Far East Cynic

Even when its bad-its still pretty good. No matter where you get it.

Enough! Enough of the childish delight with which we destroy ourselves and each other over who we choose to have sex with. Here's a modest proposal: It's well past time we grow up, stop the carnage, and enjoy sex the way God intended……..

I want to suggest that sex, be it adulterous or premarital or deviant or polyamorous, is a good thing, not a bad thing, and that sex itself is the moment of grace. And that our sterile idea of perfection is the actual sin. To start with the subject on the table, adultery is a brave rebellion against the invisible prison we build for ourselves. When the sad little man Larry Craig widened his stance in that airport bathroom, it was probably the most honest and courageous act of his life. When Clinton got that blowjob in the White House, he wasn't indulging a weakness (and an eager intern) but enacting the hero's journey of reconciling inner and outer, risking all to break through the wall of hypocritical purity he had spent years building and projecting to the world in the effort to get elected. By risking martyrdom, in fact, he lifted himself up into an exaltation we still refuse to understand. He was the Martyred Jesus of Oral Sex with Interns and all we see is a mean little sin, as all the sexual deviates pretending to be puritans gathered around in an orgy of denunciation and scandal. In our condemnation, we focus on the supposedly broken vows and the supposed pain of his wife when in fact we know nothing of his wife's true feelings or her knowledge and tolerance of his "frisky" side (frisky being one of the endless array of demeaning expressions we use as invisible prison bars, along with dog and pig and you only want one thing). We never consider that our reaction is the punishment and the meanness is all in our eyes. Every single time we play out this ritual, we replay the Old Testament rite in which the pious transferred their sins to goats, which were then driven into the wilderness, just as we drive David Petraeus and a parade of other scapegoats out the gates of our smug little village of lies in the hope that we can put the "sin" outside the gate — when it is, of course, always inside. That's what happens when you put up gates. 

What we're afraid of is the truth. We live in a world in which men and women are buried up to their necks and stoned to death for these same impulses. We recoil at such barbarism with smug assertions of our superior level of civilization while cheerfully meting out our own version of punishment for the same supposed crime — anything to avoid looking at the deeper questions of why adultery exists and what exactly all our endless sexual prohibitions and inhibitions are supposed to do for us. Because if they are there to stabilize the family or inhibit sexually compulsive perversions or avoid the conflicts attendant in jealousy, they're failing spectacularly and they always have. 

In fact, the opposite is true. Our prohibitions against sex cause perversion, and the prison walls we put up around our marriages cause adultery. That is why adultery is merely the physical enactment of the truth men and women hide for long miserable years, a glorious terrifying truth that bursts through all our barriers if we have the vitality to rebel — if we have any vitality left after all the social and personal castration that we enact every single day of our miserable slavish self-denying lives. There's a sign on my veterinarian's wall that says, WE ALL NEED A DOG TO WORSHIP US AND A CAT TO BRING US BACK TO REALITY. Those are the mutually destructive roles our society has given to the husbands and wives who assume the prisoner/prison-guard roles in marriage. Let's be honest, we have a long and inglorious social history that essentially reduces women to marital prostitutes who buster their battered dignity with the drab consolation of fidelity. But when those wives and husbands take up the role of the cat that brings us back down to reality, when they refuse their spouse's need for worship and celebration, then, in the immortal words of Malcolm Lowry, the lighthouse invites the storm.

When even the Taiwanese go after you. My friends over at NMA have decided to make a video about the Petreaus Scandal:

I still say-it's all Mrs Petreaus' fault. Either hack the program-or be gone. Funny, no one ever asks that obvious question.

For 40 million British pounds-who cares?

It would seem there could be a wealthy future out there for me……if I could just make the short list.

Gigi Chao, daughter of property tycoon Cecil Chao, entered a civil partnership with her girlfriend of seven years in a ceremony in Paris five months ago.

But Mr Chao, 76, has told the South China Morning Post that reports of his daughter's civil ceremony were "false". He announced the HK$500 million dowry earlier this week.

