Louisiana Overhauls Fucked Up (The Arse) Laws

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Louisiana Overhaul of Discriminatory Law: Hundreds Cleared from Sex Offender List

Community groups and lawyers deal blow to the state's over 100 year-old 'Crimes Against Nature' law
Sarah Lazare
June 13, 2013

Over 700 people accused of selling or soliciting sex for money were wiped from the sex offender registry in Louisiana last night after a historic settlement to beat back the state's archaic 'Crimes Against Nature' laws.

The development marked a huge victory for sex workers, members of the LGBTQ community, poor people, and women, who disproportionately bore the brunt of a law that slapped heavy punishments on accused sex workers.

The victory came after Women with a Vision, BreakOUT!, and the Center for Constitutional Rights worked with affected communities to file a class action lawsuit.

"Yesterday when I heard, I was so excited. This was a grassroots, queer-led, effort. People were screaming for change, and they won," declared Deon Haywood, executive director of New Orleans-based Women with a Vision.

Louisiana's Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS), was created in the late 1800s to criminalize sexual devience, and today targets the selling of oral or anal sex for a fee.

Before 2011, police had full discretion over whether to charge accused sex workers with prostitution, which results in a misdemeanor, or CANS, which mandates registration as a sex offender.

Salon reports:

In practice — and particularly in New Orleans, whose police department is currently under a federal consent decree for discriminatory practices — that has meant the disproportionate charging of people of color and LGBT people for “crimes against nature.” The Department of Justice report on discrimination in the New Orleans Police Department noted that “in particular, transgender women complained that NOPD officers improperly target and arrest them for prostitution, sometimes fabricating evidence of solicitation for compensation. Moreover, transgender residents reported that officers are likelier, because of their gender identity, to charge them under the state’s ‘crimes against nature’ statute — a statute whose history reflects anti-LGBT sentiment.”

"There is a thing called guilty of walking while transgender," explained Haywood.

The Center for Constitutional Rights explains that sex offender status heavily penalizes already marginal communities.

People affected by this law have been barred from homeless shelters, physically threatened, and refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept registered sex offenders at their facilities. As in the earlier case, all plaintiffs in this action proceeded anonymously for fear of retaliation.

A federal judge last year ruled that forcing people convicted of CANS to register as sex offenders violates their constitutional rights. Yet, when hundreds remained on the registry after this federal ruling, community organizations worked with the affected community and lawyers to file the class action lawsuit that was settled last was settled last night.

Community groups explain that the victory was won by people directly affected by the law. "This case would move forward by people standing in their truth and sharing their stories," explains Deon Haywood, whose organizatin takes on issues of Sex Worker Rights, Drug Policy Reform, HIV Positive Women’s Advocacy, and Reproductive Justice outreach, according to their website.

"We did something people said we couldn't do," says Haywood. "They said we couldn't organize the population represented in this case. They said we couldn't win because of who we were. People say change doesn't happen in the south. But it just did." Common Dreams

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The Centre For Constitutional Rights has this, endorsing as it does, everything I said in my previous article.

In Louisiana, people accused of soliciting sex for a fee can be criminally charged in two ways: either under the prostitution statute, or under the solicitation provision of the Crime Against Nature statute. This archaic statute, adopted in 1805, outlaws “unnatural carnal copulation,” which has been defined by Louisiana courts as oral and anal (but not vaginal) sex. Police and prosecutors have unfettered discretion in choosing which to charge. But a Crime Against Nature conviction subjects people to far harsher penalties than a prostitution conviction. Most significantly, individuals convicted of a Crime Against Nature are forced to register as sex offenders.

The registry law imposes many harsh requirements that impacts every aspect of our clients’ lives. For example, they must carry a state driver’s license or non-drivers’ identification document which brands them as a sex offender in bright orange capital letters. They must disclose the fact that they are registered as a sex offender to neighbors, landlords, employers, schools, parks, community centers, and churches. Their names, address, and photographs appear on the internet.

Many of our clients have been unable to secure work or housing as a result of their registration as sex offenders. Several have been barred from homeless shelters. One has been physically threatened by neighbors. And another has been refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept sex offenders at their facilities. more

Pariahs Among Us: Sex Offender Laws in the 21st Century

Nothing I need to add really, between what I have said previously and the content, it pretty much says it all I guess.

But if the blog had a tag: How many lives can we ruin today, for no good reason, then this story would fit it to a tee.

In actual fact, - lives ruined forever - will get you a result in the search bar.

But I don't think anything is going to prepare you for that part of the article that involves Louisiana. Sick puppies is the term that first springs to mind, and I ain't talking about the offenders, I'm talking about the State.

 Pariahs among us: Sex offender laws in the 21st century

Stringent sex offender laws in the United States destroy lives and do little to mitigate repeat offences.
Charlotte Silver
14 Oct 2012

Maybe it is not so surprising that all we can think to do with a subject we are simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by is to shout our alarm about it at every opportunity.

Sex crimes: The only kind of offence in the United States that compels all convicted perpetrators to register their name, address, date of birth, fingerprints and a photograph on a public website.

And what constitutes a sex crime? The breadth of this damning classification is alarming and includes public urination, consensual teen sex, sale of sex and exposure of genitals (including in the case of children) - as well as violent rape.

One poignant example of the irrationality and senseless devastation of overreaching sex offender laws is the story of Evan B, as told by Lara Geer Farley. When Evan was in high school he was arrested for exposing himself to a group of his female peers. A court sentenced him to four months in prison, but after he was released he was obliged to register as a sex offender. The stigma drove Evan to drop out of school, leave his home in Salina, Oklahoma and move to Tulsa, where the arduous requirements associated with his sex offender status meant that he could not maintain employment. A month before he should have turned 20, Evan shot and killed himself.

And this: A comprehensive Human Rights Watch report, published in 2007, draws attention to the common case of teenage boys aged 15, 16, 17, who have consensual sex with their teenaged girlfriends, finding themselves charged with pedophilia. They will be labelled and publicly registered as "pedophiles" for the rest of their lives.

In some states, boys as young as 10 who expose themselves to their female friends or relatives are forced to register as a "sex offender" before they understand what sex - or exposure - is.

 Outcasts

Additional laws that govern the lives of sex offenders after they are released from prison (if time is served) vary from state to state. But for all, surveillance and stringent notification guidelines are key. In addition to publicising one's status on a website, some states require registrants (the preferred moniker) to inform their neighbours, future employers, landlords, delivery men - or any other solicitor or visitor who knocks on their door - of their status as a "sex offender".

