>> ^quantumushroom:
That's rich, being lectured about safe sex by a rep of the demographic responsible for 50% of all AIDS cases.
Abstinence-only is a failure? Seems relatively new by comparison How many decades has there been "liberal" sex education in government schools? Results: 1 in 4 teen girls has an STD, half of all Black teens have herpes. FAIL.
Liberal "knowledge" always costs a little extra, as it's designed to undermine parental authority and encourage irresponsibility ("Don't worry, SOCIETY will pay for your bastard!") while downplaying real consequences.


You seem to be obsessed with the whole "every man for himself" philosophy of capitalism, but you have missed every single chapter on how this relies on informed citizens to actually work.

The entire concept of making a true free choice relies on our knowledge. Think about it: If you were asked if you with rather swim in water or swim in lava, and you had no idea what water or lava was, there is no point in making a choice in the first place, your "choice" would be no better or worse than after the flip of a coin.

If you really want people to fend for themselves, then why should we deliberately OMIT information in their sex education? Would you rather perhaps, that some official from the government should be sitting around the beds of 16 year-olds telling them not to have sex? Maybe we should have a more theocratic state, and go all-out on this whole "abstinence" idea, and just do like Saudi Arabia or Iran, and demand burka's and veils for all women, and threaten youth with 40 lashes for sex outside marriage?

Seriously, what is your real alternative? Do you like freedom, or do you like tax cuts and religion. You see, you cant have it both ways.

The statistics show quite clearly that when kids are given a proper sex education, abortions, STD's and teen pregnancies go DOWN, compared to this "abstinence only" bullshit.

Something is wrong with both their religious and sex educations if they think that anal sex is preserving their virginity. It's an oversimplification to say that religion and abstinence-only sex education are to blame. The type of religious parents that shove dos and don'ts down their children's throats, shouting "LOVE JESUS" without bothering to check whether their children have real values, faith, and integrity, are the type of people that are harming their children. The kids aren't truly converted to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and they obviously don't understand them. Perhaps they're addicted to the high that they get when they hear a live band in church. If they're having anal sex, they have a very misguided concept of virginity brought on by parents and church leaders that sensationalize religion to the point that children are confused beyond belief. If this is all that you know of religion, I can understand why you despise it. However, religion isn't harmful in and of itself, but the watering-down and misuse of doctrine is, yes, extraordinarily evil and damaging to both straight and gay people.

Let's not forget that other types of sex education fail, too. However, abstinence-only sex education is bogus. The way I see it, if abstinence isn't being taught in the home, the school will probably be ineffectual, anyway. They might as well do some damage control and educate kids about safe sex and birth control. If parents are teaching abstinence, why should they worry that schools are encouraging teenagers to have sex? Stop expecting the government to fix your problems!

>> ^Yogi:
I consider myself Agnostic I suppose, and I really think most religious nutcases are morons and shouldn't be taken seriously. However, he's picking a target that I just can't approve of, these confused teenage girls. It's not cool to me, makes him sound like a douche, and I love this guy on Bill Maher.
I don't know I just don't see how mocking Christians helps atheism in anyway, seems like just a childish thing to do. Kinda tired of hearing Christians being hated on everywhere, and I certainly don't like their stupid antics. It's just, some shit gets old.

The fact that these "confused teenage girls" do have anal sex despite their sex educators telling them not to, and rationalizing it by saying anal sex preserves your virginity, shows that they are in fact very lucid about the whole thing. It's simply a loophole in their religious upbringing (read: brainwashing) that they exploit. Children are not stupid, adolescents even less. It's not their fault if society continue to infantilize them. They are simply doing what they can with what they have in order to respond to their growing and often sudden sexual impulses.

That's rich, being lectured about safe sex by a rep of the demographic responsible for 50% of all AIDS cases.

Abstinence-only is a failure? Seems relatively new by comparison How many decades has there been "liberal" sex education in government schools? Results: 1 in 4 teen girls has an STD, half of all Black teens have herpes. FAIL.

Liberal "knowledge" always costs a little extra, as it's designed to undermine parental authority and encourage irresponsibility ("Don't worry, SOCIETY will pay for your bastard!") while downplaying real consequences.

Wow, the right wing is really going far with their sex education propaganda.

Sadly, this clip is all the sex education gwiz has received in his life.

