“A desire to bring every good thing to my child before I have another”

Melinda Gates and the Gates Foundation have announced a new initiative, and it’s one that might just bring a little mist to the eyes:

(The video is long, but like most TED talks it is well worth getting through.)

The Gates Foundation is working toward two new goals:

  • Make contraception available to anyone in the world who desires it
  • Instigate research into new forms of contraception, preferably methods that do not involve use of hormones

Indeed, the latter goal is something that has gone by the research wayside over the last 50 years. There has been no serious scientific work on new contraceptive methods since the advent of the birth control pill in the ’50s and ’60s.

Gates makes telling points in her speech:

  1. Controlled studies beginning in the 1960s in the Matlob district of Bangladesh have shown that villages that had regular access to contraception had healthier, longer-lived, and better educated children, and the villages were more resource-rich (arable land, livestock, and savings).
  2. Anti-contraception groups (such as the Catholic Church) attempt to attach the issues of abortion and draconian population control onto efforts at making contraception available to women in third-world countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and China. Gates states that those efforts highlight side issues that detract from the important ones. (Gates has also stated that she does not approve of abortion.)
  3. The “miracle” of Asian economic development in the 1980s was greatly fueled by the cultural shift in most of the affected countries to have smaller families.
  4. The most effective method to bring about the best conditions for children is to work on contraception as voluntary population control from the bottom up (at the family level) rather than mandatory efforts from the top down (government dictates and legislation).

Gates makes additional points here:

[She] believes that by focusing on the lives of women and children, and by making it clear that the agenda is neither coercive population control nor abortion, the controversy over international family-planning programs can be defused. Right now, she points out, 100,000 women annually die in childbirth after unintended pregnancies. Six hundred thousand babies born to women who didn’t want to be pregnant die in the first month of life.

and

Part of what Gates hopes to do is to re-create the former broad-based consensus behind global family planning, but in a way that’s focused on women’s needs rather than on demographics. “This is about empowering women to be educated and to make a choice that they want to make,” she says. “And if you look at what happens demographically because of that choice, you then get some of these outcomes that people were hoping to get worldwide.”

It was so nice to hear some good news about someone who has the power and resources to make things happen.

And that is one of those “every good things”.

And also, lest anyone get the idea that wingnuts might consider the notion that voluntarily controlling the size of one’s family might be a good idea…think again:

There’s a lollipop for anyone who can find a promotion of abortion or an attack upon Catholics in her speech.

(A bear hug and a warm soft kiss to The Spouse for bringing this one to my attention.)

…and people wonder why I won’t read Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card, author, member of the board of the National Organization for Marriage, and poorly-disguised closet case, is at it again:

Those signs on people’s lawns, warning you that the [North Carolina] pro-marriage Amendment One will harm children.

Of course it’s a lie – in fact, it’s really designed to fool careless people into thinking that the amendment is against traditional marriage. They’re co–opting the language of conservatives in order to trick conservatives into voting against their moral values.

But they’re inadvertently tipping their hand; they’re letting us see what’s really at stake.

There’s no need to legalize gay marriage. I have plenty of gay friends who are committed couples; some of them call themselves married, some don’t, but their friends treat them as married. Anybody who doesn’t like it just doesn’t hang out with them.

It’s just like heterosexual couples who are living together without marriage. Their friends still treat them like married couples, inviting them places together; they’re a social unit. Those who strongly disapprove leave them alone.

There are no laws left standing that discriminate against gay couples. They can visit each other in the hospital. They can benefit from each other’s insurance.

No, legalizing gay marriage is not about making it possible for gay people to become couples.

It’s about giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children. Once they legalize gay marriage, it will be the bludgeon they use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.

Our children will be barraged with the deceptions of the left. Parents will be forbidden to remove their children from the propaganda.

Any child with any gender or sexual confusion will be pushed inexorably away from the decision to establish a traditional family. They’ll be told, again and again, that any sign of effeminacy or gender confusion or same-sex attraction is an irrevocable, lifelong compulsion and they might as well shape their lives accordingly.

The left is at war with the family, and they want control of our children’s education. That’s what those signs on the lawns are about.

I’m not making this up – it’s already happening wherever the left has complete control of education. Parents in those places are already forbidden to opt out of sexual and gender propaganda.

And with the teachers’ unions absolutely under the control of the extreme left, don’t kid yourselves: Legalizing gay marriage will make the false claims of the gay lobby the established religion of the American school system.

If there were even a shred of science behind the absurd claims about gender and sexuality coming from the left, there might be a case for allowing this to happen. But there is no science behind it.

