This is mind-blowing.   To think that I used to have some respect for John McCain.  

The question recently put to McCain, on his Straight-Talk Express campaign tour, was straight-forward.  Here’s the transcript of what unfolded:

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”
Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”
Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”
Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”
Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out . . .

All I can figure is that McCain’s lust for power has shorted out some important neurons in his head.  Or he’s convinced that a person who is ignorant on important issues can be elected president–where would he get that idea?

In case John McCain is reading this blog, here is the answer from Wikipedia:

The best evidence to date indicates that typical condom use reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission by approximately 80% over the long-term, though the benefit is likely to be higher if condoms are used correctly on every occasion. The effective use of condoms and screening of blood transfusion in North America, Western and Central Europe is credited with contributing to the low rates of AIDS in these regions.

Here’s a good question:  why can’t a woman go topless wherever a man can? 

Sorry . . . I’m not buying answers like “Because that is the way it has always been” or “Because they are women.” 

Talk about equal rights!  The prevalent dress code inequity is motivated by the same mindset that leads some people to kick breastfeeding women off of airplanes.  Or am I missing something?  Here’s a relevant article on cross-cultural attitudes toward nudity.

I didn’t realize that New York state is one of the very few places in the US where women can legally be top free anywhere that a man can be top free.  Photographer Jordan Matter used New York City as the backdrop to a collection of photos he has named “Uncovered.”  Here’s how he explains the collection on “The Thinking Blog.” 

Challenging this inequity between the sexes is the purpose of my work. There has been a recent shift in America towards a socially conservative philosophy, so right after Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed at the Super Bowl, I started asking women to appear topless in New York City. [Uncovered: Busting Out in the Big Apple] is a collection of photographs featuring bare-breasted women in public around NYC, often presented with interviews exploring the issues of body image and sexuality in America today. The informal and humorous nature of these images celebrates women without sexualizing or objectifying them, while creating the illusion of a tolerant world in which shirtless women go casually about their lives. Uncovered represents just one aspect of what America could look like if we were free of shame and liberated from moral judgment.

“The Thinking Blog” contains various links to “Uncovered.”  Here’s Matter’s official site. [Warning to those who are offended or mortified by images of human breasts, including all of you who pummeled the FCC with emails complaining about Janet Jackson: "Uncovered" contains non-sexualized images of human breasts. If you're looking for sexual images, you'll be disappointed and you'll have to surf on over to one of the tens of millions of Internet sites that offer those sorts of images].

I’m sharing this information because I found the Matter’s photos to be both humorous and intellectually challenging.

How should you take care of them?  According to one book I’m reading, you need to give them lots of exercise and they need to eat good food.  You need to buy a good leash and collar.  No, I’m not referring to a childcare book–I’m talking about a book on dog care: The Complete Dog Care Manual, by Bruce Fogel, president of ASPCA.

To use a dog book to raise a child, you’ve got to pick and choose the advice, of course.  You don’t put your children on leashes or toss them bones (except when they misbehave!).  It is interesting, though, that dog-raising books are full of good ideas that also apply to raising children.  And it’s especially interesting to compare the way we are supposed to raise dogs with the way many people actually raise children. 

My family has a dog (“Holly”) and two human children, aged 6 and 8.  I am thus an expert on this topic.

My dog-training book stresses that taking care of a dog requires a lot of work.  We need to invest a lot of time in order to have a healthy animal.  The dog book places a premium on early training?  “Your dog relies on you to train it from an early age to be trusting, even-tempered and sociable…” (page 48).  Compare this advice with the way many people actually raise children, ignoring them for long stretches and often abandoning them to the commercial wasteland of television.

Feeding is critically important, according to my dog book.  Dogs need

[A] nutritious, well-balanced diet [which produces] a strong boned well-muscled healthy coated canine.  Dog owners should avoid giving their dogs excessive treats or feeding them more often than they should eat, even if a bag.   This combination of facts explains why obesity is a rampant among dog owners. 

(Page 51)  Compare this advice to the donuts, sugary cereal, and bags and bags of salty oily over-processed snacks that so many people feed their children.  Just walk down the aisles of a grocery store to see the extent of this harmful practice.  According to the experts, we shouldn’t feed such garbage to dogs, but many of us actually feed such foods to children.

There is a lot of information on training in Fogel’s book.  The author emphasizes that animals need to be trained well when young in order to be sociable as adults.  Otherwise, all kinds of bad behaviors arise.  The same thing goes for children, too, but this advice is far too often ignored. 

If this comparison between dogs and humans appears unseemly, keep in mind that humans are animals.  “Human animals” I call them (instead of “human beings”), whenever I want to have some fun with fundamentalists.  There’s no defense to my characterization, of course, since we human animals eat, poop, breathe and procreate very much like other animals, very much like dogs.

What about exercise?  “If a dog is denied mental and physical activity, its energy may be released in destructive and unacceptable behavior.”  (Page 42).  To get real exercise, does a dog need to be driven across town every weekend to participate in organized sports?  No. Does a dog need to join an expensive health club?  Absolutely not.  To get exercise, all dogs need are brisk walks combined with a few very simple toys.  We excel at breaking these rules for human children, however. (more…)

According to a recent report by the American Psychological Association,

Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women.

According to this APA report, the pressure of this “sexualization” can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance. See, also, Yahoo’s article on this report.

