Mormons Win in California, For Now

Anyone who has been following the 2008/2009 contest of California's Proposition 8 (constitutional prohibition of marriage between people of the same sexual preference or same sexual identity) knows that it was submitted and promoted by Salt Lake City. The paper trail is clear. Arguably, Salt Lake City isn't even in California. But that was not the issue, because the Utah money did persuade California voters. Recently, the California Supreme Court upheld the amendment. But Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta posted Am I a Bad Person If I Think The Prop 8 Ruling Was Correct?. His point is that this ruling will make it harder for anti-gay activists the next time around. States are beginning to domino into accepting marriage between those of same gender much like they did for those of different races in the mid 20th century. Conservatives have a valuable role to play; they fear and resist change. They function as a drag anchor to force those who would move ahead to work out iron-clad methods before change is implemented. Our legal system therefore resists implementing anything new from the grass roots direction until it is acceptable to at least half of the voting population. Very frustrating, but a historical necessity. When the process is short-circuited, we get embarrassments such as the 18th and 23rd amendments to our Federal Constitution.

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Obama strikes all funding for abstinence-only sex education

As reported at Daily Kos:

Yesterday, President Obama struck a blow to the abstinence-only community, cutting ALL of their funding streams in his new 2010 budget. Obama made it clear that our government should no longer fund these failed programs that promote misinformation, misogyny, discrimination and, of course, juggling and cinder block wielding abstinence clowns.

Watch the videos posted at Daily Kos to get a real flavor for the opposition (Ms. Unruh), who repeatdly claims that babies are good, we need babies, and that birth control pills are attempts by the pharmaceutical companies to oppress women. She claims that using real birth control is an attempt to turn women into men.

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Pornography parity

I had no idea that pornography was this popular in America. People in the U.S. are voting with their feet, according to an article on pornography published by cracked.com:

A new pornographic video is being created every 39 minutes in the U.S. [I]n hotel chains that offer in-room X-rated content alongside major Hollywood releases, porn movie rentals represent 55 percent of the overall pay-per-view usage. . .

In 2005, there were approximately 425 films released in Hollywood, including a Star Wars prequel and a Harry Potter movie, with domestic grosses of $8.597 billion. That's very impressive. In 2006, the cumulative grosses for porn videos in the U.S., leveraging video sales, rentals, mobile phone content and Internet revenues--came out to... $8.65 billion.

You'll also find that adult sex terms are wildly popular on search engines. The search term "Obama" overtook the adult sex search terms for only 23 minute during the entire year, and that was on election day. Fascinating stuff.

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New report: Children exposed to pornography might get the impression that sex is pleasurable.

Is sex pleasurable? As I young teenager I had no idea, because the "sex education" I received from my school (and my nervous father) omitted that critical topic. I was given information that amounted to "plumbing," devoid of any social context. That's how it was back in the 60's for many of us. For personal historical reasons, then, I especially enjoyed this new report by Onion Network News: Study: Children Exposed To Pornography May Expect Sex To Be Enjoyable

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New regressive laws in Afghanistan

As reported by Marie Cocco at Alternet:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just signed a law that forces women to obey their husbands' sexual demands, keeps women from leaving the house -- even for work or school -- without a husband's permission, automatically grants child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers before mothers, and favors men in inheritance disputes and other legal matters. In short, the law again consigns Afghan women to lives of brutal repression. . .

The ugly truth is that Afghanistan has long been sliding back into the violent chaos that is friendly political ground for the Taliban and other extremist groups. Women have, as usual, been among the chief victims.

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