Anti-Gay-Marriage Activists—I Feel Your Pain

The California Supreme Court has just overturned the state’s ban on same-gender marriage. People (gay AND straight) who support full civil rights for all Californians are celebrating; those who believe people forfeit their routine civil rights if they have same-gender sex are outraged.

Memo to this latter group:

I’ve read your denunciations of this court decision. When I look beyond the lies and distortions, I see your fear and anger. And I sympathize. Appreciating your pain helps me forgive—well, at least understand—your destructive, undignified lying, your desperate cries that civilization is collapsing.

So let me address some of your lies:

Lie: “These are liberal, activist judges inventing new laws.”
Fact: You know that three of the four judges affirming the decision were appointed by Republican governors. They describe themselves as conservatives who consider the Constitution the final authority, not themselves.

Lie: “This will destroy traditional marriage.”
Fact: You know it hasn’t done so in Massachusetts, or in Spain, an even more traditional society. Traditional marriage has been destroying itself quite energetically in America for years, BEFORE gays could marry.

Lie: “Marriage is intended to facilitate procreation.”
Fact: You know that if this were true, marriage would be denied to couples who were infertile, post-menopausal, or committed to being childless. The state doesn’t do fertility tests before issuing marriage licenses.

Lie: “Children are better off with a heterosexual couple.”
Fact: You know there are no reliable studies showing that kids do better with straight parents. You know there are LOTS of studies showing that kids do as well with gay parents as with straight parents with similar incomes and education. And you know that half of all heterosexual married couples get divorced. Do you argue that having divorced heterosexual parents is good for kids?

You tell these degrading lies because you’re afraid. Afraid of this homosexual “other,” this monster you’re convinced is different from you. If you knew how many gay people you saw today at Starbucks or Target or the gas station you might not be so afraid. If you knew that that helpful woman three cubicles down from yours is gay you might not so easily deny her the basic rights that you enjoy.

Being a psychologist, I have to add that you (or your best friend) tell these lies because the whole idea of a man kissing a man’s penis is creepy. A creepy idea that you (like ALL men) think about once in a while—which is way too often for your comfort.

You tell these lies because you’re angry. Things are changing way too fast for any of us to absorb. Everyone who isn’t young feels old. It seems like no one’s really in control. We can’t blame the Communists, and the terrorists aren’t molesting our kids, or demanding we commute 90 minutes to work everyday in horrible traffic.

Your churches and political leaders are telling you who’s ruining America—gays. You can’t kill them or deport them, so you try to limit their rights and their impact. You’re failing. You’re getting angrier.

And now it looks like gays are going to share what you value most—the right to love, and the right to have that love blessed by the state (with, of course, the tax advantages and hospital privileges that come with that blessing).

I understand your pain.
But quit lying.

Gays don’t want to seduce you or your spouse, don’t want to molest your kids, don’t want to undermine your marriage. Each gay man and lesbian has their own life to lead, their own petty little problems to work out. It’s not all about you and your little marriage, which NO ONE except you cares about.

So I understand your pain.
But quit lying.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Memo to Indiana: Porn=Shakespeare=Free Speech

Count Indiana among the hated Axis of Evil.

In countries like North Korea, Iran, and Libya, individuals and organizations have been required to register communication tools like modems and cell phones with the government. Such countries want to know exactly who has the capacity to express “dangerous” ideas.

The state of Indiana has recently added itself to this illustrious honor roll. The legislature has passed a law requiring businesses to register and pay a $250 fee if they sell any “sexually explicit material.”

That would include Salinger’s “Catcher In the Rye,” episodes of “NYPD Blue” the FCC has labeled indecent, and reproductions of Michelangelo’s “David,” whose world-famous arms, legs, face, and hands come burdened with a world-famous penis.

The law’s sponsor claims that it’s intended to reduce the availability of porn—a dubious goal at best (and unconstitutional, according to a group suing the state, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers). So busting the ballet or opera shouldn’t be a problem, says State Representative Terry Goodin, because “Individuals, corporations, companies know whether or not they’re selling pornography.”

Tell that to broadcasters who wouldn’t air “Saving Private Ryan” last Memorial Day for fear the FCC would bankrupt them with “indecency” fines.

