I simply do not understand some people’s attitudes towards sex. I’m a fairly conservative guy in that department, I thought, happily involved in a long term and conventional relationship, but these stories I’m hearing about the new breed of American puritanism are simply incomprehensible to me. This Kansas law to criminalize consensual amorous activities between teenagers sounds so freakily Talibanish to me.
While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline’s written interpretation of Kansas’ reporting law makes it the only state requiring that doctors, nurses, counselors, and all other care providers report—as abuse—any sexual interaction between teens under 16. Failure to report is a misdemeanor. Under Kline’s view, professionals must report even when the sex is consensual, committed with partners their age, and where there is no suspicion of injury. The plaintiffs who filed suit—a group of doctors, nurses, and counselors—contend that under Kline’s policy, even evidence of teen necking must be reported.
Then there’s this weird new commenter on this site: start here and read down, looking for comments by “B”. He has the most convoluted rationale for opposing any kind of contraception that I’ve ever heard. Apparently, you’re only supposed to have sex if there is some chance, no matter how remote, of the woman getting pregnant. You can reduce the odds by ‘natural’ methods, but there always has to be this lingering possibility…it’s sex as Russian roulette. It’s not worth doing unless there’s a round in one chamber.
I AM saying that people should always have sex that provides for the possibility of new life. Using artificial contraception removes that possibility. Therefore the act becomes solely for pleasure. Using someone to merely satisfy your own means is wrong. It’s so wrong, in fact, that people don’t even need to be told that it’s wrong.
That’s completely backwards. People having a good time together is perfectly normal and natural, and you have to be indoctrinated into believing it is wrong.
Here, for instance, is a perfect example of an irrationally warped attitude.
…harming yourself and your loved one by using artificial contraception to avoid said pregnancy is not healthy.
I think Mr B really needs to move to Kansas, unless he’s already there.
Wasn’t it Mencken who said that Puritanism was the suspicion that someone, somewhere, might be having some fun?
It’s all about control. Control and obsessing over other people’s sex lives — the only “guilt-free” way to think about sex a lot if you have a religious conviction that sex is bad.
“It’s so wrong, in fact, that people don’t even need to be told that it’s wrong.”
Good, then go away! LOL.
I think we should privatize the punishment of this action. And that punishment should be a long conversation with your parents…
…Then again, considering that Mr. B might be a parent, maybe that’s too harsh.
The sad thing is that it’s very counter-productive. Not only will their teenagers have just as much sex as the “liberal” teenagers who’ve been educated about sex, but those teens will have more STDs, more pregnancies, more abortions and will suffer from more sex problems like fetishes and performance issues than their more liberally educated peers.
It’s sad, really.
Love of sex originally evolved to facilitate reproduction; now, we can take the quintessentially un-Darwinian decision to get the pleasure without the consequences. One thing is for sure, though – laws etc should not be left in the hands of fundamentalists or other crackpots.
I’ve been a lot more peaceful since I decided a few years ago to stop arguing with people had beliefs so random they might as well have been arrived at through MadLibs.
“We should prohibit ______ (verb), because it’s not _______ (adverb)…”
Any kind of weirdness/puritanism you see in Christianity is nothing in comparison to Islam…e.g.
“At the beginning of sexual intercourse, pronounce the name of God by reciting “Bismillah” and recite the Takbir and Tahlil after Chapter Ikhlas and say ‘O God, if Thou takest out semen from my back, make it a good issue.’ ”
This statue fails immediately under doctor-patient privilege. I don’t see it even getting past the first preliminary hearing if any DA is enough of an asshole to try to enforce it.
-jcr
What if you have had a hysterectomy?
This “B” guy sounds like a devout Catholic except that he apparently disdains even the Church-approved Natural Family Planning (NFP is the current name of an improved version of the “rhythm method”).
As for God’s plan for man and woman and pregnancy, the numbers of fertilized eggs (humans! humans!) that never implant or spontaneously abort mean that God is the busiest abortionist in the universe.
Zeno is on it perfectly.
Kansas has always been this way. They seriously surpass Utah sometimes. It must be something about the vast expanse of nothingness that people need to find things to do, and people to annoy. Maybe that’s harsh, but come on.
I’ld place good money on a bet that they’re still trying to ban felatio.
as intelligent people move to more urban areas, the rural areas become more ignorant, more fundamentalist, is my guess.