It has sparked a deluge of offers. Speaking on Thursday Ms Chao, 33, said she had received about 200 proposals and that the number of people following her on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook had jumped by 1,500 since her father's announcement.

"People are contacting me on Facebook, by email, on Twitter. It's ridiculous. I can't sort out the serious proposals from the half-hearted ones. I can't make head or tail of it," she told The Daily Telegraph.

Ms Chao, an executive director of her father's company, Cheuk Nang, said that in addition to receiving enquiries from gentlemen who say they are looking for love and ask her out on a date, she has received some introductions that are less conventional.

I'll bet they were. So now the problem would appear to be, "how to get noticed in the noise". Of course, marriage never seemed to be a prerequisite for her father, who by all accounts: "has never married and once claimed to have had "intimate relations" with about 10,000 women."

Now that's a record to aspire to!

WARNING NOTICE! What follows here is very much at odds with what Americans consider to be "conventional morality".  If frank discussion of relationships-with an eye toward advocating the destruction of traditional monogamy and marriage bothers you-you might want to take a pass.

"Pamela didn't believe in the least in Victor's morality. She thought the whole thing altogether a cramping nonsense, that kept two deserving people from giving each other pleasure."

That paraphrase of a line from Winds of War, one of my favorite books, probably constitutes the best short summary of the view of relationships that I have evolved into in 30 some years. It is hard to believe that as for a less than brief period of time as a young man-I actually labored under the fear of the idea that pre-marital sex was somehow "wrong", and I struggled to reconcile how  I felt physically with what a misguided part of of society told me I was supposed to believe. That sex would only be "special" with only one person. And that I was somehow "weak" for giving into what were perfectly normal physical desires.

Of course some 20 years of being around that peculiar specimen of womanhood, "Americanus bitchius"-and watching the prime years of your sexual virility go passing by , without taking the necessary ( in hindsight) steps to right that great wrong-conditions one to a better way of thinking. And while I did my best to make up for lost time during the pas dozen years or so-I cringe when I think of all the passion I could have been experiencing, while the other parts of me were more than poised to help me enjoy it.  Thankfully the physical capability remains-and even if someday it requires a chemical assistance ( God bless the makers of Cialis, Viagra and Levritra). I still think back to the marathon sessions the ex and I had when I we were first married ( and childless)-would that I can repeat them now. Of course in hindsight-it was clear the ex was simply using that sexual bribe as a way to prep me for her long term plan to avoids contributing to the working and monetary relationship, using the birth of the children as an excuse to avoid wifely responsibilities that would continue for some time to come. Thankfully those days are over? ( or are they?).

What will follow over the next couple of days are my views of relationships between men and women-and my continued inability to understand why people in general, and Americans in particular, allow themselves to be so constrained when in fact-given the advances in medicine and technology we should be witnessing the ultimate expression of happiness of people as individuals and sexual beings. What was the point of the sexual revolution if not to pave the path for that?

The prompt for this outpouring of emotional sentiment. My ongoing love/hate relationship with a book I bought-called the Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. Love-because I am enthralled by the prospect of chucking it all to pursue a totally different course and hate because I don't think her prescriptions are radical enough surgery. She is, in my opinion, tinkering around the edges-while not getting to the heart of what makes people really happy. Namely the idea that they-and they alone-have the right to determine what they will do and what will make them happy.

Now Rubin acknowledges that like we all do-there are responsibilities that tie us down. I know all too well about that!

But I do like her twelve commandments:

1. Be Skippy.

2. Let it go. 

3. Act the way I want to feel.

4. Do it now. 

5. Be polite and be fair.

6. Enjoy the process.

7. Spend out.

8. Identify the problem.

9. Lighten up.

10. Do what ought to be done.

11. No calculation.

12. There is only love.

In a couple of days I will have a post about what I think are the "levels in relationships" and how I think every relationship plateaus. Those that survive learn to live with the plateau-many do not, and even many that appear to, are simply the choice of the lesser of equally bad alternatives. This situation is foisted on us by antiquated values, a refusal to recognize individual happiness as being more important than collective happiness and finally, our clinging to an antiquated institution, marriage, that out lived its usefulness a long time ago.