Some states require convicts to wear GPS devices, so that law enforcers can monitor their whereabouts at all time.

Louisiana requires registrants to advertise their status in large red type on their driver's licence.

Other states require periodic plethysmograph tests, in which a pressure sensitive wire is connected to the registrant's penis while being shown various sexual images. The test is designed to detect "sexual deviance".

The registrant is required to attend therapy and "behaviour modification" sessions, check in with probation officers, as well as, of course, engage the services of an attorney, none of which is cheap. Most of these costs are carried by the offender, or as is often the case, his parents.

In addition to adopting legislation that inverts the life of anyone cast as a sex offender - making him quite literally a public spectacle - hundreds of counties have established "exclusion zones". These are areas that surround various public places - parks, schools, libraries, etc - where registrants may not live, work or even walk by.

The proliferation of sex offender registration and residency restriction laws began in 1994 when the US Congress and Senate unanimously passed the Wetterling Act, which required convicted sex offenders to register their information with the state of their residence. Over the past two decades, the federal government has passed law after law that publicised the registry, tightened its stringency and perhaps most crucial, broadened its domain.

In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act, which aimed to eliminate the inconsistencies among different states' sex offender laws. However, the ugly reality is that it expanded the "sex offences" that demanded registration and thus doomed juvenile, non-violent offenders to, potentially, a lifetime of registration. The law was easily renewed by the US House of Representatives this August - a true indicator of just how politically expedient these laws are.

Even Patty Wetterling, the woman responsible for the enactment of the Wetterling law, in 2006 lamented the direction the country had taken to handle sex offences: "People want a silver bullet that will protect their children, [but] there is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure to the very complex problem of sexual violence."

Advocates of "sex offenders" speak up

Hard evidence and reason suggest that registries and residential requirements do nothing to protect society from sexual assaults. Arguments in support of registration laws rest on a fear-based assumption that notification will protect children, but that assumption is baseless: As many as 90 per cent of sexual assault cases are conducted by family members or acquaintances. Furthermore, recidivism rates among sex offenders are under 25 per cent.

While sex offender laws provide the illusion of "security", the reality remains that rapists continue to walk free. According to statistics compiled by the US Department of Justice, 91 per cent of rapists will never be prosecuted, and only a fraction of those will be convicted or spend time in jail.

Nevertheless, these laws keep coming.

This year in Southern California, as Halloween approaches, some counties have passed ordinances banning registrants from decorating their houses with cobwebs and pumpkins, instead requiring they post a placard that notifies all passersby that there are "No candy or treats at this residence". Furthermore, registrants may have no outside lighting on October 31.

California's branch of the national coalition, Reform Sex Offender Laws, has filed a lawsuit against the ordinance on behalf of five unnamed sex offenders, as well as three of their spouses and two of their children. The suit claims the ordinance violates the plaintiffs' first amendment rights - by both forcing speech and denying their right to celebrate the holiday.

In the meantime, a San Francisco law firm has filed a case against the stringent residency restrictions placed on registrants in four counties in Southern California.

These lawsuits in California are some of the first legal challenges to the mounting set of restrictions placed on a broad class of "criminals" throughout the country.

News of lawsuits challenging punitive legislation is appearing next to headlines reporting that some states may well reject the Adam Walsh Act because they simply don't have the funds to implement its burdensome requirements (Texas estimated it would cost $38m) or are ethically opposed to legislation that would place juvenile offenders on a registry for life.

The hypocrisy of sex offender laws that allege to combat sexual crime by pouring millions into surveillance and registry programmes is reflected in the difficulty experienced by rape support centres that are struggling to merely survive.

The National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV) reported in a 2012 Rape Crisis Center Survey that 67 per cent of rape crisis centres were forced to reduce the amount of hours they spend dedicated to prevention and awareness programmes; 50 per cent of programmes have eliminated staff in the past year; and 65 per cent of programmes have a waiting list for counseling services.

Sex offender laws have enabled the creation of a being - the pariah - the very notion of which is rooted in an unenlightened (and assumed by most of us to be discarded) view of humanity. A society must surely protect its vulnerable members from violence and assault. Draconian sex offender laws do not further that aim. They have simply accorded the state the power to brand an individual as undeserving of the most basic human and civil rights.

Source:

Al Jazeera

Sex laws 
Unjust and ineffective 
America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does it work?

Footnote: for what it's worth, Blogger has a complete bollocks made of the HTML on this new mandatory interface. It used to be so very simple, now it's like mad woman's shit, it's all over the place.

Illegal Everything in the US, by John Stossel: A Review

On the same day that I published the post below this one, Mayor Bloomberg Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics, a post where I had this to say: I don't think I know of any other country in the world that legislates about every aspect that governs citizens lives. I later stumbled upon the featured video, which I can only describe as the perfect foil for the post.

But after having watched the thing, and in spite of it being a Fox News presentation, and in spite even more, it being presented in a typical American, whiny voiced, hi-lo manner more suited to addressing children or fucking idiots, it still has a certain, must watch, appeal about it.

I suppose the three most recognisable areas of this forty five minute film, are three traits or characteristics that go hand-in-glove with each other, an interdependent little eco-system, so typically American, they being of course, hypocrisy, the abuse of power and moral crusading.

The hypocrisy becomes immediately apparent as the program gets under way. The time money and resources expended on protecting people from kids selling lemonade, folk selling unpasteurised milk, or lobster tails in plastic bags as opposed to 40Lb boxes, (guns drawn in both the later cases and eight years in the slammer for the lobsterman) would be all very well if only half of those resources went into protecting people from fracking or mountain-top removal. (See below) Both activities constituting a crime against nature, let alone the poor schmucks whose lives are effectively destroyed by such goings on. But as you are probably aware, the only protection going on around these activities, is that of protecting Big Energy by modern day Pinkertons, the cops.

The second item on the agenda, that of police, not just abusing their power, but of being totally out of control, is dealt with quite adequately in the program. Let's face it, we have become almost blasé about cops abusing their power. Blasé I suppose, as long as your not on the receiving end of such activities. As one housewife described a cop; 'high on his own power' or as we would describe it in this country, 'pissed with power.' It rolling off the tongue somewhat easier. As long as you understand that is, that 'pissed' is more commonly used to describe someone who is drunk, rather than pissed, as in pissed off.