I’ve often thought this sort of argument (commentator B) should be taken to its logical extreme. Okay, it’s bad to have sex if there’s no chance of conceiving a child. So it’s bad to have fun with someone of the opposite sex without some chance of conceiving a child. Hey, every time I meet a guy and don’t have sex with him, I’ve lost an opportunity to conceive a child! In fact, every moment spent not having sex is a child that doesn’t have a chance to be born! So we should have as much sex as possible at every possible opportunity to give every possible child every possible chance at being conceived!
So by the fundies’ own logic, we need to be having as much sex as possible, right? Otherwise think about those poor unconceived children who will never be born. Yeah, ummmm….
Just to back up Zeno, I recall from my Catholic school education a class called “Christian Relationships” that specifically taught that the possibility for procreation (between married couples – of course) was required for sex to be according to god’s plan. My wife and I actually attended “marriage prep” within the church where an hour seminar was devoted to NFP. The couple that gave it were marvels of self-dillusion. As in, “NFP works! We use it and we only have 5 kids!” Idiots. Always looking for god’s loopholes.
What he’s saying is just basic Catholic doctrine. Sex is about the act of reproduction, or else its “objectively disordered” or something.
Since one of the few things that is selected for in each and every generation is the propensity to get it on, the Puritans are definitely trying to make water run uphill. In fact, having sex for pleasure and companionship is a deeply human trait, which distinguishes us from most of the brute beasts who only have sex to reproduce.
don’t forget…you can twist religious idiocy to mean almost anything, because it’s freaking made up.
I think this horrible crime of necking should be punished by a sit down talk with the convicted’s parents about the birds and the bees.
…Or maybe not. I have a sneaking suspicion that this B guy is a parent. But I could be wrong. He could be some virgin in a basement.
Qulmlea: Great logic ;O) I’ve had similar thoughts, and seriously considered putting them in a t-shirt counter-slogan… “Abstinence kills a pre-conceived child” or something to that effect.
On a more serious note, I can see how B’s approach is also a nice foundation for the condemnation of homosexuality. Since there is no way homosexual acts can lead to procreation, they MUST be ungodly. The rational is probably that it is worth causing some inconvenience to heterosexuals to provide for a ‘water tight’ argument along those lines.
B’s argument is patently ridiculous. What does he/she say to women past menopause or infertile couples? Should they refrain from sex for the rest of their lives even if they are in a married relationship?
You know how this twisted logic plays out in the real world? When I was growing up in Scotland, I heard tales of Catholic boys refusing to wear a condom to have sex because their church forbade it. Yet apparently it was okay to have sex in the first place, so long as the girl was on the pill.
By the way, it’s not just Catholics who would poke tiny little holes in condoms. I know of a fundamentalist protestant couple who are probably on his 13th or 14th kid right about now.
Zeno – A lot of conservative Catholics have problems even with NFP.
speaking of twisted logic and the real world, tacitus, the Catholic Church is actively attempting to suppress condom use in areas of the world with high HIV prevalence, such as Haiti.
I guess in their (and B’s) eyes, protecting yourself against a deadly disease is selfish. Having unprotected sex, regardless of your HIV status–apparently, not so much.
A large subject.
I’m sad to say that Sweden lately adopted a 15 year limit, even though we know that youngsters start exploring sex at age 10-12 nowadays. Of course, the courts seems to not bother if the couple is of nearly the same age.
Since there are seriously sexual animals like dolphins or bononos who successfully use it for bonding and pleasure, we could take a hint and be more relaxed about it in our own culture too.
Which reminds me, I think I saw an article that says that the number of animals where homosexual behaviour has been observed now numbers ~ 1 500. Say again, why is gay marriage threatening and unnatural?
And I can’t leave without (again) relating the most funny thing I’ve ever read:
Somewhere I picked up a US gentlemens (ie soft porn) magazine. (What can I say, I’m human and I breath.) It had this letter, maybe faked but hilarious anyway, from a young girl who claimed she stayed prudently virgin by practising oral and anal sex instead. :-) This was before anal sex become commonplace, and was considered advanced believe it or not, so I had a lengthy laugh at the time.
Why do I get the sense that B’s use of a schoolyard bully as an analogy for nonprocreative sex tells us something about B’s psychology?
“B’s argument is patently ridiculous. What does he/she say to women past menopause or infertile couples? Should they refrain from sex for the rest of their lives even if they are in a married relationship?”
The official position of the Catholic Church on sterile and infertile couples is that they can get it on anyway and one hopes for a miracle. Apparently god is capable of making the sterile fertile with miracles, but not making same-sex coupling procreative. Odd God, isn’t he?
