People would be astounded at the actual art of sex/sexuality throughout the ages. They think Stormy is xxx lol. Nothing like 16th, 17th, 18th century paintings of unclothed priests and nuns oh my.
Also, whenever repression comes up, I think about this:
Q: Why does the topic of sex make people so uncomfortable? Why is it such a taboo?
A: The simple reason is that people have been for centuries living a repressed sex life. They have been told by all the religious prophets and the messiahs and the saviors that sex is sin. To my understanding, sex is your only energy. It is life energy. What you do with it depends on you. It can become sin, and it can become also your highest peak of consciousness. It all depends on how you use the energy. There was a day when we had no idea how to use electricity. Electricity was available always-as lightning- and was killing people, but now it is your servant. It is doing everything that you want. Sex is bioelectricity. The question is how to use it. And the first principle is not to condemn it. The moment you condemn anything, you cannot use it.’ Osho
I don’t want to reduce the brain power working to make life on this planet great for humankind. We need our women at the wheels of industry, government and occupations of every kind.
We need to support single moms with guaranteed childcare and educational support- we don’t need to control their sexuality.
Let’s be more like Sweden and NOT like Yemen.
Preaching to the choir… well doings Greg. You are always interesting and worth our time.
Look no further than the Joshua Generation. These are the future Christian Fascists coming to a town near you. These are the spawns from the Institute In Basic Life Principles. Run by Bill Gothard. He has been accused by at least 30 women for sexually abusing them. This is the birth place of the Dugger Family. IBLP is supported by the Bush family, Sarah Palin, the Huckabees, Sonny Perdue, Rick Perry, and the Heritage Foundation members. Madison Cawthorn was a Joshua product. Their goal is to send young adults by the thousands, to campaign for Christian Fascists. Now, there are hundreds of them in elected office across the country today. Those freaks of nature are making laws like, no cat litter boxes in schools for the furry to wanting the death penalty for women having an abortion. This all coming from religious sexual self-oppressed individuals who rape and sexually abuse millions of children. The fucking Jimmy Swaggarts' of family values.
This is Leonard Leo's election. Trump is the useful idiot. He is the distraction while Leo quietly dismantles democracy. The Heritage Foundation picked and ran Reagan's administration. Agent Orange will sign anything Leo tells him to sign. If Leo wins, we're FUCKED!
I have not been terrified by too much in my long life but I wish that more people were terrified by what faces us now. Seems that so many are mesmerized by bull Schitt, the higher the pile, the better.
This makes me so angry I’m having a hard time composing a reasonable comment. All I can do is vote Blue, quit thinking about the religious right and go about my day, and hope that in my next life I haven’t come back to the Dark Ages!
"Their obsession borders on voyeurism." I think a lot of it goes far beyond "voyeruism." If you can find a book about a penguin with two "daddies" (which surely doesn't preclude two best friends) as "pornography" you have ventured into full blown obsession with sex. I'm waiting for a ban on some innocuous book that happens to have illustrations of both birds and bees.
The "vegetative state" argument can be refuted by looking at "personhood" not has HAVING self-awareness but as being CAPABLE of self awareness if their current state changes. For a vegetative person--the possibility of gaining self-awareness after a medical break through. For a fetus, the possibility of awareness if outside the womb and still being able to grow. That's pretty much the definition of viability and pretty much what Roe/Casey used as the criteria. Before viability, also by definition, there is no hope of growing to self awareness if outside the womb.
I and many others wonder if fetal personhood from conception means child support, tax deductions, or child tax credits start from the moment the blastocyte is detectable.
I've been worried about the effect on the right to privacy ever since I saw Alito's draft. The courts have been using it as mostly bedroom privacy, but if it doesn't exist there why does it exist anywhere? Can it not be a crime for someone to hack into your computer or feed and spread all your details, including where your kids go to school or your bank password all over the internet? Even Google's ubiquitous tracking to sell you ads doesn't go that far. You can still opt out of "personalized" ads.
And one has to wonder whether an "originalist" interpretation of the act itself will be held to include Fed X, UPS, or a simple delivery truck. Is Instacart mail?
Thanks for this, Susan. I was thinking about his vegetative state argument, too. About euthanasia under those circumstances, which they also oppose. I think of Therese of Lisieux, who suffered in great agony until her death, all to satisfy the sadistic whims of the mother abbess. For these people, suffering is something to be celebrated. It's twisted.
Fuck Hamas, attack the damn Vatican; an institution full of obsequious white men and activists like Opus Dei; the largest owner of rentier property in the world; an institution that has paid out hundreds of millions if not billions in ransom to save their pedophile priesthood; and, in the early '70s, the pope came to the New World not to open the door to new followers but because the Vatican has a serious cash flow problem from those priest payouts. Did the priesthood behavior stop or modify? Nope, apparently not at all. Payment continue to this day.