Ever America, ever the moral crusader, who, just like the cops protecting the world from kids selling lemonade, want to protect everybody from drugs, soft or hard, and to protect (legal) sex workers from themselves by locking them all up. In fact as you watch two such crusaders, prosecutors in fact, you can almost feel them bristling with (their own) morality.

Incidentally, and I know it will be of interest to some, but Portugal got a few minutes mention over their recent and successful decision to legalise all drugs, soft or hard.

Illegal Everything in the US, by John Stossel

This Fox News documentary shows how crazy the law system in the US became and how police is abusing its’ power. Kids are not allowed to sell lemonade, Taxi drivers get kicked out of the market by regulations implemented through the help of lobbyists, small stores selling natural raw milk get invaded by police squads, hunters can not shoot a dear and sell the meat to their neighbours, housewives get arrested for filming policemen from their own backyard and many more silly laws exist and make it difficult for people in the USA to be really living legal or living their live as freely at is was written down in the constitution many years ago. Now prisons in the US are full of people who broke silly laws, with politicians like Obama in power, that smoked marijuana themselves and didn’t got punished for it at all.

In actual fact, these two short clips are of far more import than the above.

Did The Earth Move For You? Shagging in Iran

And you always thought Sha Ging and Wan King were cities in China!

The last of three posts on religion and sex. (1) (2) And one that hardly needs elaborating on, other than perhaps to say: looking forward to a nuclear Iran?

Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric

Women behaving promiscuously are causing the earth to shake, according to cleric, as Ahmadinejad predicts Tehran quake
19 April 2010

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair. "What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes." Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future. Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.

In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of that city's population – and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.

"A divine authority told me to tell the people to make a general repentance. Why? Because calamities threaten us," said Sedighi, Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader. Referring to the violence that followed last June's disputed presidential election, he said: "The political earthquake that occurred was a reaction to some of the actions [that took place]. And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God's power, only God's power ... So let's not disappoint God."

The Iranian government and its security forces have been locked in a bloody battle with a large opposition movement that accuses Ahmadinejad of winning last year's vote by fraud.

Ahmadinejad made his quake prediction two weeks ago but said he could not give an exact date. He acknowledged that he could not order all of Tehran's 12m people to evacuate. "But provisions have to be made ... at least 5 million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded," the president said.

The welfare minister, Sadeq Mahsooli, said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best "formulae to repel earthquakes. We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms and self-sacrifice," Mahsooli said. Gruniad

Previous: Respect People's Religious Beliefs. Why? Seat belts essential.

If God Didn't Want Us To Wank He wouldn't Have Given Us Hands: The Strange Life of John Harvey Kellogg

The second of three posts on religion and sex. (1) (3)

An interesting article from The Punch Australia that takes a look at Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a fellow probably as famous for his bizarre views on sex and being a professional virgin, as he was for being the brother of flake manufacturer, W K Kellogg.

But just as interesting as the article, is the Wikipedia entry on the fellow, which includes such delights as John Harvey's pantheistic view of the world ......

"Take the sunflower, for example. It looks straight at the sun. It watches and follows the sun all day long, looking straight at it all the time; and as the sun dips down below the horizon, you see that sunflower still looking at it; and as the sun turns around and comes up in the morning, the flower is looking toward the sun rising. It is God in the sunflower that makes it do this…

But his interest in sunflowers and the harmony of science and the Sacred Scriptures, paled into insignificance when it came to his obsession with the evils of sex and sexuality. But it has to be said in all fairness, and much unlike our contemporary moral crusaders, he appears to have applied the same rules to himself as he wished to apply to others.

Perhaps though as you read on, the more cynical among you, myself included, might come to the conclusion that he just couldn't get it up. And as a consequence of such, didn't think anybody else should get it up either.

He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism,"

Kellogg also believed the practice of this "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility; "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned. (But not earthquakes?)

Among his other charms he was an admirer of both eugenics,(US) Anthony Comstock and segregation. Wikipedia

~ ~ ~

Sex and masturbation evil? Get your hand off it.
by Christopher Ryan
September 2011

Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression. Denied food, water, or freedom of movement, people may lash out at what they perceive as the source of their problems, albeit in a weakened state. But if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire.

Unfortunately, the distorted rage resulting from sexual repression rarely takes the form of rebellion against the people and institutions behind the repression. (If it did, perhaps we’d be reading of abused priests rather than priests as abusers.)

Instead, the rage is generally directed at helpless victims sacrificed to the sick gods of guilt, shame, and ignorant pride.

Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, an Iranian cleric, recently warned that adultery causes earthquakes. I assume he said this with a straight face, Iranian clerics not being known for their impish sense of humor.

Lest we dismiss this as just another example of distant fundamentalist lunacy, we might take a look at some examples a bit closer to home.

Christianity is a religion centered upon a figure whose holiness begins with his having been conceived asexually. Mark Twain noted the bizarre anti-eroticism of Christianity when he considered heaven:

Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race . . . sexual intercourse! It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!

(Letters from the Earth)

There’s little question that the centuries-long campaign of child rape enabled by institutional cover-up is a direct result of the Church’s inhumane teachings concerning human sexuality. If priests were allowed to form erotic connections with consenting adults, does anyone doubt that countless children would have been spared their abuse in the hands of these distorted, twisted men?

Of course, religions aren’t the only institutions to champion such abuse of spirit and body; medical doctors have participated in some of these shameful crimes against humanity, as well.

In 1850, the New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal echoed mainstream thinking by declaring masturbation public enemy number one, warning:

Neither plague, nor war, nor smallpox, nor a crowd of similar evils, have resulted more disastrously for humanity than the habit of masturbation: it is the destroying element of civilized society.

“Scientific” declarations like these inspired Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (brother of the Corn Flakes Kellogg) in his campaign to eradicate masturbation from the United States. Though widely considered to be one of the leading sex educators of his day, Kellogg proudly claimed never to have had intercourse with his wife in over four decades of marriage.

As a medical doctor, Kellogg asserted the moral authority to instruct parents on the proper sexual education of their children.

If you’re unfamiliar with the writings of Kellogg and his contemporaries, their gloating disdain for basic human eroticism is chilling and unmistakable. In his best-selling Plain Facts for Old and Young (written on his sexless honeymoon in 1888), Kellogg offered parents guidance for dealing with their sons’ natural erotic self-exploration in a section entitled “Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects”:

A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision… The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.

If circumcising a struggling, terrified boy without anesthesia wasn’t quite what a parent had in mind, Kellogg recommended:

The application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the needle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur.

