A friend once related to me her grandmother’s axiom: the best form of birth control is one aspirin clenched tightly between the knees.

In the absence of aspirin, Viagra will suffice.

But that won’t do because we must have sex. We’re “militant radicals,” and sex is our national, political and economic religion. We haven’t yet formally recognized it as such, but we should. It has all the religionistic trappings: commandments and sins; widely-shared, uncompromised and unquestioning belief; zealous followers and recruiters; accepted and religiously-observed ceremonies; songs—hymns?—and chants, books, websites, “support groups,” movies and clothing; a specifically dedicated (and highly profitable) retail industry; gurus, some with impressive qualifications, who preach as, spellbound, we listen, believe and, thus enlightened, obey. It’s a mandatory part of our tax-supported educational curricula. We testify; it is sex, we believe it, and that settles it.

We even have fraudulent practitioners and “splinter” movements.

If sex is our religion, birth control is one of its most imperative sacraments (and, yes, I suppose that makes Gloria Steinem a prophet.)

Birth control isn’t new. We baby-boomers seem to believe we thought it up. But human beings have been commonly and desperately—and often at great expense and harm—seeking ways to have sex without nature’s intended results for thousands of years.

But birth control enables us to worship at our altars of sex, and this is how we live.

First and foremost, in our free-market—i.e. “capitalist”—economy, sex and our unswerving belief in it are enormously good for business. They help the rich get richer and help keep the poor content and in line. Was the housing bubble’s burst bad? Did it cause unemployment? That’s nothing. If Americans stopped acutely focusing on sex—if the commercial marketplace allowed us to stop endlessly thinking about sex—the US economy would depress irreparably because most of it—particularly the retail end—reinforces, exploits and relies on Americans’ obsession with sex. Advertisers wouldn’t know what to do if they couldn’t use sex to sell everything from toothpaste to tires, and retail markets—restaurants and bars, jewelers, florists, clothiers, beverage makers, banks, credit companies, travel agencies, cosmetics firms, hair salons, fitness centers, car dealers, pharmaceutical companies, magazine publishers, cosmetic surgeons, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, especially music and entertainment—would all likely shrivel and go bust if Americans weren’t preoccupied with sex and with identifying themselves as promising sex partners. “Sex sells,” as the contemporary colloquialism goes, “and everybody’s buying.”

Second and perhaps subsequently, we identify ourselves and interrelate mostly via sex.

What would men do—how could they possibly be men—if they had to seek more from women than sex; if they couldn’t behave like animals that, once fed, seek only sex? How would “manly” men define themselves if they could no longer raptly lust, genitalia in hand and mind, after “artists” who mechanically pump their hips, or women who otherwise beckon?

Yes, a real man must believe—or ensure women and other men believe—that he’s a potent “sex machine.” It’s his value, power, definition and love. He has testosterone, so he sacrifices anything—home, family, career and, most of all, his money—for sex. His manhood—nay, all manhood—and the nation’s economic health depend on it. If he doesn’t believe these things about himself and about manhood in general, he’s an unpatriotic, sissified affront to all things manly, an insult to his father, bad for business and generally unworthy: of no use to America. He’s a non-believer. He rejects the national sexual faith, and his nation rejects him.

For how else, besides sex, can women obtain men’s love? If women can’t offer sex to men—if they cannot relate to men on strictly a below-the-belt level—what will they do? What else have they to offer? How can they get men’s attention? How can they persuade men to do anything? What would women do if they had to appeal to other male organs besides those used for reproduction? What if women had to actually appreciate men as human beings? Without no-baby sex as a means to strength, confidence and value, women cannot communicate meaningfully with or attract men.

Women openly condemn sex-crazed men who see women as sex objects. But actions speak louder than words; so many women rely on men’s sex-craziness and can’t appeal to men without it. If a woman doesn’t believe a man wants her for sex, she has no use for him.

In that, our women perpetrate the national religion of sex more faithfully and passionately than men. The promise of sex—most acutely without babies—is a woman’s power. Birth control affords women more power than it affords men, which leads to . . ..

Third, sex plays a huge role in our politics. An Obama 2012 campaign ad rather explicitly equated voting for and having sex with him. (Maybe it should’ve had angels singing in the background.) The ad—I’m assuming it targeted women—didn’t specify protected or unprotected sex, but it did mention birth control; you bet it did.

In the land of the free and home of the brave, women who can’t or won’t have sex without getting pregnant—or, if they do get pregnant, who can’t or won’t abort the baby—are useless to men, to society and, most passionately, useless to themselves. They, too, are unbelievers.

After all, women exercise their rights—practice their faith—by “putting out” without bearing children. Everybody knows this. Only a cretin would deny it, and any politician who wants the female vote had better swear by it. On local, state and federal levels, we’re staffed with politicians who vocally and often support a woman’s right to “give it up.”

So, birth control in just about any form is a blessing. It allows us to practice sex without making babies, and that’s good for the economy, necessary so men can be real men and indispensable as a woman’s means to self-worth, control, and upward social mobility. All of this makes birth control an invaluable political-campaign tool. “Vote for me, and I will preserve your right to practice your faith.”

