Internet Porn Is Good!

I don't know how valid this study is. It sounds true. I'd like it to be true. Nothing I like more than finding rationalizations for doing what conventional "wisdom" says is bad for you.

How the Web Prevents Rape
All that Internet porn reduces sex crimes. Really.
By Steven E. Landsburg

Posted Monday, Oct. 30, 2006, at 2:22 PM ET
Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems.

First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.

The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.

OK, so we can at least tentatively conclude that Net access reduces rape. But that's a far cry from proving that porn access reduces rape. Maybe rape is down because the rapists are all indoors reading Slate or vandalizing Wikipedia. But professor Kendall points out that there is no similar effect of Internet access on homicide. It's hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.

If not Wikipedia, then what? Maybe rape is down because former rapists have found their true loves on Match.com. But professor Kendall points out that the effects are strongest among 15-year-old to 19-year-old perpetrators—the group least likely to use such dating services.

Moreover, professor Kendall argues that those teenagers are precisely the group that (presumably) relies most heavily on the Internet for access to porn. When you're living with your parents, it's a lot easier to close your browser in a hurry than to hide a stash of magazines. So, the auxiliary evidence is all consistent with the hypothesis that Net access reduces rape because Net access makes it easy to find porn.

Next, violence. What happens when a particularly violent movie is released? Answer: Violent crime rates fall. Instantly. Here again, we have a lot of natural experiments: The number of violent movie releases changes a lot from week to week. One weekend, 12 million people watch Hannibal, and another weekend, 12 million watch Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

University of California professors Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna compared what happens on those weekends. The bottom line: More violence on the screen means less violence in the streets. Probably that's because violent criminals prefer violent movies, and as long as they're at the movies, they're not out causing mischief. They'd rather see Hannibal than rob you, but they'd rather rob you than sit through Wallace & Gromit.

I say that's the most probable explanation, because the biggest drop in crime (about a 2 percent drop for every million people watching violent movies) occurs between 6 p.m. and midnight—the prime moviegoing hours. And what happens when the theaters close? Answer: Crime stays down, though not by quite as much. Dahl and DellaVigna speculate that this is because two hours at the movies means two hours of drinking Coke instead of beer, with sobering effects that persist right on through till morning. Speaking of morning, after 6 a.m., crime returns to its original level.

What about those experiments you learned about in freshman psych, where subjects exposed to violent images were more willing to turn up the voltage on actors who they believed were receiving painful electric shocks? Those experiments demonstrate, perhaps, that most people become more violent after viewing violent images. But that's the wrong question here. The right question is: Do the sort of people who commit violent crimes commit more crimes when they watch violence? And the answer appears to be no, for the simple reason that they can't commit crimes and watch movies simultaneously.

Similarly, psychologists have found that male subjects, immediately after watching pornography, are more likely to express misogynistic attitudes. But as professor Kendall points out, we need to be clear on what those experiments are testing: They are testing the effects of watching pornography in a controlled laboratory setting under the eyes of a researcher. The experience of viewing porn on the Internet, in the privacy of one's own room, typically culminates in a slightly messier but far more satisfying experience—an experience that could plausibly tamp down some of the same aggressions that the pornus interruptus of the laboratory tends to stir up.

In other words, if you want to understand the effects of on-screen sex and violence outside the laboratory, psych experiments don't tell you very much. Sooner or later, you've got to look at the data.

I'm sold on the result, if not the cause and effect relationship. I've ranted about this before, myself. It's hard for me to get around the idea that a potential rapist's compulsion to commit violence subsides as a result of a couple of hours in front of a TV or a computer screen. More likely, to me, (VERY un-scientific notion, here), the drop in crime statistics relates to how porn de-mystifies sex and makes it easier for people to talk openly about the subject. I have no idea, but I'd suspect that a significant percentage of reported rapes stem from what might be considered misunderstandings and miscommunications.

Don't get me wrong. Rapists need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and people need to learn that "No means no." However, having spent some time in the criminal justice system, I also know that misunderstandings happen, which often lead to tragic results for all involved.

The Powers That Be say...NO Sex 'Til You're 30!

Yet another example of how the government's trying to control our private lives.

Abstinence message goes beyond teens
Updated 10/31/2006 8:32 AM ET
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.

Keep in mind that "ignorance-only" sex ed doesn't work, either. The fact that our government is trying to discourage consenting adults from having sex is astounding. But then, if they're targeting an age group which has spent the last ten years as teenagers listening to their anti-sex spiel, it's probably the safest bet.

"If you're in your twenties, don't have sex! You've spent puberty learning about sex from our ignorance-only programs, which don't teach you shit!"

G.O.P...."Grand Old Porn" party?

More on the Republicans and their willingness to take pornographers' hard-earned cash.

This time, from AmericaBlog, here and here.

Porn star Mary Carey ran for governor in California as a Republican against Ah-nold a few years ago, and they seem quite appreciative of her efforts on behalf of the G.O.P. They've also been quite appreciative of her willingness to give them money.

But...but...that's PORNOGRAPHY money! It's blood money! (Okay, not blood money...semen money? Santorum money? Squirt money?) Doesn't matter to the G.O.P. It's all green, so it's all good.

Now, I've got no problem with the porn industry as a whole, obviously. But I can't help but wonder what they expect to gain from those contributions. Do they really expect the Republicans to listen to their positions? Sway a few votes, maybe? Get some porn-friendly legislation on the docket? Please.

But don't feel so bad, Ms. Carey, for the White House playing you for a sap. They've been playing the Holy Terrors, gay Republicans, our soldiers, and the entire U.S. for saps, as well. You're not alone.

Right-wing Hypocrisy...So What Else Is New?

Joshua Micah Marshall is a journalistic genius. That's all I have to say.

The upshot of the article is that while Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee, is slamming Democrat Harold Ford for attending a Playboy Super Bowl party (and thereby accepting money from pornographers), on the one hand, on the other hand the RNC is collecting big bucks from Nicholas Boyias, head of Marina Pacific Distributors, one of the nation's largest producers and distributors not just of porn, but of GAY porn.

It's been coming out recently how the G.O.P. basically treats the moral values crowd as a big joke, gladly turning tricks for their Holy Terror whoremongers and their big business pimps, and this is simply one more demonstration. Moral values? Ethics? Patriotism? Sure. Just make the check out to cash, and thank you very much.

Sex And Politics...now the politics

Gotta warn you, I tend to get a little obsessed this time every two years. I call it "fascinated with the political process." My Lovely Wife calls it "going positively batshit."

Eight days until the midterm elections, and I don't think it's hyperbole to say that November 7th is shaping up to be the most important Election Day of our time. Yes, they're all important, and certainly the 2004 elections were big-time, as well. Nevertheless, these are more important. The choices have never been so clear, and we've rarely had so much at stake. We're faced with the option of careening pell-mell toward oblivion, or taking a step back from the brink and restoring democracy to the greatest country in the world.