But the inclusion of high-class erotic stuff isn’t what makes the Indiana law destructive and unAmerican—it just highlights the problem of deciding which expression deserves legal protection whenever a legislature attempts to say that some of it does and some of it doesn’t.

The answer, according to our Constitution, is that it all does, or none of it does.

This is hard for some people to understand or approve of. So let’s say it clearly: in the radical American political system, the right to express ideas is singled out as sacred, protected above all others.

Every American’s right to say, write, paint, dance, sing, film, and otherwise express an idea is protected, regardless of the content of the idea. And the more people object to the content of the idea, the more firmly it must be protected.

All the rest, as Rabbi Hillel said 20 centuries ago, is commentary.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

London Fears Pics of Really Big Ben

I generally don’t talk about repressive legislation or sexuality witchhunts in other countries, where adulterers can be stoned to death, gays can be executed, consumers of porn can lose their jobs or kids, and artists creating “blasphemous” art can be jailed.

But when our cousins across the pond threaten the fundamental rights of their citizens to own sexy pictures, we should care. Especially when their proposed laws sound very, very close to ours.

The British Parliament is set to approve a law next week that would criminalize the mere possession of images which the government deems “too extreme.” These would include images depicting acts which “threaten or appear to threaten a person’s life” and which “result in or appear to result in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals.”

You could go to jail for owning a picture of people play-acting a scene of rape.

The new law gained traction after the murder of a British woman whose killer frequented websites depicting violent sex. Members of Parliament seem uninterested in the much, much larger number of people who go to those websites without murdering anyone.

The new law will forbid couples from sharing images of themselves engaged in consensual sex if a court decides it’s too rough. As one Lord Wallace said during the bill’s debate, “If no sexual offense is being committed, it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offense for having an image of something which was not an offense.” Translation into American: this bill creates a crime out of nothing.

The prospect of a thousand-year-old democracy forbidding people from owning pictures of legal activity is extremely disturbing. What’s even more disturbing is that similar laws already exist in the U.S. (e.g., 17-year-olds having legal sex can’t own photos of their lovemaking because it’s considered child pornography)—and every year, our Justice Department attempts to criminalize larger and larger categories of pornography.

The U.S. and U.K.—two countries divided by a common language? It’s looking more like two countries united by a common fear: the fear that pictures of sex have some magical power to destroy people’s minds. London Bridge is indeed falling down—not from porn, but from the fear of porn.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Pharoah Lives—In The Hearts of Orthodox Jews

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary, where I’m lecturing for a few days. By coincidence it’s also Passover, which gave special meaning to my visit to the old Jewish Quarter here.

I toured the famous Dohany Synagogue, the second largest in the world (after New York’s), along with several smaller ones. Done in various 19th century styles, one feature common to all is the physical separation of the genders—typically men downstairs, women upstairs.

This separation continues today in modern Orthodox Judaism in America, Israel, and around the world. Some Orthodox Jewish men won’t shake hands with a woman from outside their family. Many won’t dance with any woman, not even their own wife.

In Israel, in fact, the Orthodox Jews who control key government ministries control the 2,500-year-old Wailing Wall, preventing men and women from visiting or praying together at Judaism’s holiest shrine.

Which brings us to Passover, the festive holiday that celebrates the Israelite exodus from Egyptian slavery thousands of years ago. Tradition teaches that when Pharoah became frightened about the quickly-multiplying Israelite immigrants, he enslaved them, and, to limit their fertility, moved them to segregated dormitories—forcibly separating husband and wife.

How ironic, then, that Orthodox Judiasm repeats this destructive dynamic with its enforced separation of men and women. Indeed, fundamentalist Islam does the same, while Catholicism and evangelical Christianity do it symbolically.

How can religious people believe that marriage is holy, and then deliberately limit its intimacy and shared experiences? How can any Jew believe in a God that prevents marriage partners from praying together, from sharing a spiritual moment, from feeling connected to the tradition that helps keep them together?

A God who creates men and women who desire each other’s companionship, and then forbids them from sharing it fully, is not worthy of worship. Only a human mind could imagine such cruelty.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Dear Pope: Support Life, Support Masturbation

The Pope has stepped forward to talk about the pain inflicted by priests who sexually exploited young parishioners, calling it “a wound on the body of Christ.”

