Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has reportedly fired his top aide after discovering the man is gay.
The Mail reports that Stephen Noon’s sexuality was discovered when his long-term partner visited him at his office.
"His partner came to the office at the end of the day and was introduced to the Cardinal," a friend of the couple tells The Mail.
"Shortly afterwards the Church made it clear that his sexuality was incompatible with the job he had to do. Since he was the spokesperson for the Cardinal, Murphy-O’Connor clearly felt he had to act because homosexual acts are regarded by the Church as a sin," the friend was quoted as saying.
You know Murphy…I’ll just bet I could encapsulate your very existance inside a fairly small DOS Batch file…
A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
But…but…Bush said they were only going after terrorists. And he wouldn’t lie to us. Look at all the weapons of mass destruction we found in Iraq…just like he said we would…
Even among those who claim to "love the sinner and hate the sin", this is bedrock. I’ve had bigots tell me to my face that gay lovers don’t love as wholly, or as purely, as heterosexual lovers do. When Senator Rick Santorum compared same sex marriage to a man wanting to marry his dog, he spoke for the many, who believe literally that same sex lovers exist on the same plain as fucking animals. We don’t love, we don’t honor, we don’t care. We don’t feel any higher human emotions, no great joy or awe in a lover’s embrace. All we feel is mindless senseless lust for something that only happens to be another human being. This is the passion behind the fight against same sex marriage rights of Any sort, civil unions or otherwise. To even suggest that gay couples be given any legal status other then perhaps a criminal one, is to literally place their own marriages on the same par as bestiality. They think homosexuals are less then human, and nothing shows it better then their contempt, their utter denial, that gay lovers actually love.
The current pope (the Cardinal formally known as Ratzinger), launched another broadside against homosexual people last week, by way of attacking Italy’s new left of center government. Calling same sex love "weak", Ratzinger warned that he would use all the power of the Vatican if Italy gave same sex couples any rights that heterosexuals are bound to respect.
It seems in the Catholic church lately, gays are the new Jews. Or at any rate, the hate that can dare speak it’s name sixty years after the Holocaust. And it’s having its effect. Attacks on homosexuals, particularly in non-industrial nations with a strong Catholic presence, are becoming more common, and much more violent. In the Caribbean, in central America, in Africa, and even in Brazil, violence against homosexuals is on the rise and it is killing people.
And yet in the face of all the hatred and violence organized religion can incite, gay people still take their lover’s hand in theirs and say "I love you". If they had clue one what it means to actually love someone, Ratzinger and his henchmen would get on their knees and beg God nonstop for the rest of their miserable lives to know a love that strong, even if only for a day.
(Click to see the larger version on the Cartoon Page)
I’ve updated the right sidebar, so now you get to see some new stuff I’ve been reading/watching/listening too lately. When I went to the new WordPress system all that got tucked away into a set of formatting templates and I’ve had to set aside some time to figure them out and play around a bit. I want to take the Terror Alert panel back to the cartoon series I’d planned for it…but I have so much on my plate now as it is…
Atrios said (jokingly but still angrily) that Eric Boehlert’s Lapdogs made him want to shoot someone in the face. He even suggested Boehlert use that quote on the bookjacket.
Lapdogs made me want to shoot someone in the face -Atrios
I’ll just say that if you don’t want to get royally pissed off all over again about the way the Mainstream News Media has been kissing George Bush’s and the Republican Party’s ass for the past five years, you probably don’t want to read Lapdogs. The Swift Boat Veterans. Bush’s National Guard Service. Embedded Reporting in Iraq. The Downing Street Memo. The media looking the other way again and again at republican corruption. It’s all there and more.
You I Love is a sweet, quirky and very sexy same sex romance. If you’re like me and starving for stories like this be careful of this one though. The lovers in question are really put through the ringer by the parents of one of them and you literally don’t know until the very last frames whether or not they’ll overcome and endure. I almost threw a chair at the TV set. But it ends happily.
The last of Yun Kouga’s legendary "Boy’s Love" maga series Earthian translated into English is finally here. Volume 3 of the series, like the previous two, collects several issues into one lovingly bound volume. Begun in 1987, and produced over a period of years, Earthian is a lushly illustrated, very, very romantic tale of two angels sent to earth to stand in judgment over the human race. But it’s not what you think. The angels are actually an advanced alien race that live on a distant world named Eden. Self imposed guardians of the few habitable worlds of the galaxy, their race is slowly dying…victimized by their own vastly superior technologies, and their rigid social order. Few children are born, and those that are different are completely ostracized by their parents and treated with suspicion by the majority on the one hand, yet carefully cared for by the governmenton the other, because children are so rare.