What are the sources of these images? The report points to these examples:

Advertisements (e.g., the Skechers “naughty and nice” ad that featured Christina Aguilera dressed as a schoolgirl in pigtails, with her shirt unbuttoned, licking a lollipop), dolls (e.g., Bratz dolls dressed in sexualized clothing such as miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and feather boas), clothing (thongs sized for 7– to 10-year-olds, some printed with slogans such as “wink wink”), and television programs (e.g., a televised fashion show in which adult models in lingerie were presented as young girls).

It is difficult to not notice this modern smearing of the boundaries between female childhood and adulthood. Our media is obsessed with presenting images of women acting like little girls and little girls forced to act “sexualized.”

What’s the difference between “sexualization” and healthy sexuality? According to the APA report, “sexualization” occurs when

a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy; (more…)

Teen pregnancy is down. Is it because of those abstinence pledges?  As indicated in this article from the BBC News,  “88% of those who make the pledge break the pledge, so it must be down to condoms and safe sex education.”

The Guttmacher Institute recently released its own survey showing that most of the decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of the teens using birth control, not abstinence:

Eighty-six percent of the recent decline in U.S. teen pregnancy rates is the result of improved contraceptive use, while a small proportion of the decline (14%) can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex, according to “Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use” by John Santelli et al., published in the January issue of the American Journal of Public Health. This study raises serious questions about the value of the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that prohibit information about the benefits of condoms and contraception.

There is a wealth of information regarding reproductive health available at the Guttmacher Institute site.   I will visit the site regularly to stay updated.  Here is the Institute’s Mission Statement. 

The Guttmacher Institute advances sexual and reproductive health through an interrelated program of social science research, policy analysis and public education, designed to generate new ideas, encourage enlightened public debate, promote sound policy and program development, and, ultimately, inform individual decision-making.

The Institute envisions a world in which all women and men have the ability to exercise their rights and responsibilities regarding sexual behavior, reproduction and family formation, freely and with dignity. Essential to this vision are societal respect for and protection of personal decision-making with regard to unwanted pregnancies and births, as well as public and private-sector policies that support individuals and couples in their efforts to become responsible and supportive parents, maintain stable family structures and balance parenting with other roles. Equally vital to the Institute’s vision are the eradication of gender inequality worldwide and the attainment of equal status, rights and responsibilities for women.

The Missouri legislature will soon consider Senate Bill 285 to protect the right of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills.  Here’s the text of the bill:

This act protects the conscience rights of pharmaceutical professionals. Such pharmaceutical professionals shall not be required to perform, assist, recommend, refer for, or participate in any service involving a particular drug or device that they have a good faith belief is used for abortions. In these instances, the pharmaceutical professional shall be immune from civil or criminal liability and will not have their license suspended or revoked.

As I’ve discussed before, many conservatives argue that birth control pills cause “abortions” because it is possible that they could cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant.  This is the reason that the hundreds of “Pregnancy Resource Centers” that dot the country refuse to tell their clients about the existence of birth control pills (and see here).  Instead, such fake pregnancy clinics recommend only “natural family planning” (formerly known as rhythm), which has a failure rate of 20% per year.  Is that the kind of birth control you want for your wife, girlfriend or daughter?

It’s important to note that anti-abortion sites freely admit that the “vast majority of women” using birth control pills are not causing “abortions,” however defined.

This proposed Missouri law, if passed, would invite the following conversation between an adult woman customer and a pharmacist:

[Woman]:  I’d like you to fill this prescription for birth control pills.  My doctor wrote this prescription for me.

[Pharmacist]: I won’t do that.  I have a good faith belief that you are using those pills to have abortions.  I’m the only pharmacist on duty at this store, so that’s the final answer.

[Woman]:  This is ridiculous.  Tell me where I can find another pharmacy that will fill this perfectly legal prescription.

[Pharmacist]:  I refuse to refer you to such an evil place, as I am entitled to do pursuant to Senate Bill 285.

[Woman]: I need to talk to your boss.

[Pharmacist’s Boss]:  I’d like to fire this guy, but Senate Bill 285 provides that if I fire him, he can sue me for triple damages plus attorneys fees.

To top off this insanity, many women take birth control pills for reasons other than avoiding pregnancy.

The hormones in “the Pill” can be used to treat some medical conditions, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, adenomyosis, anemia related to menstruation, and painful menstruation (dysmenorrhea). In addition, oral contraceptives are often prescribed as medication for mild or moderate acne. 

For Wikipedia’s article on the main mechanism of birth control pills, click here.  

This bill is likely to be heard at the following place and time:

Hearing on Bills Regarding Reproductive Healthcare
Senate Judiciary and Civil and
Criminal Jurisprudence Committee
Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO
Monday, February 19th, 6:00 pm

A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends.  One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood.  At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough.

From my end of the table, I blurted out that it is not necessary to have expensive wine to have a meaningful gathering with friends or family.  In fact, I added, “wine is not necessary at all.” 

I was about to elaborate when I noticed that the other adults at the table were staring at me like I had three eyes.  “That’s not correct,” they told me, almost in unison.

I know that “look” well. I have received that same “look” from various people on other occasions. On one occasion I got “the look” from someone who was trying to justify that an ordinary car wasn’t sufficient, so he needed to buy a BMW.  Another person who gave me “the look” was trying to convince me that her $75,000 kitchen remodeling was “necessary,” even though all of the appliances in her existing kitchen functioned perfectly.  The problem with her current kitchen was that it was “old.”