We - our SCOTUS - wants to follow their doctrinal model wrt sexuality and women's rights. Fuck that.
They've been an intelligence gathering institution since inception. They may have a majority on SCOTUS (despite Catholics being only some 20% of the US population) but there should be no more Catholics appointed for decades due to this abuse of our legal system to match their doctrine. We've been set up and the Congress...right now, the Senate...should be seriously questioning Thomas and Alito at the least. If they don't answer their subpoenas, go arrest them and bring them in. Treat them as you would anyone else. We've seen enough of this bullshit. Women - and the mature men that support them - should be outraged.
I sorta go carried away, but, fuck it, there's even more. What a shit show. Go after Leo, too. There's more insurrectionist than you can shake a stick at.
Thanks for this, Billy. Technically Gorsuch is Episcopalian now, but he was raised Catholic and shares the ideology. Sotomayor is also Catholic. As is Biden, of course. Lots of power, all concentrated.
I remember way back in 1960 how upset my devout parents were about all the anti-Catholic rhetoric emerging against presidential candidate, John Kennedy. The Protestant fear was that The Pope would be running the United States. Such nonsense.
My blood has about boiled away. It is true, the barbarians have fooled the fools, lied to the scared, and waved power at the misogynist, greedy bastards. And too many citizens who could make the difference are swimming around in a sea of red herrings.
As I was reading your latest brilliant essay (and your equally brilliant guest, Jenny Cohn), one name kept entering my thoughts - Terri Schiavo. I just finished reading a lengthy article about all of the medical analysis, court cases and disputes between her husband and her parents. It breaks my heart that anyone was put through all of that - 15 years after her brain died. My husband and I got married a few years before Terri Schiavo “officially” died. We told everyone we knew that we would never want to be kept “alive” in a Persistent Vegetative State and later memorialized it in our legal documents. I find it so interesting that the right wing extremists who don’t want to spend one dollar to keep fully conscious children food to survive the summer have no problem giving full rights to zygotes and people who are essentially brain dead with no hope of ever recovering. It is pure insanity!!
Thanks, Gail. I thought of her, too, as Jenny and I were talking. I think we talked about her after we stopped recording, actually. I will never understand the anti-euthanasia thing. Why would anyone wish to continue on like that with no hope of recovery? It's so sad. And, yes, insane.
It seems to me that you are not considered a good Christian if you are not suffering the way Jesus was made to suffer on the cross. Especially if you are a woman. They love a martyr - that has been my experience. I am done with watching people suffer and try to eradicate suffering whenever I see it. I have a friend who has worked in hospitals for over 30 years and she told me that she sees situations all the time of families who want their "loved one" to be kept alive not matter what it takes and no matter how dire the circumstances are. To me that is absolutely sadistic and cruel. It may placate their guilt, but is absolutely heartless.
Next up for the hard right evangelical, childbirth by immaculate conception, sex for procreation will be a step too far.
There is something very strange and frightening that Project 2025 is underpinned by a defiant view of sex. Using sex as the motivation to eliminate basic freedoms is like using obesity as the basis of destroying the food chain. No one ever again eats, we all just wither and die.
Most inexplicable, the torch bearer is a sexual predator, the self confessed grab them by the pushy narcissist sociopath..
Too much to bear. Back to trying to get Wordle in three or less tries.
Kevin Roberts' intro has odd things to say about sex/pornography. And these are the same people who endorse the rapist FPOTUS. There is no internal logic!
I got Wordle today in 4 but I'm on a bad streak with it...
Thanks!
Since 50,000 BC the powerful have known:
Control sex and control all.
The Red states are desperate to become MORE RED
Getting the young and liberals to leave does just that
#MangoWanker #Turdking #Mobster #Traitor
#GOPTraitors
#Fascists
#Murdoch
It's a disgrace.
People would be astounded at the actual art of sex/sexuality throughout the ages. They think Stormy is xxx lol. Nothing like 16th, 17th, 18th century paintings of unclothed priests and nuns oh my.
Some things never change...
Get up to speed on the Project 2025 plan for a nationwide abortion ban.
"1873 zombie Comstock Act revived for nationwide abortion ban"
https://thedemlabs.org/2024/04/29/project-2025-uses-1873-comstock-act-for-nationwide-abortion-ban/
Andra Watkins Project 2025 on Substack. She has a microscope on this. She breaks it down daily. She's great.
Thanks for the rec!
Thank you!
