Dec. 13, 2011 — Girls and young women who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) appear to be no more likely than those who are not vaccinated to engage in sexually risky behaviors, a CDC survey finds.

After all of the drama, handwringing and false guilt about teens being given a free pass to have sex via safety from only one of oh-so-many sexually transmitted diseases, it turns out that the only thing this vaccination manages to do is keep children from dying of one sexually transmitted disease.

And, actually to the contrary of the above, it seems to at least be correlated somewhat with a rather high willingness to insist on condom use in women.

For example, subjects were asked if they’d administer harmless but painful electric shocks to another person. They chose to shock those fully clothed significantly more often than those exposed above the waist. So if you’re looking for sympathy, maybe show a little skin.

After years of church and society ranting about how a woman showing a little skin is the woman dressing for a rape, it turns out the opposite is true. Men and women who show a little skin actually elicit sympathy, not predation, from others.

Doesn’t it also seem rather interesting that the schools which treat children in the most severe ways also tend to be those which have the most stringent uniform demands…

The article in Relevant magazine, entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” cited several studies examining the sexual activity of single Christians. One of the biggest surprises was a December 2009 study, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which included information on sexual activity.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.

Ok, contrary to the wide eyed wonder all over this one, none of this is exactly news. Actually it’s so well known as to be banal — and the stats are even worse in the more fundamentalist Evangelical states. But, few of said Evangelicals have the guts to ask the following question — much less two of them in one article:

Yet the article also asks a question that rarely comes up in discussions about abstinence movement. Relevant notes that in biblical times, people married earlier. The average age for marriage has been increasing in the U.S for the last 40 years.

Today, it’s not unusual to meet a Christian who is single at 30 – or 40 or 50, for that matter. So what do you tell them? Keep waiting?

Too bad none of them had the guts to answer it though…

By contrast, secular society is embracing masturbation as a way for women to better understand their bodies and enhance their pleasure with their partners. Millions of women struggle with reaching orgasms during sex, so, more and more, sex-ed teachers are including masturbation in their curricula. Last year, the United Nations released a report suggesting that children as young as 5 learn about masturbation. The National Health Service in Britain recently released a pamphlet for teenagers with the headline “An Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” advocating that regular masturbation is good for cardiovascular health. In Spain, one regional government has just launched a sex-ed campaign with the slogan “Pleasure Is in Your Own Hands,” stating that masturbation boosts confidence and self-esteem. And even Oprah Winfrey, the standard-bearer for mainstream American ethics, has discussed the benefits of female masturbation many times on her talk show. One of Winfrey’s frequent guest experts, Laura Berman, says encouraging girls to masturbate can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences.

But Renaud isn’t pleased with secular society’s increasing acceptance of porn and masturbation for women. Interestingly enough, she’s fine with teaching young children about the existence of masturbation and porn—as long as they don’t try it. “It’s a very dangerous society that we live in,” she says, “when we’re telling women that it’s OK to look at porn.”

Many girls in Renaud’s ministry think that once they get married, they will be free to express their sexuality and enjoy orgasms with a man. This causes some to take the fast track to the altar, only to find that after they’ve married, they still feel the same taboo urges. One forum commenter married at 19 in the hope that pious matrimonial intercourse would rid her of her sinful thoughts—only to find that during sex with her husband, she would have the same fantasies. “I cannot cleanse my mind of these images,” she says. “I try so hard to focus on my husband only, but my thoughts are so warped.”

One of the most striking pieces of this article is the subject’s inability to grasp any sort of difference between the erotic (part of every society and artistic practice around the world) and the pornographic (rage based materials designed to dehumanize, degrade and shame those depicted so as to allow those who are so awash with hatred that they do not view themselves as capable of connecting or becoming stimulated in a normative bonding based manner to become aroused.) The result of such is a strange, dichotomous hostility to everything erotic and to every thought of sexuality (no matter how relationally oriented) that is meshed with a completely artificial separation of secular erotica from Scriptural erotica (Psalm of Solomon for example) but yet still denounces even the thought of such arousal response that Scripture itself could generate.

In other words: Internal inconsistency to the point of the insane…

The article is also completely devoid of any sort of grasp of the difference between fantasy (Mental expression of need and preparation of the person for the pursuit of the legitimate meeting of said need that draws us into the beauty of permanent intimate love that God designed for us) and lust (The predatory desire to use, consume and then dispose of the person with no thought for the other’s well being.)

It is then overlaid with a pseudo science that holds that the neurological release of any chemical indicating pleasure is indicative of addiction (and thus to be avoided) that completely ignores that dopamine is also released as a result of, er, bowel movements… (It’s a rather convenient way of avoiding addressing anything approaching modern psychological understanding of said bondage that basically leaves them free to demonize anything they want.) An addiction is, to quote Patrick Carnes from memory, “A pathological relationship with a mood altering experience.” In other words, it is a bent way of replacing a person with a substance, experience or mental state and using such not to feel/to feel numb.

Stoicism and Gnosticism would be proud – for to them, pleasure and the body were the enemy…

But, the most striking part of the whole mess is on the first page:

While many of the women she counsels report turning to pornography as a form of escape—from traumas like sexual abuse, infidelity, and even prostitution—Renaud compares their masturbation to alcoholism, saying that “like drugs and alcohol, so many things that feel good in a short amount of time can end up hurting you.” Renaud’s advocacy is labeled antipornography, but it aims to treat all masturbation, whether it involves porn or not. When you peel back the layers, the core of her crusade is against sexual thought—even within marriage—unless those thoughts are about your husband while you are engaging in intercourse with him.

Read it carefully: She is fully aware that the women in her group have been damaged, severely abused and often had their sexuality commercially exploited and are in desperate flight from soul wrenching pain, but she’s more concerned about that which Christ already took away: their sin.