The thing that makes sex-with-other-people so much fun, at least for some of us, is being an integral part of someone else’s pleasure in addition to one’s own. Not worrying about creating a baby we don’t want is a bonus. I’d express sympathy for B’s sexual partners, but that probably isn’t necessary…
B is giving the basic Catholic position — although the Catholics I hear it from don’t think it likely to convince anyone who doesn’t already accept the rest of Catholic moral theology.
But I agree that B just about has to be a virgin (or has only had mediocre or bad experiences). I mean, a great deal of the joy of sex is feeling your partner respond to you — to know that you’re also giving joy to someone you love. To say that’s “using” them is….bizarre. I can’t believe anyone who’s ever had a good sexual relationship could make such an assertion.
Of course, there’s a very silly contradiction in the basic NFP rationale: somehow, sex during an infertile time (or with one partner infertile due to menopause or a medical condition) is still considered “open to the possibility of procreation”? Huh? You cannot go through this elaborate protocol to detect and avoid the fertile time, boast about how effective it is — and then turn around and say you’re “open to the possibility”. It’s only “open” if you’re conceding that it’s unreliable. Infertile is infertile, period — contraception by timing (assuming it worked) is no different from infertility produced by artifically manipulating female hormones, or surgically removing a section of the vas deferens. This distinction being drawn between “natural” and “artificial” is, well, artificial. (And for that matter, why isn’t making a baby also “using someone for your means”? There’s lots of people who have children for all the wrong reasons.)
Great post, I was not aware about all those laws in Kansas. I tried to explore the issue of the negativity of sex in the Christian mind in this post
I’m a cradle Catholic myself, so I have first-hand exposure to this sex-is-only-for-procreation point of view. Most of my family members remain avowedly devout (I don’t!), yet seem remarkably infertile (one sib has two children, another has three). I think they’re cheating! And no, I don’t think NFP is doing it for them.
(And thanks, John, for the tip: I’m not surprised that the holier-than-the-pope Catholics disdain NFP as not quite kosher. It is birth control, after all, even if it’s not very good.)
I read this thread after I posted this at “manimals & B”. This thread is more appropriate…
Guys, you’ve overlooked a couple things about B’s, uh …. thinking.
One, he has, well hidden, a completely arbitrary definition of what’s “artificial” in artificial contraception.
Two, he’s completely self-contradictory. He says if you use one of these “natural” birth control methods there’s always a remote chance a pregnancy can occur, thus, somehow making the sex moral. Then he turns around and points out, repeatedly, that “artificial” birth control “is not that effective”. So doesn’t that ineffectiveness, i.e. a chance of pregnancy, function in the same way as the chance of pregnancy does in his preferred method and so make sex moral?
I looked at the site he recommends. Thermometers, digital and mercury, and instructions for observing and analyzing vaginal mucous patterns and cervical size and, in one method, a pocket microscope for daily viewing of the crystallization patterns in a woman’s dried saliva on a glass slide.
There is absolutely nothing, at all, natural about any of this. This is all knowledge accrued through diligent application of advanced technological science. And it uses highly artificial methods and tools. And as for morality, can you imagine what B and his ilk would have considered the morality of constantly looking inside a woman’s vagina to have been two hundred years ago. But nobody had this knowledge then, either. How is all this “natural”.
The site he recommends is basically about birth control methods that meet the dogma of the Catholic church and is full of the standard lies about science and what science says about birth control. And as such it’s no different from many other political groups in the U.S. that have problems when reality doesn’t match up to their preordained understanding of it. Like the ID movement.
This all makes B’s postings here highly morally suspect. If one is willing to lie about anything to advance a cause, in my book that makes one AMORAL — the ends justify the means.
His posts are so difficult to follow logically because he start’s with a conclusion then tries to reverse engineer an argument for it, come Hell or … reality. It’s very difficult for such people to discriminate between the truth and a lie.
Here’s a thought experiment that I think cuts right to the core of the anti-abortion movement. Imagine a new, reversible birth control method, a pill or a pill-a-day type, that simply makes a woman’s egg membrane impenetrable, just as it becomes after a sperm enters. Do you think all the contraception-is-abortion people and groups would close up shop and go home?
As many here have said, it’s really an anti-sex movement. Or, more accurately, it’s an anti-sex-without-consequences movement. You see, all our problems really go back to The Pill, etc. And those awful scientists who dream this stuff up.
