Jokey Bill to Criminalize Male Functions Has a Serious Intent

An Ohio bill proposed by two female state lawmakers would make it a felony for men to unleash their genetic essence outside of a procreative context – in other words, the bill criminalizes any ejaculation that is not specifically intended to result in pregnancy.

Such a measure could have life-ruining consequences for teenagers, husbands or boyfriends trying to avoid fatherhood, and, yes, gay men.

If the proposed measure – titled the "Conception Begins at Erection Act" – provokes a torrent of protest, well, that's pretty much the point, the New York Post reported.

In fact, the bill's sponsors, State Reps. Anita Somani and Tristan Rader, are up front about the satiric nature of the bill. The lawmakers cast the bill in terms of how laws criminalizing abortion affect the choices women can make over their own bodies and reproductive destines. "If you think it's absurd to regulate men, then you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women," the Post quoted Somani saying. "You don't get pregnant on your own."

A similar bill has been drafted in Mississippi, the Post claimed, and some lawmakers on the national stage don't find the idea of banning contraception absurd at all if it falls in line with the imposition of a theocratic system of law on America.

The signs and portents are already abundant. The Post recalled Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley saying last summer, "Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. So I am."

"And some will say that I am advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do," Hawley declared.

The Post noted that hard-line Christians can point to a Biblical story in which God killed Onan for refusing to impregnate the widowed wife of his dead brother, Er. Rather than deposit his semen into the widow and "give seed to his brother," Onan "spilled it on the ground" – which sounds like a description of the "pull out" method of birth control.

It is from Onan's name that the word "onanism," referring to masturbation, is derived, despite the Bible's suggestion that Onan arrived at climax through vaginal sex.

While the Ohio bill does not penalize ejaculation "if the act does not directly and immediately involve an ova" – such as "donating sperm for IVF, masturbating alone, having sex in the LGBTQ+ community, or with a woman using birth control" – any similar bill put forth with the intention of actually criminalizing non-procreative ejaculation could well take things further – a lot further.

Anti-sexual freedom notions concerning contraceptives are present, too, in the top echelons of the nation's judiciary. The Post noted that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has called for the Court to revisit marriage equality, has also invited a challenge to the right of straight people to access birth control.

Such rollbacks of personal liberty are not without precedent following the Court's 2021 overturning of Roe v. Wade, its own ruling from 1973 that gave American women a Constitutional right for half a century to end unwanted pregnancies.

The ruling that gave straight couples a right to use contraceptives, Griswold vs. Connecticut, has an even longer history as legal precedent, with the ruling having been issued six decades ago.

It may sound like a joke now, but with current political trends being what they are, and if hard-right religious doctrine should replace civil law, "ejaculation without the intent of conceiving a baby," as the Post described it, could end up being "a felony offense," just as prescribed in the Ohio bill.

That would have implications that reach far more widely than married men (or single heterosexual males) having sex in ways that avoid pregnancy. Men with sperm motility issues or other forms of infertility could conceivably be prosecuted for any act that results in ejaculation, as could men who have undergone vasectomies and not had them reversed.

Masturbation, or even wet dreams, could be criminalized, and it's an open question whether any male could make it through adolescence without becoming a felon.

For gay men, too, such laws could impose intolerable curtailments on sexual expression – a possibility even if straight men never do face serious legislative efforts to strip away their right for sexual release. Justice Clarence has also indicated a wish for the Supreme Court to revisit the issue of consenting same-sex adults to engage in sex, which was found to be Constitutionally protected in the Court's 2003 ruling Lawrence v. Texas.