Affirmative action is a contentious policy. Of late, women and African Americans such as Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama have modeled visible progress, so proponents of affirmative action have reason to be ecstatic. Yet as discrimination in the workforce becomes less and less acceptable, it’s time for groups that have never been protected under affirmative action policies to come forward and gain acceptance under those policies. I am speaking, of course, about the members of our society who practice abstinence.
The abstinent have traditionally been assigned the roles of clergymen, nuns, comic book gurus, and certified public accountants. Much like the traditional roles to which women and African Americans were restricted, these careers lack a reasonable chance of advancement, shunting members’ economic progress and widening the gap between the abstinent community and the rest of society.
Legislation would force the government to define exactly what it means to be a member of the abstinent community. One group in particular, the celibates, holds that only they are the only true abstainers. As it stands in the celibate community, leaving is tantamount to exile. “Once they’re gone they can never come back,” a celibate Californian explained to me via telegraph.
When asked if his idea of abstinence is too strict for today’s society, he insisted, “Those other abstinence groups are only abstinent when convenient. It’s like Tiger Woods calling himself black when he’s receiving an award from BET, Vietnamese at the Asian Excellence Awards, and abstinent when his wife asks him why he won’t have sex with her. We’ve got to keep our tradition pure, but it’s not easy to perpetuate tradition when our members can’t perpetuate.” Unfortunately, this is the reality for the strictly abstinent celibate community. Young abstainers are fleeing the ranks in increasing number, citing taunts from their peers for their unusual behavior.
“It’s not hard to see how a young mind could cave to sexual pressure, so we try to tell those youngsters that once upon a time their peers were abstinent just like them. They were the ones that changed,” explained the celibate Californian.
Despite their innumerable benefits, however, these policies have been met with resistance from the sexless masses themselves. Integration, they say, would extend the opportunities of the abstinent, but at what cost to the abstinent community’s rich traditions of wearing modest clothing, designing macaroni pictures, enjoying board games, and partaking in impassioned discussions of theology?
Resistance should also be expected from the Catholic Church, who is reported to be the single largest employer of celibate men and women, and Milton Bradley, the maker of the board games Candy Land and Battleship. Their bottom lines would no doubt be hurt by government action.
Despite its costs and opponents, affirmative action for the abstinent must be adopted. The abstinent are under-paid and, perhaps for this reason, under-laid. Thus, those who wish to be active in the broader community are forced to practice unwilling abstinence. This sours the long-standing medieval romanticism of abstinence practiced by the celibate community, cheapening their achievements. Therefore, our government needs to take affirmative action to help abstinent people everywhere achieve the American dream – a home with a spouse, two kids, and a picket fence.
Possible affirmative action programs include: speed dating circuits, the reinstution of the television program “Blind Date,” a series of Jonas Brothers concerts with an under-40 band, a government-sponsored Stephanie Meyer book series, and the addition of sex in new Batman comics.
-SRS ‘13