Matthew 23:1-15 New International Version

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteriesa wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Like in the time of Christ, the entire charade exists to ensure only one result: That the human leaders of the charade ensure their own place at the helm of the lives of their members — where Christ alone should stand.

So many adults are fearful that telling kids that sex is pleasurable will simply encourage young people to have it before they are physically and emotionally ready for the consequences. Better, they imagine, to emphasize that it’s important to wait and to stress the risks. But as it turns out, centering pleasure is a great way to minimize the chances that a teen will be pressured into doing something that they don’t want to do.

When we tell girls that sex is something people do when they love each other, it sets them up to believe that sex is sacrificial. So when Jassie falls in love with Bobby, and Bobby pushes for intercourse, she’s conditioned to focus on “giving it up” for him rather than on thinking about what feels good for her. The more she’s taught that her pleasure matters, the less likely she’ll be coerced into going farther than her body is ready to go. “It’s supposed to feel good”, she may remember, “and right now, being rushed and pawed doesn’t feel good. So I want to stop.” Centering pleasure gives young women a power that centering love doesn’t.

The same is true with boys. When we teach them that sex is about feeling good, we remind them that it isn’t about “losing it.” We think of adolescent boys as hormone-addled horndogs, and many of them are. There are some pretty damn horny teenage girls too, though we’re less comfortable acknowledging that. But what drives so many boys to focus on having heterosexual intercourse isn’t the pursuit of pleasure for either themselves or their partners. It’s the longing to “become a man” or to “score” in a competition that’s really about winning praise and validation from other men. Pleasure becomes less important than being a “stud” in other boys’ eyes. That’s not a lot of fun.So Cooper got it exactly right. While there are other reasons why people have sex, the desire to give and share pleasure is perhaps the most basic. And the more we center pleasure in our discussions with children, the more we equip them to say no to what hurts, what’s coerced, and what’s unwanted. And the more we empower them to say “yes” only to what feels good.

All I can add to this is that, just perhaps, we can then focus the rest of our energy on teaching them what a balanced relationship looks like, what it means to defraud another and what it means to only awaken that which the time has come for it to be awakened. In other words, empower them to really keep the hearts of everyone safe.

In “Beyond Choice, Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century,” he has written eloquently about reproductive issues and addresses the importance of spacing between births:

Women face huge risks to their health from pregnancy and childbirth. The biggest killer of women over time has been childbirth. When women die, their children are more likely to die as well.

Women have evolved to minimize these risks by planning and spacing their children and by limiting the number of children they bear.

In simplest terms for today, allowing space between the births of children provides the mother time to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, with all its related hormonal and physical changes. For children, it allows for sufficient time to be devoted to their nurturing.

Apparently this information is lost on the Duggars, but science often is at odds with fundamentalist thinking.

In spite of the rabid insanity of the source and my total reticence towards the idea of doing anything to support them, someone had to say it. One correction though: the above last word, “Thinking,” probably never did apply…

When I look at my own children through the lens of the psychological training I have, I am continually reminded at how far I fall short of the full parenting I wish I could offer them — simply due to the time demands running a practice in the area of sexuality and relationships. We decided to stop having children at two because I knew that adding a third child would mean my parenting of all of them would meet my own training’s definition of, “Negligent parenting.” I most willingly walked into the office of a surgeon for a vasectomy because I love my two kids too much to deprive them of the kind of attention, love, guidance and care they deserve.

Parents who have more time to devote to parenting perhaps can handle more — but not too many more.

To multiply that number by 10, well, let’s not sugar coat it. You are no longer even offering negligent parenting — you are not offering parenting at all and children are being raised by children. The local genius squad almost always has an immediate rebuttal of course: “But, there are so many people out there who are being abused in so many families. They, on the other hand, all look happy, it’s all working and, if it looks fine and loving, then who are you to assess their alternate arrangements of family so just butt out.” Ya, except parenting isn’t a question of relativistic post-modernism, it’s a question of science and we have hundreds of years of studies of what does and doesn’t work — 20 kids to 2 parents = kids simply don’t get parented — and kids need parenting.

What stuns me is how few people have actually had the guts to stand up and say it though — to find such, we have to go out to the crazy fringe because everyone seems to be too afraid to cease being jello and admit that there really is such a thing as, “Stupid,” and there really is such a thing as, “Smart.”

Turning your vagina into a clown car, ya, that’s one that absolutely HAS to be called for the stupid category…

For the last 12 years, I’ve dedicated immense amounts of time, money and energy to end violence against women and children. As a victim of violence myself, I’m deeply committed to destroying any institution or individual leveraging the sex-power matrix that results in child trafficking, nonconsensual prostitution, domestic violence and other abuses. If I believed that censoring Craigslist would achieve these goals, I’d be the first in line to watch them fall. But from the bottom of my soul and the depths of my intellect, I believe that the current efforts to censor Craigslist’s “adult services” achieves the absolute opposite. Rather than helping those who are abused, it fundamentally helps pimps, human traffickers and others who profit off of abusing others.

On Friday, under tremendous pressure from US attorneys general and public advocacy groups, Craigslist shut down its “Adult Services” section. There is little doubt that this space has been used by people engaged in all sorts of illicit activities, many of which result in harmful abuses. But the debate that has ensued has centered on the wrong axis, pitting protecting the abused against freedom of speech. What’s implied in public discourse is that protecting potential victims requires censorship; thus, anti-censorship advocates are up in arms attacking regulators for trying to curtail First Amendment rights. While I am certainly a proponent of free speech online, I find it utterly depressing that these groups fail to see how this is actually an issue of transparency, not free speech. And how this does more to hurt potential victims than help.

Law enforcement is always struggling to gain access to underground networks in order to go after the bastards who abuse people for profit. Underground enforcement is really difficult, and it takes a lot of time to invade a community and build enough trust to get access to information that will hopefully lead to the dens of sin. While it always looks so easy on TV, there’s nothing easy or pretty about this kind of work. The Internet has given law enforcement more data than they even know what to do with, more information about more people engaged in more horrific abuses than they’ve ever been able to obtain through underground work. It’s far too easy to mistake more data for more crime and too many aspiring governors use the increase of data to spin the public into a frenzy about the dangers of the Internet. The increased availability of data is not the problem; it’s a godsend for getting at the root of the problem and actually helping people.

