I listened to the Diane Rehm show this morning (hosted today by Frank Sesno, who moved the show along briskly and laudably forcing the guests to define their terms).   The above link is to a page where you can listen to the show.  Three organizations were represented in the studio, participating in a detailed discussion concerning the extent to which children should be taught about sex.   It was a lively and informative discussion that is well worth a listen.

Here are the organizations:

Advocates for Youth: “Advocates for Youth is dedicated to creating programs and advocating for policies that help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health. Advocates provides information, training, and strategic assistance to youth-serving organizations, policy makers, youth activists, and the media in the United States and the developing world.”

National Sexual Abstinence Association:  “The NAEA exists to serve, support and represent individuals and organizations in the practice of abstinence education.”

National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy: It’s mission is “to continue our work on preventing teen pregnancy and also focus on reducing the high level of unplanned pregnancy in the United States among adults, especially those under 30 where the vast majority of unplanned pregnancies occur.”

Reductive religion is just as objectionable as reductive science, and for the same reason: Reality is large, and our minds are small

-Wendell Berry, The Burden of the Gospels

Regulars know that our particular corner of the blogosphere, already hazardous enough (see name), has recently been hit by a juggernaut of rhetoric whose driver is under the influence of a kind of intoxication of certainty. While I understand that almost everyone is tired of the debate, I’d like to say that in some ways I recognize the embattled feeling he communicates so vividly.

I think any of us who are parents and who try to instill in our children skills of self-control, responsibility,  and compassion, feel that we are swimming against the tide of the whole culture. I want my daughter to realize that she has value and worth beyond sexual attractiveness, but I face a culture that glorifies pimps and hos and pornstars - a culture, in short that views sex as a commodity. I want her to have self-control and the ability to delay gratification, but the culture says “Grab it now. You deserve it!”

The normalization of the doctrine of limitlessness has produced a sort of moral minimalism: the desire to be efficient at any cost, to be unencumbered by complexity. The minimization of neighborliness, respect, reverence, responsibility, accountability, and self-subordination—this is the culture of which our present leaders and heroes are the spoiled children…We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

–Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to be responsible and accountable, but we our leaders refuse to be held accountable for their mistakes. CEO’s feel no qualms about drawing large salaries while running their countries into the ground. I live in a country where politicians feel no compunction about repeating what they know to be lies and distortion about Iraq’s connection with 9/11.

…our cultural tradition is in large part the record of our continuing effort to understand ourselves as beings specifically human: to say that, as humans, we must do certain things and we must not do certain things. We must have limits or we will cease to exist as humans; perhaps we will cease to exist, period. At times, for example, some of us humans have thought that human beings, properly so called, did not make war against civilian populations, or hold prisoners without a fair trial, or use torture for any reason…

-Wendell Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limit

I want her to have compassion, and the courage to fight for justice, but again, these are qualities not often found in those our culture rewards with money and power.

The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly..  An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product.

Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

In short, while I feel with Erik that a moral indictment of society is in order, I think we need to get beyond obsessing with what goes on in other people’s bedrooms and really look at society as a whole. We say that we want our children to have ethics, responsibility, compassion and critical thinking skills. These values are hard to teach when all around them children see adults rewarded for the opposite qualities.

Finally, I would like to speak in favor of discipline. Not discipline as punishment, but discipline as developing the habit of turning away from the path of least resistance. We speak of academic or scientific disciplines: to be effective in science, the mind must be disciplined to avoid assumptions and to demand evidence. There are also spiritual disciplines which can help develop compassion and develop what the Buddhists call “skillfulness” in personal relationships. Mental and emotional discipline both require a certain skepticism to our own deeply held certainties. For in the end, while the universe is infinite,  our minds are finite.

[I have interspersed some quotes of Wendell Berry with my thoughts, as an example of a Christian and conservative (in the classic sense of the word, one who conserves) writer whose thinking I respect, though I don't always agree with it.]