Once such is Chihaya, a young angel unusual for both his black hair and startling black feathered wings. Chihaya takes a fondness to the Earthian, and volunteers to count their pluses, to spare them from extermination. He is paired with a counter of negatives, Kagetsuya. The team is sent to Earth, and as the series progresses, they begin to fall in love. But the race of angels is dying, and homosexuality is punishable by death. Their dangerous relationship progresses against a backdrop of cutthroat intrigues among the other angels for power, fallen angels condemned forever to live on Earth, the sudden appearance on earth of a race of black winged angels, and a mysterious cancer that begins to kill the angels on their home world, and as Chihaya and Kegetsuya can finally no longer deny their love for one another, the verdict comes down…the Earthian must be exterminated.
If you don’t like stories that are light on action, thick with romance, and loaded with androgynously beautiful long haired (and I mean…really…really long haired) males you probably want to stay away from this one. Manga like this is mostly directed towards a female audience, but some of us gay guys like a little romance in our lives too and that’s your cup of tea Earthian is one you won’t want to put down. It is simply stunning, for the richness of its artwork, its storyline and its characters. There are some color inserts scattered throughout this collection, I don’t know if they were in the originals or not, but they are absolutely beautiful.
The cheesy anime that was done on this series did not do it any kind of justice at all. But then…the anime they did on Gravitation didn’t do That series justice either.
Chihaya
Finally, I was wandering around iTunes a couple weeks ago and found the Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Jimi Hendrix lp. If the only version of Hendrix playing Voodoo Child is the one you’ve heard on the "Best Of" collections then you need to hear this one. Jack Cassady does bass and Hendrix just electrifies the room he’s playing to. It’s an amazing performance.
That’s all for now…gotta go back to working on the cartoon…
Voting Glitch Said to Be ‘Disastrous’
Inside Bay Area (CA) (05/10/06) Hoffman, Ian
A recently discovered vulnerability in Diebold’s touch-screen voting machines has election officials scrambling to understand and contain the risk. A hacker with minimal specialized knowledge of Diebold’s system and an off-the-shelf component could load software onto the machine to disable it or alter vote counts in a matter of minutes. "This one is worse than any of the others I’ve seen. It’s more fundamental," said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist. "In the other ones, we’ve been arguing about the security of the locks on the front door," he said. "Now we find there’s no back door.
No back door eh? Alter the vote count in minutes eh? With off the shelf components eh? I’m just…shocked…shocked I tell you…
) Do you have a crush on somebody?
Not at this time.
) Do you hate more than 3 people?:
What is hate? There are people in this world that really piss me off. More then three without a doubt. But the only person I ever knew personally who could get a snarl out of me, my maternal grandmother, died years ago. My world got a little brighter.
) What’s a random word?
A word that seems to come out of nowhere given the context?
) Least favorite school subject?:
Algebra was horrible. I wish someone had taken me aside and explained to me that you could look at it as a kind of symbolic logic. I might have gotten it then.
) How many pairs of shoes do you own?:
Four casual sneakers, one pair dress, one pair hiking boots, one pair snow boots, one pair sandals.
) Name one thing that is always on your mind:
Being single.
) What is your zodiac sign?:
Virgo. But astrology is crap.
) Ever made a prank phone call?:
When I was a pre-teen. You’re allowed to be a juvenile idiot at that age. In fact, it’s part of your job description.
) Are you sarcastic?:
No. I can be ironic. I’ll kid people with a completely straight face.
) How many watches do you own?:
I still have the mechanical watch I wore in High School but I don’t wear it anymore. I hate having things hanging off my forearms. I don’t even like long sleeved shirts.
) Is anyone in love with you?
Not that I am aware.
) Favorite color to wear?:
I like them all. I wear mostly blue though…as in blue jeans.
) What color is your cell phone?:
Slate and silver.
) Where is your second home?:
Oceano, California. Yes. I would live there if I could.
) Have you ever slapped someone?:
No. I’ve punched a few people in my lifetime though. Always after being punched. I will not throw the first one.
) Have you ever had a cavity?:
Yeah. I had very crooked teeth when I was a kid. I have a bunch of caps now, and a much better smile.
) How many lamps are in your bedroom?:
Four counting the lights on the ceiling fan.
) Ever had braces?:
No.
) Do looks matter?:
Yes…but I am not looking for a supermodel. An intelligent, aware face and a friendly smile can make my knees buckle.
) Do you use chapstick?:
In the winter, yeah. But I use it sparingly. You can actually get addicted to it.
) Name 3 teachers from high school:
Frank Moran, my art teacher. Best. Teacher. Ever. Mr. Ochse: sociology. Mr. Bundy: science.
) American Eagle or Abercrombie?:
Not. Levis and Hechts.
) Are you too forgiving?:
I can be a real hard ass until someone says they’re sorry, and then I just go all limp and wussy and forgive probably a lot more then I should…
) How many children do you want?:
None for me thanks. I’m more a Be Everyone’s Uncle kinda guy…
) Do you own something from Hot Topic?
I think some of them are hilarious but I don’t wear things people have to read. My heart is on my sleeve enough as it is.
) Favorite breakfast meal?:
If I’m eating one, pancakes and eggs and bacon. Over easy.
) Ever thought you were in love?:
I have been in love. It was wonderful. Makes life worth living. Makes it sweet.