Censoring Craigslist will do absolutely nothing to help those being victimized, but it will do a lot to help those profiting off of victimization. Censoring Craigslist will also create new jobs for pimps and other corrupt intermediaries, since it’ll temporarily make it a whole lot harder for individual scumbags to find clients. This will be particularly devastating for the low-end prostitutes who were using Craigslist to escape violent pimps. Keep in mind that occasionally getting beaten up by a scary john is often a whole lot more desirable for many than the regular physical, psychological, and economic abuse they receive from their pimps. So while it’ll make it temporarily harder for clients to get access to abusive services, nothing good will come out of it in the long run.

If you want to end human trafficking, if you want to combat nonconsensual prostitution, if you care about the victims of the sex-power industry, don’t cheer Craigslist’s censorship. This did nothing to combat the cycle of abuse. What we desperately need are more resources for law enforcement to leverage the visibility of the Internet to go after the scumbags who abuse. What we desperately need are for sites like Craigslist to be encouraged to work with law enforcement and help create channels to actually help victims. What we need are innovative citizens who leverage new opportunities to devise new ways of countering abusive industries. We need to take this moment of visibility and embrace it, leverage it to create change, leverage it to help those who are victimized and lack the infrastructure to get help. What you see online should haunt you. But it should drive you to address the core problem by finding and helping victims, not looking for new ways to blindfold yourself. Please, I beg you, don’t close your eyes. We need you.

Some articles are so brilliant and show such a grasp of the issues they nearly require no comment.

This whole Craigslist stupidity reminds me of the entire campaign to put children in school uniforms because it, “Ends gang violence.” At the end of the day, when others finally did the analysis, the same number of violent acts still went down in the schools — but now the teachers couldn’t identify the perpetrators as gang members (As they were no longer wearing their colors) so they just reported violent acts. Hence, the problem of gang violence in schools was fixed by uniforms.

The censoring of Craigslist by the Evangelical Right and the myopic blindness of the bleeding-heart Left will result in nothing more then the same illusion of safety though denial and sweeping the problem into someone else’s back-yard.

But, Shhh, nobody tell the Polaris Project or a blind crew of Attorney generals that the pimps have already moved over into the, “Casual Encounter’s,” section. You might spoil their celebration…

For years, the aggressive presentation of the American Psyc. Asso. has been that homosexuality is innate, that any attempt at reparative therapy amounted to abuse and that therapists who offer such should be banned. They further promoted the idea (and aggressively attempted the enforcement of such) that schools must affirm and even market homosexuality/bisexuality/lesbianism/transsexualism as a great idea for youth or risk being seen as and create children who are bigoted.

It would be nice if they had founded all of this politicking on anything more then rumor and thin air — but, they didn’t — the science just isn’t on their side.

Finally, the push back is coming — and coming VERY hard — from none other then the American College of Pediatricians in the form of a letter stating the obvious:

(1) individuals with unwanted same sex attraction often can be successfully treated;

(2) there is no undue risk to patients from embarking on such therapy and

(3), as a group, homosexuals experience significantly higher levels of mental and physical health problems compared to heterosexuals. Among adolescents who claim a “gay” identity, the health risks include higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. Encouragingly, the longer students delay self-labeling as “gay,” the less likely they are to experience these health risks. In fact, for each year an adolescent delays, the risk of suicide alone decreases by 20%.

In light of these facts, it is clear that when well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel encourage students to “come out as gay” and be “affirmed,” there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling students (who may merely be experiencing transient sexual confusion and/or engaging in sexual experimentation). Premature labeling may then lead some adolescents into harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue.

Optimal health and respect for all students will only be achieved by first respecting the rights of students and parents to accurate information and to self-determination. It is the school’s legitimate role to provide a safe environment for respectful self-expression for all students. It is not the school’s role to diagnose and attempt to treat any student’s medical condition, and certainly not a school’s role to “affirm” a student’s perceived personal sexual orientation.

Here’s a couple more sources of real information from NARTH and Liberty Counsel.

Don’t expect the politburo at the APA to agree though…

The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church in the US and abroad was a matter of homosexuals preying on adolescent boys, not one of pedophilia, said the Vatican’s representative at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. It is “more correct” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males, than pedophilia, in relation to the scandals.

“Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 per cent belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17,” said Tomasi. His statement is backed up by a report commissioned by the US bishops that found that in the overwhelming majority of cases the clergy involved were homosexuals, with 81 percent of victims being adolescent males.

Ok, I’ve been waiting weeks for someone to finally go public with this reality: it’s not often I find myself supporting much that comes out of the Vatican — but this is brilliant — and, perhaps, hope for change…

(Yes, I fully recognize this guy is gonna get roasted alive for sheer political stupidity — but it’s not like I can’t relate to being such a driven truth-teller that I end up looking like a bull in a china shop myself. Yes, I realize that the latter part of the article is a whiny and pathetic attempt at deflection — but HE’S STILL TELLING THE TRUTH in the first part.)

Here’s what he is saying:

Accusing the Roman Catholic clergy of Pedophilia is actually letting them off the hook. The majority of the offenders are really gay and, in addition, they seem to lack the ability to relate even to other adult gay males.

Let me translate that for you:

The RC Church has, through celibacy, created a situation where men who struggle with sexual orientation seem to be inordinately selected for the clergy. It selects them simply by creating a place where they easily find that their lack of desire for members of the opposite sex will not come under scrutiny and will even be applauded.

But, it’s beyond even that…

The RC Church, through a system of alienation from normal society, has also created a situation which attracts those who are unable to properly relate to adult sexuality.