At DI, we have an extremely conservative fellow visiting the blog these days.  He’s trying to convert all of us to his reactionary world view.  He clings to his Bible as a book of literal truths and he seems to love everything that Sarah Palin ostensibly stands for. I’d like to issue a challenge to this fellow, who goes by the name “Erik.”  To me, he represents many people out there who seem to believe that if you pretend something isn’t important, it isn’t important, even if it IS important.  This includes such critical topics as as Iraq, the cobbled together all-too-human nature of the Bible, Global Warming and, of course, sex education.

Please tell me which of the following sexual education topics you would rather that our children not know anything about.  Please tell me in what specific ways we should keep children, including teenagers, in the dark.

These topics are actually the chapters of a popular book that I have read.  I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to any parent seeking a sex education book for their children:  It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (2004), by Robie H. Harris (Author), Michael Emberley (Illustrator).  Here are the topics:

Part I – What is Sex
Girl or Boy, Female or Male (sex and gender)
Making Babies (Sexual Reproduction)
Strong Feelings (Sexual Desire)
Making Love (Sexual intercourse)
Straight and Gay (Heterosexuality and homosexuality)

Part II – Our Bodies
The Human Body (All kinds of bodies)
Outside and Inside  (The Female Sex Organs)
Outside and Inside  (The Male Sex Organs)
Words  (Talking about Bodies and Sex)

Part III – Puberty
Changes and Messages (Puberty and Hormones)
The travels of the Egg (Female Puberty)
The Travels of the Sperm (Male Puberty)
Not all at Once! (Growing and Changing Bodies)
More Changes (Taking care of your Body)
Back and Forth: (Up and Down – New and Changing Feelings)
Perfectly Normal:  (Masturbation)

Part IV – Babies and Families
All sorts of Families (Taking care of babies and kids)
Instructions from Mom and Dad (The Cell, genes and chromosomes)
A kind of Sharing:  (Cuddling, kissing, touching and sexual intercourse)
Before Birth: (Pregnancy)
What a Trip! (Birth)
Other Arrivals (More ways to have a baby and family, including adoption)

Part V - Decisions
Planning Ahead (postponement, abstinence and birth control)
Laws and Rulings (abortion)

Part VI – Staying Healthy
Talk about it (sexual abuse)
Checkup (Sexually Transmitted Diseases)
Scientists Working Day and Night (HIV and AIDS)
Staying Healthy (Responsible Choices).

So what is it, Erik?  Should we avoid teaching our children about puberty? Sexual feelings? Masturbation?  Shall we keep our kids from knowing anything about any of these sex-ed topics?  Truly, tell me exactly how ignorant you want to keep America’s children and teenagers.  Should we keep this book out of America’s public libraries?  Should this book even be sold at all?   You are aware, aren’t you, that many parents are so mentally stymied about sex (because their own parents thought it better to keep them ignorant) that they don’t have a clue about how to communicate these sex-ed ideas to their kids.  Shouldn’t those parents have access to a book like this to provide them with clear information about compelling topics?

Here’s a caveat to those people who want to live in ignorance:  you can peek in this book at Amazon–beware that you might learn something.

For a little journey that is pretty amazing, though not unexpected, take a look at the comments regarding this book at Amazon and you’ll be Amazed at the cultural chasm displayed.  This book typically gets either 5 stars (from people who want their kids to be informed about these important topics) or 1 star (by people who want to keep their kids ignorant about sex).  Too bad Bristol Palin didn’t have a book like this a year ago.

Because you might actually learn something important by reading it, It’s Perfectly Normal is one of the top ten challenged books of 2007, according to the Economist.

I am a practicing Roman Catholic, and will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States. Not only will I vote for Senator Obama, I will do so gladly and with a clear conscience.  The reasons are many.  This lengthy post enumerate many of those reasons, providing ample links in support.

I accept the Roman Catholic teachings on the sanctity of human life and, to the degree the views of Senator Obama and the Democratic Party platform depart from Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life, I disagree with Senator Obama and the Democratic Party on their positions. I will work inside the party to change the positions of Senator Obama and the Democratic Party, and I will pray for change. I see my vote for Senator Obama as informed by my conscience to support a candidate not totally acceptable to Catholics but, who nonetheless poses a far lesser evil to the dignity and sanctity of life than a vote for Senator John McCain.