I won't be so presumptive to say that sex isses are the most important issues facing voters this year. Stagnant unemployment rates, a bankrupt economy, corrupt leaders, and an incompetent administration losing not one, but two wars at a time, causing staggering losses of thousands of brave troops, hundreds of thousands of civilians, and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, are but a few of the many, many options voters must consider next Tuesday.

Nevertheless, I feel that sex issues must at least be considered when casting votes. The rights of sexual freedom are every bit at risk as the right of habeas corpus, the right to equal protection, the right to due process, the right to freedom of speech, not to mention the right to freedom from terror, and to freedom from fear.

The Powers That Be, while seemingly otherwise occupied with other matters, nevertheless have engaged in a long, ongoing campaign to batter down our bedroom doors and dictate to us who, when, how, and why we choose to express ourselves sexually. Their campaign, documented on this blog, is nothing less than a drive to eliminate everything fun about sex, to reduce expression to a bland morass of polite and boring platitudes, to reduce women to baby-making machines, and to reduce sex itself to a mechanical, necessary chore.

Why? Why do the Powers That Be want to control our sex lives? I have my ideas, one of which is the fact that they want to control our bodies and our minds, making us compliant little worker ants and soldier ants, through the powerful emotion of shame. To do this, they have to control our sense of dignity and our sense of power, and to do that, they have to control our sex lives.

Observe the woman in the post below. She's sexy, she's sexual, she's brazen, and she's displaying an element of power. She's in control of her body, and of her own mind. The Powers That Be fear these images, because by their being available for you to observe, they're NOT in control.

That doesn't stop them from trying. The government is trying to shut down sex sites, sex education, porn movies, erotica, sex toys, sexual preference, and sex acts themselves which they consider "Unacceptable." What is their goal? Their utopia? Read Orwell's "1984" and you'll get a pretty good idea.

They say it's in the name of decency and of morally upright behavior. They say they're trying to prevent the corruption of society and of the sex act. However, an essential element of decency and of morality is respect. Respect for the choices of others. I may not like the way others get their rocks off, but if it doesn't harm me or my children, whatever consenting adults choose to do in their own bedrooms is their own business and none of mine. That's sexual freedom, and that's what the Powers That Be are opposing, and that's why we need to fight back.

Gore Vidal said, "Sex is politics." He also said,

"In order for a ruling class to rule, there must be arbitrary prohibitions. Of all prohibitions, sexual taboo is the most useful because sex involves everyone. To be able to lock up someone or deprive him of employment because of his sex life is a very great power indeed, and one seldom used in civilized societies. But although the United States is the best and most perfect of earth's societies and our huddled masses earth's envy, we have yet to create a civilization, as opposed to a way of life. That is why we have allowed our governors to divide the population into two teams. One team is good, godly, straight; the other is evil, sick, vicious...Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices, and what anyone does with a willing partner is of no social or cosmic significance."

If you're a consenting adult and you like porn/erotica/smut, or you like kinky sex or swinging or BDSM or you just like being left to your own devices when it comes to getting your rocks off, pay attention to the choices being offered, pay attention to the rhetoric, and don't just vote with your heart or your brain or your sense of justice.

Vote with your loins.

Sex And Politics...first, the sex

Sort of an apology ahead of time

Bush's War On Porn...

...is about as successful as everything else he's ever done.

Booming porn faces backlash
As its earnings pass $12 billion, the American industry is attracting the attention of legislators. John Harlow reports from Los Angeles


THE American pornography business is growing so fast that for the first time in a decade it is attracting the unwelcome attention of the White House and federal prosecutors.

When George Bush entered the Oval Office in 2001 he accused his predecessor Bill Clinton of being “soft on porn” and vowed to crack down on an industry that was generating $9.8 billion (£5.2 billion) a year. But anti-porn campaigners in Bush’s own party say that since then the president has been distracted by the war on terror and has done little.

Thanks in part to a new generation of “crossover” stars such as Jenna Jameson, who appears in both sex videos and the book charts with her bestseller How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, industry earnings have risen to more than $12 billion a year. Top producers such as the Private Media Group are even listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

With an average 40% profit margin on DVD sales, explicit porn is twice as profitable as the music business. Porn revenues in the US are higher than all money generated by the combined professional American football, baseball and basketball franchises.

Production is booming too. According to Adult Video News, 13,500 titles were released last year, compared with 8,000 in 1998 and 1,250 in 1988.

And, as in Hollywood, the top 20 celebrities took the lion’s share of receipts — women like Jameson and stage-named men such as Eric Everhard, Flick Shagwell and Seymore Butts.

Porn has also become high profile, with brands such as Hustler edging towards respectability and established stars such as Sarah Michelle Geller, who made her name as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, playing an x-rated actress in her next film.

I've written about "porn chic" in the past, myself. Simply put, all this brou-ha-ha the Holy Terrors are making about the porn industry calls attention to porn, but not in a "how disgusting" way, but in more of a "what's the big deal" way. And since it's gone mainstream to an extent, there's no wayt to remove porn's influence in the media, either. Try to remove explicit langage and content from every book, magazine, video, or the internet, and see how far that gets you.

But tell that to Bushco.

The Family Value of Ostracism

Found this via Crooks And Liars

In Senate race, family values campaign tested by real life
DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Randall Terry doesn't run away from "family values issues" in his state Senate race.

Among the conservative Christian's pledges are preserving traditional marriage and opposing gay adoptions. He has touted efforts to stop abortions. His campaign mailers sum up the value he puts on family: they show a picture with his wife, a daughter and three grinning young sons taken before a fourth was born this summer.

But Terry's adopted son Jamiel says the picture is missing two people: he and his sister Tila, also adopted. Both have been estranged from Terry since Jamiel came out as a gay man and Tila had a child out of wedlock.
Jamiel Terry said the self-image that his father is crafting and the campaign message about strong families ignores part of his own family history. He said voters have a right to know about that.

"He is very big on image," Jamiel Terry said. "In a large way Tila and I mess up that image."

Randall Terry is the founder of Operation Rescue, the anti-choice, anti-abortion group. He's especially noted for running off at the mouth about sexual choice, and homosexuality.

I'm not wild about passing judgment upon the way other families live their lives, but when someone puts his own family out there as a textbook example of the way it should be done, they're making themselves subject to scrutiny, don't you think?

Where does casting children out fall in the "family values" spectrum?

Talk About The Pot Calling The Kettle Black...

In case you didn't know, or knew but had simply forgotten, Democrat Jim Webb is running for Republican George Allen's senate seat from Virginia. It's lately come out that Admiral Webb (USN Ret'd) wrote some spy novels with a few explicit sex scenes. No biggie, right?

Second Lady Lynne Cheney would disagree. She flew off the handle with CNN about the issue, info here.

Here's the funny part, as Think Progress pointed out. Mrs. Cheney herself penned an explicit lesbian love novel herself.