Ephebophilia is an attraction to adolescents or people in puberty. By itself, it has NOTHING to do with gays, or even men. Thus, what is really happening is that the RC Church has created a system which not only selects for Homosexuality, it also further down-selects for those who, largely, could only see themselves as exercising such towards 11-16yr old boys (and, thus, do not simply ignore the rules of the RC Church and have sex with other men.) In other words, a very rare breed indeed.

Ok, first, let’s get a few things on the table:

(1). His popeliness is in this — and in it up to his eyeballs:

The future Pope Benedict XVI took over the abuse case of an Arizona priest, then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood, according to church correspondence.

Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that in the 1990s, a church tribunal found that the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., had molested children as far back as the late 1970s. The panel deemed his behavior — including allegations that he abused boys in a confessional — almost “satanic.” The tribunal referred his case to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005.

But it took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take.

As abuse cases with the pontiff’s fingerprints mushroom, Teta’s case and that of another Arizona priest cast further doubt on the church’s insistence that the future pope played no role in shielding pedophiles.

An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.

The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with.

In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.

Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn’t prepared for “that kind of an onslaught’.

(3). In the first article, the following statistics were published:

The vast plurality of Protestant churches in the US, numbering more than 224,000, including thousands of independent non-denominational groups, make the kind of organized tracking and recording of individual abuse cases as was done in the Catholic Church all but impossible. Nevertheless, some of the sex abuse cases in other religious communities have been documented piecemeal.

In June 2007, the Associated Press revealed that three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in the US said they receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members. Church Mutual Insurance Co., GuideOne Insurance Co. and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co., which insure 165,495 churches for liability against child sex abuse, emphasized that their figures did not always specify which cases were against minors and added that not all allegations were followed by convictions or even investigations.

National surveys by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies, has also issued a report that found that child-abuse allegations against American Protestant churches averaged 70 per week since 1993, with a slight downward trend starting in 1997. The same report also found that among Protestant churches, volunteers are more likely than clergy or paid staff to be abusers.

Basically, the 70 per week number is meaningless headline mongering as no insurance company in the world would touch that sort of risk and 3 of them obviously have. But, we can trust the 260/yr figure — the insurance companies in question have a vested interest in maintaining the accuracy of those statements.

Of the approximately 350,000 churches in the US, only 5 per cent are Catholic. If we use the same reporting period (52yrs) the Catholics are using, scale by capita (in other words X .5) and then use 40% of that number to separate the actual numbers of Protestant clergy/staff abusing minors from volunteers/parishioners, we end up with a per capita comparison of 2740 : 10,667 of Protestant to Catholic abuse victims or 389% higher rate of abuse by Catholic Clergy. Protestant circles apparently have, per capita, even less VICTIMS then the RC Church has ABUSERS!!! (And few abusers only abuse once…)

The RC Church can rant all they like about this not being a problem of celibacy — but, apparently married people seem to not score as homosexuals with ephebophilia anywhere near as often as the celibate…

In other words, It’s already a huge problem, it’s been suppressed from the top and the lid (judging from their call center crash) is about to blow off of thousands more victims. There are only about 400,000 Catholic clergy worldwide. “1.5-5 percent” is not much of a defense – it’s actually a completely damning figure. Their own numbers really mean 6,000-20,000 abusing priests world wide — the majority of which their own stats say they have done nothing about. The occurrence of homosexuals who struggle with ephebophilia in the general population is a tiny fraction of that. Honestly, if the Vatican decides to sell stock, I wouldn’t be buying any for the next few decades as the payouts are going to be mind blowing…

But, here’s the interesting part of all this — the hope inducing part:

For years, the general public has been screaming for the RC Church to do something about the problem of Pedophile priests. And, the RC Church has been responding with statements about how it is unfortunate that positions of power attract Pedophiles and with statements about plans for addressing that problem (And real action). That’s blatant denial. It’s the equivalent of saying: “We have a weasel problem in our hen house and all of our chickens are getting eaten. We need to erect an electrified bear fence to keep out large predators.”

What this rather whiny but still highly placed Vatican leader is really saying here is that the Church finally gets it, is admitting it and, hopefully is going to do something about it. Now, what is going to be interesting to see is if they attempt to put in place some band-aid screening test for homosexuals who struggle with ephebophilia or if someone at the top is finally going to grow a set of them and admit that the only sure way to select for non-homosexuals who are attracted to and can maintain healthy sexual and romantic relationships with adult members of the opposite sex is to make sure the priests are married — you know, kinda-sorta like Paul’s idea…

It’s not like we DON’T know that around 20% of them are already married and doing just fine… (Which, by the way, makes that 6,000-20,000 number all the more extreme…)

Women who took the birth control pill beginning in the late 1960s lived longer than those never on the pill, a new study says.

British researchers observed more than 46,000 women for nearly four decades from 1968. They compared the number of deaths in women on the pill to those who never took it.

In the study, women on the pill generally took it for almost four years. Experts concluded the pill cut women’s risk of dying from bowel cancer by 38 percent and from any other diseases by about 12 percent.

The research was published Friday in the British medical journal, BMJ.

After all those years of health food nuts freaking out over the birth control pill, it seems they may have signed their own death warrants by NOT taking it…

Of course, correlation does not prove causation. This could just as easily prove that non-health-food-inclined women who have lots of sex also chose to go on the pill — and it is having lots of sex that makes them live longer…

Several recent studies have shown the limited effectiveness of abstinence programs, leading many to the conclusion that we have simply set the bar too high for the advanced libido of today’s average teen. Our young people already face enough stresses in life without adding unnecessary ones. Churches should be building up our future leaders, not crushing them under a load of guilt. The answer to this problem is both clear and simple: If the expectations can’t be met, then lower the standards. Though we have already learned this principle in the arena of public education, once again, the Church is slow to catch on.

Jesus Himself said “My burden is light.”