As much as it pains me to say something about the Roman Catholic Church that isn’t condemnatory, the various statements about what Catholic teaching is were all more or less wrong.
There are wacko Catholics out there — I know, some of them were my teachers at St. Pius X High School — but the considered opinion of the church is moderately complex. More complex than has been presented here, anyway.
It features three main points:
1. No artificial contraception.
2. Sex among fertile married couples merely for pleasure is forbidden. “Mutual masturbation” they call it.
3. Sex among married couples, including those past the possibility of pregnancy, in part for pleasure is permitted, even somewhat tepidly encouraged. (Yes, I understand the illogic between 2 & 3; but that’s the doctrine.)
The Fourth Law, though, is — If God really has blessed you, you’ve got a vocation and it’s no sex for you, ever.
I doubt many Catholics actually have a clue about what the church does teach. It does it very badly when it tries.
Following on from earlier comments – the only form of contraception that is 100% effective is abstinence, so as long as you use some form of contraception it is perfectly acceptable to have as much sex as you like, as there is a chance that pregnancy will occur. Just make sure to avoid abstinence whenever possible, for pity’s sake.
“Thermometers, digital and mercury, and instructions for observing and analyzing vaginal mucous patterns and cervical size and, in one method, a pocket microscope for daily viewing of the crystallization patterns in a woman’s dried saliva on a glass slide.”
You gotta be kidding! Please…
All I know is that every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great, and if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.
(I’m sorry, but come on, somebody had to….)
Sounds like B is a proud graduate of the Vice-Pope Eric School of Contraception:
Frampton: But you allow the rhythm method.
Vice-Pope Eric: Ah, but only because it doesn’t work.
I love Amanda Marcotte’s take on this.
I think Kansas has slipped into some kind of uber-puritan twilight zone. Perhaps the AG there is trying to construct some kind of Christian sharia, to out-Leviticus Leviticus. The Feministe site suggests his ulterior motive in making teenage sex criminal is to enable the courts to subpeona teenaged girls’ medical records, especially those at abortion clinics. That way, he can attack the abortion clinics and put them out of commission. I am beginning to think Orwell had it right all along; his timing was just off by 20+ years.
You all might be interested in this site: boycottkansas.com. Judith Levine wrote an intriguing study of sex in the U.S., entitled Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. I recommend it, especially to anyone living in Kansas.
True story:
A friend, who walked away from years of Catholicism, was talking to a friend from church who had managed to have two well spaced kids. They were discussing a mutual friend who was horrifyingly on her seventh pregnancy, even though she was 1) Done and 2) Extremely Ill throughout all her pregnancies. Rhythym was just not working out.
“Oh,” said the still-Catholic friend with 2 kids, “She just needs to switch priests!”
I’m overtired, but y’know what, Bible belt, let people have their fun. I understand, as a former Christian, that the idea of indulgence is suspectly sinful. But if you can make people happier without bad things happening to them in exchange, why wouldn’t you? Actually being able to do things without consequences would be wonderful – but alas, it is only a fantasy, and is by no means what most progressive thinkers hold on the do’s and do-not’s of sexuality. We’ll always have to look after the effects of what we do, and the signs that we are taking productive steps to limit the dangers to ourselves and others should signify that we are, as a movement, more concerned about oneanother, and more self-responsible.
In my University paper, a letter was written to the Editor regarding a flame war that started in the TLF section about abortion. The letter stated that if we were busy fighting to do right rather than be right, there wouldn’t be an issue. I couldn’t agree more.
speaking of twisted logic and the real world, tacitus, the Catholic Church is actively attempting to suppress condom use in areas of the world with high HIV prevalence, such as Haiti.
I guess in their (and B’s) eyes, protecting yourself against a deadly disease is selfish. Having unprotected sex, regardless of your HIV status–apparently, not so much.
But in that case you use the other partner in order to protect yourself from the disease… after all, sex without a real possibility of getting AIDS is incredibly selfish. In fact, we should make it a policy to introduce high-incidence AIDS to North America, Western Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, where AIDS incidence is very low and people have selfish sex.
Chris Clarke once posted a GIF depicting a rhombical ochre warning sign with a black man-figure repeatedly banging his head against a keyboard. Does anyone know where I can find this image?
Correction to the above: rhombical isn’t a word – I meant rhomboidal.
I think PZ hit the nail on the head in describing the law as talibanism, and those of you in the States who have the power to do something about this need to do it, because fundamentalist Christians, if given the run of the land, will be every bit as dangerous as Islamic fundies, make no mistake about it.