In my own life, I strive always to have compassion for those who disagree with me and seek to make a world where all children are recognized for the contribution they are to their families and the world, even before they are born. I will yet find a world where choice will mean whether one raises their child with the support necessary to allow the entire family to succeed, or a child will be placed for adoption by a family capable of the same love and compassion for that child that the parent or parents who placed the child for adoption showed.

The Republican Party, despite its claims to the contrary, does not promote the sanctity of life and cynically continues to attempt to manipulate voters of faith with false promises for votes, workers and cash while pursuing a radical neoconservative and corporatist agenda wholly inconsistent with a culture of life and Catholic values.

I live in Missouri, the Show Me State, and the GOP has controlled both chambers of the Legislature and has held the Governor’s office for four years. During the past four years, Democratic legislators efforts to pass an outright ban on abortions have been stalled in a GOP run House committee or ruled “not germane” by the current GOP Nominee for Missouri Attorney General, Michael Gibbons.

Regarding Roe v. Wade, John McCain once said: “I’d love to see the point where [Roe v. Wade] is irrelevant, and could be replaced because abortion is no longer necessary. But, certainly in the short term, or even in the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would force X number of women in America to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.”  John McCain has also once said that if his own daughter were to have an unwanted pregnancy that he believed the decision on how to handle it would be made in the family. John McCain has not introduced any proposed constitutional amendments to ban abortions.

When the Republicans controlled the US House of Representatives, there was not a single vote on any constitutional amendment supported by the Republican majority to outlaw abortion.

When the Republicans controlled the US Senate, there was not a single vote on any constitutional amendment supported by the Republican majority to outlaw abortion.

While George W. Bush has been a “pro-life Republican” he has not sent over to the House or Senate for their consideration any proposed constitutional amendment to ban abortions.

While the former GOP majorities in the House and Senate were not the ¾ necessary to send an amendment to the states, we did see GOP support for and a vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages (that amendment failed to get ¾ of the votes for passage, to allow it to go to the states just before an election). If the GOP truly supported a culture of life and a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortions and wanted to capitalize on a vote just before an election, why didn’t they attempt to vote to outlaw abortion?   I’m sure Karl Rove counted the votes and knew he didn’t even have a GOP majority support for any constitutional amendment to outlaw abortions, much less ¾ of either the US House or Senate.

The Catholic Church opposes the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Senator John McCain   twice voted to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, contrary to Church teaching.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says torture is “a grave sin which violates the Fifth Commandment.” Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, called torture “intrinsically evil.”  (See Paragraphs 2269; 2297-8).  The prevention of torture had been an issue of great concern to Senator John McCain in the past. But, early in 2008, Senator McCain voted against legislation which extended to the CIA a ban on torture as defined in the Army Field Manual. Senator McCain’s vote against the bill and his support of a veto by President Bush when it narrowly passed will allow the CIA to use stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain had said about sleep deprivation that it’s not a joke and referred to a fellow POW and supporter Orson G. Swindle as having suffered from it.  The US House failed to override Bush’s veto because the Republicans voted with the President. Because of the GOP and Mr. McCain’s support for torture, it is now a part of US policy.

Pope John Paul II had said that the US going to war against Iraq was “…a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.”

While still a cardinal, Pope Benedict said:

”The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from the rational point of view: There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ’just war.’”

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said the invasion of Iraq did not “meet the strict conditions of Catholic teaching for the use of military force.” Roman Catholic teaching is that while a government may have the power to impose the death penalty, it should refrain from doing so on moral grounds and the possibility of salvation for the person who committed the crime. (See Number 56, Paragraph 2). (more…)

I was at the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden on Labor Day. What did I see there, besides plenty of Japanesery? (Or is it Nipponica?)

Sex.

Well, okay. Tropical plants flagrantly (fragrantly?) spreading their petals and waiting brightly for consummation may not be so scandalous. But look to the right. Two couples, different species, copulating carnally for all to see.