I chose selections from an article about male porn habit that addresses the subject for your reading pleasure. I have a few problems with the article. It seems to assume that only lonely and hurting people use porn, and that isn't true. Still, it makes some good points:

"How addictive is pornography?

‘I'm frightened of real sex, which is unscripted and unpredictable so I engage in pornography, which is totally under my control. But it brings intense disappointment because it is not what I'm really searching for. It's rather like a hungry person standing outside the window of a restaurant, thinking that they're going to get fed.’ That’s how one man described his porn addiction to Edward Marriott...

...Like many men, I first saw pornography during puberty. At boarding school...long before my first sexual relationship, porn was my sex education....Being away from home, my friends and I longed for love, closeness, acceptance. The women over whom we masturbated - surrogate mothers, if you like - seemed to be offering this but, of course, were never going to provide it. The untruths it taught me on top of this disappointment - that women are always available, that sex is about what a man can do to a woman - I am only now succeeding in unlearning.

...'Just like drugs, pornography provides a quick fix, a masturbatory universe people can get stuck in. This can result in their not being able to involve anyone else.’

...Men, as much as women, hunger for intimacy. For many males, locked into a life in which self-esteem has grown intrinsically entwined with performance, sex assumes a freight of demands and needs...

...It is into this troubled scenario that porn finds easy access. For in pornography, unlike in real life, there is no criticism, real or imagined, of male performance...

...Women in porn are always, in the words of the average internet site, ‘hot and ready’, eager to please...

...Men, say psychologists, also feel threatened by the ‘emotional power’ they perceive women wielding over them...they are at the same time painfully aware that their only salvation from isolation comes in being sexually acceptable to women. This sense of neediness can provoke intense anger that, all too often, finds expression in porn...

...The porn industry, of course, dismisses such talk, yet occasionally comes a glimmer of authenticity. Bill Margold, left, one of the industry's longest-serving film performers, was interviewed in 1991 by psychoanalyst Robert Stoller for his book Porn: Myths For The Twentieth Century. Margold admitted: ‘My whole reason for being in this industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. So we come on a woman's face or brutalise her sexually: we're getting even for lost dreams.'...

...As well as ‘eroticising male supremacy’, in the words of anti-porn campaigner John Stoltenberg, pornography also attempts to assuage other male fears, in particular that of erection failure. Pornography answers men's fetishistic need for visual proof of phallic potency...

...Pornography, in other words, is a lie. It peddles falsehoods about men, women and relationships. It seduces vulnerable, lonely men with the promise of intimacy, and delivers only a transitory fix. Increasingly, though, men are starting to be open about the effect of pornography. David McLeod, a marketing executive, explains the cycle: ‘I'm drawn to porn when I'm lonely, particularly when I'm single and sexually frustrated. But I can easily get disgusted with myself. After watching a video two or three times, I'll throw it away and vow never to watch another again. But my resolve never lasts very long.’

Like many men, McLeod is torn. Quick to claim that porn has ‘no harmful effects’, he is also happy to acknowledge the contradictory fact that it is ‘deadening’.

Extended exposure to pornography can have a whole raft of effects.
By the time Nick Samuels had reached his mid-20s, it was altering his view of what he wanted from a sexual relationship. ‘I used to watch porn with one of my girlfriends, and I started to want to try things I'd seen in the films.’ Married for 15 years, he admits he has carried the same sexual expectations into the marital bedroom. ‘There's been real friction over this: my wife simply isn't that kind of person. And it's only now, after all these years, that I'm beginning to move on from it. Porn is like alcoholism: it clings to you like a leech.’

...Even when in a loving sexual relationship, men who have used porn say that, all too often, they see their partner through a kind of ‘pornographic filter’. This effect is summed up by US sociologist Harry Brod, in LynneSegal's essay Sweet Sorrows, Painful Pleasures: ‘There have been too many times when I have guiltily resorted to impersonal fantasy because the genuine love I felt for a woman wasn't enough to convert feelings into performance. And in those sorry, secret moments, I have resented deeply my lifelong indoctrination into (pornography).’...

...Running through all pornography use, according to David Morgan, is the desire for control...

...The user of pornography is also psychologically on the run.
Welldon says: ‘people who use pornography feel dead inside, and they are trying to avoid being aware of that pain. There is a sense of liberation, which is temporary: that's why pornography is so repetitive - you have to go back again and again.’...

...For John-Paul Day, an Edinburgh architect, the experience of being a small boy with a dying mother drove him to seek solace in masturbation. He says he has been ‘addicted’ to pornography his entire adult life. He has attended meetings of Sex Addicts Anonymous for 12 years...