) When was the last time you cried?:
Last October, after someone I’d known as a friend since High School told me I should go back in the closet if I wanted to make friends and get by in the world.
) What did you do 3 nights ago?:
Sat at my drafting table drawing.
) Olive Garden?:
Yeah. It’s good. Too much on my plate usually though.
) Have you ever called your teacher mommy?:
Uhm…no. I’ve felt comfortable enough with a few to call them by their first names though.
) Nicknames?:
Bag. My initials spell the word and it’s how I used to sign my cartoons in school. Only friends from High School are allowed to use it.
) Do you know anyone named Bertha?:
Nope. I mistook a gal named Martha for a guy once. And no…she was not big and ugly, she was lithe and handsome and very very cute. Small hips and butt for a gal though. Threw me.
) Do you own something from Banana Republic?:
Nope.
) Are you thinking about somebody right now?
Yes.
) Do you smoke?:
The occasional cigar. Usually La Gloria Cubana. I’ve had a few genuine Cubans and my god they’re…potent. Smooth…and make your head go into the stratosphere.
) Are you happy with your life right now?:
Yes. And…No.
) Do you dye your hair?:
Sometimes. It’s not the gray…its that it’s loosing it’s nice light brown with blond strands. The light brown and blond strands are the ones going gray, leaving only dark brown and gray now. I don’t like it.
) Does anyone have a crush on you?:
Not that I am aware.
) What year were you born?:
1953
) McDonalds or Wendys?
Oh…McDonalds I suppose. I’d rather do a diner though.
) Do you like yourself?:
Yes.
) Are you closer to your mother or father?:
I loved them both, but was closer to mom I reckon because she was around more often in my life, and set a better example.
) Favorite physical feature of the preferred sex?:
This question is so embarrassing. Okay…first, their face. Then…their hips and butt. I like watching lean guys walk. Ask me how much I hate loose baggy pants.
) Are you afraid of the dark?:
No. My reflex is to learn all I can about what frightens me. I’m a "light a candle instead of curse the darkness" kinda guy…but not because I want to light the world. I’m just curious.
) Have you ever stripped?:
Well…I don’t bathe in a bathing suit. Unless it’s really cold I’ll sleep without clothes on. I like wrapping my body in nice clean cotton sheets at night. A lover’s arms would be nice too.
) Ever broke a bone?:
A toe once. That’s luckily been it.
) Are you religious?:
Not religious. Very spiritual though. I love the god I see in nature. Science is a very spiritual activity when you think about it.
) Do you chat on AIM often?:
Among my co-workers yes. My Ex and I used to do it a lot.
) Pringles or Lays?:
Utz. Which I guess is a Maryland-Pennsylvania thing. Nothing beats ’em.
) Have you ever broken someones heart?:
I don’t think so. Gosh I hope not. I would never want to do that.
) Has anyone ever called you fat?:
I was so thin for a while one friend told me his mom asked if I was a heroin addict. I wore 28 inch waste jeans. Sometime in my mid thirties it changed and I started putting on weight. One day when I went to visit mom one of her neighbors remarked on how much better I looked since I’d put on so much weight and I wanted to just die.
) Do you have a birth mark?:
I used to have a tiny little permanent freckle-like thing near my stomach that could either be a mouse or a coiled up snake…but I can’t find it anymore so I guess it finally went away. I thought it was kinda neat because my birth year is a Chinese year of the snake.
) Do you own a car?:
Yes. A 2005 Honda Accord four-door. Five speed vTech four. I got the full dressed version with the nice leather seats and wood (ersatz) trim inside. After so many years of only being able to afford the cheapest car on the lot, this time I wanted something nice.
Then gas prices went up…
) Can you cook?:
A little. I have a fish fry recipe that my neighbors all love.
) 3 things that annoy you:
Advertising. Religion addicts at my door. Registration only web news sites.
) Do you text message often?:
As in cell phone texting? Just about never.
) Money or love?
Love of course!
) Do you have any scars?:
Not externally.
) What do you want more than anything right now?:
To hear from T.A.
) Do you enjoy scary movies?:
Not really. If they’re subtle. I hate slasher flicks. That’s just pushing buttons. The 1963 version of The Haunting is probably my all time favorite ghost flick. By today’s standards its probably pretty lame but I liked the way it tried to get inside your head where your fear of shadowy things that go bump in the night lives. The Shirley Jackson book it’s based on will keep you awake nights with the lights on.
) Relationships or one night stands?:
Relationships!
) Do you enjoy greasy food?
Not greasy. Fried and Deep fried doesn’t’ have to be like that. You pad off the oil when you take it out of the fryer, or let it drain as you’re cooking it. Don’t let the food soak in it.
) Do you own a box of crayons?:
Uhm…pastels. But I’ve never really gotten into pastels. They kinda just sit in the box waiting for me to take an interest.
) Who was the last person that said they loved you?:
Still waiting for the first.