I have also received that same look from fundamentalists when I explain that the earth is billions of years old.  The “look” is a “we-will-pretend-you-didn’t-say-that” look.  It shouldn’t surprise me to draw the same “look” from both consumers and Believers, given that wasteful and pretentious spending is the de facto national religion of the United States.  We’ve moralized extravagant spending to such an extent that “living the good life” means buying lots of things we don’t really need.

Back to that dinner I was attending, the conversation moved on, but not my intrigue at the discussion about the “necessity” of expensive wine.

You know, all I had done was to state an undeniably true fact: People don’t really need to drink wine (certainly not expensive wine) to have meaningful social gatherings.  After all, poor people can’t afford expensive wine.  Are poor people incapable of having meaningful gatherings because they can’t afford expensive wine?  Raise your elitist hand if you believe that.

Nonetheless, in making my pronouncement about wine at dinner, I had appeared boorish to my acquaintances.  But I felt innocent.  How could it possibly be that consuming particular types of food could, in any sense, be essential? 

Here’s a rule of thumb I follow: Whenever something doesn’t make any sense to me (in this case, that a particular expensive food is a prerequisite for having meaningful social gatherings), it’s best to assume that relationships are somehow being threatened.  When a claim makes no sense, it’s always about relationships, not the things that appear to be the topic (here, expensive wine).

I also receive this “look” whenever I disclose that I cut my hair with a Flowbee, a hair-cutting device that works in tandem with your household vacuum cleaner (don’t laugh unless you’ve tried it).  The Flowbee works especially well on men’s hair styles. Acquaintances to whom I mention this usually laugh, then protest that I really should spend $20 every six weeks to get professional haircuts.  I “deserve” this, they tell me.  What’s curious is that no one claims (after looking at my hair) that the hokey-seeming Flowbee doesn’t look like a haircut done by someone at a styling salon.  At bottom, their discomfort is about the social propriety of using a Flowbee, not about the function of the device.  They, too, would like good haircuts and they, too, would like to save LOTS of money, but they wouldn’t dare use a Flowbee. 

America would not be American without consumerist excess, would it?  Consider the $1,200 car sound systems that people “must have.”  Consider designer bed sheets stores where you can get a twin sized Praga Embroidered Duvet Cover for only $540.  And don’t forget that caring America parents “deserve” to spend $140 for designer diaper bags for their peeing and pooping babies.  (more…)

Think about it. The primary (”God Given”) visible sign of male maturity is facial hair. Therefore the reason a man shaves his face must be:

• To appear feminine, or
• To appear underage

Now, to whom do men who shave their faces appeal? Lessee: Someone who either wants a feminine lover, or an underage lover. If we discard the pedophiles, who is left?
Or am I (really) oversimplifying the social implications of this relatively modern custom?

We’re right in the middle of massively expensive Christmas displays. No, not just the light displays. I’m referring to the numerous expenditures of time, energy and money that, because they are expensive, serve as reliable messages to others that we are interested in bonding with them . . . or not. Christmas is as good a time as any to let the truth hang out.

These displays take many forms. To whom do we send Christmas cards (and from whom do we receive them?)? To whose parties will we be invited? Who are those select people with whom we will end up exchaning gifts? It doesn’t matter if we don’t really enjoy cards, parties and gifts. It doesn’t really matter whether we believe in virgin birth. It doesn’t matter whether there were three kings or whether there was an especially bright star. As with oh-so-many things, Christmas is really about relationships. At bottom, Christmas is about rubbing elbows and bonding, no matter what the conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom says that Christmas is about a particular set of alleged historical truths. We need to keep in mind, though, that there are many cultures that give no credibility to the Jesus story who engage in similar gatherings and similar gift exchanges based on their own lore, much of if as unlikely as the story of a virgin giving birth to a God. They have their own gift exchanges and parties and songs and decorations framed by lore that makes no sense to those raised in our culture. But all of this conduct, regardless of the frame, makes sense to evolutionists who carefully step back a few steps and ask some simple yet pointed questions about what is really being accomplished, no matter what the excuse is used for the holiday hoopla.

The alleged historical stories, whatever they might be, can be important even though not true. Those alleged stories frame the celebrations, giving the people all the excuse they need to bond with some people and to exclude all of the others. The alleged stories “work,” no matter how strained they are, no matter how much they violate the laws of physics, biology and common sense. From an evolutionist’s point of view, a fantastic story is a fantastic story. It might as well be a story about a flying octopus or the tales about Zukamono, who protects the Earth from giant invisible dragons. Or it could even be a story about a big fat elf named Santa. Any tale that invites celebrations, conversation and the rubbing of elbows works. At bottom, it’s all about relationships. That has never changed and it never will change.

Humans aren’t very impressive as individuals. Or, at least, their accomplishments are generally limited. They can accomplish super things as coordinated groups, however. Holidays present us with oppotunities to bond (or not). Bonding functions as the social glue that gets the job done. Bonding allows individuals to coordinate their activities; bonding allows us to become super-organisms that can accomplish things of which unbonded groups of individuals can only dream.