Lest you think Kellogg was interested only in the sadistic torture of boys, in the same book he soberly advises the application of carbolic acid to the clitorises of little girls to teach them not to touch themselves.

Kellogg, the Catholic church, and Iranian clerics all demonstrate that the repression of human sexuality all-too easily becomes a “malady that considers itself the remedy,” to paraphrase Karl Kraus’s dismissal of psychoanalysis. The Punch AU

H/T Maren

More insanity: 11 Strange, Horrific, or Just Plain Weird Ways Societies Have Policed Sex Throughout History Link

The 'My Name is Ricky and Sex is Icky' Santorum Post

What Rick Santorum Doesn’t Know About Sex

Rick Santorum doesn't understand why people have sex.
by Christopher Ryan
January 6, 2012

Rick Santorum doesn’t know what sex is for.

In a recent appearance in New Hampshire, he summarized his thoughts on the subject, saying, “God made man and woman, and men and women come together to have a union to produce children, which keeps civilization going and provides the best environment for children to be raised.” While this may seem a common-sense understanding of the function and purpose of sexuality, it doesn’t apply to human beings.

What Santorum is missing can be expressed in simple math. The vast majority of species have sex only to reproduce—a function reflected in a very low ratio of sex-acts-to-births. Gorillas, for example, have intercourse at most about a dozen times per birth. And as with good Catholics, gorilla sex is all business: no oral, anal, manual, or any other kind of non-reproductive dilly-dallying. The female of most mammals only has sex when she is ovulating. Otherwise, no go. But the sexuality of human beings—and our closest primate relations, bonobos and chimps—is utterly different. We and our chimp and bonobo cousins typically have sex hundreds—if not thousands—of times per birth, with or without contraception.

Santorum has argued that contraception is morally wrong because, “It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” But human beings happily experience, witness, imagine, and lament a cornicopia of erotic encounters that couldn’t possibly result in conception. Leaving aside the many “perversions” happily practiced by humans the world over, the human female is available even for Vatican-approved missionary position intercourse—at least theoretically—when she’s menstruating, already pregnant, post-menopausal, or otherwise precluded from conceiving. Is this, too, an abomination? Even Santorum and his wife, who have had more children than most couples, have certainly had a lot more non-reproductive than reproductive sex over the years.

It’s the nature of the human beast. For Homo sapiens, sex is primarily about establishing and maintaining relationships—relationships often characterized by love, or at least affection. Reproduction is a by-product of human sexual behavior, not its primary purpose.

Another way in which we differ from most mammals is in our complex, multi-male social networks. The gorillas mentioned earlier are polygynous, with one dominant silverback mating with several females (perhaps more akin to Romney’s religious beliefs than to Santorum’s). The only monogamous ape, the gibbon, lives in isolated nuclear family units in the treetops of Southeast Asia, while humans, chimps, and bonobos all live in complex social groups with multiple males in attendance. Of the hundreds of species of primates, there are precisely no monogamous species living in multi-male groups—except humans, if you buy scientific or religious arguments for the naturalness of human monogamy.

Although the nuclear family has been promoted like a soft-drink in recent decades, it’s clear that we are the most social species on the planet, interacting with and depending upon each other in ways that extend far beyond Mom, Dad, and Junior. We intermingle in ways no other creature could imagine—or tolerate. We do not raise our children in isolated treetops. We drop them off at school, where they satisfy their instinctive hunger for community, under the protection of adults whose names we’ll never know. When sick, we take them to doctors we’ve never met in hospitals built and maintained by utter strangers.

If you still doubt that humans are deeply social creatures, consider that our greatest punishment is solitary confinement. Anyone who’s experienced it will tell you that any human companionship—even that of murderers, rapists, and Washington lobbyists—is better than isolation. Sartre got it wrong: Hell is the absence of other people.

Santorum is inadvertently correct that sex “keeps civilization going.” But he’s wrong to credit only heterosexual reproductive sex. Sex of all kinds comes naturally to our species, and most of it has little to do with reproduction, and a great deal to do with loving one another. Sex and love hold communities—not just families—together. And in the end, it is our communities, as much as our families, we ask to raise our children, protect us from disaster, and offer us some measure of comfort in our final days. psychologytoday

Inside Rick Santorum's Head: For Him, the Right to Privacy Doesn't Exist
by Jim Hightower
22 February 2012

Rick Santorum is the latest darling of the most extreme of the GOP's extremist voters. Here's just an earful of this guy's moral piety.

Let's start where it all starts for us humans: conception. Not only does Santorum insist that life begins at the instant that a sperm contacts an egg, he also wants to preserve the sanctity of sperm itself by outlawing birth control. Yes, every sperm counts. Last October, he warned about "the dangers of contraception in this country…It's not OK. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

Indeed, Ayatollah Rick is a bit obsessed with what you might be doing in your bedroom. The Supreme Court, he asserts, was wrong to rule that we have a right to consensual sex in our homes. "Then you have the right to bigamy," he wails, "the right to polygamy…to incest…adultery…the right to anything." Then comes his punch line: "This right to privacy doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution."

In a January interview on CNN, the sanctimonious Santorum offered another startling insight into his moral code. When asked what he'd say to his daughter if she had been raped, was pregnant, and was crying for an abortion, he actually said, "the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape…gift of life and accept what God is giving you." He added that his daughter — and presumably yours, too — ought to "make the best out of a bad situation."

So much Rick, so little time. I haven't even gotten to global warming ("no such thing," he says), or his endorsement of the Crusades as being about "core American values," or his comparison of homosexuality to "man-on-dog" sex. But, with the national spotlight now on Santorum, we can count on many more Rickisms to enlighten us. truthout

Quintessential Santorum.



Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum repeatedly came under criticism at Wednesday’s debate over his voting record in Washington. We speak to Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, author of the recent article, "A Pennsylvanian’s Guide to the Rick Santorum You Don’t Know." "There’s basically two sides of Santorum," Bunch says. "One is the culture warrior side, and that’s the side we tend to talk about most in the media—the abortion, the gay rights stuff, the contraception stuff... But the other side of Rick Santorum, and one that I’ve written about a lot over the years, is the Washington insider Rick Santorum." Democracy Now



Who me indeed, because the content of the clip, although it featured Santorum in part, had nothing to do with the chosen backdrop. Oooh ya bitch! Lol

Story

Awesome Amendment to "Personhood": the "Spilled Semen" Clause

If I said as with the previous post, some things don't need an introduction, I don't really know how to introduce this one. The sexual repression and religious fervour (insanity) are beyond scope of reference.