I can't help but wonder what sort of loathing goes on in the Cheney household at family gatherings. Don't forget that the Vice President's daughter is a lesbian, herself. How can she deal with the fact that her father is a very public opponent of homosexuality, her mother tees off on explicit sex in fiction while trying to hide her own attempt at soft-core porn, and Mary herself recently made a contribution opposing Virginia's anti-gay ballot initiative.

Oh, that's right. They're all hypocrites, so that's how they cope.

I forgot.

The New Jersey Gay Marriage Decision...

as promised, a closer look.

The full opinion is here.

Frankly, the New Jersey Supreme Court did a better job of hoofing than you'd see on "Dancing With The Stars."

First, the bad news:

The New Jersey Supreme Court, like virtually all other state appeals courts that have addressed the issue, concluded that there's no fundamental right for gays to marry, which permits the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to apply.

Gays can enjoy substantive legal rights which are available to married people, but they can't marry.

The Court ultimately passed the buck to the New Jersey legislature, refusing to outline exactly what rights gay couples can enjoy. Instead, the court ordered that body to draft legislation to make those decisions. So much for "activist" judges.

The Court applied only New Jersey law to this case, and didn't invoke any Federal rights at all. This case isn't going any further. No appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, here.

The Court didn't even really make or interpret new law. Instead, the Court concluded that a Domestic Partnership act passed by the state legislature was valid and should be enforced.

The good news:

The NJ Supreme Court DID determine that the state's equal protection laws extend to gay couples, and the Court DID conclude that gays are entitled to substantive rights available to married heterosexual couples. That's a plus.

The Court seems to be following the present trend. Don't call it marriage, but offer the substantive rights of marriage. Just don't call it marriage. Half a loaf, I presume, is better than none.

The lower courts fell back on the old argument that the main purpose of marriage is to raise kids, and that heterosexual couples offer the best environment for raising kids. The Supreme Court shot this one down cold, and even pointed out that most of the plaintiffs in this case have children themselves. The Supreme Court also pointed out that the kids are harmed by their parents' inability to have the same protections offered to heterosexual couples.

This is big. Ultimately, when gays are allowed to marry, it'll be because depriving them of being married violates not just their own equal protection rights, but those of the kids, as well. This decision shows gay couples litigating this issue in the future the way to go.

Gad, I'm such a law geek. Going to have a beer or two, now.

Victory In New Jersey...

...I guess.

MSNBC seems to think the issue's still up in the air, however. Think Progress seems more assertive in calling it a victory for gay marriage.

I'll hold off on deciding for myself until after I read the opinion. More later.

New Jersey Supreme Court Ruling Tomorrow on Gay Marriage

You gotta be a real sick puppy to be such a law geek for something like this.

Lambda Legal appears optimistic.

And just in time for the elections, too.

Whew!

Sex! Politics! Sex! Politics! Even I can only take so much talk about sex and politics before I need a break!



So let's just focus on sex.

John McCain on Gay Marriage

His thoughts? From "Hardball" at Iowa State University.

On gay marriage:

“On the issue of gay marriage, I do believe, and I think it's a correct policy that the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, a marriage between man and woman, should have a unique status. But I‘m not for depriving any other group of Americans from having rights. But I do believe that there is something that is unique between marriage between a man and a woman, and I believe it should be protected.”

“I think that gay marriage should be allowed, if there‘s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don‘t have any problem with that, but I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.”

"On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that people want to have private ceremonies, that‘s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal."

I think Senator McCain is entitled to all due respect as a serviceman and a former P.O.W. As a politician, he's a gutless wonder.

About my last post...

I characterized religious conservative fundamentalists as "pimps" and Republican lawmakers as "whores."

Upon reflection, (and a phone call from concerned family members--thanks for reading, Mom!) I've found myself wondering if I've gone too far. Might my characterization of the relationship between the Holy Terrors and the G.O.P. as being akin to prostitution be a tad unfair and unreasonable?

Hill Republicans Air Out the Closet
Foley Scandal Points Up Acceptance And Anxieties of Gay Staffers

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; Page C01

*****
"You have to separate the marketing from the reality. The reality is, these (Republican Congress) members are not homophobic. For the most part, they're using this marketing to play to our base and stay in power. They have to turn out the votes," said David Duncan, once a board member of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association and a former top aide to Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio), who last week pleaded guilty to corruption charges linked to the Abramoff scandal.

Andrew Sullivan, the openly gay conservative columnist, calls the Republican leadership "closet-tolerant."

"They're tolerant of gay people but they have to keep quiet about it because their base would go crazy if they ever express it. That's the bottom line," Sullivan said. "They have this acute cognitive dissonance, which is a polite way of saying hypocrisy."

Naw. "Pimps" and "Whores" pretty much covers it.

Speaking Of Schisms...

One in the Cheney household?

Mark Warner, Cheney’s daughter write checks to oppose marriage amendment
By CHRISTINA NUCKOLS, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 17, 2006

RICHMOND — Former Gov. Mark Warner and Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary, both have written checks to help opponents of a proposed state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, according to campaign reports filed Monday.

Never thought much of Mary Cheney. I mean, to be so actively associated with such a homophobic administration, she's gotta be looking forward to years of therapy to deal with that shit.

I don't put much stock into the notion that this is a sign the G.O.P. is trying to be more welcoming into their "big tent." Mary Cheney's something of a pariah, anyway.

Now, if her father'd made a contribution, that'd be big news.

A Schism On The Right?

Events are rapidly accellerating. Sometimes it's impossible to even think about keeping to the "only one post a day" rule.

Seems the Holy Terror Pimps and their G.O.P. Whores are starting to fall out. Can they keep the bitches in line?

Some Seek 'Pink Purge' in the GOP
By Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writer
October 18, 2006

WASHINGTON — In recent years, the Republican Party aimed to broaden its appeal with a "big-tent" strategy of reaching out to voters who might typically lean Democratic. But now a debate is growing within the GOP about whether the tent has become too big — by including gays whose political views may conflict with the goals of the party's powerful evangelical conservatives.

Some Christians, who are pivotal to the GOP's get-out-the-vote effort, are charging that gay Republican staffers in Congress may have thwarted their legislative agenda. There even are calls for what some have dubbed a "pink purge" of high-ranking gay Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the administration.
*****
"The big-tent strategy could ultimately spell doom for the Republican Party," said Tom McClusky, chief lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group. "All a big-tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns."

Now the GOP is facing a hard choice — risk losing the social conservatives who are legendary for turning out the vote, or risk alienating the moderate voters who are crucial to this election's outcome.

"There's a huge schism on the right," said Mike Rogers, a gay-rights activist who runs a blog to combat what he calls hypocrisy among conservative gay politicians. "The fiscal conservatives are furious at the religious conservatives, because they need the moderates for economic policy. But they need the social conservatives to turn out the vote."

The article recalls the whole issue with Condi Rice and Mark Dybul, which I talked about earlier. It also points out that anti-gay senators like George Allen and Rick Santorum actually have gay staffers. On the whole, the article's rather upbeat for the G.O.P. They'll find a way, they say, to pacify everyone for their "big tent."