You probably won't agree with many of the points of view I write. But it makes me feel quite liberated to set these long repressed thoughts down. And so I shall-regardless of what the more prudish elements of our world will tend to think.

The Secretary of State wants to unwind a bit swigging some beer in a Columbian hot spot. And that's OK.

But a hard working member of the military or a Secret Service Agent wants to drink  a few beers and slice off a nice guilt free piece of Columbian tuna-and THAT's somehow a big deal.

Hillary only wishes she had tits and a bubble butt like this!

RIIIGHTTTTTTT!

Double f*cking standard if you ask me.

Moral of the story:

1) Chicks always get away with more than men.

2) ALWAYS pay the girl!

3) Don't go on liberty with the other guys.

4) Curfews suck!

5) The whole morality thing has gotten out of hand.

Because the more I read the stupidity of most so called "conservative" commenters on the subject of having insurance companies do their job-the angrier I get. If you want yet another example of why America is failing-and stupidity is rampant-go here.  If you want yet another reason why I am down on American politics, and remain fundamentally disappointed in the land of my birth's inability to rise to it's potential-this stupid and ignorant argument about contraception is it.

Let's go over the basics again, shall we?

This is not a new rule. It was in effect during the entire Bush administration-actually about 12 years now. And most Catholic hospitals have been complying.  In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn’t provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees Employers that don’t offer prescription coverage or don’t offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC’s interpretation of the law, you can’t offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.

Instead of re-evaluating its attempt to turn contraception into a wedge issue—after all, Fox News (yes that Fox News) published a poll that found 61% of Americans approve of “requiring employer health plans to cover birth control for women.” —the GOP, led by Missouri Senator Roy Blunt (R-Crazytown) has decided to double-down on the War on Women. Blunt has introduced an amendment to the PPACA which would allow employers to deny any preventive health services (including breast cancer screening, depression screening, and diabetes screening), under the guise of religious freedom and respecting the right of conscience of insurers, plan sponsors and healthcare providers, among others. Apparently, that’s the new meme: Insurance companies are now having their religious freedom infringed. Somebody save them!

And I am the one who gets accused of being a misogynist. 

The point here is simple. While birth control costs more than nothing, it costs less than an abortion and much less than having a baby. From a social point of view, unless we're not going to subsidize consumption of health care services at all (which would be a really drastic change from the status quo) then it makes a ton of sense to heavily subsidize contraceptives. Now of course sometimes the economically rational course of action (kill everyone in Alberta and steal their oil) is immoral (killing is wrong) and therefore we don't do it. But just on the dollars and cents subsidizing birth control is a no-brainer. The unfortunate thing is that under the American setup the subsidies tend to be passed through the employer, which has set the stage for this controversy.

And its really sad-because I admire the Catholic Church on so many things. But I won't go with them on this.  Especially since the church's teachings on sex are totally screwed up.

The President offered up a rhetorical solution in response to their rhetorical freak-out over language in a new health insurance rule and the fiction that their objection was about religious freedom was exposed as bullshit. They could walk away, but instead they are pumping up the volume to keep the issue alive. It is a political play that has more to do with Republican politics than almost anything else.

The Bishops are demanding an end to any rule that requires any insurance company to cover any contraception or family planning as basic health issues for women. This is just the latest iteration of a centuries old objection to women having control of their bodies, their lives, their happiness and their liberty by the conservative power-focused elites running the Roman Catholic Church. This objection manifests itself in screeds against anything that treats sex as an activity separate from breeding and/or free from the dictates of Church Law.

And yet, I don’t think this latest play is about sex or even the Church trying to control the lives of women—I think it is about power and that sex, women, gay marriage and a host of other culture warrior issues are the pathway that they see as the golden road.