What more can I say? other than, I suppose a blow job is out of the question!

Awesome Amendment to "Personhood": the "Spilled Semen" Clause

We must have as much sex as possible.
By Jill
2.12.2012

A brilliant Democrat in Oklahoma has tagged an amendment onto her state’s proposed Personhood law, making sure that the government doesn’t just intrude into women’s reproductive lives, but men’s as well:

Oklahoma State Senator Constance Johnson, a Democrat, has offered an amendment to the “personhood” bill pending in the state legislature. The pending bill, if passed, would declare that “the unborn child at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

Johnson writes that “the Personhood bill would potentially allow governmental intrusion into families’ personal lives by policing what happens to a woman’s eggs without any similar thought to what happens to a man’s sperm.” Her amendment reads:

“provided, however, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

But that’s not enough. The Bible is pretty clear that only the Lord knows which sperm and which egg will join to create a person. Interfering with that in any way is very very bad — so we should give the Lord as many opportunities as possible to make sure that the right gametes can come together. As the wonderful Frances Kissling says in the comments to that article:

This [spilled semen] amendment is critical. We must protect spatial separated persons – sperm and eggs. The creator, the bible tells us, knew each of us before we were “knit” in the womb. He knew the very sperm and egg that would unite to make us who we are. Given that reality, it is imperative that we all have as much sex as possible. For women, ovulation is the time when we must be sure to give our egg a chance to join with the sperm that it was destined to meet.

The fact that God chose not to tell us which of our eggs and our sperm would join means that a celibate priesthood and sisterhood must be ended. Each priest and nun knows not what God intended for their eggs and sperm and therefore, procreative sex is essential lest we prevent the person already know to God from coming into being. Feministe

It's satire evidently. To prove that her amendment was in jest, Johnson voted... But you would have to be forgiven for thinking it's not. In 2012 America, nothing, and I mean nothing, would surprise me.

Barbie Dolls Un-Islamic Hanging Women Islamic

Updated below.


Not much point in saying anything; it's all been said before.

Iran: Morality Police Cracking Down On Barbie Dolls

* Morality police get tough on "un-Islamic" dolls

* But Barbies still on sale to discreet customers

* Iran to make models of downed U.S. drone

By Mitra Amiri

TEHRAN, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Iran's morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday.

As the West imposes the toughest ever sanctions on Iran and tensions rise over its nuclear programme, inside the country the Barbie ban is part of what the government calls a "soft war" against decadent cultural influences.

"About three weeks ago they (the morality police) came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies," said a shopkeeper in a toy shop in northern Tehran.

Iran's religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its "destructive cultural and social consequences". Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops.

The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.




A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.

The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.

"My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat," said Farnaz , a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs as she was told they were also banned from public sale.

Pointing to a doll covered in black long veil, a 40-year-old Tehran toy shop manager said: "We still sell Barbies but secretly and put these in the window to make the police think we are just selling these kinds of dolls."




Iran has fought a running battle to purge pervasive western culture from the country since its Islamic revolution overthrew a western-backed king in 1979, enforcing Islamic dress codes, banning Western music and foreign satellite television.

As another swipe at the West, Iranians will soon be able to buy toy versions of the U.S. spy drone that it captured in December, Iranian media reported.

Models of the bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel - which Iran's military displayed on TV after it was downed near the Afghan border - will be mass produced in a variety of colours, reports said. Huffpo with video, blocked in UK

Well if Barbie gives them a problem, I wouldn't know where to start with this fellow?



Better not tell the Japanese then.





I remember my youngest having a Cabbage Patch Kid, the very same as this one if I'm not mistaken. As with all loved dollies, it never left her side.




Slim Whitman's, China Doll, a double rendition, aptly in Chinese as well.


I used this Maureen O'Hara doll in a post to highlight the utterly tasteless and cynical age progression graphics employed by the directors of Madeleine McCann Inc.

And we know who they are don't we? The same directors responsible for the child's death, mummy and daddy.

Major GOP Candidates All Pledge to Be Hard on Porn

Evidently not.

In "Onion"-Worthy News, Major GOP Candidates All Pledge to Be Hard on Porn
By Michael Hayne
January 11, 2012

A headline that is surely Onion-worthy, but sadly is all too true. In October, right as then Republican front runner Herman Cain was showing his superior morality by denying he had extra-marital affairs or sexually harassed women, Morality In Media (MIM), the “leading national organization opposing pornography and indecency through public education and the application of the law (hateful, sanctimonious, self-loathing prudes who hate the idea of anyone being happy),” launched an effort to get presidential candidates in both major parties to commit to strict enforcement of obscenity laws. After all, what Jenna Jameson does with a banana trumps high unemployment, soaring college tuition costs, corruption, environmental apocalypse, outdated and crumbling infrastructure, external threats and foreign conflicts, Wall Street greed during a time of unprecedented income equality and in the worst economy since the great depression and is all Americans can think about.

Well, it seems Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum all pledged their commitment to the MIMpledge. That’s right, the serial adulterist was among the three major GOP candidates to agree to proscribing the one last pleasure away from desperate and unemployed Americans.

Former Senator Rick Santorum in a written statement:

“Federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.”

Former Governor Mitt Romney in a written statement:

“(I)t is imperative that we cultivate the promotion of fundamental family values. This can be accomplished with increased parental involvement and enhanced supervision of our children. It includes strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws, as well as the promotion of parental software controls that guard our children from Internet pornography.”

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich in a face-to-face meeting:

When MIM’s Executive Director Dawn Hawkins asked former Speaker Gingrich if he will enforce existing laws that make distribution of hard-core adult pornography illegal, he responded: “Yes, I will appoint an Attorney General who will enforce these laws.”

Just to be clear, they are all running on a platform of LESS government? Oh yeah, that Republican truism only applies to less economic opportunity for the middle class and poor. Evidently, Jesus was much more concerned with what consenting adults chose to do for a profession than such ludicrous and inhumane acts as staying faithful to your dying spouse, looking out for the neediest, and adopting better energy strategies that do not involve pillaging an already exhausted planet with reckless abandon. And lord knows the founding fathers intended elected leaders to inject their warped religious views into the secular sphere of government. And do I even have to mention the irony of vigorously opposing pornography by a group of men who appear readily willing to screw the American electorate in public.