Somewhere along the way, however, many of us start to reify the myths that serve as opportunities for bonding.  We take such myths and lore as literally true for no good intellectual reason, but for a very important social reason.  Considering the myths to be literally true intensifies the bonding  process.  I don’t claim to understand the mechanism for this process, but it definitely happens.  Those people who are most into the social aspects of the Christmas season are the least comfortable questioning the myths and lore of Christmas.  

If you are invited to the homes of these people, don’t expect that your question whether Jesus really existed or whether he was really born on December 25 will be warmly greeted.  Critical thinking and skepticism, therefore, might  well be  the enemies of social cohesion.  Such questioning is likely a greater sin than being anti-social. The questioning of the literal truth of widespread Christmas myths will often be seen as immoral by those who seek to rally around these myths.  These myths thus serve the same function as flags.  It is not the intellectual content that is important (that content is quite often self-contradictory or nonsensical).  Rather the myth serves as a social rallying point.  Again, it can be important without being literally true.  I’ve written about this critical distinction previously.

As shown by Amotz Zahavi, animal signals must be expensive to be reliable. This is a universal rule throughout the animal kingdom.  Displays can be expensive in two ways.  We can present something of value to another person or we can incur a debt or burden on ourselves (in the latter case, the classic example is the peacock’s tail).  Many displays are expensive in both ways.

Simply uttering to someone that he or she is “valued” is just too easy for us human animals.  Words are cheap.

(more…)

According to this salon.com post by Bill Maher, the worst menace isn’t Mark Foley.  Not by a long shot.  Focus, instead on legions of corporate and government predators. 

Though this was written in October 2006, I didn’t notice it until today.  As always, Maher doesn’t pull any punches:

[Foley] was probably the first fruit those pages ever came into contact with that wasn’t drenched in pesticide.

But that’s America for you — a red herring culture, always scared of the wrong things. The fact is, there are a lot of creepy middle-aged men out there lusting for your kids. They work for MTV, the pharmaceutical industry, McDonald’s, Marlboro and K Street. And recently, there’s been a rash of strangers making their way onto school campuses and targeting our children for death. They’re called military recruiters.

More young Americans were crippled in Iraq last month than in any month in the past three years. And the scandal is that Mark Foley wants to show them a good time before they go? When will our closeted gay congressmen learn? Our boys aren’t for pleasure. They’re for cannon fodder. They shouldn’t be another notch on your bedpost. They should be a comma in Bush’s war. If I hear a zipper, it had better be on a body bag.

As I have mentioned a time or two before, I used to be Christian.  I wasn’t just Christian, I was a fundamentalist.  I spoke in tongues (”praying in the spirit” we called it), I attended services 4-5 times a week and sometimes entire weekends were spent in services.  I’ve helped paint the church, I’ve joined in food drives and done other “good works.”    My family is littered with fundamentalists, and we even have several pentacostal preachers amongst us.  All the preachers are men, of course, since women are not generally allowed to even speak to the congregation from the pulpit, even if are women speaking about the scriptures to an audience of all women.  This, despite that church members are mostly made up of women.

I believed that the King James Version of the bible, while not completely without a few errors in translation, was the revealed Word of God.  For a long while, I was a part of a sect that admitted that the original words of God were lost, but that the KJV, despite that it was not a direct translation but rather a version of a version or translation of a translation, was a good place to start and that we should learn Greek and Aramaic to get back as close to the original as we could.  I did in fact learn some Greek and used a Greek/English interlineal bible (where both languages are included by alternate lines).  I was taught that if there was an apparent inconsistency, then it had to be the result of either mistranslation or misunderstanding, because the original was made of words directly from God and written down by man at his direction.

Used to be… until many things happened, the biggest was seeing that, at least in my profession, the very worst abuses seem to be perpetrated by people professing to be Christian.  I think Muslims are dealing with that same issue right now.

I thought we were better than non-Christians, because we held ourselves to a higher standard.  I thought doing good works included being a “good steward” of the earth, and that God expected nothing less from us, and that  fundamentalists, at least those that were ‘in fellowship’ with God (church-speak for doing what we believed God wanted), all tried to do the same.  We were encouraged to help the less fortunate among us.  Looking back, clearly the help was directed either to those we might ’save’ or those among us who were struggling, and we always expected some form of repayment.  Repayment might be a ‘recommitment to Jesus’ or ‘acceptance of salvation’ for the unbeliever.  At the very least, we could expect God would reward us with ’stars in our crown’ once we got to heaven. 

I believe there are still lots of good people in Christian congregations, people who try to do good things and who don’t cheat or otherwise abuse others.  It does seem like there are an awful lot of batterers in church, both the kind that beat their wives and the kind that beat their children, but I’m sure that isn’t the majority.  I thought doing good things was not only an individual policy, but one supported by the institutions.  That isn’t the case, at least among some.

The National Association of Evangelicals, an organization of literally millions of Christians, (whose motto is “cooperation without compromise”) has had some problems recently, headlined by their top guy, Ted Haggert, who resigned in disgrace.  You’ll remember him, he condemned homosexuals from one side of his mouth while he used the other side for other purposes (guess he had a big mouth).   I can’t resist including a blog post I saw on that topic.  They nominated another guy, Joel Hunter of Florida.  Rev. Hunter wanted the organization to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming to their platform.  The evangelicals would have none of that, saying that they were afraid of being called liberals, so Hunter was not permitted to lead the organization. The Colbert Report had a great story, saying that “nothing is more Chrisitan than refusing to do good works so you won’t be called names.”