For anybody who has looked at the history of the Catholic Church (and any organized religion for that matter) a key part of their activities over time becomes how to maintain power, privilege and influence—and all the goodies that come with it. Eventually that is all that matters for the institution. The greatest success in this effort always comes when political leaders bow to the dictates of the Holy Roman Church and agree to make State Law subservient to Church Law. Back in the days of Kings and Queens you only had a handful of elites you had to work with and the mutual pursuit of power inspired many of them to treat Church Law as State Law. It worked for a long while and then came the Reformation, Protestantism, King Henry, the Enlightenment, Democracy and eventually a desire by more and more people to make their laws free of religion and the dictates of any Church.

The United States of America was founded on the belief that Church and State are separate and that the Laws of this Nation trump the laws of any religion—including the Roman Catholic Church. As you can imagine, this has made the conservative wing of the Catholic Church quite sad. For over a century they have been on the losing end of many political fights—especially when it comes to women in America. The Church opposed suffrage for women and any effort over the years that might free women from the Church sanctioned role of breeder. The Church has fought every form of contraception and lost most battles. They also have lost the battle of finding any American politician who was willing to embrace the idea that US Law should be subservient to Church Law—until now.

Living here in Europe where they have national health insurance-and thus what is covered or not is none of the church's business-the issue seems even more ludicrous. If the US had a national health insurance program this would be a non-issue. But don't kid yourself, this is just the beginning, the moral lunatics will extend the rules to other venues, end of life care being the one that most readily comes to mind. Fuck that.

 

I don’t watch Meet the Republicans, This Week with the GOP or any of the other Sunday shows, but reliable sources report that Jack Lew went on Face the Conservatives and State of the Right Wing with Candy Crowley yesterday and told the bishops that clowntime is over:

 

Mr. Lew said the president put out a solid plan, and when asked whether there is more room for compromising said, “No. This is our plan.”

 

In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Lew said, “We’re going to go ahead and implement it.” He said the White House has “broad consensus – not universal consensus – that this is an approach that’s right.”

 

Rick Santorum was on next, and his face got red as he cried, bunched up his little fists and pounded the table saying that in his ideal world women would be constantly pregnant, but until he can raise up his new caliphate, he’ll accept that sluts can take their shame to a pharmacy and get the pill, but those roundheels should have to pay for it. Or words to that effect.

And is it just me, or do any of you detect a bit of a post-coital flush coloring Mitch McConnell’s pronouncement on Bob Scheiffer’s Old Man Show that not only Catholics, but any employer, should be able to decide not to pay for contraception as long as they dispense Viagra like a holy sacrament? My guess is that Mitch just renewed his Rx for the little blue pill for free on his Congressional health plan.

Insurance companies are supposed to be bill payers-nothing more. When you empower them to make value judgments on peoples lives-you are doing nothing but giving them yet another excuse to fuck people over. The religious conservatives are advocating a  fantastically broad standard – including the "toll on others" who have nothing to do with the Catholic organizations at all but who might just infer that contraception is OK – essentially ending any idea of the law as a neutral means for citizens with radically different moral views to choose for themselves what is good or bad. The law must reflect morality and that morality must be based on Catholic "natural law" . The stupidity and basic immorality of that position should be plainly evident to anyone with a brain.

Of course by that standard-just about all tea party supporters are not included. Since they lost the ability to think cognitively a long time ago-as evidenced by their support for Santorum and this stupid position.

Commenter Cupajoe wanted a rant against marriage. By amazing coincidence-I'm feeling right down on that subject tonight. Ask,  and ye shall receive:

Lovingly stolen from Expat at Large!

Sorry baby-I’d love to please you but……………..

The human papillomavirus — more commonly known as HPV — causes more oropharyngeal cancers than tobacco and alcohol use, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

“This is important because previously HPV was thought to be one of the risk factors for this type of cancer along with tobacco and alcohol use, and now we know that it is the leading cause of this type of cancer,” said Dr. Aimee Kreimer, a professor at the National Cancer Institute and one of the study’s authors.

Oral HPV is transmitted during oral sex and people with multiple oral sex partners are at the greatest risk for contracting the disease, said Kreimer.