...Like drugs and drink, pornography - as Day has realised - is an addictive substance. Porn actor Kelly Cooke says this applies on either side of the camera: ‘It got to the point where I considered having sex the way most people consider getting a hamburger. But when you try to give it up, you realise how addictive it is, both for consumers and performers. It's a class A drug, and it's hell coming off it.’

The cycle of addiction leads one way: towards ever harder material...

Morgan believes ‘all pornography ends up with S&M’.
The myth about porn, as a witness told the 1983 Minneapolis city council public hearings on it, is that ‘it frees the libido and gives men an outlet for sexual expression. This is truly a myth. I have found pornography not only does not liberate men, but on the contrary is a source of bondage. Men masturbate to pornography only to become addicted to the fantasy.'..."

Read the whole article here: http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=2302

Other articles on the sibject of porn "addiction":

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

http://men.webmd.com/guide/is-pornography-addictive

Actually, if I recall correctly, grade 5 was the year when they taught us "Sex Education".
Back then, they fast forwarded through an animated video showing girls how to properly use a tampon.

These kids all got to see their teacher in the act.

-_-;

For the "Small Government" and social conservatives, I offer these stark facts:

It costs less to perform an abortion than it does for the state to take care of an unwanted child.

Adoption and foster care services cost the state money - far more than a simple $600 procedure.

So which is it? Supporting Planned Parenthood and comprehensive sex education, which leads to lower taxes in the long term, or overturning Roe v Wade and forcing Abstinence-only education upon public schools, which would cause a massive influx of children into the Adoption and Foster care system, which isn't free. What's worse, is most of the staunchest "pro-lifers" don't normally adopt. To me, this is NIMBY-ism at it's worst.

And let us acknowledge this cowardly act for what it is: an act of terrorism by a Christian Fundamentalist. This shooter has more in common with your average Taliban militant than an average mainstream American.

During the Clinton Administration, Abortion rates declined. Despite this, Christian Fundamentalist Extremists killed 9 doctors in their "pro-life" crusade. During the Bush administration, no doctors were killed for performing abortions, but abortion rates steadily climbed.

Clearly, the extreme right gets desperate when they perceive they're falling from power, but their vitriol is in no way grounded in reality... I hate to say it, but cowards like this will continue terrorize doctors who provide abortions, especially if the last 20 years are any indication.

So your personal objection has nothing to do with "life is sacred", but based on the perceived innocence of the child.

My personal objections are myriad, but the innocence of the child is a critically important factor to me when considering the issue of abortions.

When do you personally draw a line in the sand regarding time? Out of womb, 1 year old, 3 years old, 7 years old, etc?

Conception. If left alone, the fetus would become a living person. From the moment that potential exists, I consider the life of the innocent child to be worthy of careful, deliberate, due consideration. However, that is my opinion and I don't require others to ascribe to it and I certainly do not advocate setting political policy around it.

Pro-choice and pro-life have been the accepted labels for a while... So. just. stop.

Relax. If I use "this" or "that" (in quotes) to describe something, it's an example of highlighting terminology with a tongue in cheek pause. Typically people do this to denote the questionable nature of the highlighted phrase, not to impart validity to it.

1) Personal liberties.

In regards to the political nature of this issue, I very much concur.

I think that abortion should be legal so that the ones that do it can be done safely. I strongly disagree with 3rd trimester abortions - I think they should be illegal with the exception for the physical health of the mother. I think there need to be an honest campaign spreading sex education material (including abortion and its alternatives.)

Very similar to my views in principle.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Depends on who you ask I guess. For me, the issue is a matter of 'innocence' versus 'guilt'. An unborn child is completely innocent. It has done nothing bad or good. It is a life in potential. An INNOCENT life deserves the opportunity to live, grow, and have the chance to contribute to society.
The opposite is true of the guy on Death Row. They had a chance to show what they could do, and they squandered it. They chose to perform actions so heinous, so awful, and so damaging that they have forfieted thier right to continue to participate in civilization.


So your personal objection has nothing to do with "life is sacred", but based on the perceived innocence of the child.

I suppose this perceived innocence could be extended to other innocent life, but can I assume that your defense of life only extends to humans? When do you personally draw a line in the sand regarding time? Out of womb, 1 year old, 3 years old, 7 years old, etc?


