of mankind.

    You, sir, have forgotten the first rule of Blight Club. IOKIYAR.

  35. 35.

    AA+ Bonds

    One also must realize that in the shotgun theology of many New Evangelical and fundamentalist sects, if you have accepted Christ as Savior, you can sign this pledge believing that you will follow it in your heart, and then sin and violate it a couple months down the line, and then “get right” with God in your heart and perhaps through public blubbering, and then go sin again, etc. and what keeps you from damnation is that personal acceptance of Christ in what I would describe as a weird, faint echo of Calvinism

    They wouldn’t read this assessment and agree with it, but practically, that’s what it looks like

    It’s like pre-Counter-Reformation Catholicism, minus shame/guilt mechanisms like any sort of controlling authority, mortal sin, Sacrament of Penance, etc.

  37. 37.

    AA+ Bonds

    @amk:

    I think we’ve been holding pretty steady since Pat Robertson’s run at the Oval Office

  39. 39.

    AA+ Bonds

    People don’t think about the 1980s a lot beyond the big names but when I look at Harry Reid I see a man defined by his Kampf against Paul Laxalt.

    Who?

    Exactly. And that’s the sort of bullshit that determines how our politicians behave nowadays

  48. 48.

    gex

    To be fair, they’ve said absolutely nothing about serial marriage. Quick marriage, quickie, quick divorce and you’re still GOP material!

  52. 52.

    THE

    You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage……You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.

    Wow. I’ll bet the queue to sign up must have stretched… All the way around the writing pad at least.

  53. 53.

    JPL

    The pledge is 28 pages long and contains your standard repub concerns. Unless it specifically says something about lying, I wouldn’t worry about it.

  56. 56.

    Rathskeller

    @Patricia Kayden: That’s the thing! How?! How?! How?!

    I’m an atheist, and I work in San Francisco. Not only have I never cheated on my wife, I feel guilty when I look at the barista’s tits. But I have “San Francisco values”, what with my being ok with porn, gay marriage, and I dunno, contraception.

    How can Newt have had a six year affair and get a free pass? I keep coming back to that and the cold-bloodedness of that affair, combined with the complete forgiveness from the GOP body politic, just doesn’t make any sense to me.

  60. 60.

    IrishGirl

    @YellowJournalism: LOL You know the sad thing is, once they started teaching Abstinence in the schools, a lot of teenagers started doing oral and anal because ‘you know, technically, it’s not sex’ and the STD rate skyrocketed. Go figure…..

    If that doesn’t prove to them that Abstinence education doesn’t work, then nothing will.

  61. 61.

    Surly Duff

    I look forward to seeing the increase in 6 year-old Republican candidates on Laurens Co. ballots.

  63. 63.

    Lolcat Liberation Front

    That Chronicle article is a hoot. I love that the SC GOP Chairman finds a way to blame all this madness on… Bill Clinton’s penis. Obsessed, they are.

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