Study participants who reported having more than six oral sex partners in their lifetime were 8.6 times more likely to develop the HPV-linked cancer, the study showed.

So much for tastes great-less filling.

Truly,  a revolting development.

Is useless on a Monday when deadlines are near. The S.O. came up on the short end of the stick-again. However, in my defense-I did buy her earrings and a ring in Bahrain……………

And we have seen zero gratitude for that!

Then again-before women start whining-remind them how lucky they are not be living in ancient Rome!

From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics “were drunk. They were naked,” says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival – or longer, if the match was right.

It should be no surprise to any regular readers here, that when it comes to sex-I am very open minded and take a pretty liberal view point when it comes to the age old question of “How much is enough?” ( Answer: There is no such thing as ‘enough sex’). So it should come as no surprise that I have pretty ambivalent feelings about the supposed misdeeds of Representative Lee-who, it would appear, seems to have a thankless wife at home not performing her wifely duties, in near sufficient quantities it would seem. That’s hardly surprising since Congressmen are in the end also human beings-and subject to the same afflictions and peculiarly American hang-ups concerning sex. Unlike other great nations on the planet-America with its warped view of sexuality provides no useful alternatives, thus forcing men like the good Rep Lee to resort to eminently traceable means such as Craigslist-which proved to be his undoing.

Imagine if we actually faced up to the problem and took a more practical view of sex and sexuality, and actually moved forward from our cramped and confining views of marriage and partnership? Think of the talent that could be harnessed-given that the it appears the Congressman seemed how to know how to do his day job. For people who complain about getting the government off our our backs, they seem to turn a blind eye to telling people how to live their personal lives. Which makes them complete hypocrites IMHO. Before anyone goes high and right-live through the hell that is a sexless marriage, and then maybe, just maybe, you might have some frame of reference.

Thus I am passing along this post from John Coles place that examines this dichotomy in more detail:

Like Humans Do

by mistermix

Chris Lee is a skeezy cheater, and a hypocrite, but he’s also another reminder of the waste and pain caused by our contradictory, one-sided and archaic views of marital fidelity.(emphasis mine-SS).

Any regular Dan Savage reader/listener knows that one of his most common caller/writer is one part of a married couple who’s sexually frustrated. Usually there are children involved. Often, this person knew that they were sexually incompatible when they married, but was hoping things would change. Usually, their marriage is under a sexual death penalty: if there’s an affair, there’s a divorce.

This kind of call or letter is pretty boring because there’s really no solution accepted by mainstream society. Most of these marriages would be a hell of a lot better if the sexually unsatisfied partner had a discreet affair, but that puts the other partner in a socially untenable situation. “Open marriage” is something for dirty hippies or sleazy swingers, not an upstanding member of society. And, since the first stop for marital therapy is often a pastor or priest, it’s very unlikely that the open option will even be broached.

So, instead of negotiating an outlet, these marriages move on to a badly executed affair, tears, recriminations and, usually, divorce. The cheated-on member of the pair has the moral and legal high ground, they’re under intense social pressure to make the cheater pay, and by the time the cheating happens, the cheater’s resentment over their lack of satisfaction has probably already poisoned the well.

If we want to do something about the high divorce rate, we might want to get real about making sexual satisfaction a precursor to marriage, and also about the role of a discreet, mutually agreed-upon affair as a safety valve. Of course, religion and social norms rule that out-of-bounds. That’s too bad, because the only person more miserable that Mr. and Mrs. Chris Lee this morning is their little boy, a kid who’s in a world of hurt that might have been avoided if mom and dad had been able to negotiate a piece on the side.

Maybe there is a business opportunity here for me-opening the US franchises of well known freelancer bars!

To be holed up inside the house because of this:

I needed the time to get caught up on this project. I spent most of the weekend holed up in my “man cave” writing draft after draft of a proposal and taking the occasional break to bang my head against the wall.

It is not that the work is that hard-but it is quite serious. In a lot of ways, the defense contracting business is similar to the world’s oldest profession. How to figure out how to get as much ass in your service-for the lowest possible price the market will bear.