That’s why we are proud to offer a “lite” version, or re-visioning of a popular abstinence program. We confront specific areas in which previous abstinence methods have failed, and offer exciting options.

Thanks Kathy for pointing this out…

Some links just don’t deserve to be hidden in the comments… Yes, it’s a parody — but it’s just as real as the insanity of purity ball/ring thing.

On the one side, we have Fundamentalist Evangelicalism — with their useless shame and purity balls. On the other we have the liberal left — with teachings that (Though well hidden) really do sound allot like the above link.

Seems either is so much better then addressing the real issue: Shame, guilt, fear and shattered relationship — you know, things WE WOULD actually have to change instead of just hammering our kids…

At least nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, says a new report. And premarital sex isn’t new — the high rates include the sexual habits of women born in the 1940s, challenging the idea that sexual behaviors used to be more restrained.Sex has apparently become something of a young American habit. “It’s hard to stop the evolution of that urge,” said Judy Kuriansky, a sex therapist, media personality and adjunct professor of psychology at Columbia University Teachers College in New York.The report, published by the private Guttmacher Institute in New York, challenges the thinking behind government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

So to summarize, everyone is having premarital sex. All the Christians are having premarital sex too — even those subjected to purity balls and purity rings. In fact, it matters not at all what race, sex or religion the persons hold, they are all having every sort of sex and the only reason they are not having babies all over the place is that, in spite of the US government and abstinence education, more and more of them have figured out contraception.

Oh ya, and 5% of Americans apparently lie on anonymous surveys about having sex…

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

This is a remarkably well done study. We have known for years that Fundamentalist Evangelical states tend to have really high rates of teen pregnancy — but this reality was always written off under the line that the other states are just aborting the children.

A line, we now learn, that is not even remotely true.

Apparently, even when you factor in those abortions, the fear, denial, shame, avoidance of the subject, abstinence based education, teen chastity balls/purity ring thing and the absence of credible teen education in contraception is doing nothing to stop teen sex — and a lot to help the whole, “Be fruitful and multiply,” thing.

Perhaps someone should have had a talk with Paul… His contention that the, “The law kills but the Spirit brings life,” seems to have finally been proven false.

The laws of Fundamentalist Evangelicalism DEFINITELY do bring forth life from teen girls…

Ms. Wisteria, who holds a degree in early Christian fabric and drapery design from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, worked as a model during her student days, and she came to a conclusion: Christian women needed a lingerie line that would let them look sexy but still retain that sense of modesty required for bedtime prayers and morning quiet time.

There’s a widespread misconception, she said, that Christians fear pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, and see it as degrading, corrupting and tainted.

“That’s a dirty, rotten LIE,” she yelled, stamping her foot on the marble floor.

“But it’s always so hard for a couple to transition from kneeling together in awe before the gates of heaven — praying for famine victims in Darfur, for instance, or the political situation in East Timor–and then jumping into the sack for a session of hot carnal pleasure. I wanted to help bridge that gap. That was my sacred mission.”

The result was her first popular cutting-edge design– the breakaway flannel granny gown.

If I wouldn’t take so much heat out of the fundamentalist Evangelical right (And reverends thereof), there’s a twisted part of me that would want to not bill this as the parody it is — and see how many would take it seriously.

But, having been drawn and quartered for not condemning a client who bought his wife sweaters from Victoria’s Secret, for linking to a site which sells foam wedges to support couples for love making (Especially disabled couples), for suggesting a Pyrex toy could be used to treat vaginal spasms, for suggesting that God created our ability to have fantasy and for having the nerve to suggest a sexual teaching guide (with [GASP] pencil diagrams) was not leading a couple into pornography, I must refrain — and wonder how much of the article really is parody; or if it’s history…

When a teenage girl knowingly sends provocative pictures of herself to friends or a boyfriend, is she guilty of child pornography or simply practicing self-expression?

New research that looks at the criminalization of self-made images exchanged among consenting minors argues that the laws and public service campaigns designed to protect girls from becoming victims may actually be blaming the girls themselves and curbing their natural desire for sexual self-expression.

Teenagers sending provocative and even pornographic images via cellphones — a practice known as sexting — is really just a modern variation on "playing doctor or spin the bottle," Peter Cumming, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, argued in a paper on children's sexuality defending the practice.

"Technology does change things, and there can be very serious consequences," Prof. Cumming said. "But that obscures the fact that children and young people are sexual beings who have explored their sexuality in all times, and all cultures and all places. A distinction has to be made between nudity and child porn," he added.

In the last couple of months, the media suddenly seemed to discover that teens had phones (With cameras) as well as computers (With WebCams) and, as usual, the sky was falling. News outlets ran stories, prosecutors suddenly started charging girls who were even photographed in their underwear and, “Dr.” Phil commenced his usual clueless moralizing and grandstanding to shame girls into ceasing the practice of sending erotic pictures of themselves to others (Which, of course, he and others immediately commenced calling pornography.)

Ignoring the reality that this doesn’t fit any scientific definition of rage based erotica (Which Porn is). Ignoring that even under the blunt instrument of the law, nudity does not even remotely equal erotica/pornography and ignoring the raw senselessness of punishing a victim as her own perpetrator, this insanity has provided an interesting window into the collective self hatred present in the sexual psyche of North America. It’s like the veil has been violently pulled back and people are suddenly exposing the attitudes about sex that make them so uncomfortable:

Sex as a means of manipulating others.
Sex as a means of violating others.
Sex as a reason for marital failure (If marriage itself doesn’t kill sex in advance.)
Sex as pure sleaze.
Sex as a means of keeping one gender or another under your thumb.

No more are those attitudes hidden in the back room — but the weird thing is that the proponents of such are hardly hanging their heads in shame over the obvious shattered reality now visible in their belief systems. The above attitudes are actually the foundations of their sudden outrage and activism with rants about how boys will use girls, how gullible girls are for being sexual, how no one will want a girl who does this and how badly girls who do this are gonna get hurt.