Here’s a closer look at one of the pairs “doin’ it”:

I guess it isn’t too surprising at a venue that sells Beer and Saki together.

Why should we ask John McCain harsh questions? Because we need to even the playing field. You see, if Barack Obama had McCain’s background, ignorance and bad character, the election would have been over months ago. The news media is holding back, though. Those media barbecues appear to be paying off.

So it’s time to even the playing field. Since the media keeps asking these sorts of disparaging and insulting questions to Barack Obama, it’s time to ask these same sorts of questions to John McCain. I admit that a few of these are outrageously unfair, just like many of the questions repeatedly posed to Obama.

Most of these questions are fair, though, and the news media has refused to dig deep and really get the answers Americans need. If you have additional questions that the media needs to ask John McCain, please submit them in the comments. I’d like to make this post a place where reporters are free to visit for ideas. As you can see, I’ve attached explanatory links to most of the proposed questions.

Unlike Barack Obama, McCain has a lot of explaining to do about what kind of person he has shown himself to be and portrayed himself to be. Let’s get started:

Generally Puzzling
Isn’t it true that you personally now oppose several bills that you yourself co-sponsored?

Why is your smile so creepy and fake?

Do you really believe that the President of the U.S. virtually functions as a dictator?

General Character Deficits

Isn’t it true that you aggressively courted your current wife, a 25-year-old beer heiress while you were still married to your first wife?

Is it true that you obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to your first wife?

How is it that being imprisoned in Vietnam or being shot down while flying a plane qualifies you to be president? Why shouldn’t we think that Vietnam messed up your head and made you erratic?

I notice that you aren’t wearing a crucifix around your neck. Is that because you hate Jesus or is it because you think you are better than God?

You have said some harsh things about a black man who is running for President. Prove to us that you and many of your supporters are not bigots.

Isn’t it true that you are not born again? How many times have you even been to church this year? How does that compare with last year, which wasn’t an election year?

How can we be sure that your wife won’t abuse drugs at the White House if you are elected President, or cover up her abuses of drugs?

Did you marry your current wife more for her great wealth or because she offered you social connections that advanced your career as a politician?

During the Vicki Iseman scandal, your wife Cindy suggested that because you were a man of character, you would never have an affair. But isn’t it true that you started dating Cindy while you were still married to your first wife?

Why did you work so hard to help spread false anthrax stories in 2001? Isn’t it true that your conduct in spreading those stories that Iraq was responsible for that anthrax enabled the Bush Administration to expose the lives and well-being of our soldiers in Iraq?

Isn’t it true that you broke your promise by not being in isolation while Barack Obama was questioned by Rick Warren?

Did you have any moral qualms when you left your first wife - a former swimsuit model - after she was disfigured in a car accident and put on a few pounds?”

Does the Religious Right know that you give talks before gatherings with dubious family values, including suggesting that your wife enter a topless beauty contest?

Aren’t you too old and forgetful to be President?

Why won’t you release all of your medical records? What are you trying to hide?

How many letters did you send for the purpose of interfering with an FCC investigation on behalf of your beautiful lobbyist friend, Vicki Iseman?

How much financial help have you and your supporters given to your lobbyist friend Vicki Isley to help her disappear since your close relationship was revealed?

Have you been sexually faithful to your current wife?

Shouldn’t you be concerned that your wife is too “icy” to effectively serve as First Lady?

Shouldn’t it raise huge red flags when people who run for high office refuse to make their family’s tax returns public? Why should your wife Cindy be an exception?

To be president, is it enough that one is an old wise-cracking, hot-tempered, and often confused and forgetful guy?

Ignorance of facts regarding major issues
Give us the names of some prominent economists who really support your “economic plan.”

Why do you seem to know so little about Iraq?

Tell me everything you know about the history, culture and religions of Iraq. You can have as much time as you need.

Out of touch with ordinary people
Didn’t your wife say that the only way to get around Arizona is by private jet? and see here.

You don’t even know how many houses you own, do you?