>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
My question to the "Pro-choice" or "Anti-Life" crowd is similar... What is the reason to HAVE an abortion when there are many other options available? I see abortion as the most extreme choice to be applied only in the most exigent of circumstances.


I'm actually trying to have a rational discussion with you. Please stop trying to make points like an emotional child: i.e. "Anti-life." Pro-choice and pro-life have been the accepted labels for a while. Likewise, pro-choice could label pro-life as "anti-choice", "anti-free will", "anti-american", "anti-liberties", "anti-women", etc, etc. Subversive and childlike "under the radar" name calling quickly drops a conversation into a emotional gutter. So. just. stop.

As for your question:

I can't speak for pro-choice people, only myself. As normal, I don't find myself in either camp. My view on abortion is the result of the following personal beliefs:

1) Personal liberties. I am a huge supporter that, among adults, a person should be able to do anything they want as long as doesn't harm another, non-consenting adult or their property. A great book on this subject is "Ain't Nobody's Business of You Do" by Peter McWilliams. Of course with freedom comes responsibility and accountability. The three are completely intertwined and can't exist without the others.

2) I don't know when life begins. Many have beliefs of when life begins, but those are just beliefs, not knowledge, no matter what they say. In my mind, when life begins will be a question that will never be answered satisfactory. Some people like to think about this question in potential instead. I personally don't agree with that since the baby is completely dependent on the mother. You don't even see brain activity until 12 weeks. Either way, I've resolved that I will never truly know to my satisfaction.

3) I've seen the results of a society where abortion is completely outlawed. Even if you do everything positive to decrease abortion, there will always be some. It's the equivalent of trying to stop teens from having sex. It isn't realistic. As a society, we can shoot for the ideal, but ultimately have to deal with what is realistic.


So concrete answers... I'll have to give snippets. I think that abortion should be legal so that the ones that do it can be done safely. I strongly disagree with 3rd trimester abortions - I think they should be illegal with the exception for the physical health of the mother. I think there need to be an honest campaign spreading sex education material (including abortion and its alternatives.)

trancecoach - i absolutely agree. i read some articles a few months ago about the 2 conflicting attitudes we're given about sex and gender, one from the media and one from our institutions - government, school, religion, family - it discussed how boys were bombarded with ideas of masculinity from the media that tell them to be macho, objectify, be tough, be cool. and from our sex our sex education programs - your penis will kill someone and make babies you wont support - these ideas are just as damaging to our sons as they are to our daughters. i am raising both a son and a daughter without a television in our home or a father to provide the masculine perspective... im just as concerned about my son as i am about my daughter.

i have some videos about it i will sift in a bit when i have more room in my queue. perhaps a sift talk post featuring articles about sex and gender need to be in the works.

>> ^HadouKen24:
>> ^xxovercastxx:
To the Church it's not an AIDS epidemic, it's an epidemic of sinful behavior. If you accept that as true, then yes, condoms make the epidemic worse. AIDS is a deterrent whereas condoms are an enabler.

Condoms are not only an enabler of sinful behavior, but sinful to use themselves. The Catholic Church condemns all forms of birth control as a violation of God's intended purpose for sex.


Oh please. Show me the evidence for this. Widespread condom distribution in Africa has seen HIV levels plummet while abstinence education in the US has clearly been demonstrated to be less effective than traditional sex education. And hey, while you're at it, try explaining to me why you believe your religious beliefs of 'sin' grounded entirely in the tenets of your faith and not in any impartial logical sense in morality should be imposed on anyone but yourself.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Sex-Education-Commercial#comment-694918

Christ, just as inarticulate, uneducated, and scarily appealing to dumbfucks as her mother.

I'm not entirely sure that she's "against" abstinence or quite "gets it." She sort of says both things: "its unrealistic" followed by "you should just wait ten years, it would be so much easier."

The reality is that if she has been EDUCATED with REAL information instead of the bullshit that these abstinence programs spew out, she WOULD have had an easier time of her first sexual experiences and probably wouldn't have become pregnant.

My highschool back in the late 80s and 90s was insanely hyper about sex education. I became sexually active at 15, mind you in retrospect that is kind of scary, but used a condom EVERY FREAKING TIME. Properly too I might add (don't ask me about putting condoms on bananas, I know way too much about it).

So while I think this is a great illustration of why abstinence programs are utter poo, I don't think that Palin jr. is necessarily or clearly speaking out against them.

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