Religions > Atheism > Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
19 Dec 2004 11:07:39 AM |
| Object: |
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
From The St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/04:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/18/Opinion/Don_t_get_your_knicke.shtml
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
When it comes to sex, Americans act like adolescents: simultaneously
confused, titillated, scandalized, drooling, obsessed and grossed-out.
Maybe it's because we are a comparatively young nation.
Maybe it's because our mythic founders - the Puritans - were the most
unfun people in Europe.
It doesn't take much for us to get our knickers in a twist.
A promo for the nighttime soap Desperate Housewives appearing on
Monday Night Football treated viewers to a creamy-skinned blonde,
dropping her towel in front of a fully-padded player in a steamy
locker room.
The family values nation rose up, peppering ABC with complaints.
They weren't offended that this low-rent seduction scene played into
stereotypes about black men and white women.
They just don't like nekkidness.
Children could be watching!
Of course, it is a scientific fact that the mere sight of a nice set
of female thoracic vertebrae can corrupt the minds of the young.
Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed,
wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of
steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires while fans
with faces and torsos painted blue or with giant pieces of plastic
foam cheese on their heads cheer them on.
Football is good clean all-American fun.
Sex is dirty; violence is okay.
The hissy fit over Nicolette Sheridan's bare back on Monday Night
Football isn't surprising in a country where the attorney general
ordered the statue of Justice covered up because she sported a bare
bosom, the hussy.
Gay marriage, abortion, pornography, sex education - these were among
the issues "values" voters in the presidential election cited as
important to them.
Most are evangelical Christians and most went for George W. Bush.
A lot of them were still mad about Bono's feckless use of the "F-word"
on a televised awards show and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at
the Super Bowl.
The scary prospect of glimpsing a nanosecond of a breast far
outweighed the commercials with the flatulent horses, the booze
bingeing and the one where the voice intones, "Erections lasting more
than four hours require immediate medical attention."
"Values" voters claim to be all about "spirituality," but they are
really fixated on the body.
The Religious Right regards sexuality as dangerous, anarchic, an enemy
of the orderly state.
For progressives, expressions of sexuality (like religion) among
consenting adults are a matter of individual liberty.
In other words, not that big a deal.
But throughout American history, conservatives have used sex to tar
liberals and liberal ideas.
When Thomas Jefferson ran for president against John Adams, he was
accused of being a crypto French Revolutionist, hell-bent on promoting
nonstop partying and sanctioned adultery.
The 1800 equivalents of the New York Post and Fox News ran endless
(and quite prurient) stories about his affair with his slave Sally
Hemings.
Proslavery ideology in the 1850s argued that if "the African" were
emancipated, "our civilization and its institutions would be
destroyed."
"Free love" would replace domesticity, uppity women would demand the
right to vote and the family would disintegrate.
Now we are told that if homosexuals are allowed to marry, the
institution of heterosexual marriage will be wrecked.
As one congressman breathlessly threatened, next thing you know
polygamy will be legalized.
People could marry dogs or goats.
Given that straight people divorce over 50 percent of the time, the
idea that gay marriage somehow undermines traditional marriage is
flimsy as the outfits the Desperate Housewives wear to do the dusting.
The central question is this:
When did sexual morality become equated with morality in total?
What about the morality of tax cuts for the rich and extra burdens for
the poor?
The morality of insisting that children be born then refusing them
health care and a decent education?
Capital punishment?
Colonialism?
Torture?
Lying about reasons to send young men and women to their deaths in
war?
Morality isn't just about reproductive organs.
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
.
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| User: "Dale" |
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| Title: Re: Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
19 Dec 2004 01:33:33 PM |
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"Fredric L. Rice" <FRice@SkepticTank.ORGREMOVE> wrote in message
news:10sbd7egkbq230a@corp.supernews.com...
From The St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/04:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/18/Opinion/Don_t_get_your_knicke.shtml
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
[...]
Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed,
wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of
steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires
Blah, blah, blah. With friends like this, lovers of freedom need no enemies.
.
