Editor’s Note: The following article by Eric Francis will be presented in three parts over the weekend. It was originally published on Nov. 3, 2006, halfway into Bush’s second term. –RA
Dear Friend and Reader,
TWO STORIES made news this week that ring the bell during these extraordinarily Scorpionic days — days leading to a wildly contentious national election in the United States, where presently Republican majorities in our legislative bodies are up for grabs. If you’re not from the US, you may well marvel at how strange this all seems.
The local astrological background, as we’ve been discussing, is that five of the traditional planets are currently in Scorpio: Venus, Mars, the Sun, Jupiter and retrograde Mercury talking to all of them (but speaking backwards, like on a Beatles album). And retro is the word. We also experienced the Mars-Chiron square on Monday, which seems a nice provocative emblem of the week’s news in the world of sex; last week, Venus and the Sun both squared Chiron. This pretty much assures we’ve all had some buttons pushed recently.
As for the deep background. As previously reported in Planet Waves, the US government has for 25 years been running a program misinforming (supposedly educating) teenagers on the dangers of sex and the virtues of being abstinent until heterosexual marriage. As part of the curriculum, students are misinformed that birth control doesn’t work, and in some places are sent for therapy if they so much as ask one question about homosexuality. The program often includes making teenagers sign an “abstinence until marriage pledge” that according to one study delays the first experience of teenage sex by about three months, but increases the risk of STDs and pregnancy.