) Who was the last person that made you mad?:
That I know personally? Stuart. But I get mad just about every time I read the news these days.
) Who was the last person that made you cry?:
See above.
) Who was the last person that made you laugh?:
Michele. Some of her bulletins are just hilarious. But the guy (on MySpace) who posted this had one answer on it that made me laugh out loud too. (hips eh…?)
) Who was the last person that you fell for?
Keith. And yes…I fall. Hard. Or not at all it seems.
) Who was the last person that instant messaged you?
Tom, my branch manager. Because we’re all scattered throughout the building, the people in my branch (software engineering) actually use AIM to talk to each other a lot.
) Who was the last person that called you?:
My brother, Billy.
) Who is the person most likely to fill this out?:
They’re either bored, vain, horribly self absorbed, or much too introspective for their own damn good.
1. What curse word do you use the most?
I like variety.
2. Do you own an iPOD?
Yes. Thought they were kinda faddish until I owned one. I love mine now.
3. Who on your Myspace "Top 8" do you talk to the most?
Bob – via email. I’ve actually been in Peterson’s company more.
4. What time is your alarm clock set for?
It’s set for Throw Me Against The Wall If I Ever Go Off. Seriously…no alarm. I hate alarms. You want to see my cranky side, just wake me up out of a sound sleep. I just wake up when I need to. I’m such a light sleeper I can actually do that.
5. How many suitcases do you own?
Oh gosh…let me count… Five pieces of luggage…four back packs (counting the North Face wilderness backpack I never use anymore…) and one briefcase.
6. Do you wear flip-flops even when it’s cold?
No flip-flops. Sandals, sometimes, when it’s warm.
7. Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?
Take. I am not highly photogenic.
8. What was the last movie you watched?
You I Love. I almost cursed the screen out loud when I thought it was going to end with the lovers broken apart from one another. But it ended happily.
9. Do any of your friends have children?
Yes. And my brother has two which makes me an uncle.
10. Has anyone ever called you lazy?
My maternal grandmother back when I was a kid. But she called me a lot of things. "Stinkin’ Rotten’ Good-For-Nothing Garrett Just Like Your Pap" was one of her favorite names for me…
11. Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep faster?
I used to. But they either don’t work or are addictive and make my head fuzzy. I am not going to walk through the last half of my life as a pill addict, and I don’t care what plans the pharmaceutical industry has for me otherwise.
12. What CD is currently in your CD player?
The soundtrack to Ice Station Zebra, by Michael Legrand, is in the Onkyo DX-710 in the living room stereo. The little Sony in my bedroom is empty. I may end up giving it to Good Will. I use the iPod now when I’m doing chores around the house.
13. Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk?
I don’t drink milk. One too many mouthfuls of milk that had gone bad just…er…soured me to it…
14. Has anyone told you a secret this week?
Yes.
15. When was the last time someone hit on you?
Uhm… Last summer actually. It was amazing. As I was walking out the door of the Baltimore Lambda Rising bookstore I heard a guy behind me say, "nice ass" and I was so embarrassed but kinda delighted because at my age you don’t get many of those. But he was looking for a casual one-time hook up and I’m not that kinda guy.
16. Can you whistle?
Yes. Oddly though, only by inhaling. So my whistle is not terribly strong.
17. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone?
My brother.
18. Do you think people talk about you behind your back?
I reckon. I mean…I Hope I don’t just vanish from everyone’s consciousness when I leave the room…
19. Did you watch cartoons as a child?
Oh gosh yes. Astroboy. Jonny Quest. The Space Explorers. I also had a great fondness for the Gerry and Silvia Anderson Supermarionation shows… Supercar, Fireball XL-5, Stingray, Thunderbirds…
21. Are you shy around the opposite sex?
I’m just all around shy. But it’s beautiful guys that really clam me up. Probably why I’m still single…
22. What movie do you know every line to?
Not every line…but I know Casablanca almost by heart now.
23. Do you own any band t-shirts?
Yeah. My brother gave me a Led Zeppelin t-shirt a few Christmases ago.
24. What is your favorite salad dressing?
Ranch.
26. Do you do your own dishes?
I have to…it’s only me here. I have a pretty good Fiestaware collection.
27. Ever cry in public?
When mom passed away.
28. Are you on a desktop computer or a laptop?
I’m typing away on Mowgli, my main Intel (actually a 64 bit AMD) desktop (my household computers are all named after Jungle Book Characters…I loved the Kipling stories…the Disney version not so much). Mowgli can run several versions of Windows and Linux. Currently I’m running 32 bit Windows XP. I’m typing this out on Open Office and I’ll cut and paste it when I’m done. Computer geeks do not give short answers to computer questions.
29. Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoo?
Not. I will do many things in the name of fashion but poking holes in my body isn’t one of them. I have a couple clip-on earrings for when I’m in an earring mood.
30. Whats the weather like?
Sun’s just coming up…looks like a clear blue sky this morning.