As far as I can tell, this is the first researcher who has squarely faced the key question: Why are we shaming/punishing/condemning young girls for being sexual beings (Yes, very stupid ones…) instead of addressing those who would distribute the evidence of said stupidity?

The stunning irony in this entire debate is that neither Oprah, “Dr.” Phil, Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, WiredSafety nor any of the major news outlets launched their campaign with a set of messages to young boys about respecting the sexualities of young girls, how a woman’s sexuality (especially offered to you) is a precious gift, how much of a moron you look like when you treat a girlfriend (Or her picture) like a piece of meat to hand around to your friends, how women are attracted to men of honor and how those that violate the above should be charged and educated to grow up.

Naw… Because that would expose our own attitudes about sex and, particularly, women’s sexuality. Like, perhaps the fact that we think sex is evil, dirty, sick and nasty — and you should only do it with the one you love…

Maine this week became the fifth state, and the fourth in New England, to legalize gay marriage, provoking yet another national debate about same-sex unions. The Lessins’ advocacy group, the Maui-based World Polyamory Association, is pushing for the next frontier of less-traditional codified relationships. This community has even come up with a name for what the rest of the world generally would call a committed threesome: the “triad.”

Unlike open marriages and the swinger days of the 1960s and 1970s, these unions are not about sex with multiple outside partners. Nor are they relationships where one person is involved with two others, who are not involved with each other, a la actress Tilda Swinton. That’s closer to bigamy. Instead, triads—”triangular triads,” to use precise polyamorous jargon—demand that all three parties have full relationships, including sexual, with each other. In the Lessins case, that can be varying pairs but, as Sasha, a psychologist, puts it, “Janet loves it when she gets a double decker.” In a triad, there would be no doubt in Elizabeth Edwards’ mind whether her husband fathered a baby out of wedlock; she likely would have participated in it.

But, But, But — they PROMISED!!! They were so sure it wouldn’t be a slippery slope…

In a message posted on the Miami archdiocese Web page, the archbishop apologized to parishioners and radio listeners for what he called a “scandal.”

“Father Cutie made a promise of celibacy and all priests are expected to fulfill that promise with the help of God,” Favalora said. “Father Cutie’s actions cannot be condoned despite the good works he has done as a priest.”

Cutie apologized in an online statement Tuesday, saying he “wants to ask for forgiveness if my actions have caused pain and sadness. … I assure you that my service and dedication to God remain intact.”

Isn’t it interesting how an archdiocese well known as a safe haven for sexually abusive priests suddenly manages to get so pissy assertive when the other person involved is old enough to vote. And has ovaries.

It says something about the priorities and underlying patterns of brokenness here that this is what would finally be called a, “Scandal…” In any other church, everyone would be cheering that the one leader in the area who is actually doing something productive to really change people’s love lives has now, himself, found love.

You always see this pattern in systems of religious power: Those actions which undermine the power system are always deemed to be so much more evil then those which are neutral or actually maintain said system. The rating process really has nothing to do with any sort of evaluation of the actual damage sustained by human hearts…

Grove City student suspended over gay porn video

Says film income helped pay tuition

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Associated Press
GROVE CITY, Pa. — A student is appealing his suspension from a Christian college in Mercer County for appearing in gay porn videos using a pseudonym.

Twenty-two-year-old John Gechter, of Philadelphia, was suspended for one year pending appeal from Grove City College after a student saw him last month in a video posted online.

Mr. Gechter is appealing the suspension and says he may sue, claiming that the gay porn job isn’t any of the school’s business, especially since he performed using the name “Vincent DeSalvo.” Mr. Gechter says he used his porn income to pay for his schooling.

School officials say Mr. Gechter is suspended because he was well aware his porn involvement “exhibited behavior contrary to the values” of the school about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Three interesting things here:

The most interesting part of this is still being recognized by precisely nobody… Apparently, the student who was looking at same-sex oriented erotic videos and narc’ed him out — well, s/he’s still a member of the student body…

It seems that, on this week’s edition of the naughty list, the sex acts involved in viewing same-sex erotic materials are not quite naughty enough to qualify as a, “Really bad sin,” — but performing them (at least on film) is. Or maybe, the real issue is just that the public can’t identify which student reported the problem — thus the school can still claim the problem doesn’t exist in their back yard, avoid dealing with it and still retain their carefully crafted public image…

The second interesting fact is that this guy is telling the truth about his financial needs. It seems that, for no better reason then hiding their finances from the government, the school canceled every student’s ability to subsidize an education in the normal (student loan) way.

The third interesting thing is that no one stated considering keeping them both there, admitting that the entire student body is overloaded with broken hearts and working with all of them to heal such…

Fundamentalist logic…

And just as we were beginning to acknowledge this and trying to overcome the stigma attached to the disease our attention has been diverted by court cases in which people infected with HIV, mostly men, have been convicted for conduct that risks, or is simply perceived to risk, transferring the disease.

Johnson Aziga of Hamilton is the first person in Canada — possibly in the world — to be convicted of first-degree murder for having unprotected sexual intercourse with two women without telling them that he was HIV positive. He’s received a “life” sentence.

This has to be one of the most striking and disturbing articles of the day. Here’s the logic:

Forget the fact that this man knew what he was doing would kill. Forget the reality that he got the ability to bring that kiss of death through his own actions. Forget the fact that he lied to get that ability to bring this kiss of death to another. Let’s blame the victim of this deadly gift for the crime of trusting him and curse the injustice of the legal system for arresting him for this deliberate homicidal act.

Why? Well, here’s the logic: We live in a world of AIDS where everyone should live in fear of this pervasive plague or at least some other STD.

Really? Lets talk about a pervasive plague that impacts around 2/3rds of one percent (0.7%) of the population, is mostly transmitted by male on male sex (40—49% of new cases) and, in the United States, a known population (African Americans) make up about 48% of the total HIV-positive population and more than half of new HIV cases — despite making up only 12% of the population.