Except, these are real people we are talking about here-and no matter how this turns out, real people are going to get screwed. People I know personally ( and possibly myself), and don’t deserve this kind of disrespect.

So this project weighs on me a lot. I know we have to get it right-and in a normal world we would have well over 60 days to so. With that kind of time this would be a relatively straightforward task and the weekends would be free.

But not our erstwhile task master. Who thinks its a good idea to staff a multi million dollar project in less than two weeks? I don’t-and I don’t know anyone else in the trenches who thinks it is either.

But such is the world we live in.

Snow keeps the phone from ringing-and that’s a good thing. Back to the salt mine……………

Or how it moves through the ocean?

The ancient debate continues:

 The consensus appears to be that while the stereotype of black-big, white-medium, Asian-small penises may have a bit of truth in it on average, individual male members’ dimensions vary far more. (Women who are tempted to say they can confirm a definite difference between races should first ask themselves what sample size a scientific survey would need to be statistically credible, and whether they wish to declare themselves to be, in essence, highly seasoned Wanchai hookers.)

I’m going to have to remember that line-I can think of at least a couple of times when it might come in handy.

I stumbled across this article the other day. I suspect it will be more than a little controversial-but I liked it because it echoes some of my own feelings about the mental damage the the “sex is holy” attitude inflicts upon so many people. You might  not realize it, but in my youth I was much more of a black and white person than I am today. And I clearly allowed myself to be made to feel guilty about things that required no such feelings. That twisted mindset caused  me to miss a lot of opportunities that I should have acted on. Fortunately, I was given a second chance in my 40′s-and I made up for a lot of lost time.

Notice too-the author is not saying that sex is not powerful, and that teenagers should not be wary of the consequences. However, the mindset that teaching abistence only does anything appreciable to reduce sexual activity is just crazy. So here now is this little article for your enjoyment:

Bristol Palin And The Trouble With Christian Sex

As part of Bristol Palin’s role as a born-again champion of abstinence, she recently wrapped up filming an episode of ABC’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, in which she plays the friend of another young single mother. Look for the episode to air this summer, but look for the Palin family’s hubris to air nonstop before, during, and after then.

While Bristol seems much sweeter than the rest of that clan, that arrogantly church-going family reminds me of three fundamental problems that arise from traditional Biblical instruction on sex.

Forget the tired notion that Christians are “against” sex. They’re as wildly for it as anyone; that’s what got Bristol into trouble. Christians simply have an idealized notion of sex and relationships, one that’s increasingly divorced from the reality and the direction of the larger society.

I speak, of course, of mainstream and conservative Christians, who struggle more nervously than others with three fundamental problems that arise from Biblical sexual instruction.

1. Its rules weren’t intended for modern society.
Whether the human body developed gradually over millions of years or suddenly around six millenia ago, God or Mother Nature installed sexual plumbing that slips noisily into gear around age 13 and keeps churning noisily for decades. Yet human society has developed in ways that increasingly delay marriage till 30-something. The body and mind are hardly silly to rebel.

The focus on abstinence, on “presenting one’s body as a holy and living sacrifice to God” (to use Paul’s term), is in 2010 a great way to never meet that special someone. Christianity is so fearful of experimentation on the part of singles that it encourages passivity instead. The notion is that “God will deliver the right person in His perfect timing. I shouldn’t upset His plans or force His hand and get into inappropriate entanglements.” Given that marriage is being delayed more than ever, it’s little wonder that many quality people that I knew in church have moved into middle age solo, against their will and better judgment and deepest longings. And it’s little wonder that some of those who married did so with people outside the church.

2. It promises more than it can deliver.
It criticizes all premarital liaisons as dangerous or at least misguided, and it pooh-poohs any possibility of even some redeeming or meaningful engagement with another human being. And it sets the marital bed up as a far greater good. This leads to the common complaint of various married Christian friends, which is that married sex isn’t what it was cracked up to be. Distress over the mundaneness of it all, anger at the lack of interest on the part of a spouse, and curiosity about what else may have been out there prior to marriage may not be terribly different from what anyone else feels. But Christians’ sense of disappointment is more real and palpable.