31. Would you ever date someone covered in tattoos?
Probably not. I’d be very afraid of the odd one over his right shoulder blade (that was for all you Ray Bradbury fans…)
33. When is the last time you slept on the floor?
Back when I was 30 and I pulled some muscles in my back.
34. How many hours of sleep do you need to function?
Lately I’m getting a good six.
35. Do you eat breakfast daily?
No. Just not hungry when I wake up usually.
36. Are your days full and fast-paced?
Sometimes. Sometimes not. I work to deadlines. Life is a roller coaster.
38. Do you pay attention to calories on the back of packages?
No. I should at my age but I don’t. I weigh about 30 pounds more then I want to, yet I eat very little. The problem is my job keeps me sitting, and my sleep disorder keeps me too tired to be active.
39. How old will you be turning on your next birthday?
Fifty-three.
40. Are you picky about spelling and grammar?
I’m in no position to be picky about either. Let’s hear it for spelling checkers…
41. Have you ever been to Six Flags?
No. I do boardwalks but not amusement parks. Unless I’m with someone.
43. Do you get along better with the same or opposite sex?
The same. My feelings and lusts are relentlessly polarized toward guys. I like guys, I like being a guy, I like being around guys. Not idiotic Guy Show kinda guys though. Beautiful, smart, creative, curious about the world, good-hearted guys. They’re my proof that there is a God, and that God is good.
44. Do you like mustard?
Depends on what it’s on. I like it on hot dogs. Not so much on ice cream.
45. Do you sleep on your side, stomach, or back?
Side and stomach.
46. Do you watch the news?
The network news is worthless. Just…worthless. I do Google News, Raw Story, 365Gay and Page One Q periodically throughout the day.
Lesbian brains differ from straight women’s brains. Last year, a study showed that gay men, like straight women and unlike straight men, processed a male pheromone in a sex-related part of the brain (the hypothalamus) but processed a female pheromone in a scent-related part of the brain. Now the authors of that study report differences among women: 1) Lesbians, like straight men, prefer the female pheromone and find it less irritating than the male pheromone. 2) Straight women find the female pheromone more irritating. 3) Straight men and women process same-sex pheromones in the scent area but process opposite-sex pheromones in the hypothalamus. 4) Lesbians process pheromones of both sexes in the scent area. Interpretations: 1) Sexual orientation is biologically based, not a choice. 2) Sexual orientation is more biologically based in men than in women. (For a summary of the study of gay men, click here. For Human Nature’s take on gay marriage, click here.)
Coming soon: Exodus president Alan Chambers discusses why breathing leads to sexual brokenness.
(Reuters) The Budapest story headlined "Hungary workers get shock at bottom of rum barrel" issued on May 4 is withdrawn. Police said the incident, reported on a police magazine Web site, happened 10 years ago. Reuters has been unable to make any further checks to substantiate the story.
The essential charter of the jihad movement – its "Mein Kampf" – is Sayyid Qutb’s "Milestones" (1964). Before Qutb toured the United States, between 1948 and 1950, he was best known as an Egyptian novelist, poet, and critic. After his time here, he became famous as an Islamic ideologue and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Cairo-based think tank and home of theocratic revolution. He achieved martyrdom in 1966, when he was executed by Gamal Abdel Nasser. His book lives on. It can be found, in whole or in part, on many of the Internet sites created by Muslim students.
…
Qutb didn’t join the Muslim Brotherhood until 1952 – three years after the assassination of the movement’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, and two years after Qutb’s spell of expatriation in the United States. Firsthand experience of Western jahiliyyah seems to have transformed Qutb from a devout but orthodox believer into the architect of worldwide jihad. His American writing (fragments of it were translated and published by John Calvert last year in the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations) shows him as a lonely naïf, adrift in a world of lewd temptations. Although Qutb was forty-two when he sailed from Alexandria for New York in 1948 (the Farouk regime was paying him to study American education methods), his voice sounds painfully young. On the voyage out, a "drunken, semi-naked" woman showed up at the door to his cabin, an American government agent, dispatched by Langley expressly to corrupt him – or so he told his Egyptian biographer years later. Qutb’s sense of extreme moral precariousness comes to the fore in every encounter. Few men past the age of forty can ever have felt their immortal souls to be in such danger at a church hop as Qutb did when he attended one in Greeley, Colorado. The pastor, doubling as disk jockey, lowered the lights to impart "a romantic, dreamy effect," and put on a record of "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" (presumably the Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban version, from the soundtrack of the 1949 hit movie "Neptune’s Daughter"). "The dancing intensified…The hall swarmed with legs…Arms circled arms, lips met lips, chests met chests, and the atmosphere was full of love." We’re in the psychodrama of temptation here – the language tumescent with arousal, even as it affects a tone of detachment and disdain.
You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom…You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.
