Judge Sam and the revirginization of America

by David Benjamin

“No pity. After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity.” 

― Tristan Tzara, The Dada Manifesto 1918

PARIS — There is nothing more poisonous to civil society than purity.

The purity police reared their shrouded form and bared their scythes again this week, in the pinched, pious form of Justice (an ironic title) Sam Alito, whose draft for the Supreme Court’s evisceration of Roe v. Wade proposed to purge our populace of loose women, pubescent sluts, black ho’s, incestuous twelve-year-old girls and their abortionist enablers. Judge Sam’s manifesto foreshadows a wave of state-sponsored purifications that will flood the nurseries of America with the forced spawn of carnal iniquity and swarthy lust—a million unwanted babies (most of whom, unfashionably pigmented, will continue through life unwanted). 

Beneath the Court’s racist states-rights pretext lurks the mission of the laughably misnamed “pro-life” movement, no member of which has ever been spotted at an anti-war rally or uttered a peep against gun violence. Anti-abortion warriors preach a version of purity. They would reconstitute a nation in which every girl’s a virgin ’til she’s married off, in which every marriage is Christian, and where every Christian wife is a serial breeder, submissive, prolific and homebound. They would give us an America purified of condoms, contraceptives and consent.

Purity’s power lies, of course, in its illusion. It never was, never will be.

Even in the Bible, purity proved a fleeting mirage. Barely had Creation finished when Adam and Eve, naked to each other and curious, cleaved together and conceived Cain (or was it Abel) and came away wondering if there wasn’t something a little smutty about the whole affair.

Else why the apple, why the snake?

When God heaved them from the Garden, apparently over premarital sex, he committed the first purification ever recorded. He did not, however, purify Adam and Eve, who were—along with all their progeny—indelibly tattooed with original sin. God only purified the place they left behind, which disappeared thereafter from the Bible, never mentioned again. To keep Eden pure, no one could go there, no one could find it on a map and, finally, no one knew if Eden existed, which—after the lovers bit the apple—it did not. For the next forty books, purity pretty much disappears from Scripture, in favor of blood and begats, scolding and suffering, a little erotica, some nice poetry and even a book called Lamentations.

Right from the jump, God was making a point. We didn’t get it. 

The immutable rule for all purification is that it’s retroactive, often without warning and always excessive. In Genesis, God perceived impurity in a couple of born-yesterday kids who didn’t know pure from prune juice. When they succumbed to their God-given desire, God punished them cruelly, banishing them from an earthly paradise and imbuing them with the knowledge of certain death.

All our subsequent purifications are Genesis all over again. We see some quality in “other” people that we deem unseemly. We declare all bearers of this blemish impure and we wreak the wrath of God. The great purge is the purest expression of power, telling the unwashed, unwanted, soiled and sinful that We can do. Whatever we want. To you.

I could delve the vast, depressing history of purity and its purges, from the Babylonian and Roman conquests to the Inquisition, the “Indian Wars,” the Third Reich and Vladimir Putin’s current cleansing of Ukraine. But let’s stick with lessons from the Bible. 

Between the books of Genesis and Matthew, realism rules. Characters are fatally flawed. But then, finally, in Luke, Chapter 1, purity gets a cameo. The angel Gabriel descends into Mary’s boudoir and says, abracadabra, you’re havin’ a baby—no horny husband, no makin’ whoopee. And the kid already has a name: Jesus.

“… ‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’

“The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’…”

You have to admit that “overshadow” is a hell of a euphemism.

Compiling his copy from first-century oral traditions and legends of Jesus, Luke wrote the last of the four accepted gospels. It amends, contradicts, recasts and sanitizes many of the tales told by Mark, Matthew and the gloomy, dogmatic John. Matthew was the first to identify Mary as a virgin knocked up by the Holy Spirit. Luke’s version expands the miracle substantially, if not more credibly.  

After the bedroom scene with Gabriel, however, Mary and her virginity slip from the gospel spotlight. Even in Luke, after a supporting role in the Christmas story, Mary is barely heard from—for good reason. Among New Testament authors, Mary wasn’t presented as an object of worship. She was not deemed a priestess, prophet or saint. She was merely a womb, chosen to gestate the Son of Man (not Mary) and fade into domestic obscurity, like a nice Jewish peasant girl. 

Mary’s comeback took a few centuries. Eventually, her virginity was not only heralded by the lawgivers of an insurgent and strident religion but rehabbed into a cult unto itself. Mary, mother of Jesus, became the Virgin Mary (in caps). Her purity attained a sanctity and solidity never imputed in the New Testament.

Like all purity crusades, the revirginization of Mary required a campaign of mass denial. Most troublesome for Vatican revisionists was the gospel of Mark, the earliest of the Big Four. Not only does Mark overlook the virgin birth, he explodes the Catholic grade-school myth that Jesus was an only child.

Mark cites Mary’s busy mom career in Chapter 6. Jesus visits Nazareth. It’s not a big town. His family still lives there. Everyone knows Jesus. They say, hey, come on. This kid’s a prophet? “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”

If you’ve read the Bible, you’ve noticed that it makes no mention—nor do the gnostic gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi parchments, nor any other ancient scrawl—about Gabriel making six return flights to Mary’s boudoir to plant all those brothers and sisters in Mary’s undefiled uterus. 

Mary could only become a virgin all over again if someone—long after she had any say in the matter—edited the record, reshaped reality and purged a lot of “heretics” who challenged her chastity. Torquemada, one of history’s great purists, would barbecue you for doubting the Virgin Mary. 

It occurs to me that Alito, along with an army of pro-life assassins and abortion-clinic bombers, might feel ambivalent about which Mary they like better. In Mark, she’s human and supernumerary, meek and mild. On the other hand, in the Catholic Church today, Mary is huge, a pedestaled goddess blessed among women, with a constituency and a platform. She exudes power.

Is this an image of feminine dominion that sits well with a Christianist Court whose mission is to purge abortion rights and purify womankind? Judges Sam, Clarence, Neil, Brett and Amy might feel squeamish about an unwed teenage Mary “touched by an angel,” knocked up in her own room and unfaithful to her fiancé. 

Shouldn’t the Trump Court’s ideal post-Roe Mary come off, rather, as selfless, powerless, ovulating and unprotected? Better, maybe, that she’s way past any lingering vestige of girlish purity—older, married and tired, a Mary who can’t remember her virginity or figure out why it was ever important. 

This would be a woman more Judge Amy than Holy Mary, sighing, gritting her teeth, waiting for it to be over—and hoping to Christ she’s not pregnant again.