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Bristol Palin’s Wisdom: Better Than Science?

by on ·Sex & Culture, Sexual Intelligence Blog

I have scars older than Bristol Palin. I have a pair of shoes, several garden tools, and a hundred cassette tapes older than Bristol Palin. You get my point. You’ll recall that the Palin Kid created a brief moment of bizarre theatre 6 months ago when she turned up pregnant, 17, and unmarried. Her mom pretended this was completely irrelevant during a presidential election campaign she was attempting to re-shape as a referendum on the sexual culture wars. The would-be Vice-Mom topped Larry Craig and Elliot Spitzer as a world-class hypocrite, condemning all those sluts who have sex before marriage,…

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“Decency” Group Calls Me Out in Cincinnati

by on ·Sex & Culture, Sexual Intelligence Blog

Last night I braved the snow, wind, and ice to speak at the University of Cincinnati, part of their Sexploration Week. The students who attended seemed pretty engaged–almost no one text messaged or snored during my talk. One group who didn’t attend did have some pretty strong opinions—Citizens for Community Values. CCV, whose anti-democracy, pro-censorship work I’ve exposed before, thinks it’s a horrible idea for students to learn more about sex. They expressed their outrage to the University president, and urged their members to write to the local newspaper (over 100 did). A letter in this morning’s Cincinnati Enquirer was…

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10 Facts of Life for the New Surgeon General

by on ·Sexual Health, Sexual Intelligence Blog

Among his many tasks, President-elect Obama must select a new Surgeon General. While in many ways it’s a ceremonial post, the SG is supposed to be the country’s medical advocate. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been suggested as the probable choice. In addition to his other credentials, Dr. Gupta was named one of People Magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” just a few years ago. What a contrast. For eight years the Bush administration has been obsessed with regulating Americans’ sexuality–seeing sexuality as a political issue rather than a health issue. So this seems an excellent time to remind the incoming Surgeon General…

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The Problem With Rev. Rick Warren—It Isn’t the Rick, It’s the Rev.

by on ·Sex & Religion, Sexual Intelligence Blog

Rick Warren is the conservative mega-preacher from Southern California who’s giving the invocation at Barack Obama’s swearing-in on January 20. Lots of people have been criticizing Obama’s choice. They accurately note that Warren is rabidly anti-gay, anti-condom, anti-sex education, anti-reproductive choice. He brags about his supposedly great work battling AIDS in Africa, but it turns out that Warren’s ideological commitments to abstinence and against condoms have actively undermined public health in Africa. He’s a dangerous, deluded, man full of hate and fear. Obama could have chosen a different religious figure, someone whose beliefs more closely match those who elected him.…

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The “Moral Majority” Still Doesn’t Exist

by on ·Sex & Religion, Sexual Intelligence Blog

Paul Weyrich died last week at age 66. Weyrich created the still-influential Heritage Foundation, the think tank that helped social conservatives take over the Republican party. At a 1979 meeting of religious leaders, Weyrich referred to a “moral majority” in the U.S.. The name stuck, and through the ‘80s, Jerry Falwell energized the conservative movement using this theme as a political focus. Christianity in general and America in particular have traditionally equated “morality” with limiting one’s sexual choices and experiences. And so one of the things that made the Moral Majority movement possible was Americans’ need to deny the breadth…

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