Bullshit. The so-called "big tent" is open only if you toe the Holy Terrors' line. Case in point, the aforementioned junior senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum.

As previously documented herein, Senator Santorum had actually signed a pledge not to discriminate against gays when it came to hiring practices in his own office, then he recanted that pledge when the Holy Terrors had a collective shit fit. He was (and still is) trailing his Democratic opponent Bob Casey by double digits in the polls, but rather than take a step toward the middle (and toward common decency), he opted to go back to business as usual and suck the collective dicks of the neo-con Christo-fascists who pay his bills and his kids' private school tuitions. If Santorum (and the rest of the G.O.P.) really want to attract more people to their "big tent," they've first got to develop spines made of something other than a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

The Holy Terrors will get their bitches back on the leash, even if it costs them Congress.

Good.

What kind of sick, depraved, morally degenerate, sexually twisted...

deviant perverts are we dealing with, here?

With the Foley scandal, we have a sexually predatory Congressman stalking teenaged boys while the House leadership not only looked the other way, but actually put Foley on the missing and exploited children caucus. (It takes a thief to catch a thief?)

Representative Chris Shays actually compares the Abu Ghraib torture scandal to a sex ring and, later, to pornography.

Those two episodes makes me wonder if G.O.P. Congressmen truly understand the meaning of the term, "consenting adults."

But let's recap some other stuff prominent Republicans and Holy Terrors have been shooting off their mouths about.

Contraceptives (which prevent pregnancy) are equivalent to abortifacents (which terminate pregnancy).

Sex should be as risky as possible, which means no sex ed, no HPV vaccine, no ready access to birth control. Protection encourages promiscuity.

And sex isn't for fun, anyway. It's solely for making babies.

Even marriage isn't about love and companionship...it's about being fruitful and multiplying.

Finally, we get down to the nut of it. Conservatives seem to believe some truly abhorrent shit about homosexuality.

How bad is it? The Holy Terrors are actually pissed at Condoleeza Rice, now. And why?

Here's why:

Rice's 'Mother-in-Law' Comment Raises Conservative Hackles
Remark Comes During Swearing In of Open Homosexual to Ambassador-Level Post
By Fred Jackson and Jim Brown
October 16, 2006

(AgapePress) - A spokesman for a family-advocacy group in Washington, DC, is expressing disgust with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's swearing in of an openly homosexual man as global AIDS coordinator -- and in particular, with comments she made at the ceremony.

Late last week, USA Today stated that the Republican Party is facing what it calls an "identity crisis" when it comes to efforts to try to please both homosexuals and conservative Christians. The report used a ceremony at the State Department to provide a very pointed example of how the GOP seems to want the support of "values voters," but are willing to appease the homosexual activist agenda.

The ceremony involved Secretary of State Rice and the swearing in of Mark Dybul, an open homosexual, as the nation's new global AIDS coordinator -- a position that carries the rank of ambassador. An Associated Press photo of the ceremony also shows a smiling First Lady Laura Bush and Dybul's homosexual "partner," Jason Claire. During her comments, Rice referred to the presence of Claire's mother and called her Dybul's "mother-in-law," a term normally reserved for the heterosexuals who have been legally married.

The Washington Blade, a pro-homosexual publication in the nation's capital, was accurate on Friday when it predicted Rice's remarks would "rais[e] the eyebrows of conservative Christian leaders." Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, says the secretary's comments were "profoundly offensive" and fly in the face of the Bush administration's endorsement of a federal marriage protection amendment, though that backing be less than enthusiastic.

"We have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," says Sprigg. "But even beyond that, the deferential treatment that was given not only to him but his partner and his partner's family by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is very distressing."

Sprigg says in light of the Foley scandal, "it's inexplicable that a conservative administration would do such things." He also notes that Rice's comments defy an existing law on the books protecting traditional marriage. "So, for her to treat his partner like a spouse and treat the partner's mother as a mother-in-law, which implies a marriage between the two partners, is a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act," the FRC spokesman states.

As the USA Today report notes, the Rice statement comes in the midst of news stories dealing with the Mark Foley scandal, many of which have talked about the number of homosexual staffers on the Republican payroll. Some pro-family people are starting to wonder if this homosexual influence within the GOP may account for the party's lack of action on social conservative issues. FRC's Tony Perkins says that among the questions that need to be asked are: "Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members or staffers?"

Indeed, the USA Today account of the swearing-in ceremony concedes that the Foley investigation may be exposing what it calls a "politically awkward" fact of life in the world of national politics. That is, some leaders in the Republican Party "practice a more tolerant brand of politics" in office hiring than others in the party have conveyed on the campaign trail.

Dybul, who was confirmed by the Senate two months ago but was just sworn in due to scheduling conflicts with Secretary Rice and Mrs. Bush, is the nation's third openly homosexual ambassador. The other two no longer hold their positions. According to news reports, in all three cases the men's homosexual partners held the Bible on which the oath of office was sworn.

Emphases are mine.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this article, but I think it speaks volumes about the sense of derangement rattling around in the skulls of the Holy Terrors. Secretary Rice apparently treated an openly gay man with respect and his partner with some dignity, and the FRC's response was to shit a brick. Gay people aren't deserving of respect? Gay people should have nothing to do with AIDS coordination or research? And what's that whole issue with Dybul being sworn in with his hand on the Bible? Did that somehow corrupt the Good Book? Should it be burned? Does gay cooties extend that far?

The upshot is that the Holy Terrors seem to have some seriously demented ideas about sex. That it's got nothing to do with fun or love or affection or pleasure, but only with making babies, that anything that doesn't comply with that "norm" is abhorrent, and that homosexuals are themselves sub-human.

How sick and twisted is that?

More On the HRC survey

As promised, I looked at the survey a little more closely.

As my previous post indicates, the Holy Terrors' efforts to slam gay people in general for Mark Foley's sins doesn't seem to be working.

However, the rest of the poll has some other interesting data. I need to point out that I'm no sociologist, and I barely passed Statistics way back when we still did our homework by using chisels to carve marks into stone slabs. So my "analysis" is no more scientific than anyone who, say, appears on Fox News. Still, I did find some interesting stuff.

First, the survey asked people to rate the importance of the following two questions:

"Making Sure that gays and lesbians receive the same rights and protections under the laws as other Americans," and "Protecting our traditional family values from teh gay lifestyle." Those polled were asked to rate the issues' importance in one of five categories, either "Very Important," "Fairly Important," "Only Somewhat Important," "Not Important," or "Not Sure." The figures compared peoples' answers from October 2006 to those of April 2006 and July 2003.

What's interesting is the fact that over the course of time, it appears the Holy Terrors' push to deprive gays of equal protection isn't working.

In October 2006, the percentage of those polled who thought it was either "very important" or "fairly important" to ensure gays and lesbians receive equal protection was 64% in July '03, 61% in April '06, and 61% in October, '06.

The percentage of people who felt it was either "very" or "fairly" important that we needed "protection from the gay lifestyle" was 57% in July '03, and then the numbers dropped to 48% in April '06 and 51% in October '06.