Is it any wonder that, so called, condom fatigue has set in? Is it any wonder that the general public still seems to think of STD’s in terms of chlamydia or the like? Is it any wonder that a few (Yes, even at the chlamydia level) very foolish individuals have begun playing a condom free game of Russian Roulette and could also be at risk to this order of calculated homicide?

Naw — let’s decry the failure to, “Overcome the stigma attached to the disease.” In English, that means, “Convince the population that this is everyone’s problem instead of still mostly being the byproduct of limited (Mostly homosexual) extremely high risk behaviors centered in a known population.” It means, “Ignore that there are some who actually pursue infection with the HIV virus.” It means, “Let’s all act like it makes sense to pretend obvious and rampant irresponsibility on the part of one known population group should be destigmatized while demanding hyper-responsibility in another.”

Once again, forget standing up, telling the truth about where the problem is centered and demanding that the core of the problem deal with it. Let’s deflect it by talking about other STD’s and make the whole world responsible.

Is it any wonder this completely preventable disease called HIV/AIDS is not going away?

The pastor of Willow Creek Chicago — the city campus of the evangelical megachurch Willow Creek Community Church — has resigned and admitted to “sexual impurity,” a church spokesman said.

The pastor, Rev. Steve Wu, could not be reached, and the church would [not] specify what took place.

Wu, 43, moved from California’s Silicon Valley in early 2006, hired by senior pastor Rev. Bill Hybels to lead Willow Creek Chicago, the downtown branch of the South Barrington-based church.

And further down…

The statement said: “He admitted to sexual impurity and has taken full responsibility for his sin. He has expressed a desire to participate in a restoration process.”

The usual drama continues — yet another collection of sex obsessed evangelicals find yet another in their midst who slipped Willy across this week’s line and, yet again, have tossed him out on his, er, nether-regions as a form of utterly useless restorative therapy that is sure to result in both zero change and a speaking tour — probably with a book deal. (Clearly, we assume, this is necessary because sex is so much badder then all the rest of the antics they are involved in.) None of this is new. What’s interesting is how honest they have been this time…

“has taken full responsibility for his sin.”

Two errors in seven words — pretty much a record I think…

Last time I checked Scripture, it tells me Jesus took responsibility for the sin of the entire world, took it all upon Himself and died for it. Paul further tells us that (Rom 7) we died with Christ to all of the elemental principles of this world (Col 2:21) and the very concept of the naughty and nice list style of living that got instituted in at the Fall in the garden of Eden. Sin was such a serious problem that no one other then God Himself could do ANYTHING about it — and He had to die, kill us and then raise all of the above to a new life to do it. And, He did it — once and for all

But not in Bill Hybel’s inferno… It’s a special place of image and performance where people handle sin with so little seriousness that they actually believe that a human being can do something to fix it. Here, sin (At least whatever of it is on the latest naughty list) is still front and center (Because apparently Jesus only died so we can eat Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers) and people are still scaled by it until they can work hard enough to appear to clean up their own acts.

But don’t worry, it’s a caring place where they help people reach that sinless state — by ensuring their unemployment…[SIGH]

I’m still waiting for a church with the guts to stand up and say,

Today pastor _________ came to us to admit that he’s been having an affair with our women’s ministry coordinator. We’re leaving both of them in their jobs and are going to set out as a community to experience what it is like to see Jesus do what He said he would do in setting the captives free if we actually become the safe place He talked about. This week we are going to start that journey by talking about guilt, shame and condemnation and how that unholy trinity keeps people doing stupid things that will never satisfy. Bring what you have been conned into believing is your own dirty laundry at 11am and we’ll see if Jesus can do the stain removal you never could even get started on…

Ya, I know — never mind…[SIGH]

The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.

Ya, ok, not so much… (To say nothing of the idiotic delusion of reparative therapy being completed in three weeks…)

ap.org

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard – a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

But of course, the church is clearly living out their commitment to a transparent, open reflection of a new life in Christ… We think… Ok, maybe they are mostly covering it up better then even Haggard himself and even paying hush money…

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man’s decision to go public.

But no, of course it’s not hush money — it’s just compassionate assistance… Um, no wait…

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

Boyd said the church will not take action against the man if he tells his story in the press.

“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to,” he said.

Yep, compassionate assistance — with a Non Disclosure Agreement. I’ll bet the church also makes patrons of their food bank sign one though so I’m sure it’s all standard procedure…

It isn’t often that Evangelical Christendom manages NOT to make me ashamed to be associated with them — this is not their lucky day…

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.

They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.

“Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research.

Ok, this is so striking it just screams out for a comment. One of the foundational rules in statistics is the law that, “Correlation does not equal causation.” In other words, just because you can prove that the rising or falling levels of one thing (Say the number of rum runners in Boston during prohibition) are exactly linked to the same in another (Say the number of Baptist Ministers in Boston during prohibition), you have NOT proved that they actually have ANYTHING to do with each other (No, all Baptist Ministers are not rum runners — they are all a function of population growth).

Oh yes, every researcher on the planet is taught this fact.

So, then we have this genius — Dr Thomas Pollet claims that because he can link the success of a man giving a woman an orgasm with his success in making money, women must be biologically programmed through some strange evolutionary adaptation to like sex (And therefor have better orgasms) with men who have money.

Of course, there’s a problem with this — Ros has had the same number of orgasms from our lovemaking today that she had when I was a starving grad student living on student loans. Shouldn’t her sex life have improved dramatically since I started earning a living?

Or, perhaps men who can make a decent living tend also to be educated men — men who are willing to get off their butts and read a book about sex — men who are willing to learn from someone smarter then Hugh Hefner…

Naw, couldn’t be that — gotta have something to do with a woman’s vestigial primate tendencies to be a gold digger…

Just remember this the next time someone says, “But Science says…”

But, according to Add Health data, evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début”—to use the festive term of social-science researchers—shortly after turning sixteen. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.