The English writer Daniel Defoe is best remembered today for creating the ultimate escapist fantasy, "Robinson Crusoe," but in 1727 he sent the British public into a scandalous fit with the publication of a nonfiction work called "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom." After apparently being asked to tone down the title for a subsequent edition, Defoe came up with a new one — "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed" — that only put a finer point on things. The book wasn’t a tease, however. It was a moralizing lecture. After the wanton years that followed the restoration of the monarchy, a time when both theaters and brothels multiplied, social conservatism rooted itself in the English bosom. Self-appointed Christian morality police roamed the land, bent on restricting not only homosexuality and prostitution but also what went on between husbands and wives.
It was this latter subject that Defoe chose to address. The sex act and sexual desire should not be separated from reproduction, he and others warned, else "a man may, in effect, make a whore of his own wife."…One prime objective of England’s Christian warriors in the 1720’s was to stamp out what Defoe called "the diabolical practice of attempting to prevent childbearing by physical preparations."
The wheels of history have a tendency to roll back over the same ground…
–Contra-Contraception by Russell Shorto, in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 7, 2006
You should go read Contra-Contraception, if only to disabuse yourself of any notion that the religious right’s war on abortion has anything whatsoever to do with being pro-life. It was never about being pro-life. It was always about being anti-sex. Ayn Rand said often that the totalitarians of the world were united against one thing and that one thing was the human mind. Like a lot of her philosophical sermonizing it’s close, but not quite on target. What they’re united against is the Self, and you never see it more clearly, then in their furious condemnations of sex for its own sake. If there is anything, any one point, you can get all the tinpot dictators of the world to agree on, secular communist, fundamentalist theocrat, or cult-of-personality strongman, it’s that nobody should ever be allowed to have, as Tristero puts it, "the ecstatic, transgressive, transcendent, life-affirming, overwhelmingly selfish and also ego-obliterating ecstasy that is sex" without their permission.
It’s all about control, and much, much more then control of your body. Never mind the politics of abortion and who owns your body. The fight is over ownership of your inner self. Does your spiritual and emotional life belong to you, or some nebulous outside agency that may be god, or may be society, but is always in the final analysis someone who says they speak for god, says they speak for society.
Humans are fallen creatures, so the rhetoric goes, and we cannot be trusted to manage our own intimate affairs without making a mess of things. So we must be guided in the paths of righteousness…apparently by other fallen humans who somehow just happen to be less fallen then everyone else. Rand had a great line about that in Atlas Shrugged:
You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: That you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others – that you’re unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omipotent ruler…
Kinda…doesn’t make sense when you think about it. But that’s exactly what they’re saying to the rest of us. It’s a fallen world…present company excepted.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is considered one of the leading intellectual figures of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. In a December 2005 column in The Christian Post titled "Can Christians Use Birth Control?" he wrote: "The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age — and one of the most ominous…
State legislatures are debating dozens of bills surrounding emergency contraception, or the "morning-after pill": whether pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill orders; whether it should be made available over the counter; whether Catholic hospitals may decline to provide it to rape victims. To the dismay of many public-health officials, and following the will of conservative Christian organizations, the Bush administration has steadily moved the federal family-planning program in the direction of an abstinence-only-until-marriage program…
Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex…
It was just a tad over forty years ago, that states could outlaw the sale of contraceptives, even to married couples, never mind the fornicating heathens. If you think the American taliban considers promiscuity in the same way the rest of us do, think again. The war on sex goes right into the bedroom of married couples too. They think they have the god given right to tell even that fundamental god ordained unit of society, husband and wife, how and when to have sex, and more importantly…why. Just because you’re a married heterosexual that doesn’t mean you get to enjoy sex either. You have sex to make babies and for no other reason. Not to nurture the intimate bond between a couple, and especially not for its own simple joyful pleasure. Taking pleasure in physical intimacy, let alone emotional and spiritual intimacy, is immoral, because it is selfish. And selfishness is sinful and wrong because next thing you know, they’ll stop obeying us.
I am not a Randian. In my early twenties I was enthralled by her books and at 52 it embarrasses me now to go back and read them. Rand was not an artist. She was a pamphleteer. A very, Very verbose pamphleteer. But she had a profound insight into what morality is, and also into the totalitarian mindset and this passage from The Fountainhead I think is relevant here.
Notice how they’ll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once. By Instinct. There’s a special kind of insidious hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators…The independent man kills them – because they don’t exist within him and that’s the only form of existence they know.
There it is. And it isn’t envy, it is fear. The fear of those of us who can cope with the world as it is. We of the "reality based community". Yes, sometimes we are afraid too. Sometimes this poor world frightens us with its cruelty and meanness. We witness our proudest achievements turned into machineries of death. We watch appalled as greed destroys what we’d hoped to build. Yet still we try, slowly, painfully, sometimes at great personal cost, to see at the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, because we know we must. And that is why they hate us. Not for our sins. But for our courage.