It was really all about appearance after all. 

In a post entitiled “Canada Makes the Baby Jesus Cry,” Ed Brayton had this to say about the Canadian Parliament’s recent refusal to reconsider last year’s approval of gay marriage throughout Canada: 

Now, of course, Canada’s entire culture will collapse, people will stop marrying one another and loving their kids, and dogs and cats will start living together.

According to this article, some airlines are starting to enforce policies that children shouldn’t be seated next to unrelated men, because you never know what might happen . . .

Frances Kemp booked an aisle seat on a recent British Airways (BA) flight because she had a bad leg that required extra space. Her 76-year-old husband Michael occupied the middle seat. A nine-year-old girl took the window position.

When a stewardess asked Frances to switch seats with her husband, she declined. The stewardess explained that the seating arrangement breached the airline’s child-welfare regulations and moved the child.

Michael is a retired journalist with no criminal record; he made no contact physical or verbal with the girl; no complaint or request to move was received; the child’s mother was elsewhere on the plane. The girl’s welfare was deemed to be in peril solely because Michael was male.

Michael Moore recently published this pledge in the Los Angeles Times.  I applaud each of these twelve points:

1) We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2) We will let you marry whomever you want (even though some among us consider your Republican behavior to be “different” or “immoral”). Who you marry is none of our business. Love, and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.

3) We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It’s your checkbook too, and we will balance it for you.

4) When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.

5) When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we’ll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.

6) When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma.

7) Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9) We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren’t much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, take up another sport. In the meantime, we will arm the deer to make it a fairer fight.

10) When we raise the minimum wage, we will raise it for your employees too. They will use that money to buy more things, which means you will get the money back! And when women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage too.

11) We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t practice those beliefs. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs (”Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies,” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn’t just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism — starting here at home.

12) We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and break the law. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side first. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I know, a catchy title.  A little unfair maybe, since there’s nothing particularly titillating in what follows.  Or maybe there is, depending on what–what’s the saying?–”pumps yer nads!”   But in view of Erich’s post about our newly appointed head of Family Planning, I thought this might be the time to indulge more than a little in a topic rather close to my heart (depending on where one locates said metaphorical organ).

Did you know that the last week of October is national Protection From Pornography Week?  Yes, indeed, signed into law by our illustrious president, Mr. Bush back in 2003.  I for one had no idea I needed to be protected from it.  How reassuring to know that we are being defended from dangers both real and imagined by the ever watchful gaze of our very own homegrown clerics.

We’ve spent tax dollars on this.  Here is the link to the official White House proclamation.

Seems innocuous enough, even homey.  All that stuff about the destructive effects of porn on children, who can argue?

Has it occurred to anyone throughout the last two decades (beginning, in my opinion, with Ed Meese–anyone remember him?) of the war on pornography that–like alcohol and tobacco–pornography is simply not for children?  It seems a ludicrously simple idea to me–it was never intended for them.  We manage to have reasonable laws about things not intended for children.  We don’t let them drive cars (except at amusement parks, in specially constructed rides), we don’t let them drink booze, we don’t allow the sale of tobacco to minors.  They can’t vote, either, because we presume to decide on their level of intelligence and ability to make political statements.  That one may be arguable, but…    

We don’t allow children to sign contracts.  We don’t let them in to see “R” rated movies without a parent or guardian.  Technically, children aren’t allowed to have credit cards, but sometimes that one slips through the cracks.

Point being, we manage these other prohibitions quite handily.  Occasionally something goes wrong, but we have a system for dealing with it that doesn’t require a national week signed into effect by the president.  I mean, we don’t have a National Protection From Contracts Week detailing how contracts have debilitating effects on families and children (especially children, oh, those poor innocents who cannot defend themselves from the deprivations of over-zealous loan officers and contract litigators!).

The other side of this is, however, perhaps a little more contentious.  We don’t allow children to participate in all this stuff, but we make an assumption that adults may, can, and that there is, for the most part, nothing wrong with it! 

So why do we need this Protection From Porn Week? 

Well, it’s not aimed at children.  With all that child sexual exploitation is an evil thing and no sensible adult would allow that it’s not, the target here is not to protect children.  It’s not even to protect.  The target is Sex.

Since the Sixties there has been a war going on in this country about the public function of Sex in our society.  I won’t here detail that war–we sell products with it, but we can’t actually sell the thing itself (except in certain places under strict licensing etc.); we all like to be sexy, even when we don’t admit it, but we don’t necessarily want to follow through on the implications, i.e. have sex commensurate with the degree of sexiness we like to pretend to; sex is one of the most wanted things we have, yet there is a perverse urge to deny it to others when we deem it inappropriate (or even when it is appropriate, just public).  The war has taken on all the canny subterfuge and annoying intangibility of the worst aspects of the Cold War, which I think is an ironic if apt comparison.  After all, the Cold War was as much about ideas as about actions.

Attorney General John Ashcroft spent $80,000 on a curtain to hide the tits of Justice so television viewers wouldn’t be offended.