Tell us about some of the ways we could have wisely invested one trillion dollars in America had we not wasted it in Iraq? Take your time and talk about how we could have improved American with that vast sum of money. (more…)

This video of John McCain is truly incredible. The questioner asked whether insurers, who cover Viagra, should also cover birth control pills.

The simple answer should have been that insurance companies should, indeed, cover birth control pills. Any organization that covers Viagra and Prozac (and vasectomies, much less surgery for tennis elbow) should cover the pills and medical care necessary for people to control if and when they will get pregnant. But McCain was incoherent. Here’s the Straight-Talk Express at work:

This is not the first time McCain has shown profound ignorance on birth control and sexuality. And see here for much more. The problem is that he is trying to hold onto the radical right, which wants to outlaw all effective birth control. See also, here, regarding the political positions on birth control pushed by those bastions of misinformation, “Pregnancy Resource Centers,” which dot the land, often well-funded by tax dollars. The Republicans are controlled by those who believe that they should control when and how you feel sexual pleasure. And here’s more proof. And check out the special proms for prepubescent girls. For more proof of this Republican ignorance, check out the statistics demonstrating that abstinence-only education (also well funded by the federal government) is a joke. I should clarify. I think that abstinence can be a substantial part of sex education for adolescents, but not the only part. The phrase “Just say no” doesn’t, on its own, stop kids from unintentionally getting pregnant.

Also check out McCain’s ignorance on the relationship between condom use and HIV.

As you can see, then, even when you set aside the issue of abortion, Republicans are further determined to tell you if, when and how to get pregnant. How can they not see that this should be a decision left to individuals? The answer is that Republicans are pandering to the radical “religious” Right’s wacko view that use of birth control pills constitute a method of causing an “abortion.”

Under a bill to be introduced soon in Utah, sex education teachers would be criminally liable if they “deviate from state law governing sex education, which requires that it focus on physical and emotional development of adolescents, healthy relationships and the threat and prevention of diseases.”

The bill is being prepared in response to a recent allegation of alleged impropriety:

The Jordan School District is investigating allegations that a seventh- and eighth-grade health teacher violated the sex education statute by responding to questions from students about topics beyond the core curriculum, including homosexual sex, oral sex and masturbation.

What are we coming to?? How dare a sex ed teacher talk about homosexual sex, oral sex and masturbation!

A group called Birth Control Watch is suggesting that we ask the following questions to the candidates:

1. Do you support couples having access to safe and effective birth control options, including emergency contraception?

2. Do you agree that for women to achieve equality, they must have access to family planning services, including birth control and contraception?

3. Do you support requiring health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs to cover birth control and contraception?

4. Do you support expanding current federal funding for Title X and Medicaid so that women with low incomes have more access to birth control options?

5. Do you support requiring pharmacies to dispense birth control to patients without discrimination or delay?

6. Do you support comprehensive sex education being taught in schools that includes information about abstinence, contraception and how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS?

7. Do you support the Prevention First and Access to Birth Control (ABC) Acts?

John McCain would hate to answer any of these straightforward questions.  His policy toward birth control is incoherent when it doesn’t outright seek to invade the private sex lives of Americans.

This article at Alternet (”The Real Pro-Life Candidate”) makes it clear that Barack Obama is the true pro-life candidate.  Why?

Study after study suggests the right to life approach, which McCain has helped execute for decades, is actually the root of the problem: leading to more abortions and later ones too . . . The data show that the pro-choice approach is more effective at achieving what the American public views as “pro-life” goals — i.e. reducing the number of abortions, preventing late term abortion — than the so-called “pro-life” approach.

By the way, who is likely to support freely available birth control pills?  Almost everyone:

Obama could remind the voter that only 11% of sexually active women don’t use contraception and from this 11% comes 50% of the nation’s abortions. Ninety-one percent of the American public strongly favors contraception because of this very reason.

The only people not favoring birth control are those who seek to encourage unplanned pregnancies.  That’s a great policy in a world of dwindling resources, right?  Who are such nuts?  People like this .

I agree with the writers of the Alternet article.  It’s time to cater to 89% of sexually active women, thereby recognizing the right of women to control their own bodies and simultaneously decreasing the number of abortions.  For much more on the wacky resistance of a highly vocal minority to birth control pills, see here.