Instead of promoting social and economic polices that seek to strengthen struggling families, including mandating sick leave and parental leave, the GOP candidates would rather focus on ridiculously irrelevant issues that seek to appease a small but influential group of theocratic loons ahead of the South Carolina Primary.rhrealitycheck.org

Criminalizing Childhood

Here we go again.

Criminalizing childhood
by digby
December 02, 2011

Here's yet another case of turning normal childhood behavior into a pathology:

A Boston elementary school is investigating a 7-year-old first-grader for sexual harassment after he struck another boy his age in the groin.

No, this little boy didn't leer and grab the other kids' junk. It was a fist fight. Between two boys. In the second grade.

Matthew Wilder, spokesman for the Boston public schools, declined to comment on the incident or why it has been classified as a possible case of sexual harassment. He said officials do not discuss confidential student information.

“Any kind of inappropriate touching would fall under that category,’’ Wilder said. “The school administration is conducting a full investigation that has not concluded yet. Certainly, once that investigation is through, we’ll then make a final conclusion as to who will be disciplined and how.’’

This is one of the reasons why people don't take sexual harassment seriously. Hulabaloo

Parents Sue D.A. for Charging Their 6-Year-Old Son With a Felony After He Played Doctor With a 5-Year-Old Girl

"As tensions grow in America, as divisions flourish, and the nation leads up to something unseen but ugly, prissy vindictiveness and moral sadism become normal. We have become a gotcha culture, watchful for transgressions meaningless but forbidden, so that we can make the malfeasor squirm. How we enjoy the squirming, the writhing on camera, the heavy punishments inflected for nothing." - Fred Reed

What is it with America when it comes to sexual matters? There is a bunch of stuff under the ''Sex Prudery'' tag in the side bar, but I think this one just about takes the biscuit.

File under, shit you couldn't make up.

Parents Sue D.A. for Charging Their 6-Year-Old Son With a Felony After He Played Doctor With a 5-Year-Old Girl
Jacob Sullum
November 23, 2011

Last week the parents of a Wisconsin boy sued Grant County District Attorney Lisa Riniker for charging their son with first-degree sexual assault, a Class B felony, after he played "butt doctor" with a 5-year-old girl. He was 6 at the time. When the boy's lawyer tried to have the charge dismissed, Riniker replied: "The legislature could have put an age restriction in the statute if it wanted to. The legislature did no such thing."

According to the complaint (PDF), the girl is "the daughter of a well-known political figure in Grant County," and her brother, who is the same age, also was involved in playing doctor but was not charged. In addition to Riniker, the lawsuit names as defendants retired Grant County Sheriff's Sgt. James Kopp and Jan Moravits, an investigator with Grant County Social Services "whose regional supervisor...is the political figure's wife's sister-in-law"—i.e., the aunt of the alleged victim.

Although the boy, now 7, is too young to be prosecuted or named in a juvenile delinquency petitition, Madison.com reports, county officials are using the felony charge to force his parents into accepting "protection or services" for him. The lawsuit says that once he turns 18, he will be listed as a sex offender.

I noted a similar case in my July Reason story on sex offender laws. Reason.com

- - -

"As tensions grow in America, as divisions flourish, and the nation leads up to something unseen but ugly, prissy vindictiveness and moral sadism become normal. We have become a gotcha culture, watchful for transgressions meaningless but forbidden, so that we can make the malfeasor squirm. How we enjoy the squirming, the writhing on camera, the heavy punishments inflected for nothing." - Fred Reed

No Tits Please We're Christians

Are you sure it wasn't John Ashcroft?

Bare-breasted statue uncovered two centuries after Christians hid her body

Figure found in Bristol church house where John Wesley worshipped had her modesty preserved by breastplate

A statue of a bare-breasted woman whose torso was discreetly covered for centuries has been found in a Bristol church house where John Wesley worshipped.

There is speculation that the half-clad figure was considered too much of a distraction for Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and his followers.

The figure, holding a cornucopia of fruit, is suspected to be Abundantia – a Roman personification of abundance and prosperity.

The statue is thought to have arrived in the UK from Europe and to have been placed in the house soon after it was built in the 17th century.

In the 18th century theologian Wesley (1703-91) held prayer meetings in the building before his move to a purpose-built place of worship – the New Room.

The statue was found above a fireplace during a lottery-funded restoration of the 12th-century Priory Church of St James and the church house.

Conservation experts removed a lead cuirass (a piece of armour consisting of a breastplate and backplate) from the figure. She now stands – as they believe the artist intended – with her green frock pulled down and a red shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

Andrew Ziminski from Minerva Stone Conservation has written an article on the figure in Cornerstone, the magazine of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He said: "She is pretty super. The figure had a lead breastplate that covered the bosom and the breasts had also been painted over. She was covered in a brown sludge and we found her tucked away above the fireplace.

"The house dates from the 17th century and John Wesley used to hold prayer meetings there.

"Although he [Wesley] wasn't much of a prude himself, it was perhaps his followers who wanted the figure covered up – bosoms are bosoms and flesh is flesh.

"She does not feel English to me and could have been taken to Bristol by someone visiting the city on a ship."

The church and associated house have been restored and now comprise a place of worship, meeting rooms and a cafe. Gruniad

h/t weissnicht

Sarah ''Shagger'' Palin: A Book Review

Something a little lighter for today.

How Much Do You Really Want to Know About Sarah Palin? Why Joe McGinniss' New Book, "The Rogue" May Be TMI

It's a book that puzzles as much as it enlightens. There's a fine line between "wow!" and "really?"—and McGinniss is working both sides of that divide.
By David Corn
September 16, 2011

It's hard to know how to read Joe McGinniss' new book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. The blistering work is not a traditional biography. One-third or more is devoted to a Palin subplot: Joe McGinniss—that is, the tale of the author moving into the house next door to Chez Palin in Wasilla, Alaska, and the blog-and-tweet-storm that bold (and PR-savvy) move triggered. There is a reason for McGinniss injecting himself into the story, since the episode presumably shows Todd and Sarah at their autocratic and paranoid worst. But in Rogueland, getting to the worst is a true challenge, for there is so much—too much—to choose from.