Who really was?  We’ve been looking at public nudity like that for two centuries.  Except for a few extreme crackpots, I don’t know of anyone who ever seriously complained–because we have all made the distinction between nudity and sexuality in these instances.  I mean, no one seriously gets turned on by the nakedness of Justice.  Do they? (more…)

You didn’t think it could get any loonier at the White House, did you?  According to this article by the Washington Post, Bush’s new appointee in charge of family planning is opposed to all effective forms of family planning:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

AWC (full name “A Woman’s Concern - Pregnancy Health Services”) is a pregnancy counseling service that forbids employees from referring patients to birth control providers.  Here’s their brochure.  Here’s a quote from the AWC brochure:  “AWC staff and volunteers will not distribute brochures, books or other materials that advocate and promote the use of contraception.”  Check out the website of AWC. As you can see, they refuse to even acknowledge the existence of birth control. The reason they don’t mention birth control is because they’re totally against it. 

If organizatins like this had their way, new laws would be passed prohibiting the sale of the pill, condoms, the diaphragm and every other effective means women have to control pregnancy.  Some conservatives out there are really advocating for these horribly intrusive and counter-productive laws.  To make things even worse, these fake clinics are getting lots of government money through the mechanism of tax credits.

I’ve previously investigated some of these so-called “pregnancy crises centers” or “pregnancy resource centers.”  They should all be shut down for the fraud they perpetrate on their unsuspecting customers and for their terrible medical advice that has the effect creating lots of repeat customers (lots of future unwanted pregnancies). See here and here. 

In Slate.com, William Saletan writes that the Democrats should blast the Republicans for the irresponsible policies they push in the area of family planning. 

The solution is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn’t about doing what feels good. It’s about taking responsibility.

This is no gimmick. It’s a model for a new, more responsible definition of responsibility. Conservatives have often joked, astutely, that for many liberals, social irresponsibility is a euphemism for personal irresponsibility. But the reverse is also true: For many conservatives, personal responsibility is a euphemism for social irresponsibility. The solution is to require responsibility on all sides. Birth control is a perfect example. Its effectiveness depends on technology, access, and use. Better technology is industry’s responsibility. Better access is society’s responsibility. Better use is the individual’s responsibility. If everybody does his or her job, the abortion rate goes down. Way down.

In the meantime, the new head advisor of the $238,000,000 budget to provide for family planning grants believes that effective family planning is immoral and demeaning.  Maybe we can’t yet reverse this appointment.  But let’s at least we should be honest about what is going on.  Let’s start calling Keroack’s organization the U.S. Department of Accidental Pregnancies.

In Missouri, Republican legislators charged with getting to the bottom of a problem, have produced a fine example of spurious causal linkage that ought to go down in history with the assertion made by certain agents of the pope to Michelangelo that, since one of his marbles had taken seven years to complete, the new one for which he had requisitioned four helpers, would therefore take 28 years to complete–four times seven, you see, equals twenty-eight. It never occurred to them to divide, only multiply.

Which seems to be a problem Republicans have with regards to certain problems.

Their conclusion in this instance is that the rise in illegal immigration over that last three decades can be attributed to abortion. Specifically, because some forty-five million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade, those millions of potential Americans represent the short-fall in our labor pool which illegal immigrants are filling.

I haven’t laughed so painfully in a long time. Not over this sort of absurdity.

The Democrats on the same committee have refused to sign off on the report, but the report is now public, and all the Republicans signed it, hence alleviating any doubt (had there ever been any) where they stand on the issue of illegal immigration. Obviously, we should go on an accelerated program of creating a second baby boom to stem the tide of all those undocumented workers stealing American jobs. It will, of course, take about 18 years for the program to produce any tangible results–unless, of course, the Republicans intend sponsoring legislation to overturn child labor laws.

Anything to strike a blow at a woman’s right to choose.

Now, lest we not be clear about where I come down on this issue–both issues–let me state a couple of things up front.

I am a man. I therefore do not believe I have a “natural” right to say anything at all about what a woman does concerning reproduction. I have some contempt for males who bleat about their rights being trampled by abortion (after all, it’s MY fetus, too, she used MY sperm). In specific instances where a couple planned in advance to make a baby and the woman backed out after pregnancy occurred, I have a modicum of sympathy–broken promises are hard to take–but I don’t see any way short of legal instrument (a contract between them, notarized, etc) of ever proving the case. (more…)

According to this recent news item on MSNBC, Emily Gillette, 27, filed the complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission late last week against Delta Air Lines, for kicking her off of a flight between Burlington and New York City.

Gillette said she was breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter as their flight prepared to leave Burlington International Airport. She said a flight attendant handed her a blanket and told her to “cover up.”

The airline is defending itself by claiming that Gilette wasn’t being sufficiently “discreet.”

A breast-feeding mother is perfectly acceptable on an aircraft, providing she is feeding the child in a discreet way,” that doesn’t bother others, said Paul Skellon, spokesman for [the airline]. “She was asked to use a blanket just to provide a little more discretion, she was given a blanket, and she refused to use it, and that’s all I know.

Huh?  Let’s see . . . I’m looking at my calendar . . . it is the year 2007 A.D.  

I’m not going to waste any time wondering whether Ms. Gillette was “discreet.”  Immoralist that I am, I don’t see any reason why any woman should have to be discreet while nursing her baby.  There’s no more reason for this than for requiring a woman to throw a towel over her own head while she herself eats a pretzel.  Or requiring a man to be discreet when he blows his nose.