The past several decades have seen fantastic technological achievements in science and technology. What was once power that only a handful of large corporations and big governments could house in vast computer rooms, now rests on desktops in homes all over the world. Music plays from devices that clip to our belts and which have more computational power in them then the computers that worked on the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Information about nearly anything one would want to know in the form of text, images, video, is literally at our fingertips. Our spacecraft explore the solar system and beam images of distant planets back to us at the speed of light. Our telescopes reach out and gather light from near the dawn of time. It can be utterly overwhelming. As Carl Sagan said it at the end of his novel Contact, for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only though love. It should surprise no one then, that in our time religious fundamentalism shouts a terrible noise of death and destruction back at civilization, back at love.
They fear the world because they cannot cope. They fear us because we can, and they hate us for our courage. So they must control us. So they must enslave us. And the only way to completely enslave a person is from within. Take away from a person all the awe and joy, all the wonder and exuberance of life, and the emptiness you’ve left inside of them might be yours to fill. That is why there is a war on sex, a war on human intimacy, a war, ultimately, on love.
Some days you gotta wonder if the cultural scolds aren’t right about this being a lost world. Once upon a time it was only prostitutes and the marketers of vibrators and skin magazines who plied their trade to the lonely and love lorn. But at least the sex itself was real. It’s come to this now…
No. Just…no. There’s something seriously wrong here. I’ve had an arm around me as I slept a time or two in my life. There’s no comparing the embrace of a real live human to a stuffed pillow shaped like an arm with a stuffed hand shaped appendage at the end of it. Christ…that photo is depressing as hell.
I saw something similar in kind about a year ago…interestingly it was another Japanese product…
I dunno… How do you bring one of those into your house without wanting to just shoot yourself? At least with a prostitute, the sex is real. But you can’t fake having a lover. You just can’t. At least I can’t. That’s why I’ve never been tempted by prostitutes.
(Washington) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has bowed to pressure from a Republican congressman to include two abstinence-only proponents to a federal panel on STDs, bypassing the scientific approval process according to a published report.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind) the chair of the House subcommittee on drug policy accused the CDC of including only opponents of abstinence programs on the panel to be held Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla.
In e-mail to Health and Human Services officials, obtained by the Inquirer, Souder’s office asked whether the CDC was "clear about the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective."
"It was clear that there was not a scintilla of something positive about the abstinence education method," Michelle Gress, an aide to Souder told the paper.
Critics of congressional interference at the CDC said they were concerned that scientific studies on sexual behavior would not be made public if they conflicted with the administration’s pro abstinence stand.
Jonathan Zenilman, president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association and conference organizer said that the two pro-abstinence people added to the panel are not scientists.
"These people aren’t scientists; they haven’t written anything," he told the Inquirer. "The only reason they’re here is because of political pressure from the administration."
To make room for the abstinence proponents the CDC dropped two researchers from the panel – one a Penn State scientist who had prepared a discussion paper on how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates.
Emphasis mine. I have a follow-up post in the works about the republican war on sex, since the Sunday Times conveniently did an article about it. But for now just note that it does not matter whether or not it abstinence programs meet any scientific objective. They meet a political one. The lack of any scientific credentials on the part of the abstinence proponents is actually a plus. It means they can’t be suspected of having any loyalty to the evidence.
Many teens taking virginity pledges renege on them and others take them after having had intercourse, according to a study released Tuesday by the Harvard School of Public Health.
Researcher Janet Rosenbaum studied the responses of 13,568 participants, ages 12 to 18, from a 1995 national survey and compared them with a follow-up study a year later.
She found that 52% of adolescents who made the pledge not to have sex until marriage in the 1995 survey denied making such a vow a year later.
Dig it. They not only broke the pledge, they denied ever even making it. It’s real easy to make that kind of pledge early in adolescence, when the hormones haven’t quite gotten up to temperature, and real hard to keep it later on. Ask me how I know.
But that’s not to say that these virginity pledges don’t benefit anyone…
The federal government is spending $178 million in the 2006 fiscal year for abstinence education, the council said.
Any guesses as to how much of that money goes to "faith based" institutions? Republican friendly faith based institutions?
The mistake of course, is assuming that the goal of abstinence education is specifically to stop people from having sex. In the grand scheme of things it is, surely. But what abstinence education does is deprive people, teens specifically but not exclusively, of the knowledge they need to avoid getting pregnant or getting sexually transmitted disease. Like a room full of carbon monoxide gas, which doesn’t so much suffocate as prevent the blood from being able to absorb oxygen, abstinence education exists to prevent education, so to make the sex lives of teens and adults more dangerous.
If the goal to be achieved is, as the abstinence proponents claim, to prevent kids from engaging in behavior that can be dangerous to their health, to their very lives, then they need look no further then the experience of the Netherlands, whose comprehensive sex education is light years beyond the kind of frankness the religious right would ever tolerate here in the United States…and yet their rates of teenage pregnancies and STDs are among the lowest in the world. There’s your answer: Teach kids the facts about sex and human sexuality. But that’s not the question. The religious and political right aren’t trying to keep kids and adults safe, they’re trying to keep them from having sex. They’re trying to keep them from having sex, by making it more dangerous for them to have it. Even if that means killing some of them. Especially if that means killing some of them…
Deaths from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer – but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths.