Also, whenever repression comes up, I think about this:
Q: Why does the topic of sex make people so uncomfortable? Why is it such a taboo?
A: The simple reason is that people have been for centuries living a repressed sex life. They have been told by all the religious prophets and the messiahs and the saviors that sex is sin. To my understanding, sex is your only energy. It is life energy. What you do with it depends on you. It can become sin, and it can become also your highest peak of consciousness. It all depends on how you use the energy. There was a day when we had no idea how to use electricity. Electricity was available always-as lightning- and was killing people, but now it is your servant. It is doing everything that you want. Sex is bioelectricity. The question is how to use it. And the first principle is not to condemn it. The moment you condemn anything, you cannot use it.’ Osho
All wise, but that last line especially!
I don’t want to reduce the brain power working to make life on this planet great for humankind. We need our women at the wheels of industry, government and occupations of every kind.
We need to support single moms with guaranteed childcare and educational support- we don’t need to control their sexuality.
Let’s be more like Sweden and NOT like Yemen.
Preaching to the choir… well doings Greg. You are always interesting and worth our time.
Billserle.com
Always
Sweden not Yemen!
With human overpopulation, we need to close down the sperm banks and guys having too many kids with too many wives. #SustainableLiving
Human #Overpopulation is the problem so let’s deal with this instead of making more babies 👨👩👦 #OneOrNone
Agree.
Thomas Malthus
Adopt homeless kids instead.
I agree, but they don't. They think we need MORE people because it's good for the economy or something. SMH.
Look no further than the Joshua Generation. These are the future Christian Fascists coming to a town near you. These are the spawns from the Institute In Basic Life Principles. Run by Bill Gothard. He has been accused by at least 30 women for sexually abusing them. This is the birth place of the Dugger Family. IBLP is supported by the Bush family, Sarah Palin, the Huckabees, Sonny Perdue, Rick Perry, and the Heritage Foundation members. Madison Cawthorn was a Joshua product. Their goal is to send young adults by the thousands, to campaign for Christian Fascists. Now, there are hundreds of them in elected office across the country today. Those freaks of nature are making laws like, no cat litter boxes in schools for the furry to wanting the death penalty for women having an abortion. This all coming from religious sexual self-oppressed individuals who rape and sexually abuse millions of children. The fucking Jimmy Swaggarts' of family values.
This is Leonard Leo's election. Trump is the useful idiot. He is the distraction while Leo quietly dismantles democracy. The Heritage Foundation picked and ran Reagan's administration. Agent Orange will sign anything Leo tells him to sign. If Leo wins, we're FUCKED!
Wow, could be chump is not the worse danger, just has the key to the treasure chest.
Pretty much. That's what is so terrifying.
I have not been terrified by too much in my long life but I wish that more people were terrified by what faces us now. Seems that so many are mesmerized by bull Schitt, the higher the pile, the better.
Well put.
Thanks, Lisa. I'm unfamiliar with Joshua and will look into it.
Not familiar with "Joshua" but sure do recognize other names.
This makes me so angry I’m having a hard time composing a reasonable comment. All I can do is vote Blue, quit thinking about the religious right and go about my day, and hope that in my next life I haven’t come back to the Dark Ages!
It's infuriating, so infuriating.
"Their obsession borders on voyeurism." I think a lot of it goes far beyond "voyeruism." If you can find a book about a penguin with two "daddies" (which surely doesn't preclude two best friends) as "pornography" you have ventured into full blown obsession with sex. I'm waiting for a ban on some innocuous book that happens to have illustrations of both birds and bees.
The "vegetative state" argument can be refuted by looking at "personhood" not has HAVING self-awareness but as being CAPABLE of self awareness if their current state changes. For a vegetative person--the possibility of gaining self-awareness after a medical break through. For a fetus, the possibility of awareness if outside the womb and still being able to grow. That's pretty much the definition of viability and pretty much what Roe/Casey used as the criteria. Before viability, also by definition, there is no hope of growing to self awareness if outside the womb.
I and many others wonder if fetal personhood from conception means child support, tax deductions, or child tax credits start from the moment the blastocyte is detectable.
I've been worried about the effect on the right to privacy ever since I saw Alito's draft. The courts have been using it as mostly bedroom privacy, but if it doesn't exist there why does it exist anywhere? Can it not be a crime for someone to hack into your computer or feed and spread all your details, including where your kids go to school or your bank password all over the internet? Even Google's ubiquitous tracking to sell you ads doesn't go that far. You can still opt out of "personalized" ads.
And one has to wonder whether an "originalist" interpretation of the act itself will be held to include Fed X, UPS, or a simple delivery truck. Is Instacart mail?