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” Benedict said today in Boston, vowing to eliminate such behavior from the priesthood.

This, of course, is an important step. But with all due respect to the thousands of lives damaged by molesting priests, what about the tens of millions of lives damaged by the OTHER Catholic Church sex scandal—the profound condemnation of masturbation?

This is the first sexual activity of most humans, and the primary sexual activity of most Western adults—far more than intercourse or even passionate kissing.

Despite the lack of clear Scriptural reference (masturbation appears NOWHERE in the Old Testament, and there’s one ambiguous, POSSIBLE reference in Matthew), the Church has reaffirmed and again reaffirmed the sinfulness of this sexual activity. How can that be? Masturbation does not destroy life, exploits no one, involves no adultery, expresses no “perversion.”

The Church has a lot to answer for in its handling of priests who sexualized children. But it has way, way more to answer for in its meticulous creation of guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear of Divine punishment—for the most simple, genuine, life-affirming sexual activity of all.

If the kids molested by priests are worth so many papal tears, how about the brothers, sisters, cousins, and neighbors of those kids—who, not molested by priests, are nevertheless ravaged by the Church’s inhumane condemnation of their sexuality. Every adult who started as a Catholic child faces life with this handicap.

When will the Pope—any Pope—step up and end this ongoing catastrophe?

Outraged that I would mention molestation and guilt about masturbation in the same breath? Consider the TYPICAL results of this guilt:

* sexual dysfunction (lack of desire, erection, or orgasm)
* inability to have a meaningful relationship
* feeling so dirty that you invite sexual misuse as an adult
* depression because God hates you
* bulimia and anorexia
* disgust about others’ sexuality and sexual choices
* teaching your own kids to be ashamed of their sexuality
* using violence to prove to yourself you’re a real man

Such damage is NOT trivial next to being molested—in fact, the effects are quite similar. Learning to feel guilty and disgusted over your masturbation as a child is just a different way of having your sense of self eroded, your ability to relate damaged, your access to your divine sexuality stolen.

Masturbation is life-affirming, and the Church claims it wants to affirm life. Ending priest-child sex is one step. Stopping the inhumane assault on masturbation is another.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Protecting Our Sexuality, One Bad Law At A Time

With anxiety and anger about sexuality reaching a noisy crescendo, Congress members and state legislators are responding with laws that quiet the mob—laws that have little chance of surviving.

For years, Congress has passed law after law attempting to rid the internet of pornography. Texas recently passed a law requiring strip clubs to pay a special tax of $5 per head (no jokes, please).

And last week, Indiana passed a law requiring sellers of “sexually explicit” materials to register with the state and pay a $250 fee.

Every federal law censoring the internet has been halted by a court. The Texas law was overturned by a court several weeks ago. The Indiana law, you can be sure, will be overturned before Labor Day.

All because of “activist judges.” You know what an “activist judge” is—someone who decides that a law you like happens to be illegal.

Most people understand that Congress can’t pass a law reinstituting slavery—and that if it did, a court would overturn it. Similarly, a state legislature can’t authorize murder, or require all its residents to eat beef to qualify for a driver’s license.

Americans may not understand the legal technicalities preventing the passage of certain laws (even if highly popular), but they understand the general idea. We live by a set of rules—the Constitution and its Bill of Rights—that elected officials simply cannot waive.

This is all fine—until a group of people thinks they should be allowed to trample the Constitutional rules because they’re upset about sex. Sexual danger. Sexual fear. Legislators pass laws in response to SexPanics that break the larger, Constitutional rules.

When these laws are successfully challenged, counties and states face huge legal bills, and everyone’s time has been wasted. But legislators win.

“Don’t blame me,” they say, “I voted for a law you demanded that would protect our children, but those snooty judges decided you citizens couldn’t have the laws you asked us to pass. You might as well live in Russia.”

This is legislative cowardice. Most lawmakers are lawyers. They can generally guess what new laws won’t stand up. They vote for the laws anyway, watch them (predictably) get ruled unconstitutional, then blame the courts, the ACLU, and “liberal” plaintiffs (bookstores, strip clubs, a student who just wanted some birth control).