We have a nice brewery run by the Schlafly family in our town. A town already renowned for beer. But a relative by marriage is more famous than the beer because of her stance against women’s rights and against progress through knowledge. Yes, Phyllis Schlafly is in the local news with a new controversy. In brief, this Washington University Alumna has been offered an honorary degree, and the faculty is in an uproar.

Why? After all, my own commencement speaker (honoree of the year) at that institution was Bob Hope. He claimed to be the most degreed high school dropout in the world at that time. The link above goes to the article containing the full text of a scathing letter by the faculty about the choice of Schlafly, specifically from the Law School. The flap is because the faculty thinks that honoring an outspoken anti-intellectual with another degree would demean an institution of learning. At least Bob Hope says silly things on purpose.

Our own Erich had put a response up there, but I found the post it by browsing news involving Creationism, another educational priority of Ms. Schlafly. Quoth he:

The problem is that if Ms. Schlafly completely had her way, core values of true academics, including skepticism and tolerance, would be extinguished. Under those conditions, Washington University would cease to exist.

The “American Life League” is putting out this silly garbage. They are trying to make it illegal for anyone to purchase birth control pills. This would put us back to the 1965 case of Griswold v Connecticut.

Consider some of the this wacko group’s talking points:

Q: Is it OK to take the pill for my acne or other health reasons?
A: Although the pill may have some minor benefits, the fact that it can kill preborn babies and cause harmful side effects for the woman outweighs its minor benefits. Because the pill weakens the immune system, it can cause bacterial infections and can make a woman more susceptible to the AIDS virus. It can also cause the following side effects: pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, cervical cancer, ectopic pregnancy, shrinking of the womb, breast cancer, blood clots, birth defects in children conceived while their mothers are on the pill, stroke, weight gain and much more. 2,3,4

Q: Isn’t it better to be on the pill when you
are sexually active?
A: Better for whom? The pill does not prevent you from getting a sexually transmitted disease, it is not 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy and you could conceive a child who gets chemically aborted before the baby’s presence is even known to you. Moreover, sexual activity outside of marriage is seriously wrong.

These are not new tactics (these arguments have been used by “pregnancy resource centers” for years), but it’s as stupid as it’s ever been. These “conservatives” want to government to have the power to dictate private sexual behavior between consenting adults (including married consenting adults). Unbelievable.

The media needs to hit McCain in the head with this blunt question: “Do you support the right of American adults to freely choose from all available birth control pills and devices, without any interference from the government?” Make McCain decide if he wants to publicly assume the looney side of this issue too.

Jon Stewart takes a close look at some of the basic tenets of “Abstinence Only Sex Education” and finds this approach deficient.

The disturbing part of this story is the reactions of so-called medical professionals to this couple’s situation and decision.

Now there are two ways to look at this. The one that might make more sense (though certainly no more palatable) is that these physicians et al are concerned with Insurance issues. What’s covered here? How does malpractice potentially enter into it? And while these folks are relatively well off and can carry their own expenses, what kind of precedent might be set here that will spread to the uninsured or Medicaid?

Unpleasant, but it would give a dimension to it that we could wrap our disgust around.

The other way to see it is as an example that, much as we might as a society wish to see ourselves as maturing, getting beyond such primordial reactions (namely—”Ugh! You different! You die!”), it turns out not to be true. That what we have is a facade and as long as no one really tests it, we can be what we think we are, at least to ourselves.

My reaction to what this couple is doing was initially (and continues to be) “Wow, cool!”

But I may well be in the minority.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Republican political anatomy.   You see, I’m not only an armchair anthropologist, but I’m a social neuro-surgeon (a brand-new expertise, created today).   After careful review of all available relevant data, I have developed a precise chart (click on the thumbnail below) detailing each of the major features of the modern Republican brain.  