I’m wondering why an airline would have a policy that requires a nursing mother to be “discreet.”  What part of nursing needs to be discreet?  The part about nourishing milk being made available to the baby?  The part about the baby drinking the milk?  The part about the baby not going hungry?  None of these is the true fear, because no one would have any problem with a woman conspicuously feeding breast milk (which she previously pumped from her breast) out of a bottle.  Nor is the worry that some portions of breasts are offensive.  Women expose large swaths of tops of their breasts through their conscioius choice of clothing. To combat this “top of breast” onslaught, airlines would need to invoke strict dress codes.  I haven’t heard any outcry for such airline dress codes.

This inane airline policy is really about protecting “us” from nipples.

Gee . . . I wonder what social segment is pressuring airlines (and everyone else) to protect us from nipples?  Let’s have an unscientific survey.  Let’s put 500 religious fundamentalists over here on my right.  Now, by a show of hands, which of you fundamentalists think that the nipple of a nursing mother should not be visible in a public place?  I see about . . . oh . . . 462 hands.   Now, let’s put 500 secular humanists over here on my left. Please raise your hands if the airlines should protect us from seeing nipples.  Two hands?  Wait!  One of you is clentching a Bible!  Get over in the other group where you belong! Only one hand now?  No wonder they call us God-cursed immoralists!

So . . . the people trying to “protect” us from nipples are the same people who strive to “protect our marriages” from gay people. It’s the same people who try so hard to foist that sex obsessed book on the rest of us.  You know, the Bible.

Here’s a little self-help therapy for those of you who just can’t get over the fear and shame of nipples.  Go into your bathroom and lock the door.  Stand in front of a mirror and take off your shirt.  Now, carefully take a look at your nipples.  There . . . that’s what nipples look like.  Ask yourself whether your head exploded.  Probably not.  Did a demon emerge from the floor and stab you with a pitchfork?  Probably not.

I’m also going to suggest some reading for you fundamentalists.   There are articles that discuss nipples and areolas. I know reading these article is going to be difficult, because what really bothers you guys is that you don’t want to be reminded that you are animals.  Yes, humans are animals.  We are cousins with the other animals (and plants).  We poop.   We breathe, we sleep, we cough, we have emotions, we eat, we guard territories.  Just like other animals.

Yes, and we lactate.  Take a deep breath and listen up: seeing a nipple won’t make you turn to stone.  If you get sexually bothered seeing a woman’s nipple, it’s YOUR problem, not hers.  Really, you need to get over it.

Oh, all right. I’ll say a few things about this Reverand Haggard thing, although what really there is to say I’m not sure.  Those caught up in the spell of an evangelist community may not care–this is just another example of how rotten-to-the-core sinful human beings are and even the best of us just can’t overcome the demons.

Frankly, it’s boring.  Swaggart, Bakker, now this guy, among many others…I am reminded of the preacher in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath who gave up the Call because he couldn’t keep his hands off the women.  He had the integrity, finally, to realize who he was and stop being a hypocrite.

But it seems that hypocrisy is just reinforcing for people like Haggard and his followers, the more the better, because it validates their committment to the cause.  It never seems to occur to them to step back and ask if, given that no matter how hard they pray or how much money they throw in the till or how many times they repent they remain pretty much as they started out, perhaps the assumptions being made aren’t just a bit, well, wrong.

I’ve seen these born again gays on talk shows announcing that Christ “cured” them of their homosexuality and I wince.  It is indeed possible to shove yourself into a straitjacket and distort yourself to the point of being your own polar opposite.  Many of us may have found it necessary to do something like this for a short while just to deal with a given situation.  But over the longterm all it does is cripple the one in the iron lady.  They haven’t changed themselves so much as created their own condition of extreme neurotic denial, forced themselves to the point of breakdown, and become an enemy of their own natures.

For what?

Senator Mark Foley was a rabid anti-child porn advocate.  He was passionate, committed, a real zealot.  It surprised me not at all that it turned out he had a proclivity for sexual advances on the very people he was working to protect from people like himself.  It was as if, were he successful in changing the entire world and the whole sexual landscape and somehow eliminating everything he was working to eliminate, then he would no longer suffer–take away the temptation and he might never be tempted.

It’s like an alcoholic who expects everyone around him/her to refrain from drinking so he/she won’t want one.  Or a smoker who does the same.  For the most part, people would accommodate these people. 

But what if it’s a born again vegetarian who demands that no one around them eat meat so that they can more easily refrain?  (I once knew a man who blamed rock’n'roll for ruining his life and insisted that none of it be played around him anymore so he would never be tempted to pick up a guitar again.)

Now, certainly that last is a bit on the silly side, but my point is that people like Foley and Haggard have a tendency to make everyone else bear the moral responsibility for what they see as their own failing of character.  The reverend–any of them–probably thought that in the world they’d want to live in, the prostitute simply wouldn’t be there to take their money and make them feel awful.  That way they couldn’t sin because there would be no opportunity–everyone else would make sure of it.

Pass The Buck Morality.  It’s pathetic.  Not only for the hypocrisy and arrogance, but because, often, the thing being condemned is not necessarily condemnable.

Homosexuality is simply another way of being sexual.  The pernicious canard that sex is only and ever for procreation fuels the over-the-top rhetoric of those condemning it.  I wonder how many of them actually believe that–or practice it.  Sex between humans is far more than that, but somehow this frightens certain people.  And those most frightened of it seem, often, to be those most bent on stealing the fun from everyone else.