As Sandra Fluke, the political left’s newest de facto birth-control expert—and instantly ordained priestess in the national church of sex, having studied at a good seminary: a law school—affirmed in an interview on NPR’s “Diane Reems Show,” unwanted babies are socially and financially burdensome. They cost taxpayers a lot more money: four times as much, said Fluke, as . . . well, as wanted babies, I suppose. This harkens back to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s reasons for encouraging abortion: we have to purify our population of these babies who are socially and financially burdensome. Nobody wants them. They make us look bad. We must have sex, but we can’t afford its natural results.

That’s why Nazis liked Sanger, and why even grisly, post-birth “abortions”—a la Kermit Gosnell—are necessary: a patriotic blessing, not a crime. That’s why, as Illinois Senator and as US President, Barack Obama supported and continues to support a woman’s constitutional right, or religious rite, to hire a healthcare professional—or maybe Luca Brasi—to drill a hole in her newborn baby’s skull and suck out “its” brains with, say, a Shop Vac which, as “Doctor” Gosnell, Delaware Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have shown, need not be sterilized: “quick and dirty” in some closet, just the way we like it.

This might shed a whole new light on the Supreme Court’s Roe-versus-Wade decision. Was it really about “women’s rights,” or was it about efficiently disposing of all these dad-gummed unwanted and burdensome babies we keep making? We have our junk food, our booze and drugs, our sports and “real housewives” and, most emphatically, our sex. These keep the masses happy and content. They’re good for national stability. But what about all these danged unwanted babies?

Enter Roe versus Wade and the Supreme Court’s insight. “Tell ‘em,” the robed and priestly justices might’ve mumbled among themselves, “it’s for ‘women’s rights’.” But, no: arguably, it was for the economy and social purity. The justices established the faith and, to this day, we religiously examine them to ensure they’ll keep it: “Do you believe . . .?”

Once the baby’s born, he or she is no longer “invading” the mother’s body, so the popularly passionate “keep-your-laws-off-my-body” melodrama is no longer applicable. For one thing, we might reply, “keep your body off our laws.” But who’s going to support this unwanted kid? Who’s going to get “it” out of classrooms so the kids we really want can learn? Who’s going to pay the police, lawyers, judges and social workers who will inevitably be called upon to handle “it”? Who’s going to pay for “its” food, clothing, and shelter, “its” healthcare and, of course “its” cellphone? As Fluke’s statistics imply, “its” parents won’t pay, and “it” can’t pay on “its” own, either. If we don’t want the bother and expense “it” statistically promises—and we don’t—we must prevent and/or get rid of “it”: that messy, burdensome little result of our national sexual religion.

The morally high-sounding “women’s-rights” angle to promote birth control is not so much a stroke of genius as much as shrewd understanding of the ideological marketplace. If sex is religious freedom, babies are slavery. Babies violate the faith.

Birth control guarantees our unbridled worship of sex. It’s a documented cost-cutting measure that purifies the population: our passionate blood sacrifice. We even burn the remains.

Listen: some people blame the Third Reich on sexual frustration. Truth be told, the attendant social-psychiatric school blames almost every social malaise on sexual frustration. Never mind that the Roaring Twenties, when everybody partied and America coined the term “flapper,” led to the Great Depression; and never mind that perhaps the most genuinely progressive time in American history came after World War II when people—sobered up, old-fashioned and unenlightened though they were—exercised some restraint. Being human, they certainly thought about, wanted, and had sex, and liked it just fine. But they didn’t make sex their fervent national obsession. It wasn’t the most important thing. They did well, and not just financially. Their post-war world, though flawed, was more wholesome and humane than ours. Arguably, their stodgy, outdated morality had a strong common-sense element.

But if we ignore that, it inevitably follows: birth control—including late-term and “post-birth” abortion—is necessary, apparently more so than the salvation of our souls, which is apparently okay because sex—especially without babies—means immediate profits, freedom and power.

Dismiss the silly debate about abortions for rape victims and women whose health is threatened by pregnancy. It’s a seductive argument; an effective means for expressing melodramatic self-aggrandizement and righteous indignation, but it’s largely hot air. Most people won’t deny a woman the legal and even moral right to terminate a pregnancy that’s sprung from rape or that threatens her life, and most abortions aren’t performed for those reasons anyway. Most abortions are merely about getting rid of unwanted babies who’ve sprung from casual sex which, as we know, is a woman’s patriotic duty—to promote economic health—and her primary social, political and financial leverage.

I’m well aware that those who read this and find it offensive will impulsively seek to discredit me personally. The ad hominem fallacy is all the rage, so I’ll preemptively admit to my participation in the national religion of sex. Born in the 1950s, I came of age in the 1970s and, for most of my adult life, I lived—to the hilt—the “If it feels good, do it,” and “Do it! Do it! Do it, till you’re satisfied, whatever it is” commandments, chanted rhythmically and repeatedly to joyous, playful, seemingly harmless melodies on AM radio. To a guy like me—impressionable to a fault and fearful of rejection—the emergence of the national religion of sex and my own testosterone was a potently destructive mix. How many have I hurt—used until holy release and then discarded—over the decades? Upon others and myself, what untold harm have I wrought?

