Saturday, August 29, 2009

Obvious, once you think of it that way.

There are two good reasons many people don’t want sex:

1) they don’t expect to enjoy it,

or

2) they’re not getting along with their partner.

When one or both of these are true, low desire is healthy, not something to fix.
— Dr. Marty Klein

Monday, August 10, 2009

Crush the Fascist Serpent?

Saw this banner at the Pride Parade back in June and naturally it interested me. (Just in case you can't read the "tagger style" writing, it says "Life Begins When You Stand Up to Christian Fascists.") Many people I admire (Spengler, Junger, Pius XII, and just about every self-identified National Bolshevik) has been attacked as "fascist" and now my faith was fascist too. Unfortunately, it was just a banner, no flyer explaining who they were or what they were up to, and they passed by too quickly for me to ask any of them what it was about.



Imagine my delight when I ran into a fellow with a smaller banner with the same wording at the Bughouse Square Debates a few weeks later. Having no shame, and a 'satiable curiosity, I went right over and asked the fellow about it. He asserted without hesitation that the government of this country was a virtual hostage to "Christian elements." He cited as proof of this the continued opposition to "marriage equality," the "assault on the sovereignty of women's bodies," and the fact that Obama had recently appointed Joshua DuBois, associate pastor of a Massachusetts Pentecostal church, to head the President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Well, a Christian heading the office of Faith-Based something-or-other — surely that's inappropriate!

Almost certain that the din in the back-ground was not the traffic on Clark Street, but the approach of jack-booted legions of clean-living Pat Boone types coming to take away my sacred right to free love and sedition, I asked the fellow, "How do you figure that Christians are imposing their morality on us; seems like you secular fellows have been getting your own way on the abortion issue since 1973."

"Well — abortion is a right!"

"Even late-term abortion? Even if a majority of Americans oppose it?"

"You can't tell a woman what to do with her body!"

"So then, you don't trust the democratic process to sort this out?"

'When you're taking away people's rights; that's just mob rule!"

"Okay — what about that guy in Wisconsin that had his pharmacist license suspended because he wouldn't dispense birth-control. Do you think the state has a right to coerce people to do things that violate their religious beliefs?

"He wasn't doing his job. Dispensing contraception is part of being a pharmacist!"

"So, you're anti-democratic on abortion, and you favor coercing people to violate their conscience ..."

"Yeah ..."

"But the threat to this country is Christian fascism?"

"That's right!"

Saturday, August 8, 2009

What did she expect?


"It'll spice things up."
"It will add a new dimension to our marriage."
"Aren't you big enough to love more than one person?"
"If it doesn't work out, then we can go back to the sway things were."