The self-loathing of such people is dangerous.  Dangerous to the rest of us who don’t buy into their moral churnings.  Because they become zealous in trying to make sure no one indulges the thing they fear so that they will never be tempted.   Rather than change their own life, they think they have to change everyone else’s.

All I want to say to such people, in the end, is:  get over yourself.

Trying to have a baby is one important reason to have sex.  There are other important reasons to have sex regularly, according to this article in Forbes:  “Is Sex Necessary?”  

Refer to this article whenever someone preaches to you that the only proper reason to have sex is to have babies.  The article is based on a study that correlated overall health with sexual frequency:

Queens University in Belfast tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The study was designed to compare persons of comparable circumstances, age and health. Its findings, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards.

Here are some of the health benefits to having sex on a regular basis:

• Reduced risk of heart disease
• Weight loss, overall fitness
• Reduced depression
• Pain relief
• Less frequent colds and flu
• Better bladder control
• Better Teeth (go read the article)
• Keeps prostate healthy (I’ve heard this from my own doctor)

Humans also use sex to bond with each other, shown by the fact that humans are “unusual in our continuous practice of sex, which is a direct consequence of our concealed ovulations.”  Whenever someone preaches that using sex to maintain social bonds is “unnatural,” feel free to remind them that humans aren’t the only primate to use sex to bond.  Check out the behavior of our cousins, the bonobos.

Debate goes on, seeming forever, about the issue of religious belief in a secular society.  The validity of sacred texts becomes grist for the mill and sides line up over What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers.  We see competing fish on cars–Darwin fish with feet in answer to the unembellished christian fish symbol, then a bigger fish labeled Truth swallowing the diminutive Darwin fish, and on and on.

What is really at issue here hasn’t got one thing to do with who believes in god or evolution.  Belief is a self-contained, private matter.  The issue that gets lost in all the polemic is very simple: behavior.

Those who would sap the poison from the “inerrant word” crowd are defending their assumed right to live the way they want.  One might argue that belief in god doesn’t really limit people, and as far as it goes, that is true.  If you, as an individual, choose to believe in god, then you have elected to reform your life according to the tenets of your new faith.  You may adopt whatever modest or byzantine traditions and habits you wish.  After all, you have chosen this, you get to do it.

What you don’t get to do is tell everyone else to behave accordingly, and that’s where the meat of the issue lies.

Because fundamentalists–and we’re talking about fundamentalists here for the most part, of any stripe–do not adopt such an extreme view of faith out of intellectual curiosity or even spiritual need.  They do so to join a Program.  They want to be part of an army, marching in the cause of righteousness.  And for an army on the march to make any sense at all, there must be enemies to fight and victories to win.

None of which has anything to do with getting to heaven or living your own life according to a select set of principles.  It has to do with making changes in everything around you.  What would be the point of going to war, metaphorically or otherwise, if after you win you leave everything as it was before you marched?

We who disagree with these programs are defending ourselves in the most civilized way we can–by arguing over the justifications, the framework, and the legitimacy of the governing creeds.  We dissect Scripture and demonstrate that it is riddled with inconsistency, error, contradiction, and, by the way, a  lot  of bad advice in order to assert that those marching to change our lives do not  have the authority, much less the responsibility, to enact those changes.

What changes am I talking about?

Women, to put it as plainly as possible, are not chattel.  (more…)

What kinds of voters are we?  It’s hard to tell by looking what kind of candidates we elect.  After all, we usually only have two viable choices; we often hold our noses and vote for the “lesser of two evils.”   Many potential candidates never appear on the ballot, thanks to our horrifically corrupt political system, a system that requires a candidate to have corporate money in order to seen as viable by the corporate-owned media. It is a ludicrous and vicious circle. 

Even acknowledging the severely limited choices we have at the polls, how well do we vote? Do we prepare ourselves carefully before entering the voting booth?  Do we work hard to expose ourselves to a wide range of perspectives before voting or do we fall prey to the availability heuristic, voting on the basis of highly suspect political ads and intellectually vapid local “news”? Do most voters take time to carefully deliberate on the long-term risks and benefits of the political positions touted by the candidates?  Apparently not, based upon the ubiquity misleading attack ads that invite unreflective scorn rather than a deliberate consideration of the issues.

Another bit of evidence suggesting that many of us vote without enough preparation occurs whenever citizens vote for lesser known candidates and issues.  On numerous occasions, people have admitted to me that they voted for or against a particular candidate (or issue) about whom (which) they knew nothing at all.  In Missouri, this happens all the time when circuit judges seeking retention appear on the ballot.  People tell me that they voted for or against judges based simply on their names (which, admittedly, suggest gender and, very tenuously, ancestry). 

How else suggests the sorts of voters we are? 

I suspect that people make voting decision in about the same way they make the other important decisions in their lives.  People who are generally nonchalant or reckless in their ignorance probably tend to vote that way.  People who are well-informed in other aspects of their lives tend to be well-informed when voting.  I suspect, then, that we might get a reading about how we take care of our country as voters with about the same amount of care we exercise when we make decisions—often life and death decisions—in other important areas of our lives. 

I realize that I am treading in dangerous psychological territory. Perhaps I am violating the fundamental attribution error—the “inflated belief people have in the importance of personality traits and dispositions” (see