Thanks for this, Susan. I was thinking about his vegetative state argument, too. About euthanasia under those circumstances, which they also oppose. I think of Therese of Lisieux, who suffered in great agony until her death, all to satisfy the sadistic whims of the mother abbess. For these people, suffering is something to be celebrated. It's twisted.
And I agree about voyeurism. I was being kind!
Fuck Hamas, attack the damn Vatican; an institution full of obsequious white men and activists like Opus Dei; the largest owner of rentier property in the world; an institution that has paid out hundreds of millions if not billions in ransom to save their pedophile priesthood; and, in the early '70s, the pope came to the New World not to open the door to new followers but because the Vatican has a serious cash flow problem from those priest payouts. Did the priesthood behavior stop or modify? Nope, apparently not at all. Payment continue to this day.
We - our SCOTUS - wants to follow their doctrinal model wrt sexuality and women's rights. Fuck that.
They've been an intelligence gathering institution since inception. They may have a majority on SCOTUS (despite Catholics being only some 20% of the US population) but there should be no more Catholics appointed for decades due to this abuse of our legal system to match their doctrine. We've been set up and the Congress...right now, the Senate...should be seriously questioning Thomas and Alito at the least. If they don't answer their subpoenas, go arrest them and bring them in. Treat them as you would anyone else. We've seen enough of this bullshit. Women - and the mature men that support them - should be outraged.
I sorta go carried away, but, fuck it, there's even more. What a shit show. Go after Leo, too. There's more insurrectionist than you can shake a stick at.
Thanks for this, Billy. Technically Gorsuch is Episcopalian now, but he was raised Catholic and shares the ideology. Sotomayor is also Catholic. As is Biden, of course. Lots of power, all concentrated.
VP Harris is also Catholic...
I remember way back in 1960 how upset my devout parents were about all the anti-Catholic rhetoric emerging against presidential candidate, John Kennedy. The Protestant fear was that The Pope would be running the United States. Such nonsense.
What’s the sex life of a priest? 🧐 Nun.
Ha!
My blood has about boiled away. It is true, the barbarians have fooled the fools, lied to the scared, and waved power at the misogynist, greedy bastards. And too many citizens who could make the difference are swimming around in a sea of red herrings.
Leo says that WE are the barbarians, though...
Plenty of evidence to the contrary; Of course, the Goebbels propaganda rules say that you must accuse your enemy of what you are.
As I was reading your latest brilliant essay (and your equally brilliant guest, Jenny Cohn), one name kept entering my thoughts - Terri Schiavo. I just finished reading a lengthy article about all of the medical analysis, court cases and disputes between her husband and her parents. It breaks my heart that anyone was put through all of that - 15 years after her brain died. My husband and I got married a few years before Terri Schiavo “officially” died. We told everyone we knew that we would never want to be kept “alive” in a Persistent Vegetative State and later memorialized it in our legal documents. I find it so interesting that the right wing extremists who don’t want to spend one dollar to keep fully conscious children food to survive the summer have no problem giving full rights to zygotes and people who are essentially brain dead with no hope of ever recovering. It is pure insanity!!
Thanks, Gail. I thought of her, too, as Jenny and I were talking. I think we talked about her after we stopped recording, actually. I will never understand the anti-euthanasia thing. Why would anyone wish to continue on like that with no hope of recovery? It's so sad. And, yes, insane.
It seems to me that you are not considered a good Christian if you are not suffering the way Jesus was made to suffer on the cross. Especially if you are a woman. They love a martyr - that has been my experience. I am done with watching people suffer and try to eradicate suffering whenever I see it. I have a friend who has worked in hospitals for over 30 years and she told me that she sees situations all the time of families who want their "loved one" to be kept alive not matter what it takes and no matter how dire the circumstances are. To me that is absolutely sadistic and cruel. It may placate their guilt, but is absolutely heartless.
I have great difficulty commenting about crazy myth belivers.
80 percent of humans are insane.
Your pal
The tooth fairy
LOL
Thank you, tooth fairy!
Next up for the hard right evangelical, childbirth by immaculate conception, sex for procreation will be a step too far.
There is something very strange and frightening that Project 2025 is underpinned by a defiant view of sex. Using sex as the motivation to eliminate basic freedoms is like using obesity as the basis of destroying the food chain. No one ever again eats, we all just wither and die.
Most inexplicable, the torch bearer is a sexual predator, the self confessed grab them by the pushy narcissist sociopath..
Too much to bear. Back to trying to get Wordle in three or less tries.
Kevin Roberts' intro has odd things to say about sex/pornography. And these are the same people who endorse the rapist FPOTUS. There is no internal logic!
I got Wordle today in 4 but I'm on a bad streak with it...