Great Great Aunt. Catholic. Twenty-three children. That’s all I have to say.
Kansas has *not* always been this way. It wasn’t very long ago that Kansas was a hotbed of radicalism. Their late dependence on corporate media has got them safely reined in.
Or, a head sable banging on keyboard, per Alon’s request.
Blazonry explained:
Start with the background color. “Or” is of course gold, though in practice it’s yellow. The figure in a highway caution sign is always “sable”, black.
Or, a stag saltant sable (deer crossing).
Whenever I see the “slippery when wet” warning, two squiggles, I comply by swerving from side to side. For some reason my passengers generally object.
I wonder if guys pushing a 7 pound ball over 5″ in diameter through their anus is “pleasurable” to consider that pregnancy is the only “pleasureable” recourse for having sex, and thus the only MORAL choice in sexual contact. This reminds me [anecdote ahead] of the idiot who once thought kissing would lead to pregnancy, in their ignorance of biology, and thus avoided girls for fear of cooties.
The letter stated that if we were busy fighting to do right rather than be right, there wouldn’t be an issue.
It does seem as if at least part of the anti-abortion movement is more concerned with making sure abortion is illegal and disapproved of than with actually reducing the number of abortions.
A while ago I was mulling over some slippery-slope argument, about how people who accepted abortion couldn’t logically disapprove of infanticide, and came up with the reversed argument others have posted above, that it slips both ways–you could as easily say that it’s murder to avoid reproducing at any available opportunity. I saw it at the time as a deliberately absurd hypothetical; what I didn’t realize is how close that was to a genuinely popular position.
There are people today who insist (counter to the evidence) that the birth control pill primarily works by preventing implantation of already-fertilized eggs (they call it “silent abortion”); and that this is a sufficiently horrible thing that the Pill needs to be stamped out by any means necessary, even, apparently, if it would actually lead to more abortions of the more dangerous and politically and emotionally wrenching surgical variety. I try hard to be an empathetic person but I have a hard time imagining the thought processes behind this.
so, if I or my spouse were naturally infertile, we should never have sex?
When the Catholic Church is to your left on sexual issues, you need to re-evaluate.
Seems simple enough to me.
B is just a selfish lover – having never been able to provide pleasure to another person.
~
so, if I or my spouse were naturally infertile, we should never have sex?
Actually, I think that B made a convoluted argument about why sex with infertile people is alright.
Does anyone else think that contantly using Taliban (like, -ish, etc.) as a slur against fundamentalist christians is a tad overdone? Christians started doing this kind of stuff long before the Taliban even existed. (Heck, they’ve been doing it since before Islam even existed!)
B is Bog Standard Roman Catholic. Of course, the vast majority of Roman Catholics aren’t; they make up their own minds about this sort of thing. (That is to say, they are in effect protestants. The pope, and B, would no doubt think that a Bad Thing. As for me, I never think it a bad thing when adults decide to act as adults.)
I wonder if guys pushing a 7 pound ball over 5″ in diameter through their anus is “pleasurable” to consider that pregnancy is the only “pleasureable” recourse for having sex, and thus the only MORAL choice in sexual contact.
When I got to the end of this sentence I realised that the point was that giving birth isn’t pleasureable. But as I started reading it, I was thinking “yeah, I know guys who would probably get off doing that”. No, I’m not going to ask them “what’s the biggest dildo you’ve ever had up your anus – I’d probably get a wildly exaggerated answer .. or an offer to do it to them…
I’ve never had kids, but it’s always struck me as a pretty hardcore BDSM activity.
The grand idiot B: I AM saying that people should always have sex that provides for the possibility of new life. Using artificial contraception removes that possibility. Therefore the act becomes solely for pleasure. Using someone to merely satisfy your own means is wrong. It’s so wrong, in fact, that people don’t even need to be told that it’s wrong. From the other thread.
Here he skips a step to get to his punishment of these folk. Solely for pleasure is not equivalent to using someone. Period. End of story. Proof this guy’s screed is logic free and should simply be ignored.
He really hates people, you know, as he is the cause of death of literally millions, for anyone in power who applies his ‘thoughts’ will end condom distribution to third world nations, and alas, folk will die of disease. At best, there will be overpopulation and folk will die of starvation or war. He likes this death and suffering. It is his cause celeb. More death, more funery rites, more work for the cleric, more ‘evidence’ of his diety’s displeasure. B, you are simply evil.