Hey Americans, democracy does NOT mean the majority can create ANY laws they want—it means they can pass any laws they want within the Constitution’s wonderful, far-sighted limits.

Americans who are too immature to understand that their fear and anxiety about sex do not suspend the rules of the game will get the lawmakers they deserve. These charlatans will pander to their fear, pretend to do something efficacious, and when it predictably fails Constitutional scrutiny, argue “hey, I tried to do what you wanted, but due to a flaw in the system, we both end up victims.”

No, judges overturning bad laws isn’t a flaw in the system; it’s the system working like it’s supposed to. The adult fruits of democracy are only for those adult enough to comfort themselves when their emotions want something their political system can’t—and shouldn’t— provide.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

Minnesota Justice Paralyzed By Facial

Former University of Minnesota football player Dominic Jones is accused of sexually assaulting a woman by, among other things, ejaculating on her face while she was drunk.

Despite eyewitness accounts that the woman asked to be “rained on,” the State says it must be rape because no sane, sober woman would actually consent to such a perversion.

Jones’ attorney requested I testify as an expert witness about the many ideas and practices regarding ejaculation and semen (and faces) that have developed over the centuries. The Chief Judge of the District Court approved the expenses for me to fly out.

But the State prosecutor pulled a legal technicality and challenged my expertise, and so the trial judge held a phone hearing. She was told I’d written five books about sexuality, trained almost 100,000 doctors and psychologists in sexuality, and done sex therapy and marriage counseling for about 30,000 hours.

And she turned me down. I hadn’t written any books on “facials.” I hadn’t taken any courses on “facials.” I hadn’t done any research studies of “facials.” It’s all true. Of course, no one has.

Denying my sexological expertise because I haven’t done research on facials—that’s like saying an experienced architect isn’t an expert because none of the houses she’s designed have rose bushes in the front.

But the judge didn’t stop there. She said even if I were an expert, such expertise wouldn’t be relevant to the case—that is, wouldn’t involve any special knowledge beyond what a typical jury member already knows.

In a single judicial gesture, Judge Rosenbaum dismissed an entire profession and its field of study.

Ironically, by displaying her ignorance of what sexologists know, the judge proved that the study of sexuality is indeed a technical profession beyond what lay people know.

Why would a woman invite a facial? Why would a man do it? Your honor, here’s some damned expertise:
* For safer sex
* To prevent pregnancy
* To share intimacy
* To give a partner a gift
* Because semen is considered magical
* To share a laugh
* Because someone came quicker than expected
* To experiment
* To maintain one’s “virginity”
* To mimic those hot ladies in porn

I’m annoyed that I’ve been insulted, although I don’t take it personally.

I’m appalled that justice is so hard to come by in Minnesota, where the only place a woman could ever want a man to come is inside her vagina—her special semen receptacle.

It is, of course, a lot easier to get convictions when the defendant does not get to put on a complete defense. Apparently, some Minnesota prosecutors and judges prefer it that way.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

It’s Women’s History Month—But Which Women?

March is Women’s History Month.

Americans don’t know much about history in general; why were Kellogg’s Corn Flakes invented? Why was J. Edgar Hoover so feared? How did contraception become criminalized in the U.S.? Why did the American Psychiatric Association remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses? And if we Remember the Alamo, shouldn’t we also Remember Stonewall, the Hays Code, and the Comstock Laws?

Anything that better acquaints us with our history—or herstory, if you will—is almost certainly a good thing. But which women’s history? Which women?

Should we study ardent supporters of church-state separation like Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or small-minded policy-makers like U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling, who fear that God needs the help of American law?

By “women,” do we mean Margaret Sanger, who went to jail for opening America’s first birth control clinic, or Bridget Maher (Family Research Council) and Jan LaRue (Concerned Women for America), who lie about the effectiveness of condoms and try to restrict the public’s access to birth control?

Should we know about Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, who believed books and pictures of sexual activity were dangerous, or the ACLU’s Nadine Strossen, who has spent her adult life crusading against the censorship that inevitably hurts women and their sexuality?