The margin of error is somewhere between three and four percent.

Another survey question asked whether gay people should either have the rights to marry or to have some sort of rights to civil unions, or to no legal recognition rights at all. Again, survey results were compared with other results taken in April 2006, September 2004, and May 2004.

The percentage of people who thought gays should have some relationship rights numbered 66% in 10/06, 65% in 4/06, 61% in 9/04, and 61% in 5/04. The percentage of people who thought gays should have no relationship rights for those same time periods were 31%, 33%, 35%, and 36%.

A third survey question that got my interest was the question, "From what you know about gay and lesbian people, do you think that gay and lesbian people choose to be gay or are born gay?

In May 1993, 46% of those polled believed people choose to be gay, dropping to 44% in May 2000, 35% in April 2006, down to 33% in October 2006. Over that same time period, the percentages of people who believe people are born gay were 33%, 34%, 42%, and 45%.

What does all this mean?

I'm no expert, but it appears to me that over the course of time, the Holy Terrors' anti-gay campaign isn't working at all. In fact, it appears that all this discussion of gay rights is having the opposite effect. It appears people are becoming more tolerant of the gay "lifestyle" and gay rights, not less.

Just thought I'd share.

We're Not Buying The G.O.P.'s B.S. anymore...

The good news on the Foley mess is that the American people are seeing the G.O.P.'s line of bullshit for what it is.

From ThinkProgress:

Since the Foley scandal broke, many right-wing activists have attempted to brand the scandal as a homosexual issue. Linda Harvey of the conservative site WorldNetDaily stated that “sex with youth are built into the ‘gay’ sub-culture” and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that “neither party seems likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.”

Fortunately, the American public has rejected their dishonest scare tactics. A new Human Rights Campaign poll shows that Americans continue to support gay rights:

– 62 percent of Americans believe that Foley’s behavior was “typical of politicians,” as opposed to just 30 percent who believe his behavior was “typical of gay men.”

– 70 percent of Americans say that the Foley scandal has not changed their opinion of gay people.

– 80 percent of Americans believe it is important to make “sure that gays and lesbians receive the same rights and protections under the law as other Americans,” up from 77 percent in April 2006.

The entire poll can be found here.
I'm taking a closer look at it myself, later.

Gay Democratic Moles In The Republican Closet??

More sickness from the Right as they try to explain away the Foley mess.

As promised, I've got more on how the Righties are desperately scrambling to punch more holes in their sinking ship.

Cliff Kincaid is a special piece of work. He's employed by Accuracy In Media, a rightwing propaganda site posing as a "media watchdog" organization and while he admits his fellow Republicans have botched the Foley mess, he insists there are darker forces at work behind the scenes.

From his October 9 column...

The possibility remains, however, that Democrats or their operatives have played a role of some kind in the scandal.

During a Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show, radical gay activist Michael Rogers declared that “the greatest kept secret for the GOP for the past six or seven years has been the extraordinary number of closeted men who have been helping to facilitate that anti-gay agenda."

*****
What Rogers is saying is that secret Republican homosexuals are working behind-the-scenes to sabotage a conservative pro-family agenda in the Congress. They are acting more like Democrats than Republicans, if indeed they are Republicans. Whatever their actual party affiliation, these operatives are using the liberal media, homosexual publications, and radical bloggers like Rogers to accomplish their objectives.

*****
For the sake of honest and open government, not to mention protection of the children, the secret Capitol Hill homosexual network must be exposed and dismantled.

I like that last bit. Gotta get in that dig about all homosexuals being pedophiles. Can't forget that.

Kincaid elaborates in his October 12 column.

So if the gay Republicans are not really Republicans, what are they? One veteran observer of this network told AIM that the Foley scandal should make it crystal clear that the gay Republicans are in reality "liberal activists" who want to use the party to advance the same homosexual agenda embraced by the Democrats.

Ominously, the Foley scandal suggests that this network has inside information about the sexual behavior of members of Congress and their staffers that can be exploited in order to create scandals at a moment's notice. Only now are House Republican leaders like Dennis Hastert beginning to understand the trap they may have gotten themselves into. They thought they were being tolerant and diverse and constructing a "big tent" when they were giving gay Republicans important positions of power. It is now apparent that this power has been used to sabotage the party from within.
*****
It's early in the probe, but we may be looking at emerging evidence of a homosexual recruitment ring that operated on Capitol Hill. It's time to get beyond partisan politics and follow the evidence wherever it leads. Our media should not be intimidated by charges of "gay bashing." They must lead the way in getting to the bottom of this terrible abuse of power.

All emphases are mine.

Oh, those insidious homosexuals! They infiltrate the Republican corridors of power, gain influence, learn secrets, then use blackmail and intimidation to bring down the G.O.P. from within! In the meantime, they jeopardize their own careers, not to mention the lives of innocent children, and subject themselves to gay-bashing by homophobic conspiracy-ologists like Kincaid.

Simply brilliant!

I wonder how Kincaid plans to smash this "recruitment ring" lurking behind every corner. Casually ask if a Congressman's aide watched Bravo or Logo last night? Take note if his suit and tie coordinate too well? Inspect his DVDs and CDs for any show tunes?

Shays Covers His Ass About The Abu Ghraib "Sex Ring"...sort of

Representative Shays cleared up a few misconceptions...

Rep. Shays Seeks to Defuse Controversy Over Abu Ghraib Remarks
Friday, October 13, 2006
Associated Press

HARTFORD, Conn. — Republican Rep. Christopher Shays said Friday the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were more about pornography than torture.

The congressman, who is in a tough re-election fight, said a National Guard unit was primarily responsible for the abuses.

"It was a National Guard unit run amok," Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable ... This is more about pornography than torture."

I don't dispute that sex abuse is torture. It's despicable, especially when perpetrated by someone in a position of authority, such as an occupying foreign army or, oh...I don't know...a Congressman, perhaps?

But equating pornography either with sex abuse or with torture, is that what you're saying, Congressman?

So let me get this straight...


This...



is the same as this.

Well, I'm glad you cleared that up, Congressman.

The sickness in the G.O.P. is spreading

It's not just the Foley Scandal anymore...

Shays Says Abu Ghraib Abuses Were Sex Ring, Not Torture

Associated Press

Published October 13 2006, 11:18 AM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Republican Rep. Christopher Shays says the Abu Ghraib prison abuses weren't torture but instead involved a "sex ring" of National Guard troops.

"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday.

"It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked," added Shays. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."
The lawmaker's comments were in a transcript of the debate provided by his opponent, Diane Farrell. Shays' campaign, contacted Friday, did not dispute the comments.

I'm not sure which is more disturbing, the possibility that Congressman Shays isn't really aware of what happened at Abu Ghraib, or that the Congressman doesn't think it constituted torture.

