Sex Around the World

Is A Good Mortgage Like Geriatric Sex?

As if dealing with the awful sight of model Heidi Klum’s boobs in a Jordache ad isn’t painful enough, Americans also have to deal with that little mortgage thing that threatens to eat everyone’s home. Apparently, Australia can discuss both—sex and mortgages—at once. Local lender Virgin Money’s new print and TV ads show a naked old couple being very, very affectionate. In America, the response would be, ‘how do we keep men, women, and children from contracting polio, HIV, and permanent brain damage from this lascivious ad?’ In Australia, by contrast, the question is, “will these lascivious ads help sell…

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Ancient Greeks, Modern Romans

I’m in Rome, Italy—combination holiday and teaching for a week. No complaints here. Inside the huge Coliseum there are large corridors (as in any big stadium), and this month they’re being used for an exhibit of Grecian pottery and statues—about the god Eros. I’m not generally a pottery or statue kind of guy, but while I was at the Coliseum I did take a look. As cool as the ancient artifacts were, what blew me away was the exhibit’s narrative. The theme of the exhibit was understanding Eros as an expression of human emotion, power, drama, society. And so the…

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Sexual Hypocrisy—When the Personal is Political

Randall Tobias abruptly resigned as head of the Bush administration’s foreign aid programs Friday after he was implicated in an investigation of high-priced call-girls. Ho-hum, another married Republican outed as—gasp—participating in non-marital, non-monogamous sex. The moral failure of yet another Bush appointee would hardly be worth mentioning, except that Tobias directed the Agency for International Development (USAID) and America’s global AIDS relief programs. In those capacities, he was personally responsible for implementing a condom-is-the-last-resort policy for AIDS prevention. He implemented America’s shameful international blackmail scheme–you want family planning money, you have to vigorously oppose prostitution, while promoting abstinence & monogamy.…

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