The trouble is that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active, which could be a problem in many countries.
In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favor vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.
"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.
A license to have sex… Pay attention to that. The problem with the vaccine, according to the Family Research Council, isn’t that it doesn’t work, but that it does. In fact, it appears to be 100 percent effective in protecting women from the human papilloma virus, which is the primary cause of cervical cancer in the United States…a cancer that strikes more than 10,000 women in the U.S. each year, and kills over 3,700. Take that shadow of death away from people and, according to the religious right, you have given them a license to have sex.
And that’s why science is unwelcome on a CDC panel on sexually transmitted diseases. Science and medicine cure disease and make pregnancy a matter of choice, and that gives us permission to have sex, and only the man behind the pulpit can give us permission to have sex. Got that? In a nation where the mullahs cannot legally stone to death people who have sex without their permission, pregnancy and disease are all they have left to hope for. And make no mistake, hope they do.
I like to read Drew Curtis’ Fark.Com precisely for its being such a mixed bag. The Photoshop contests are what I mostly like, but the random news links users throw in there are often interesting too. And sometime the user community response is even more interesting.
The other day, someone posted a link to this story …
Man Allegedly Attacks Quizno’s Cup Mascot
NORTH HUNTINGDON, Pa. — For four years, Tammy Scattell has been hiring teenagers to fill a Quizno’s cup costume and advertise her North Huntingdon Quizno’s store.
Now, she can’t get anyone to do it.
"They’re like, ‘Let’s just give it some time.’ They are afraid to go out now. It’s kind of scary," Scattell said. The cup suit is a great marketing tool.
But police said a teen inside the suit took punches and kicks from a man who pulled over to attack him along Route 30 while his buddies took pictures of it on their camera phones.
A North Huntingdon police officer’s wife saw it happening and called police.
"A young man had jumped out of the vehicle, knocked a boy over in a Quizno’s suit and started kicking him. They got back in the vehicle and took off, and we were able to stop them a short time later," said Patrolman Tom Harris, of the North Huntingdon police. The Quizno’s mascot is OK.
These men face summary disorderly conduct citations:
Nicholas Trumpe, of Elizabeth
Justin Walker and Tony Anthony, of Greensburg
Jeremiah Bozich, of Irwin
Brian Goossen, of Jeannette
Each of the men is in his 20s.
They thought it was funny. Funny enough to take pictures as a keepsake. Maybe show them around to all their friends. Maybe post them on the Internet. Fuckin hilarious… A number of Farkers seemed to agree…
At least he was wearing a cup.
Thereby accomplishing what most of us have always wanted to do to character suited figures, but have never dared.
I so very badly want to do that but I have never seen one in my city.
I have wanted to do this oh so many times.
/minus the camera phones
//maybe just one
Thanks dude who beat up foam Quizno’s cup guy as I’ve wanted to do that as every single time I leave Quizno’s I have the crazy shaits. But I keep on going back.
QiznOWNED
Furries are bad enough. Pervs who dress as inanimate objects deserve whatever they get.
One of them almost gets it though…
When Bestbuy had their grand opened in New Orleans we tried for thirty minutes to get one of my friends to tackle the big stupid looking tag mascot that was waving and just being a general dumbass. Finally after we promised him 40 bucks he agreed. We waited on one of the isles and when the tag was coming by he got a huge running start and speared the crap out of it. We were all in uproarious laughter until we started to hear cries and then the tag unzipped to reveal a 14 year old girl. He got expelled from our school and an assult conviction….
But then he ends it with…
best.bet.evar.
Actually, you and your pals should have been arrested and jailed too, for paying that guy forty bucks to beat up a kid in a costume. Especially the ones who paid to watch it.
The sight of those mascot things usually irritates me, but that’s because I project on them how I would feel if I was trapped in a dead end minimum wage job and forced to humiliate myself in front of every car that drove by my place of work. I am a deathly shy soul, more stage crew then stage, and I would probably walk off the job rather then put one of those goddamned things on. But some people really like doing the mascot thing. I’ve met a few of them over the course of my lifetime, and they’re generally sweet exuberant souls who just want to make everyone smile. Bully bait, in other words.
Let it be said that not everyone in that thread thought what those guys did was funny. A few were pissed off that the only charge leveled against the attackers was disorderly conduct. What kind of person thinks it’s not only funny, but funny enough to take pictures of someone beating up someone else for no other reason then…well…it’s funny to watch someone getting beaten up. The kind of person you don’t really want walking the streets. And precisely because they don’t think its any big deal, and can’t fathom why anyone would want to make a big deal out of it. It was just some kid in a stupid costume…fuckin hilarious watching him trying to fight back from inside that stupid costume… It’s not what people hate that tells you how depraved they are…it’s what makes them laugh.
BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.
"You know, I’ve experienced many great moments and it’s hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.
"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Yep…sitting in your boat catching perch on your lake has just about got to be the best part of presidenting.
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