By now, maybe you've heard about the most titillating portions. For instance, there's Sarah Palin hooking up with basketball star Glen Rice when Rice was a college star playing in a tournament in Alaska. Rice confirmed to McGinniss what he called a "respectful" encounter, noting that afterward "we talked a lot on the phone" and he had a "big crush" on Palin. But for McGinniss, there's more to this episode. In his book, this bizarre-in-retrospect intersection is proof of Palin's "fetish for black guys." That quote comes from an unnamed "friend." But—wait a moment—another unnamed friend says that following the Rice date, Palin freaked out: "Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out. The thing that people remember is her freak-out, how completely crazy she got: I fucked a black man! She was just horrified. She couldn't believe that she'd done that."

Fetish or freak out? The reader is rightfully confused. But the point is, there's so much juicy stuff in this book attributed to blind sources, and much of it is hard to sort out. Titanic fights between Sarah and Todd. Drug use. Sex. Affairs. Awful parenting. Supersaturated self-absorption. And weirdness. All the usual touchstones of a celeb-bio. The Palins' home life is a 24/7 nightmare of spousal fights and parental disregard. A "former houseguest" tells of being tossed out of the Palin home because Sarah suspected that she and her husband were having sex in the guest bedroom using—OMG!—baby oil. There's too much TMI in this book.

As a journalist who does rely on unnamed sources, I'm not knocking the general practice. But when the context of the blind attributions is a flood of vituperation, the use of unidentified sourcing becomes more troublesome. After all, McGinniss doesn't seem to miss any opportunity to slide the dagger into his subject. Here's a small example. When Palin was finishing her term as mayor of Wasilla, she fired a close associate. The fellow, John Cramer, who had done much to assist Palin during her time as mayor, told McGinniss his dismissal came as a complete shock. He had no explanation for it. The move speaks for itself. If Cramer's account is accurate, it depicts Palin as ruthless and selfish. Point made. But that's not enough for McGinniss. He can't resist the urge to tap dance on the grave: "It was as if Sarah didn't feel her tenure would be complete without one last gratuitous exercise of her power, without hurting just one more person who had helped her."

Perhaps. But the reader, if he or she believes Cramer, probably already reached the conclusion that what Palin had done was vile. This little jab suggests that McGinniss is being propelled by his bias. And that does a disservice to the journalism within the book.

To be fair, The Rogue is full of named witnesses testifying against St. Sarah. Former state trooper Gary Wheeler, head of Palin's security detail when she became governor, notes that she was a lazy chief executive. "For six years I was with [Frank] Murkowski and [Tony] Knowles," Wheeler told McGinniss, referring to her predecessors as governor. "For them, the job wasn't forty hours a week, it was eighty…For her, it was a part-time job." He asserts that Palin spent much of her days shopping, coming to work at 10 a.m., and leaving by 3 p.m. He says she bought about 100 pairs of sunglasses her first year as governor. (Make of that what you will.)

McGinniss also does a fine job dissecting Palin's associations with extreme Christian fundamentalism—territory other authors have previously excavated. Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla with one public issue: more bike paths. But McGinniss shows how her real agenda was to transform her town into an enclave of evangelism. When she campaigned for governor, McGinnis writes, "the hardest job her staff had was to keep her quiet about her religious beliefs." He reports that after being elected governor she fired a group of minority state employees who had worked on her campaign. An aide (named) says, "Sarah just isn't comfortable in the presence of dark-skinned people." But what about Glen Rice?

Virtually anything negative one can say about a person who is not a murderer or genocidal war criminal is said about Palin in this book. Of course, that doesn't make it untrue. Yet as I trekked along on McGinniss' unrelenting death march to the bowels of Palin's supposedly dark soul, at times I almost felt sorry for her. How many backstabbing "friends" can one person have? (One "friend" told McGinniss of a snowmobile trip that included both Todd and Sarah and allegedly involved a cocaine binge.) And how much wrath does any biographic subject deserve? At times, I wanted to reach for the hand sanitizer.

McGinniss is a journalist with a long, storied, and controversial career. Dialing back on the Palin-slamming might have yielded a better book—especially considering his run-in (or feud) with the Palin clan. The Rogue is must-cringe reading. It's a book that puzzles as much as it enlightens. There's a fine line between "wow!" and "really?"—and McGinniss is working both sides of that divide. Alternet

For blokes and gals who aren't porn shy, try Google image ''Nailin Palin'' funniest thing I've seen all week. Safe search off of course.

Why You Don't Want Rick Perry Making Decisions About Your Sex Life (Illustrated)

Update: Perry and the HPV Vaccine: Selling Women's Health (and Everything Else) to the Highest Bidder more

Why You Don't Want Rick Perry Making Decisions About Your Sex Life

The belief that sex is "immoral" pushes Conservatives to support abstinence-only, sex-is-immoral education and policy, even though it is proven to be harmful.
By Amanda Marcotte
August 22, 2011

Governor Rick Perry of Texas has thrown his hat into the presidential contender ring, and his nascent campaign has quickly came to demonstrate why the blurring of the distinctions between church and state are so dangerous, especially to women. His campaign has surprisingly been even more of a demonstration of this than that of Michele Bachmann’s, even though the mainstream media consensus is Bachmann is more of a theocrat. Part of the reason is that Perry has been the governor of Texas for over a decade now, and his experience and power as an executive has simply given him more chances to blur the lines….and more reasons to be called out for it.

The incident that got the most attention was Perry’s prayer rally in Houston, TX, where Perry, in what many (including myself) consider a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, led 30,000 evangelical Christians in a day of prayers for the state and the nation. Perry’s contempt for constitutional restrictions on government establishing an official religion throws into stark relief how much the anti-choice movement, to which he is currently pandering as hard as he can, is basically just one arm of an overall theocratic movement in the U.S. to wed state to a very particular interpretation of the Bible.

To begin with, Perry did show some sign of willingness to separate church and state while governor, when he issued an executive order requiring girls in Texas entering the 6th grade to be vaccinated against HPV. This is how it should be. Regardless of one’s personal religious convictions about female sexuality, when you’re the governor, your job is not setting the religious dogma for the state, but prioritizing the public's health. HPV is a public health issue (just because you personally may feel contracting HPV is just desserts for having sex, the people you pass it to may not be burdened with such anti-sex superstitions) and Perry acted like an executive handling this public health issue, and not a theocrat foisting his own sexual judgments on his citizens.

From a previous comment of mine:When I started reading about Perry's stance on the HPV vacine, (£300/$600 per patient) I thought, he's being a bit progressive here, until that was, I read about his connection to Merck.