I can’t say but, haunted by wretched memories, I know that, as enthusiastically as I participated, I didn’t truly believe. I knew it wasn’t right. I acted like an animal, and while I basked outwardly in my peers’—my fellow practitioners’—admiration, inside, I was aghast. Now I’m remorseful. So it goes.

In other words, if this missive rings to some as an accusation, then it is as also a confession, and in all honesty, it’s likely that I speak now due to waning middle-aged hormonal levels more than any imagined courage, wisdom or even righteous outrage.

In that, perhaps youth isn’t so great. Perhaps age—in a way that young people can’t understand—has its contributions. Perhaps older people, having committed and hopefully learned from the sins of youth, have both a right and a duty to speak, and young people should listen and heed. I should have listened but didn’t, and I speak now from personal experience and observation: from what I’ve lived and seen.

I’m a full-fledged doubter: an agnostic, a questioner, a heretic. I blaspheme against the national religion of sex and expect those who yet fully embrace it to condemn not merely my words, but me, as blasphemous. None the less, I say: this is wrong; it’s damned us. Our national religion of sex is dehumanizing and destructive to the human spirit. It’s debasement on a grand scale. It’s an artful, well-contrived lie, heinously wrought for profit and power in the names of high-sounding ideals. I read about Dr. Gosnell, and how the media have largely ignored his and others’ murderous and bloodthirsty practices, and I have to ask: what have we done for sex? What will we sacrifice for sex?

More acutely, what won’t we do for sex? If we will bore a hole in a baby’s skull and suck out his or her brains, if we will snip a newborn baby’s spinal cord, and if we will ignore this as if it doesn’t matter, all in homage to our national religion of sex, what won’t we do?

What kind of people are we? Can we even say we’re human anymore? Animals routinely abandon, kill and even eat their young, but human beings?

To my dismay, I participated. So now, perhaps in some vain attempt at penance . . ..

I cannot help but see the unanswered, ignored contradictions inherent to any religion; specifically to this missive, the heinous betrayal by abortion supporters of all that we religionistically espouse as holy writ.

For example, women have rights, too? Well, yeah, but we value women the most—and ironically, we insist they value themselves more—when they eagerly present themselves as sex objects who don’t burden themselves, the men involved, or society, with children.

Abortion and “the pill” are good for women? You must be kidding me. If we’re really concerned for women’s welfare, shouldn’t we be preaching to women that they’re valuable—to men, to society and to themselves—as other than sex objects? If we really want men to regard women as equals, shouldn’t we teach men in song and story to define their masculinity by means other than sexual performance? Wouldn’t that be progress? Wouldn’t that be evolution? Wouldn’t that be leaving the past behind rather than embracing it?

For another example: worshipping sex means we’re intelligent, enlightened and progressive? When it comes to sex as religion, higher thought comes to a halt. We regress to the mental equivalent of feral cats, rushing to hump away with “intelligent, enlightened and progressive” abandon, candles ablaze, hymns and chants to the sex god religiously adding background.

“Progress” and “intellect” are thinking with one’s genitalia? Human welfare is subjecting an entire population to a massive, commercialized, profit-hungry, dehumanizing and decidedly neurotic sexual obsession; reducing an entire population to a mass of grunting, panting, sub-human beings?

“I’m man. You’re woman. We do ‘wild thing’ and kill baby. We’re intelligent.”

Jeepers, people will have sex. To ensure our survival, our Creator made the human sex drive unstoppable. Do we really need to supercharge it? Don’t we know: that’s how babies are made? In light of this well-known condition, shouldn’t we be finding ways to mitigate our sex drives? Doesn’t that sound more genuinely enlightened, progressive and intelligent?

Do we really believe that ancient, “cave-dweller” beliefs are enlightened, and the people who shun such beliefs—people who believe in restraint and a more advanced and higher plain of existence—are old fashioned?

Shouldn’t we admit that we were wrong; that the “sexual revolution” was misguided, short-sighted, commercial and political bologna, unwise to the point of stupidity, and our sexual faith is the real blasphemy? Shouldn’t we reject politicians who seek to profit from our dehumanization? Shouldn’t we shun greedy commercial interests that encourage us to think and behave like animals? Can’t we see that recasting and glorifying—even rewarding and admiring—beastly behavior as freedom, civil rights and enlightenment is a heinous lie, indicative of deeply-rooted disrespect that advances into loathing?

Perhaps some irate reader, frustrated by my unwillingness or inability to believe in the national religion of sex—the religion that makes birth control so damned imperative—can explain these contradictions in a response.

Meanwhile, “let’s boogie.” Let’s “lay that pipe” and prevent or efficiently dispose of the babies (in an environmentally safe way, of course). It’s good for business. It’s our national, government-sponsored, culturally- and commercially-enforced religion. It makes us rich or, barring that, happy in poverty. It sets us free. It’s our definition. It’s deliciously, sinfully, wickedly decadent. It’s our progress and our politics. It’s all good, and the world’s Dr. Gosnells, with their bloody, sacramental knives, scissors, drills and vacuum cleaners, are waiting.