In case you didn't know, or knew but had simply forgotten, some of the most well-documented human rights abuses of the past ten years occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, perpetrated by U.S. soldiers, not upon other soldiers, (as the Congressman apparently believes), but upon Iraqi citizens, most of whom were apparently never charged with crimes.

Salon has a catalog documenting the abuses. You'll have to sit through a commercial to get a free day pass, but it's well worth thirty seconds out of your life.

Battery cables to the genitals, waterboarding, beatings, attacks by dogs, the sodomizing of children, and this little chestnut:

Military investigations of Abu Ghraib turned up other incidents of abusive treatment of female detainees that were not shown in photographs. According to the Fay report, one of the most horrific incidents occurred on Oct. 7, when three military intelligence soldiers allegedly assaulted a female detainee. The unnamed detainee told investigators that she was taken to an empty cell, where a soldier held her hands behind her back while another soldier forcibly kissed her. She was then taken to another cell, where she was shown a naked male detainee and told that she would be stripped if she did not cooperate. Finally, she was returned to her cell, and forced to kneel and raise her arms while one of the soldiers removed her shirt. She said she began to cry, and her shirt was returned to her, with a warning that the soldiers would return each night if she did not cooperate. The Fay report found that there was no record of an authorized interrogation of this detainee on that night.

Just some soldiers out for a fun time, Congressman?

(My Monthly Reminder) In case you didn't know...

or knew but had simply forgotten...

THIS is the kick-ass website for erotica on the net.

I know I've got a link to the right for ERWA, but you can never have too many, you know?

And while you're at it, check this guy out.

What The Foley Mess Is Really All About

Like I said yesterday, I more or less would rather leave the whole Mark Foley scandal up to others to rant and rave about. I'd rather this blog be devoted more to purely sexual issues, (even sexually political issues) and I've felt sex really isn't the main issue, here. Let's face it. At the time the scandal broke, when Foley's "overly friendly" text messages and emails were all that we knew about the guy, that was enough to crucify the guy. If he hadn't touched any page at all, the inappropriateness of the messages, plus the long-time coverup of his activities by the G.O.P. House leadership, would have been enough of an outrage.

However, the Holy Terrors' spin machine, already going full speed, has kicked it into overdrive. Rather than wish this away, they're actually trying to frame the issue into one of their standard venomous talking points, "Gays are evil."

Earlier, I posted one particularly disgusting hypothesis from an asshole at Human Life International. The jerk claims homosexuals "reproduce" by molesting young boys, "turning them" gay as young, impressionable youths so they can likewise molest other kids, and so on.

Another pinhead, working for the oxymoronic "Accuracy In Media" group, wrote an article yesterday teeing off on gay Republicans and how they've infiltrated the party to promote their own agenda and how they must be rooted out "for the sake of honest and open government, not to mention protection of the children." I'm not posting the link (again, why encourage them?) yet because I've got more on this issue later.

Right now, I want to make one thing clear.

The Foley mess isn't about homsexuality.

It's about influence.

My dictionary defines "influence" as "the power of persons or things to affect others," "the ability of a person or group to produce effects indirectly by means of power based on wealth or high position, etc." "a person or thing that has influence."
The effect to be produced in this case (well, one of them, anyway) is getting off. That's what Foley was after. His influence was that as an older man, a supposed mentor to the pages in his care, a highly connected government official, someone to be admired, he was in a position to take advantage of his situation, exert his influence, and get what he wanted.

Now, people use influence all the time. Frankly, that's what it's there for. Politicians, police officers, parents, athletes, bullies, everyone uses what leverage they have, their influence, to get what they want.

People even use it for sex. I want to distinguish "influence" from "persuasion." Persuasion can be an intoxicating, erotically energetic experience. It's seduction. It's soft words and the right atmosphere, a daring caress here, a flash of skin there. Persuasion is a discussion, almost an argument, between two persons in a more or less equal position, equally matched. One persuades the other to his or her point of view.

Then, we have influence. The parties aren't in an equal position. One, through wealth, position, power, or all three, has the advantage. It's not a fair "argument."

Generally speaking, society frowns on using influence for sex. We don't like the notion of the casting couch, where a producer gets a starlet to have sex with him for a part in his latest production. We dislike hearing how a coach or a teacher had an affair with a student. We're especially troubled when the person being influenced is especially vulnerable, such as a teenager.

If Mark Foley had been busted texting a fellow gay Congressman, or even a longtime "friend" of about the same age, there might have been a stink, but nothing compared to what's going down now.

Why? Because Mark Foley had enormous influence, and he used it to get sex, not only from vulnerable people, but from especially vulnerable teenaged boys.

But it didn't stop there. He used his influence with fellow members of Congress to put him in and keep him in a position to take advantage of pages almost like a glutton left alone in a bakery.

It doesn't matter that Foley is gay. It matters that he was a Congressman, and that his victims were children.

Put it another way.

What if it came out that Mark Foley was texting and cyber-fucking and seducing young women and the Congressional leadership was covering it up?

Would it still be a scandal?

More Sickness From The Holy Terrors on the Foley mess

Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, is probably the brightest star in the Holy Terrors' firmament. He's got as much pull (probably more) as anyone when it comes to ramming the Holy Terror' War On Whoopie down America's throat. He's anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-fun, anti-freedom to the nth degree.

So, when one of his minions gets busted doing something repulsive, what does he do? How does Dr. Dobson respond to the allegations about Congressman Mark Foley's indiscretions?

Blame the victims. On his October 6 radio broadcast for
Focus On The Family, Dr. Dobson said:

As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a -- sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages.

Sharper minds than I have pointed out that the "prank" argument was raised by Michael Savage and Matt Drudge, and thoroughly debunked by other sources. If this is all a practical joke, why did Congressman Foley resign? And what about the fact that other pages have come forward with similar allegations, including one person who asserts he had sex with the Congressman after he'd turned 21?

Are all these young men practical jokers? And if Congressman Foley was such a fine, upstanding fellow, why did he fall for the gag?

In any case, I find Mr. Moral Values (excuse me...DOCTOR Moral Values) to be generally repugnant, but this drops offensive behavior to whole new levels.

This whole episode is ugly for a long list of reasons. The seduction and sex talk with teenaged boys. The long cover-ups on the part of the House leadership. Would any of these great Americans let their colleague Mark Foley associate with their own sons and grandsons?

But what makes it worse is the fact that the Holy Terrors are spinning this so that anybody but one of their own is at fault, and they're taking advantage of their usual vile talking points, beating the same old sick drums about the evils of homosexuality.

Homosexuality equals pedophilia. Homosexuals "seduce" otherwise "normal" people into their deviant lifestyle. Grown men in their fifties can't be held responsible for their actions when faced with the temptations offered by teenaged boys. And if teenaged boys do engage in sexplay with grown men in their fifties, they're not being exploited, they're doing the exploiting! Anyway, it's their own fault for being so damned seductive, isn't it?

This is just sick...

I've avoided the temptation to tee off on the whole Congressman Foley/page/House leadership coverup scandal. I've been perfectly happy watching the whole thing unfold like a bad disaster movie.

