Hmmm...

Did you ever notice whenever someone says "...for the children" or any mention of "protecting" someone that isn't themselves; we tend to lose a freedom right afterwards?

Legal adults: Please parent your children or don't have any. So long as you can handle that, I won't have to put up with this bullshit.

Drivers ed classes teach mechanics, no driving skills.

Wisconsin law mandates teaching abstinence in sex ed

Or so the headline would read if it were drivers ed and not sex ed. All I say is the state of wisconsin disgusts me. Who the hell lets things like this get by? We're progressing backwards into a state of fear and stupidity. There is so many things wrong with the idea of abstinence education I don't know where to start. Firstly there is the issues of inevitability; children grow up. They get older and they have sex before they get married. Not that it matters its before marriage because people get married and divorced and married again all the damn time in this country. Anyways back to the point; abstinence education sends people into the world with no idea of what do to to keep themselves safe other than dont have sex. I can not accept that anyone in this country would both believe that people would decide not to have sex until they were 'married for life' and be considered of sound mind. Said more briefly, they would have to be suffering a mental defect to think people wont have sex until marriage. Abstinence is only the "safest way to avoid STDs and pregnancy" if you assume people wont have sex, and as studies show those 'pledges,' where people sign a paper pledging not to have sex till marriage, which are part of many abstinence education, more than 50% are broken within 2 years.

Personally I remember my sex ed classes, you know what I got out of it? The girl gets knocked up every time. period. Thanks a lot, great use that is to me that was.

Directly from Dan Savage himself:

I've been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don't just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: "The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut."

After raising the alarm for months back here in the sex-ads section, I was intensely gratified to read Russell Shorto's brilliant cover story, "The War On Contraception," in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. To readers who think I'm being hysterical: So you don't think the religious right would seriously go after birth control? Fine, don't believe me. But maybe you'll believe Shorto when he lays out the American Taliban's plan to deny access to birth control—any and all types, folks, not just emergency contraception.

"In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex," Shorto writes. "Contraception, by [their] logic," Shorto continues, "encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage." Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: "We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception." And there's this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: "I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill… Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation."

I'll say it again, breeders: The American Taliban is not just opposed to straight premarital sex, with their abstinence education and hilariously ineffective virginity pledges, or gay sex, with their "ex-gay" campaigns and their anti-gay-marriage amendments. The American Taliban doesn't think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom—not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you're going to have—you need to read "The War On Contraception." And don't comfort yourself with the notion that these are just some anti-sex religious wackos: The Bush administration not only listens to these wackos, it appoints them to important positions all over the federal government—and let's not even think about the members of the American Taliban that Bush has already appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.

This is some serious shit, breeders. You're being attacked. It's time to fight back.

Savage Love May 17th, 2006

So I got in a mood to be thinking about hockey again last night and this morning and I pulled up an old writing thing I put down in 2000. I reread it a little and edited a few things and kinda wanted to share it because I felt like it was worth putting up.




Period One. The puck drops. The wingman holds his spot on the hatchmarks and a large red jersey leans an elbow into his shoulder. As the center fights the puck out of his skates, the wingman’s legs are buckling. The puck is kicked out right to the wingman. He pulls back with the puck and just wants to get it away from the red. Before the plan unfolds, the largest red jersey on the ice runs right through him. Barely aware of the last 4 seconds, he gets up to see everyone in his own end. Knowing now what made the breeze that cooled the nervous sweat on his face was the rush into his zone. The puck is a blur. While getting up, he tries to follow the puck. He cannot keep the puck in focus for more than a second. Like trying to follow a fast-moving insect in the open air, he’s not able to do it.

Stepping across the blue line, his team takes control of the puck. The defense speeds it around the boards. The puck touches the stick of the other wing and is drilled into the boards. The center sweeps down and knocks the puck out. As if galvanized by all the attention it was getting, the puck hops into the air and spins erratically as it hits the ice again. Without a second to waste, the wingman rushes behind the center as he picks up the black cylinder. Swooping like a hawk, another red jersey confronts the center. The center moves half a step to the right, bobs his head, and seemingly teleports to the left. The wingman has no time to react and the defenseman goes for him instead, the slower, dazed prey.

Somehow he avoids the hit full on but takes the hit solidly in his right shoulder. The hit ends any movement of his foot; he spun around like a top, his left still striving forward. Miraculously able to stay standing, he scans the situation. Running on his first impulse, he blazes into the corner where the puck should be in seconds. It arrived just as he had hoped. Just as he can send it back where it came from with a quick flick of his wrist, another red streak appears before him.

Again, he feels a crushing sensation all over. It quickly dissipates because he had somewhere to go. The wingman pumped his legs to get to in front of the padded wall of a goalie. While he was detained in the corner, the puck attempted escape from the attacking zone. A fellow blue jersey catches it at the line.

As if it were a pinball, the puck flew back right at the net. Everyone on the ice hears the soft thud when the goalie’s reflex-like save keeps the game even. The puck does not like being caught in the tender’s glove, it bounces out, making its way out as soon as it entered. The puck falls to the ground. In a blink of an eye the wingman instinctually slaps the puck past the tender to rest in the white stitching. The boys clad in blue gave a shout as they skated half the ice back to their bench, beating their sticks on the ice. Finally a chance to think and breath. Slaps fall on his head from all sides; in only 45 seconds, the winger made a lasting difference in the game.