Of course he had to take it all back, claiming it was all a mistake and that he should have left the decision to the legislature, knowing full well the fundamentalist-heavy state legislature would have killed the requirement. The fact that Perry feels he has to apologize for putting the health of Texas girls ahead of fundamentalist over-the-top hatred of female sexuality--hatred that now runs so deep that they support letting 4,000 women a year die of cervical cancer rather than do anything that could be construed as accepting that sex happens---is just one example of how much the theocrats have taken control of our political process. And how they intend to flex that power by attacking the very concept of a healthy sexuality.

Also indicative of the problem was Perry’s response to a question about sex education in light of empirical evidence that abstinence-only doesn’t work. Perry, unable to deal with the conflict between the demands of fundamentalists that secular government promote their dangerous views of sex as deeply sinful and the demands of public health, flubbed the question. Paul Waldman of the American Prospect explained the flub:

Liberals may think that conservatives support abstinence education because they believe it will reduce teen pregnancy, when the truth is that stopping teen pregnancy is at best a minor consideration for conservatives. If there’s going to be any discussion of sex in school at all, they believe it ought to express the categorical moral position that sex is vile and dirty and sinful, until you do it with your spouse, at which point it becomes beautiful and godly (you’ll forgive a bit of caricature). The fact that abstinence-only education is far less effective at reducing teen pregnancy than comprehensive sex-ed isn’t something they’re pleased about, but it doesn’t change their conviction about the moral value that ought to be expressed……

Not sure if this guy has aspirations to become a Republican Governor, but he certainly seems qualified for it when you read the details of his manifesto.

So while it’s true that Rick Perry is not a particularly smart guy, the difficulty he has here comes from the fact that his stance on sex education is about 95 percent moral and 5 percent practical.

Waldman's right, but the problem runs even deeper than liberal empiricism vs. conservative “morality.” (I question a “morality” that hates something as life-affirming as sex, and believes that it’s so sinful it should result in disease, life destruction, and even death for people who engage in it outside of their incredibly strict parameters.) The problem goes right to the separation of church and state. The belief that sex is “immoral” isn’t a standard-issue moral belief shared across cultural or religious differences, unlike other moral beliefs such as the wrongness of murder or stealing. This is a question of religious freedom, and whether or not religious beliefs that sex is wrong should be imposed on minors. Standing with religious freedom means standing with comprehensive sex education and mandatory HPV vaccines, on the grounds that people who get these things will still be free to believe sex is wrong. In fact, whether or not your religion teaches that sex is dirty, you still benefit from vaccination and education---that way, if you slip up and have sex, you can have a clean, pure guilt trip of self-hatred without having a bunch of unnecessary health problems. And if you ever get over your commitment to such a misanthropic, sex-phobic faith, you will be able to start your new, sex-positive life with a clean bill of health.

But even more for the rest of us, we should have secular, evidence-based policy instead of fundamentalist faith-based policy not just because it has better health outcomes for everyone, but also because the belief that church and state should be separate was baked into our Constitution right from the beginning. Alternet

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

Footnote: I need to check out the full HPV story in Texas. The connection to Merck link that I posted only mentions Perry instigating the program and little else.

Update: If you check out the claiming it was all a mistake (video) link above, all is explained. But what did strike me about Rick's grovelling performance was just how Romneyesque he was. Hard to tell the buggers apart. You will find previous Mitt Romney under the Mormon tag.

For my sentiments on the subject there is this.

Human Papilloma Vaccination For All UK Schoolgirls

This is how socialist medicine works, it works well, and it works even better when the pious and the sanctimonious, who should be more concerned with their daughters health than with her maidenhead, don't enter into the equation.

Given the high cost of the three injection course, £300/$600 for every girl in the country this has to be one of the best examples of preventive socialist medicine in the entire history of the National Health Service.

It is government action like this that rekindles a little of my long lost national pride. more

H/T Maren

Tony Bennett: One ''Paedo'' Too Many

I notice, though there seems to be great reluctance among Bennett acolytes to discuss the matter, that Tony Bennett is about to get the arse sued off him.

The details of which I have no idea, and even less interest, other than these few lines here.

What it is exactly that has caused Edward Smethurst to instigated proceedings against Bennet, is not something with which I am au fait, but given my knowledge of Bennett's unhealthy preoccupation with the sex lives of others, I can well imagine.

But it is the bottom line, the result of any such action, that seems to elude Bennett's disciples faithful, the damage done to the cause, and not least the damage done to the sincere hard work of others by this attention seeking barmpot. Perhaps one day it might get through to some, that this man is a disaster, not just to seeking justice for Madeleine McCann, but to any cause he latches on to.

This, only stumbled on today, discourse between ''Blackwatch'' and Tony Bennett might give some indication as to the probable content. But if that isn't totally convincing, there are examples a plenty to be found of just what obsesses the mind of this attention seeking creature, just seek out some of the older posts at the links provided.

For now, my little fans, ciao.

BLACKWATCH: Bennett follows this up with the following statement, referring to the pornography websites the Police File record Robert to have visited:

BENNETT: "I am of course driven by a strong conviction that Madeleine died in Apartment 5A and that there has been an organised cover-up of the truth. I tend to think that this may be connected with something illegal going on, be it sexual, drugs or perhaps medical. And again, as you mention, the Redclouds site plus the encrypted material on his computer plus the things said about his sexual preferences/perversions by Carlos Costa and the anonymous female witness all conflict with the idea that they are all devout JWs. Further, it cannot surely be coincidence that Brian Kennedy is also a Jehovah's Witness."

To which I replied:

BLACKWATCH: "I think some may have speculated (and I mean speculated) on drugs running - but there's diddly squat evidence. Having said that Amaral headed up the Narcotics Division and Metodo 3 detectives seem to have dabbled in the trade according to some reports. Porn and drugs pertains to organised crime I suppose ... Of course, it's very tempting to entertain the idea of one or more members of the Tapas group being involved in communities like Redclouds. Membership appears to be on the increase. A natural progression of swinging? Not so sure. allowing yourself or your partner to be filmed having sex is a world away from allowing your 4 year old daughter to be used or filmed"

Bennett's response to this was no less insistent:

BENNETT: "BW, I would suggest that for some people, it is not a world away but a STEP away, There is a great deal of evidence that people who develop an obsession with or addiction to sex look for ever more exciting ot novel ways of developing their interest. No need to go into details, but I am aware of some case histories where 'swingers' have indeed gone on to take an interest in sex with young children. Or to put it another way, amongst 100 'swingers', you might find one or two paedophiles lurking secretively amongst them." Full article