No, you won’t find “Iraq” on this anatomical diagram, even though it reveals each of the major neural substructures found in the modern Republican brain.  That’s because the modern Repubublican has developed relatively recently.  No specialized “Iraq” module has thus had time to evolve. You will nonetheless find each of the brain structures that, working together, compel the instigation of multiple fear-induced, needless, destructive, ineptly planned, corrupt and potentially non-ending military conflicts in the Middle East. 

Whenever sufficient numbers of these malignant features are found in the brains of those who hold substantial political power, one can expect the atrophy of an entire country, absent immediate and dramatic political resuscitation. 

Without further ado, here it is.  Just click on the thumbnail for all the gory details:

If you’d like to review some fascinating and rigorous psychological data of what it means to be a conservative, check out this post regarding a study by Frank Sulloway or this post considering the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Mike the Mad Biologist reports on a new report by the Guttmacher Institute.  He concludes: 

61% of women who have abortions already have children. So much for the ‘irresponsible slut’ propaganda.

Here’s how Christina Page addresses this question:

• 98 percent of American women have done it.
• 37 million Americans are currently doing it.
• Most of the GOP candidates oppose it.
  What is it?

“It” is using birth control.   The GOP candidates have made it clear that they oppose the right of women to choose abortions.

The GOP candidates have not yet been forced to explain their generally ridiculous positions on this incredibly important issue of whether birth control should be freely available to consenting adults.  It’s time for this free ride to end.  They should be forced to take a position.  Why?  Honesty on this issue will reveal their ambitions to destroy additional personal liberties in order to hang onto the votes of fundamentalist zealots (I know that this is redundant).  Here’s how Page explains her position:

These guys [GOP candidates] may try to outdo each other on anti-abortion rhetoric and explain, unflinchingly, how doctors will be thrown in jail when Roe fails (an inevitability in their minds). But it’s the contraception question that really scares them. Because once the presidential debate focuses on how the candidates plan to alter the average American’s sex life (made possible thanks to family planning) it is lifted from the pink ghetto of “woman’s issues” and becomes a concern of male voters too.

For more evidence regarding the prevalent GOP position that birth control should not be freely available to American adults, see these previous DI posts:

Beware Claims of Pregnancy Resource Centers

The Bush administration relishes unplanned pregnancies - new evidence.

Focus of religious organization: Ban all birth control

Bush’s new head of family-planning programs opposes birth control

Protecting pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for legal drugs

Those abstinence-only programs are really bringing down the teen pregnancy rate . . . or are they?

Conservatives: Stop having sex for the pleasure of it! 

Special proms for prepubescent fundamentalist girls 

This post is from Press Esc:  

The Pope’s calls to save the environment [were] met with dismay by critics who have repeatedly pointed out that the Vatican’s ban on contraception will effectively negate all attempts at protecting the environment and tacking climate change.

“Care of water resources and attention to climate change are matters of grave importance for the entire human family,” Benedict XVI said today, on th eve of an international symposium on the defense of the Arctic. “Encouraged by the growing recognition of the need to preserve the environment, I invite all of you to join me in praying and working for greater respect for the wonders of God’s creation.”

But William Lawrence argues in New Scientist that Catholic church is responsible for denying women access to condoms that could halt the population explosion, which is the main cause of Planet Earth’s environmental ills.

Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from organizations that normally provide family planning materials.

The White House approved Abstinence Only policy is now the official Missouri directive. This program is well discredited. Yes, it does cause the average age of first sex to increase, by about 3 months. But the incidence of pregnancy and disease from graduates of Abstinence Only is significantly higher within the same age group as survivors of real sex education.

This sex anti-education clause was attached to a bill that requires any office that provides abortions to comply with regulations pertaining to full Emergency Room facilities.

Blunt ceremoniously signed the bill on a cross-shaped podium in a church lobby in front of an audience of church leaders. Talk about keeping church and state separate!

Here’s the Google News round-up on this issue

In this 1971 article, Judith Jarvis Thomson suggests that we’ve spent way too much time and emphasis on the issue of whether a developing fetus is fully human.   She doesn’t concede this point (she argues that acorns are not oak trees).  Yet she prefers to bring the conversation to what to do assuming that the fetus is fully human.