However, one of the side-effects of the scandal has been the way the Holy Terrors have decided the best defense is a good offense, and the best way to defend a sexual predator is to be as offensive as possible.

I won't link directly to their website (why encourage them?) but Human Life International has cranked out some truly repugnant shit lately.

From People For The American Way...

A far right Catholic group that thinks Bill Gates and Warren Buffet should be reviled for their humanitarian work (saying “they have money, we have God”), objects to a vaccine to inoculate women against cervical cancer, and thinks that Mel Gibson’s ‘apology’ after his “unfortunate relapse in his fight with alcohol,” and “some imprudent comments made while in that state” is enough to say “case closed, move on,” has this to say about the Mark Foley revelations that he was abused by a member of his clergy:

“If his claim that he was the victim of sexual molestation by a clergyman, it only further proves that known homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood. Foley's actions were that of homosexual predator, not a pedophile. Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children. This creates a cycle of violence and disordered behavior that creates future generations of abusers and predators.”
The group, Human Life International, claims to have 59 satellite offices in 51 countries and describes itself as "the largest international, pro-life, pro-family, pro-woman organization in the world.”

P.S. According to "Pediatrics," the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 99.6% of molested girls and 98% of molested boys are victimized by HETEROSEXUALS, not homosexuals.

The whole affair is just giving me the creeps.

Last Month's ERWA column

ALL WORKED UP ABOUT THE PORN MENACE
By J.T. Benjamin
Copr. 2006

Not even they knew how bad it truly is.

Pornography is one of the favorite bug-a-boos of the
Holy Terrors. Porn, they argue, is a “cancerous
infection” which corrodes family relationships, leads
to sexual addictions, and desensitizes and corrupts
sexuality itself.

One of the most insidious things about porn is how
it’s so pervasive. Nobody is safe from exposure and
corruption.

ChristiaNet.com, which calls itself the world’s most
visited Christian portal, last month announced the
results of a survey the website conducted in
partnership with Second Glance Ministries. According
to ChristiaNet’s news release “no one is immunized against the vice-grip clutches of
sexual addictive behaviors. The people who struggle
with the repeated pursuit of sexual gratification
include church members, deacons, staff, and yes, even
clergy. And, to the surprise of many, a large number
of women in the church have become victim to this
widespread problem.”

‘The poll results indicate that 50% of all Christian
men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to
pornography,’ said Clay Jones, founder and President
of Second Glance Ministries…60% of the women who
answered the survey admitted to having significant
struggles with lust, 40% admitted to being involved in
sexual sin in the past year, and 20% of the
church-going female participants struggle with looking
at pornography on an ongoing basis.”

No wonder the Holy Terrors are up in arms. If this
many true believers are in the sway of porn’s
insidious clutches, we must be in the grip of a porn
pandemic.

But wait a minute. Don’t saddle up the Four Horsemen
just yet.

A closer look at the press release reveals the study
and its conclusions may not be all they’re cracked up
to be. In the first place, it appears no attempt was
made to ensure that the survey’s participants were a
random sampling, either of evangelicals or even of
visitors to the website. Visitors to the website were
invited to participate, and if they had five minutes
to kill, they did it. That makes the survey about as
scientific as a Ouija board.

Secondly, the survey consisted only of eleven
questions. The conclusions that ChristiaNet and
Second Glance Ministries drew from the answers
are….creative.

Question #7: Is looking at pornography a sin in God’s
eyes? Of 970 surveyed, 901 said yes. No surprise.
Question #8: Have you ever struggled with
pornography? 100 women said “yes” of 507 questioned,
and 229 men of 463 questioned also said “yes.” By
answering “yes,” the survey-takers were concluded to
be addicted to pornography, according to ChristiaNet
and Second Glance Ministries. No questions about how
much money was spent annually on porn, no questions
about how many times a week a participant looked at
porn, nothing.

But wait. It gets better.

Question #3. Is masturbation a sin in God’s eyes?
744 of 970 participants (male and female) said yes.
Question #4: Is masturbation a part of your life?
127 women of 507 surveyed said “yes,” and 190 men of
463 surveyed said, “yes.” (One of the things this
response told me is that 273 of the men surveyed were
lying on this question).

Then we get to Question #6. “Have you ever taken part
in a sexual activity that is sin?” 263 women, more
than half, and 304 men, about two thirds, answered
“yes” to that question. Sounds like most of those
polled have serious problems, right? Hide your
daughters and your barnyard animals, America.

But wait a minute. The overwhelming majority of those
polled consider masturbation and pornography to be a
sin, so it’s possible that simply jacking (or jilling)
off to a dirty magazine is all it takes to condemn all
these people to Hell, right?

Right?

The ultimate point of ChristiaNet’s dingy little rest
stop on the information superhighway is to drive home
one all-pervading, familiar theme.

Pornography is bad.

Never mind all the evidence to the contrary.

From the time the first Cro-magnon man painted
something on the walls of the cave and the first
Cro-magnon self-appointed moral arbiter looked over
his shoulder and said, “Hey! Those look like boobs,”
the Powers That Be have been trying to abolish porn as
the cause of all evil in the world.

And yet, despite their efforts, the evidence that porn
is actually harmful is surprisingly slim.

In 1970, the “Nixon” Commission, first appointed by
Lyndon Johnson and then carried on by the Nixon
Administration, announced the results of a two-year
study of the possible harmful effects of pornography.
The commission’s conclusion? "In sum, empirical
research designed to clarify the question has found no
evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual
materials plays a significant role in the causation of
delinquent or criminal behavior among youth or adults.
The Commission cannot conclude that exposure to erotic
materials is a factor in the causation of sex crime or
sex delinquency (pp. 27)."

As soon as the report came out, President Nixon
denounced its findings and launched plans to crack
down on the immoral scourge.

Sixteen years later, President Ronald Reagan put
together another commission on pornography, dubbed the
“Meese Commission,” after then-Attorney General Edwin
Meese, who chaired it. Six of the commission’s eleven
members had been known as anti-porn advocates. The
best thing that can be said about the commission is
that they knew which side their bread was buttered on.
According to the Meese Commission, exposure to
pornographic images had a clear causal relationship to
sexual violence. What made the Meese Commission’s
scientific conclusions so profound is that the
Commission drew those conclusions without eliciting
scientific testimony or examining scientific evidence.
They might as well have surveyed people on an
internet website.

So, despite all the political spinning of wheels, what
adverse effects might porn generate? In 1995, Berl
Kuchinsky of the University of Copenhagen published
the results of his study of the effects of pornography
on the crime rates of four industrialized nations.
Three of those nations had liberal laws regarding
access to porn, and the fourth was the United States.

Dr. Kuchinsky’s findings are startling. In the three nations with liberal
porn laws, the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark,
and Sweden, after ruling out all other potential
factors, over time there were dramatic DECREASES in
the rates of sex crimes over the course of more than
two deceades. In the U.S., with relatively strict
anti-porn laws, the rate of sex crimes was
substantially higher.