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| User: "Meteorite Debris" |
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| Title: Re: Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
19 Dec 2004 05:25:16 PM |
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On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:33:33 GMT the ET form known as
Dale<dmgreer@nspm.airmail.net> sent a radio signal across the vast
expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
"Fredric L. Rice" <FRice@SkepticTank.ORGREMOVE> wrote in message
news:10sbd7egkbq230a@corp.supernews.com...
From The St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/04:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/18/Opinion/Don_t_get_your_knicke.shtml
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
[...]
Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed,
wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of
steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires
Blah, blah, blah. With friends like this, lovers of freedom need no enemies.
This would be the freedom to use a stick no thicker than your thumb to
beat your wife? The freedom to flout international while condemning
others for doing so? The freedom the develop WMDs while condemning
others for doing so.
None of this makes sense until you substitute the word "power" for the
word "freedom".
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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| User: "Dale" |
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| Title: Re: Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
19 Dec 2004 08:57:58 PM |
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"Meteorite Debris" <abuse@optusnet,com.au> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c30b1da8a025911989fc5@news.optusnet.com.au...
On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:33:33 GMT the ET form known as
Dale<dmgreer@nspm.airmail.net> sent a radio signal across the vast
expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
"Fredric L. Rice" <FRice@SkepticTank.ORGREMOVE> wrote in message
news:10sbd7egkbq230a@corp.supernews.com...
From The St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/04:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/18/Opinion/Don_t_get_your_knicke.shtml
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
[...]
Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed,
wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of
steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires
Blah, blah, blah. With friends like this, lovers of freedom need no
enemies.
This would be the freedom to use a stick no thicker than your thumb to
beat your wife? The freedom to flout international while condemning
others for doing so? The freedom the develop WMDs while condemning
others for doing so.
None of this makes sense until you substitute the word "power" for the
word "freedom".
My complaint was that Roberts was making irrational and insupportable
accusations against an entire class of people, merely to support a
questionable thesis about freedom of speech. What are YOU talking about? And
what the hell does "flout international" mean?
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
20 Dec 2004 05:05:52 PM |
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On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 19:33:33 GMT, "Dale" <dmgreer@nspm.airmail.net>
wrote:
"Fredric L. Rice" <FRice@SkepticTank.ORGREMOVE> wrote in message
news:10sbd7egkbq230a@corp.supernews.com...
From The St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/04:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/18/Opinion/Don_t_get_your_knicke.shtml
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
[...]
Better to focus on the game, in which a bunch of steroid-crazed,
wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires harm another bunch of
steroid-crazed, wife-beating, semi-literate millionaires
Blah, blah, blah. With friends like this, lovers of freedom need no enemies.
Most of the American populace hasn't the courage to look freedom in
the eye-as you demonstrate so nicely.
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
.
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| User: "Meteorite Debris" |
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| Title: Re: Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex |
19 Dec 2004 05:39:21 PM |
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On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:07:39 GMT the ET form known as Fredric L.
Rice<FRice@SkepticTank.ORGREMOVE> sent a radio signal across the vast
expanse of deep space -._.--._.--._.--._.--._.--._.
Don't get your knickers twisted, morality isn't just about sex
By DIANE ROBERTS
When it comes to sex, Americans act like adolescents: simultaneously
confused, titillated, scandalized, drooling, obsessed and grossed-out.
Maybe it's because we are a comparatively young nation.
Maybe it's because our mythic founders - the Puritans - were the most
unfun people in Europe.
It doesn't take much for us to get our knickers in a twist.
A promo for the nighttime soap Desperate Housewives appearing on
Monday Night Football treated viewers to a creamy-skinned blonde,
dropping her towel in front of a fully-padded player in a steamy
locker room.
I watched the last episode of Michael Palin's Himalayas. In Bhutan you
learn that by custom each house has a painted phallic symbol on the
outside, sometimes quiet explicit, sometimes with representations of
sperm spurting. Now this stuff must be seen by very small children and
seemingly with no ill effects. They have not caught the xian
dysfunctionality. With visitor visas costing $US200.00 per DAY per
person the country is quiet safe from bleating xian missionaries.
--
epicurus1*at*optusnet*dot*com*dot*au
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing that they themselves
were dead and in Heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in
Hell.
-Mencken
.
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