Personally, I am beginning to think free speech of his type should be banned or controlled – it is at best ill informed, at worst murderous. (Well, not really, I think this and the very wide freedom fur on my back gets all upset at my very self!)
The officially-approved method for a Catholic man to collect a sperm sample for medical analysis without violating any Vatican taboos is to have penile-vaginal sex (with his wife, of course) using a condom with a couple of pinholes poked in it. This way, if the deity of choice elects to inaugurate a miraculous impregnation, he (the deity) need not be troubled to poke a new pinhole, beam the chosen sperm cell across the latex barrier, or otherwise unduly exert himself to fulfill his own omnipotent will, and the doctors can play with the remaining contents of the condom according to their own free will.
Has anyone notified B (could this be Balthazar of the Beastly Beatitudes?) that a relevant advanced theological discussion is underway here?
Perhaps B would be gratified at this news item (excerpted from a recent Chuck Shepherd “News of the Weird” column):
No pleasure, therefore no exploitation?
I can understand the squeamishness about under-aged sex. Most 15 year olds are impregnated by adult male predators, so that explains a lot of the laws that penalize anyone for underaged sex. However, underaged peers are a different manner. As far as I know, most kids learn about sex from each other, with little thanks to those hopeless sex education classes that don’t teach them much beyond basic plumbing.
Regarding people like Mr. B, everyone should realize that a major reason people have sex is because it feels good. Contraception has made it easier for people to enjoy sex without the risk of catching STDs or of the woman getting pregnant. Sex isn’t only about procreation anymore, and you don’t have to be in a monogomous relationship to have sex that you enjoy. Some people need to catch up with the times.
Sex for pleasure isn’t really a new thing. A few years ago, while still in Israel, I read an article about how some of the earliest rabbis, who lived around the time of Jesus’s purported birth, considered sex for pleasure natural and beneficial. Presumably they only considered PVI, but since that’s the only sort of sex that leads to procreation, it’s understandable that it’s the best-known and most common form of sex.
Mr. Raven and I were driving into Seattle this morning in quite the biggest windstorm this area’s seen in a while. Driving across the 520 bridge (they later closed it b/c of the gusts, and it’s still closed 10 hours later), we felt something structural in the passenger side give way, and pulled off to investigate. The wind had actually pulled off the broken plastic strip at the bottom of the rear panel, and it was dragging–clearly, it now had to be taken all the way off to continue driving the car.
Mr. Raven’s style is to carefully evaluate the situation, formulate a plan, and then proceed to execute the plan, while I’m more the “yank first, ask questions later” type. So I began tugging harder and harder on the strip, and then twisting and flexing to get it to give way, while he was still assessing it.
The thing is–and Mr. Raven agrees, in retrospect–that you shouldn’t stand directly behind someone who’s pulling back harder and harder on a long thin sharp plastic thingy, b/c when it finally does give way, all that force being exerted has to go somewhere else. As he put it, “That wingnut on Pharyngula almost got his wish about us cutting out the nonprocreative sex.”
Let’s see…so now in addition to thinking of me when they see dead, limp squid, people are also going to be reminded of me when they’re nearly accidentally castrated?
There’s a troubling trend here.
Gee, (he said, disingenuously), where are B’s own comments on this thread?
When I see a sign that says “LANE ENDS MERGE LEFT”, I say, “Yes. Yes, they do.”
“I’ve never had kids, but it’s always struck me as a pretty hardcore BDSM activity.”
LOL! And the torture continues after birth, with sleepdeprivation, tugging at nipples, and all.
Something similar. Abstinence is for Virgins.
While I was a Catholic high school student, I got into an argument with my religon teacher about NFP, giving all the reasons people have covered above for how illogical and inconsistent the Church’s position is. I got the most strongly disapproving look from Sister Sharon for telling her that being a nun didn’t seem very open to the possibility of new life.
Anyone catch “Sex in the Bible” on the History Channel last night? They pointed out that Christian attitudes toward sex are shaped by a (theoretically) virginal Jesus and the letters of the celibate Paul who expected the end of the world to occur at anytime.
Mr. B should really read the Old Testament. Then he should learn a little about female sexuality and how to give a woman an orgasm. Finally, he needs to realize that if the only way god would want women to take pleasure from men was through vaginal intercourse, the clitoris would be back by the vagina or even inside it! But it’s not. It’s up at the front where it is difficult for many women to get proper stimulation during actual intercourse. Is this an example of bad design?