I found Thompson’s discussion unusual in that most abortion arguments (pro and con) focus on the status of the fetus.  Thompson assumes that the fetus is human, yet she argues for an approach that

allows for and supports our sense that, for example, a sick and desperately frightened fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, pregnant due to rape, may of course choose abortion, and that any law which rules this out is an insane law. And it also allows for and supports our sense that in other cases resort to abortion is even positively indecent. It would be indecent in the woman to request an abortion, and indecent in a doctor to perform it, if she is in her seventh month, and wants the abortion just to avoid the nuisance of postponing a trip abroad.

What is Thompson’s approach?  It is a detailed approach filled with vivid examples that creatively and powerfully illustrate her points.  Hers is also an approach entirely lacking in vitriol.  

One of her examples especially caught my eye, in that it quite similar to a pro-choice argument presented at this site by Grumpypilgrim.

Here is one of the illustrations from Judith Thompson’s fetus is fully human pro-choice argument:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.”

If you found this example intriguing, there is a lot more for you here. 

Why would God be justified destroying an entire city right now?  Because we’re bad.  How do you know we’re bad?  Because of lesbian sex.

How do we learn all of this?  Because when minister John MacArthur says so, James Dobson nods in approval.  For more, see Crooks and Liars.  Here are Mac Arthur’s words:

We haven’t had a massive calamity such as the destruction of an entire city. We certainly don’t want that to happen — pray that does not happen — but it could happen. And God would be just in any calamity that he brought upon us.

See also Bob Cesca’s spin on this intriguing theological position.

ps.  Someone should tell MacArthur about New Orleans.

The Washington Post reports on a “controversial” meaure that would:

increase funding for family planning clinics, expand Medicaid and private health insurance coverage of contraceptives, require hospitals to make emergency contraception available to rape victims, and allocate money for comprehensive sex education programs that teach youths about birth control as well as abstinence.

Here’s the money quote.   You might have to read it several times to believe what you’ve read:

“There’s a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences _ that’s the bottom line of all these bills,” said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a conservative group which opposes the measures.

Now let’s see . . . whose body is it?  

There are many people in power who believe that the government has a right to keep citizens from seeking private consensual pleasure in a way that they choose.   Conservatives often attack Roe v. Wade on the alleged basis that Roe has no basis in the Constitution.  

On this issue of access to birth control I would respond: where in the constitution does it say that consenting adults don’t have a right to seek pleasure, where many of them are adults in their 20’s, 30’s 40’s and up, and especially where many of them are married to each other? 

For more on conservatives and their arrogant attitudes toward controlling the harmless sexual impulses of others, see here and here and here and here. 

For some of the real-life health benefits of having sex often, see this list, based on an article from Forbes Magazine.

Parting thought:  Wouldn’t we be better off as a society if people had babies only when they intentionally had babies?   I can’t believe that we’ve gotten to the point where such a position has become “controversial.” 

We like to think of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as days when young children give lots of hugs to their loving parents.  We don’t like to consider that these days are also days when thousands of innocent children are beaten by their parents, their anguished cries often not heard outside of their dysfunctional homes.  Saddest of all, these children are condemned to be beaten and screamed at by the people they trust most. 

In 1988, I was waiting for an elevator at the State office building where I worked as an Assistant Attorney General. Many social workers had their offices in the same building, and several of those social workers were also waiting for an elevator.

All of a sudden, a middle-aged man started yelling at a three-year-old boy, who started crying.  The boy weighed about 40 pounds.  The man quickly got angrier and started smacking the boy violently with the palm of his hand-maybe it was his fist.  Whump! Whump! Whump!   The little boy was now breathless and whimpering.  Like the other half-dozen people waiting for an elevator, however, I did nothing but stand there horrified.  The man cocked his arm back to strike the boy yet again when one of the social workers jumped forward and yelled at the man: “Stop hitting that child!”

With that, the man looked confused, then angry, then more confused, then meek.  The social worker further instructed him: “follow me.” The man followed the social worker, presumably to the social worker’s office.  It did not appear that the social worker knew this man.  This social worker, now a hero in my mind, stepped forward because