Clearly, Bush is not going to drift quietly into oblivion. Majikthise and Feministing report that his administration is appointing a certifiable kook to run the federal program that oversees family planning and reproductive health. His qualifications seem to be that he's fanatical about abstinence, to the point of making stuff up.
At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, "If I Only Had a Brain") by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships. Seriously.
[Keroack] explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, "trust" encounters, and sexual intercourse. "It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression," he said.
But apparently if you've had sex with too many people you use up all that oxytocin: "People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual." Hear that? Too many sexual partners and you'll never love again!
I know that oxytocin is thought to have a strong role in bonding, is triggered for secretion in many situations—sex, labor, lactation, etc.—but these claims that you can have permanent depletion of oxytocin levels by too much sex? Never heard of that. I hit the physiology texts in my office; no support. I tried the online databases, and hoo-boy is there a lot of stuff on oxytocin; but nothing I could find to support those claims. Keroack doesn't seem to have published anything on this subject in the peer-reviewed literature, either—the only source cited for it is something called "A Special Report from the Abstinence Medical Council". Strangely, the only instances Google turns up of this "Abstinence Medical Council" is as the publisher of this report, and as a part of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, run by Leslee Unruh, unqualified hack (and also organizer of creepy "purity balls"). I think I'm right to suspect the source is ginned-up propaganda for a quack organization.
Nice.