Another key difference in behavior, Regnerus reports, is that evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception. This could be because evangelicals are also among the most likely to believe that using contraception will send the message that they are looking for sex. It could also be because many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease. More provocatively, Regnerus found that only half of sexually active teen-agers who say that they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time. By contrast, sixty-nine per cent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or another trusted adult consistently use protection.

The gulf between sexual belief and sexual behavior becomes apparent, too, when you look at the outcomes of abstinence-pledge movements. Nationwide, according to a 2001 estimate, some two and a half million people have taken a pledge to remain celibate until marriage. Usually, they do so under the auspices of movements such as True Love Waits or the Silver Ring Thing. Sometimes, they make their vows at big rallies featuring Christian pop stars and laser light shows, or at purity balls, where girls in frothy dresses exchange rings with their fathers, who vow to help them remain virgins until the day they marry. More than half of those who take such pledges—which, unlike abstinence-only classes in public schools, are explicitly Christian—end up having sex before marriage, and not usually with their future spouse.

The stats just keep rolling in — Evangelical shame and Catholic guilt once again just doesn’t seem capable of arresting the misplaced human teen’s longing for love. Whatever shall we do???

Perhaps that might be a reason to offer it to them some other way — like maybe just being fathers and mothers to the fatherless and motherless???

Or, we could just launch another purity ball instead…

‘One of the saddest moments when I was thinking about my marriage was when I realized that sex with Brad was the only thing we shared that was unique to us.

‘It was what made us more than roommates, and yet I was denying our marriage that aspect.’

But did it change their marriage for the better?

‘It changed completely,’ says Charla. ‘We started being more attentive to each other, not just in bed, but about the trivial little things. Brad would offer to do some chore or run an errand, and I wouldn’t be thinking he was doing it to gain sex points.

‘We became so much closer. You can’t have that sort of regular intimacy in bed without it spilling over into the rest of life.

‘There was a lot less narking and sniping. You just can’t do that all day then want to get into bed with the person at night.

‘My self-confidence was greatly improved, too.

Ten years ago, saying this earned me the ire of several church leaders and one green-paper-with-pink-ink piece of beautifully scented (and unsigned) hate mail from a feminist type who figured I was a male pig. Now it’s making the news in our post-feminist culture as though it’s a novel idea just invented — speaking in suddenly awed tones about figuring out that daily sex could be good for all.

Our society is finally waking up — finally figuring out that our barter system for sex in marriage is an insult to both partners and an inversion of how we were designed to function. (Sex was designed to be the platform on which all other areas of intimacy are integrated. It is a servant to all the rest of the areas of intimacy rather then the pinnacle of all intimacy to be used as a reward for good performance in the other areas.)

Books are being written. People are rediscovering thousands of year old East Indian and Asian texts where daily sex is reported to be the best idea for a marriage. People are doing anything but acknowledge how short a time ago it was that we forgot this truth:

1 Corinthians 7:4 The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. (5a) Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer (and fasting.)

But hey, it’s just Paul — what did he know anyway???

Calling it a way to “open the door for dialogue” between the resort and its homeowners, Anne Hathorn, of the Clearwater firm of Becker & Poliakoff, said the resort must cut off ties with Web sites that promote the swinger lifestyle, tighten control on the use of Caliente’s name in event advertisements and where the ads are distributed, and get Caliente reinstated in the American Association for Nude Recreation.

Caliente Resort said it plans to keep on marketing to those it calls “nontraditional nudists.”

Caliente was embroiled in controversy last month when the association temporarily suspended its membership and opened an investigation into sexually charged monthly parties at Caliente organized by Aahz Party Lifestyle Group, a “lifestyle,” or swingers, group with Caliente’s blessing.

The association promotes family-friendly nudism. Its investigation puts at stake Caliente’s access to marketing assistance and membership subsidies for tourists, among other advantages.

Here’s one for the category of ironic parallelism…

They come there looking for freedom, a chance to throw off the oppressive constraints of society and run free in their (largely) wrinkled, middle-aged birthday suits — “just as God intended it.”

Then they create a complicated series of rules and regulations for what constitutes appropriate freedom, a homeowners association to back it and retain a lawyer to enforce their definitions of freedom… It seems oppression follows wherever rule-keeper type people are…

Sounds a lot like Evangelical Christianity doesn’t it??? We too set out to create a place supposedly based based on grace with its calling of freeing people from the bondage to law and judgment that has trapped them in that which formerly was (A system of law, sin and death) and unable to breath free.

Then we create a place sanctioned by Revenue Canada, governed by a federally approved charter, led by a talking head (we misname a pastor), controlled by an elected board issuing edicts (which we misname the elders) and managed by staff people (often misnamed the deacons) hired under their agreement to uphold a code of conduct and do what that board tells them to do. We preach a gospel of performance and moralizing and flood people with good-works systems and, “Opportunities,” to perform such in to prove that they really belong — and guilt them into doing such.

And, then we wonder why it becomes a place of fear, shame and the bondage of a tiny minority’s control with people living in the exact opposite of what Jesus came to bring.

And, worst of all, we do so because we can’t believe that Jesus/the Gospel has any real power. We can’t believe that setting people free will unleash love and community — not selfishness. We can’t believe that preaching real grace (Not the performance based version) will draw people to heal — not to wreak the lives of others. We can’t believe that creating a church where the broken messes of our lives are spilling out all over the place (where everyone is ok with those messes being there) and relying on God to heal them (Rather then using judgment based performance to fix it) could actually create a church where it is safe to be — not a haven for abusers. We can’t even fathom that the absence of structure could actually inspire creativity — not anarchy.

We can’t — because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t really believe that Jesus is real or that He can heal. So, we’ve created our own systems. Surprise surprise, they suck.