Should we learn about Deb Levine, who founded ISIS to create innovative sex education internet programs for teens, or Leslie Unruh, whose Abstinence Clearinghouse lies about the consequences of teen sex, and deliberately prevents teens from getting the healthcare they need and deserve?

The truth is, we need to know about all these women. We need to know the history of how our sexuality has been stolen and re-stolen from us by frightened do-gooders, religious fundamentalists, so-called feminists who don’t trust women, and “decency” groups that try to enshrine their personal morality into law. Being female doesn’t mean that someone is a friend of sexuality.

We’re told that history is written by the winners. We need to know as much history as we can, to protect sexuality—and ourselves—from being the losers.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

New New York Governor & Wife: ‘We Had Affairs’ (Yawn. Yay!)

It’s a great country when a blind black man can become governor of the nation’s most important state.

And David Paterson, within hours of his inauguration, made it an even better country by discussing the extramarital sex he and his wife Michelle each had several years ago.

Their acknowledgment was elegant in its frankness, lack of apology, and limit on details. “I didn’t want to be compromised, I didn’t want to be blackmailed,” stated Paterson. He said he hoped his openness would help New Yorkers trust him and help everyone move forward to focus on governing.

What an amazing idea: a politician admitting he has a normal life—including sexual complications—and getting on with his job. “I betrayed a commitment to my wife several years ago, and I do not feel I’ve betrayed my commitment to the citizens of New York State. I haven’t broken any laws, I don’t think I’ve violated my oath of office, and I saw this as a private matter.”

This sets a new standard for political discourse:
· News media will now have to prove that a politician’s sexual behavior is actually newsworthy.
· Anti-sex “morality” groups will now have to prove that a politician’s private life has relevance to his/her qualifications.
· All this hypocritical, neo-feminist criticism of political wives who choose to publicly support unfaithful husbands (Mmes. Spitzer, McGreevy, Clinton, etc.) can now stop.

At least, that’s what should happen.

By telling the truth, the Patersons put sex right where it belongs: in the realm of other people’s private lives. Bor-ing. With Britney Spears being the most googled term for six of the last seven years, Americans need the news to be way more boring.

Yesterday, Michelle Paterson said “A marriage is going to have peaks and valleys, so I want to show my kids how to get through them and how to work through them, because no marriage is perfect.”

There is nothing more Godly, no leadership more competent, than that.

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Technorati: sexual freedom, sexual repression, censorship, sexual intelligence, sexual censorship, sexual politics, war on sex, America’s war on sex, sexual rights, sex education, pornography

20/20, Age of Consent—and Me

Last night, 20/20 did an hour on various aspects of Age of Consent laws. I’m pleased to say they really got it right.

I was on screen for almost a minute (that’s a year in TV time), pointing out how fear of sexuality is driving public policy about teens—who society trusts to drive and to work, but not to have sex. 20/20 showed the cover of my current book, with a voiceover describing the War On Sex. Very cool.

The program interviewed a number of teens who were arrested for having consenting sex with “underage” partners—that is, other teens who can’t legally consent to sex. The boys’ punishments ranged from probation to jail to lifetime registration as sex offenders.

Host John Stossel was appropriately indignant about this horrible injustice. The show gave airtime to lawmakers, the fathers of teen girls whose boyfriends had been arrested, and even vigilantes devoted to publicizing the home addresses of people busted for consenting sex with teens.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said the solution to teen sex was for people to not have sex before they marry. It’s an idea rejected by virtually all Americans (who now typically marry for the first time at 25), but various policy-makers on the show said that criminalizing sex that isn’t wise may deter a few young people from making mistakes. As for the boyfriends and fiancés who can’t get jobs or housing because they’ve been busted for sleeping with their girlfriends, one state lawmaker described that as “a necessary evil.”

That’s probably not the phrase he would use if it were his son whose life was destroyed for having sex with the girl who loved him.

ABC’s article about this is pretty thoughtful, and even quotes me with facts about how rates of rape and teen pregnancy are declining—contrary to the predictions of those terrified or enraged by the increasing sexualization of our culture.

Some say you can judge a society by how it treats animals. Maybe we should also judge a society by how it treats human beings with adult bodies acting on adult feelings in private—who happen to be under 18.

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