Similar conclusions were drawn by comparing the
porn-and-sex-crime rates between the U.S. and Japan, a
nation known for easy access to extremely graphic and
sometimes cruelly misogynistic porn.
Just for kicks, I “googled” the terms “pornography”
and “harmful effects” and got more than two and a half
million hits. I reviewed some of the available online
literature, being as carefully scientific as
ChristiaNet’s survey had been.

My conclusion? The evidence of porn’s harmful effects
appears to be virtually entirely anecdotal. People
tell stories about how porn ruined their lives, and
the stories are accepted as valid evidence.

Okay, I can play that game. My own conclusions?
After having spent most of my adult life watching,
reviewing, critiquing and studying porn, not to
mention sharing it with my Lovely Wife, it’s turned us
both into adventurous, enthusiastic, passionate,
slightly kinky sex-crazed maniacs.

But I consider that a good thing.

Yay, porn!

Nudity passe? As if!

We can dare to dream, but I think this fellow's overly optomistic.

Has Nudity Become Passé?
October 1, 2006
By GREG MORAGO, Courant Staff Writer

We live in an age in which we have never been freer to see flesh. Go to the movie theater, and view as much T&A as you like. Turn on your on-demand cable, and get soft porn. A few clicks of the mouse will get you the hard stuff. Walk into the video store, and get any manner of naked male or female forms. Heck, you can even "hear" nudity on Howard Stern's satellite radio show.And yet with this all-too-available preponderance of skin, the nude body still has the ability to excite and enthrall in its most common artistic outlets. Whether it's Paul Cézanne's oil painting of female nudes ("Three Bathers," currently on view at the "Cézanne to Picasso" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) or couples graphically working through sexual dysfunction ("Sexual Healing," on Showtime) or full-frontal male nudity (director John Cameron Mitchell's sexually explicit film "Shortbus," opening in limited markets Oct. 13), the naked body remains a powerful force in pop culture.

Nudity for shock value or titillation, however, has almost ceased to be either shocking or titillating. "I don't know where it is that you can't see nudity if you want to see nudity. We have so much more access to nudity than ever before," said Jeanine Basinger, founder and curator of the Wesleyan University Film Archive. "So where's the shock of it all? In a society that has everything hanging out all over the place, it's not that interesting."

So, when is nudity interesting? In what context is it powerful?

"When it's for beauty," Basinger said.

Indeed, art (and the inherent beauty of art forms) remains the most vivid example of nudity's ability to move artistic mediums to new levels.

Though all the advance press for "Shortbus" has been about its graphic sex, Mitchell has been quoted as saying that "most people don't even remember the sex at the end of the film" because they were swept up in the story.

That's exactly what Rob Ruggiero is saying about "Take Me Out," the Richard Greenberg play he's directing for TheaterWorks in Hartford, which features full-frontal male nudity (and not just passing glimpses but full scenes of naked men in a locker room).

Ruggiero said the humor and drama of the Tony Award-winning play about a Major League Baseball player's coming out will be remembered more so than the extended scenes of male nudity.

"Very few people talk about the nudity afterward," said Ruggiero, who directed the play in St. Louis last year. "The play and the characters are so engaging."

Still, he acknowledges that the play's nudity, while shocking to some theatergoers, is also one of the production's drawing cards.

"This play attracts all types of people - the gay population, the baseball fan and people who want to see nude men," he said. "But when they leave, they've all had an incredible experience in the theater."

There's no doubt that "Take Me Out" will have local theatergoers buzzing for months (it runs Oct. 12 through Dec. 3) for one simple reason: the penis.

Art is all well and good, but things get dicey when the penis is involved - whether it's in the visual arts, film or theater. Even television, for all of its naked liberties, has trouble with male nudity. The closest America ever got to the penis was the naked butt of Dennis Franz on "NYPD Blue." And that was in the last century.

"Full-frontal male nudity is still really unusual in cable television. If you're looking for any kind of nudity on broadcast TV, you'd have a hard time finding it. You might have been better off in the age of `Charlie's Angels' or `Baywatch' than you are now," said Bob Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. "On `CSI,' you can catch some pretty explicit stuff, but the bodies are all decomposing."

This fall, moviegoers can see male and female nudity in movies such as "Confetti," "This Film is Not Yet Rated," "Another Gay Movie" and "Shortbus."

Basinger, however, said these are examples of our on-again/off-again interest in nudity. "Nudity comes and goes," she said. "It's not like it's something we can't get, but it keeps coming back."

For film, the real hurdle is male nudity - still a rarity in a sea of often gratuitous female nudity. "If male nudity is going to be acceptable or not in films, then we have to ask ourselves about seeing Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson naked. Unless a major star is going to do it, then we really can't claim that it's a trend," Basinger said. "Big-name male stars have not had to face that issue."

Although there aren't big-name male stars in "Take Me Out," the hurdle of male nudity hasn't just been crossed; it's leapt. The play features three nude scenes; the second one involves six actors showering on stage.

"It's an interesting challenge to get naked on stage like that. These guys are amazingly brave," Ruggiero said.

And what of the audience's reaction to this brave nude world?

"These guys are going to be bare-naked and showering as close as 4 to 5 feet from the audience," he said. "It's more than a little unnerving."

In a country where CBS gets fined a bajillion dollars for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" and a Texas public school art teacher can get canned for taking kids to a (shudder) art museum with nude sculptures, it seems we can still get our panties in a bunch about nudity, even for artistic purposes.

In fact, (I'll have to go into some of my old notes to find it,) but I seem to recall a U.S. Supreme Court case from a few years ago which established that as far as the First Amendment is concerned, nudity has no artistic value whatsoever. So, as long as the government can still freak out about a bare breast or Dennis Franz's nude ass, we're still in the same boat.

And now...more gratuitous sex.

I'm so ashamed.

Really, I am.

More Politics...anti-gay marriage movements

A word of warning...political junkie that I am, as election day draws nearer I tend to get a little obsessive about it all...drives my Lovely Wife crazy.

Anyway, a few words about pro-homophobe initiatives on state ballots.

Simply put, eight states have measures attempting to ban gay marriage on the ballots this fall, Arizona, Wisconsin, Idaho, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and of course, Colorado.

I've already talked about the Colorado race. On the same ballot will be an initiative giving gay couples domestic partnership rights, essentially bestowing upon them most of the rights of married people, even if they don't actually get to consider themselves married. Both measures are actually winning right now, according to the polls.

The races in Idaho, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee are considered slam-dunks for the homophobes, but the rest of the races are considered at least competitive. What's interesting is the fact that in Arizona and Virginia, the sticking point seems to be the risk that anti-gay marriage legislation would likewise shoot down heterosexual domestic partnerships that aren't considered a form of marriage, as well. Had a post on the subject myself, in August about the Wisconsin race.

How ironic if the issue that kills opposition to gay marriage is the notion that heterosexual non-married couples want to protect THEIR right to stay...unmarried!