At some level, the notion that abstinence in singleness will lead to maximum joy in marriage is a microcosm of the idea that if you show restraint on earth you will have boundless joy in the afterlife. And there are many who, based on how they found the former notion to be untrue, worry about the latter being a bit trumped up, too.

3. It encourages bad faith, not integrity or maturity.
While Christian instruction makes some believers passive, as noted above, it makes others into liars, deceptive to themselves and others.

Given that Sarah Palin has always championed abstinence-only approaches for sex ed, how did Bristol not heed the message? One of numerous studies helps us make sense of it:
the Washington Post reported in 2005 that “although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms* and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex,” according to researchers from Yale and Columbia Universities.”

*Hello, Bristol!

Within a contemporary church, you will discover many committed couples who break traditional bounds of romance while pretending to be chaste. They stay overnight, for example, grinding their way past every boundary short of intercourse. I believe Calvin would have had them flogged in Geneva, and I suspect God would have told them to quit the BS and just go ahead and use a condom instead of attempting to play coy.

Theological and ecclesiastical authorities will say that this isn’t what Biblical instruction intends and shouldn’t even be cited as an example of Christian conduct. But few will concede that sex is complicated, and that sometimes the unmarried couple that enjoys sex responsibly but which later breaks up may be healthier than the ones who rationalize loopholes.

There is also the issue of premature marriage. Go back to the huge gap between puberty and marriage that arises due to social changes that extend adolescence longer than ever before. Combine this with Paul’s admonitions that “it is better to marry than to burn,” and far too many devout Christian singles end up getting married before they are emotionally mature. They want the sex now, and marriage is the only way they can get it in a way that they think God can bless. So they marry just after graduation from their Christian college, well before they know what they want in a relationship or can bring to it. This is bad faith, and it is thus small wonder that the divorce rate for Christians is roughly the same as for those who don’t live by the Bible’s demanding standards.

If there is a God, I imagine he or she cares more about emotional health than about rigid rules (“the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”). And the various rationalizations and loopholes of true believers can in many cases move them farther from, not closer to, emotional health and an integrated view of reality.

There are various scholars, particularly many feminists, who have dismissed the Christian view of sex in an unflattering or distorted light. I can think, for example, of Karen Armstrong, the bitter ex-nun who makes it her calling to insist, oddly, that Muslims are far more progressive about sex than Christians.

But Christians, from Bristol Palin to Jimmy Swaggart, love them their sex, or at least their idealized concept of what sex should look like. That’s what causes the three major troubles listed above. And that seems to beg for greater discussion in America’s churches.

Rob Asghar’s Lessons from the Holy Wars, a journey from Islam to Christianity to a more open spirituality, is available now at Amazon.

I was at lunch with a co-worker yesterday. As it happened I was eating an oyster Po-boy sandwich when Tiger woods speech came on the television in the restaurant / bar we were eating at.

The sound was turned down but it sure seemed like it went on for a hell of a lot longer than it should have gone.

I still feel that Tiger should confine his “apology” to just three words: LICK MY ASS!

Tiger Woods has the misfortune to be living in the wrong country-had this been Europe, there would have a polite “ho hum” when it was revealed that he had a mistress or two-and then all would have gotten on with more important pursuits.

But not here-here where sexual hypocrisy is the rule of the day-Tiger has to grovel on TV. And we still have never gotten the answer to the most burning question of this affair-what was Mrs. Woods doing to hack the program at home?

Repeat after me, everyone. “You. Can’t. Be. Addicted. To. A. Biological. Imperative.” It just isn’t done.

Have you ever heard somebody complain that they’re taking too much air for their own good? Same principle applies.

By the way, if you honestly believe that you’re addicted to pussy, you can save yourself five weeks and forty thousand dollars by slamming a car door on your penis. That’s sure to work, certainly better than Cunt Rehab with Dr. Fucking Drew will. 

Here is what Tiger should have said.

H/T to my Canadian Counterpart!