In fact, the scientific evidence we have points in the opposite direction: Same-sex attraction is not a strait jacket; people’s desires change over time; gay people still have choices; a reproductive dysfunction like same-sex attraction is not a death sentence for your DNA or for your desire to have a family in which children grow up with male and female parents to model appropriate gender roles.

Heterosexual pair-bonding has been at the heart of human evolution from the time we divided off from the chimps. Normalizing a dysfunction will only make ours into a society that corrodes any loyalty to it, as parents see that our laws and institutions now work against the reproductive success (not to mention happiness) of the next generation.

But your children will never hear any of that information, true as it is, because it contradicts the dogmas of the left.

Legalizing gay marriage is about driving all contrary evidence or argument out of the public discussion. That’s why the gay-marriage lobby tries to stifle discussion – they have no arguments that stand up to serious investigation.

They brand their opponents’ arguments as religious, and therefore illegitimate; but in fact their own arguments are just as faith-based, just as lacking in evidence, as any Bible-based argument.

So a vote for the amendment is a vote to keep alive the possibility of educating our children without having the false dogmas of the extreme left drilled into them, while contrary arguments are barred.

It’s a vote to allow actual research into human sexuality to continue (or begin again), because the question will remain open.

It’s a vote for freedom of religion – the only right that is in serious danger in America today.

Like black people, gays are reeeeeally reeeeeally scary to some people.

I wouldn’t demand that people not buy Card’s books or read his stories.

But I sure as hell won’t.

The price of admission

(This is a longish repost. Stick with it, because the thoughts it contains are well worth your time and consideration.)

Dan Savage, the managing editor/sex columnist for the Seattle Stranger and host of MTV’s reality show “Savage U“, posted this letter and Savage’s response about a year ago. This dialog resounded strongly within me, because it discusses an issue that I have had in my mind for as far back as the memory of my sexual life goes:

Sometimes a monogamous relationship does not fulfill the needs of one (or both) of the partners.

~~~

My wife and I click on just about every level—parenting, money, religion, politics, etc.—except for sex. After our last child was born, my advances were increasingly rejected. In an attempt to avoid pressuring her, I stopped initiating. One week passed, nothing. A month passed, nothing. A YEAR passed, nothing. Depression and anger set in. But I was committed to being the “perfect husband,” so I did not pressure her, hoping her libido would return. It didn’t. After two years, I finally lost it and confronted her. I expected that an open dialogue would improve the situation, but a month passed and she never brought it back up.

I realize that I’m lucky to be happy and fulfilled in just about every area of my life, but I’ve become fidgety, short-tempered, and hypersensitive. I do not want to have an affair and I do not want a divorce. I love her and our children, but I’m at a loss as to what to do. Knowing there are women out there in the world who actually enjoy sex is devastating (it kills me to listen to you field a call from a sexually confident woman on your podcast). I am mourning the loss of intimacy and connection with another person.

Please Advise Troubled Husband

I’ll get to you in a minute, PATH, but first…

MTV, a cable television channel that has been broadcasting music videos in a continuous loop since the summer of 1981, has elected to speed the moral collapse of the United States by putting me on television. My upcoming sex-advice program is tentatively titled Savage U, and it represents MTV’s first foray into non-music-video programming. (My preferred title for the show—Dan Savage’s Alaska—was rejected by the program’s co–executive producer, Piper Palin.) This news has upset not only my son, who has been in the MTV stage of his development for roughly three years, but also Maggie Gallagher, the head of the National Organization for Marriage, who has been stuck in the raving-bigot stage of her development for nearly three decades.

“Renowned sex columnist Dan Savage, who is an openly gay man,” Gallagher wrote on her blog, “will be taking his popular sex and relationship advice column to MTV in a show appropriately called ‘Savage U’ where he intends to educate your college student about the importance of honesty over just about anything else, including fidelity.”

Gallagher, who once had a child out of wedlock, speaks for the fidelity-over-anything-else crowd (fidelity over honesty, reality, statistics, biology, ability, etc.). Now, some people are capable of abstaining before marriage and being faithful to one partner for life—some people, but not Maggie—but these people represent a tiny minority of sexually active adults. And while those who make this aberrant lifestyle choice should not be discriminated against, the rest of us—the majority of sexually active adults—should be free to engage in grown-up conversations about sex and desire and the more reality-friendly ways in which we define fidelity without being shouted down by the monogamously correct.

I’d like to address Gallagher’s two main objections to Savage U in some detail:

“Savage, for all his experience, does not know what women are like,” says Gallagher.

I may not know what women taste like—I’ve never gone down on one—but I do know what women are like. My mother was a woman, my sister is a woman, my favorite bartender is a woman, my first sex partners were women, and many of my friends, neighbors, and coworkers are women. And as someone who is attracted to men and is in a long-term relationship with a man, I know what straight women have to put up with.

Ironically, Gallagher is a practicing Catholic who cites her faith as a reason for her opposition to same-sex marriage. But not knowing what women taste like has never stopped the pope from offering his unsolicited advice to women—no birth control, no abortions, no oral, no anal, no handjobs—and it seems a little hypocritical of Gallagher to suggest that I’m not qualified to offer advice to women, since I don’t fuck ‘em, without first telling that old fag in Rome to STFU already.

“The possibility of taming one’s sexual desire for the sake of another, or of a vow, is not in the Savage moral imagination,” says Gallagher. “Libido will have out, and honesty about that is the best policy.”

The possibility of taming one’s sexual desire for the sake of another most definitely exists within the Savage moral imagination. I frequently discuss the “price of admission,” that is, the personal sacrifices, large and small, that make long-term relationships possible. For some, the price of admission—what it costs to ride a particular ride—includes “taming one’s sexual desire for the sake of another.” If anal sex is something you enjoy, but you’re in love with someone who doesn’t do anal, going without anal is the price of admission. If you’re not into monogamy, but you’re in love with someone who insists on it, then monogamy is the price of admission.

Yes, libido will have out—but “libido will have out” doesn’t translate into “Dan ‘Doesn’t Fuck Women’ Savage says anything and everything goes.” Two people in a long-term, committed relationship should be open and honest with each other about their sexual interests, turn-ons, drives, etc., because, yes, libido will have out. Meaning sexual compatibility and sexual satisfaction have a huge impact on the health of our relationships and marriages, Maggie, particularly if your spouse is your sole source of sexual satisfaction and release. People who can be open and honest with their partners—whether the relationship is monogamous or not—are likelier to have their needs met and likelier to meet their partners’ needs. And when needs are met, people are less likely to cheat and more likely to stay married.

Openness and honesty don’t automatically translate into everyone gets everything everyone wants. Not all needs can be met. But sometimes just having the sacrifices we’ve made for the good of our marriages acknowledged—getting a receipt after paying the price of admission—is good enough. Getting some credit for going without anal, along with the green light to jerk off to anal porn now and then, can make going without anal easier. Indeed, it can make going without anal virtuous, something that speaks well of the going-without-anal partner’s character and priorities.

But there are times when monogamy—its pressures, its discontents, its unquestioned acceptance—can destroy an otherwise decent marriage.

Take PATH’s marriage. If his wife doesn’t come around—if her libido doesn’t kick back into gear after mental or medical intervention—this couple is surely headed for divorce. PATH is not only feeling depressed and resentful, he’s also contemplating an affair (even if he’s in the dismiss-that-idea stage). Sooner or later, he’s going to cheat or walk. But this marriage, a marriage that works on every other level (“parenting, money, religion, politics, etc.”), could be saved if Mr. and Mrs. PATH were encouraged to openly and honestly discuss their sexual needs and their sexual disconnect. If Mrs. PATH is done with sex—for now, perhaps forever—Mr. and Mrs. PATH should be encouraged to come to a reasonable, mutually agreeable accommodation, one that allows for Mr. PATH to get his needs met elsewhere if that’s what he needs to stay sane and stay married.

I’m not sure what to call someone who places a higher value on preserving monogamy within a particular marriage over preserving that marriage itself, Maggie, but I wouldn’t call that person a defender of marriage.

“Mommy, why does Firefox always go to this ‘cleen-yur-regerstee’ page?”

So, you’re cruising down the internet freeway, and you’ve been reading funny comics, catching up on email, copying down recipes for tomorrow night’s dinner, and (quietly, while the kids are at the movie theatre) watch a little soft-core porn.

You know that porn sites are just rife with viruses and malware and such. So you’re careful about what you click on.

Just before the kids get home you clear your browser history (you’ve learned how to do that after little Jimmy wanted to know about the funny “toy site” that Mommy had visited — “Mom, those toys look boring!”), and you go to a safe, family-friendly religious site and leave the browser open.

The next morning, you find that your machine has malware/trojans/viruses/generallybadbadsoftware loaded onto it.

Welcome to the real world.

How soon the Republican Party forgets about St. Paul…

News item from the U.S. state known as a major depository of dumbshit thinking:

In the politically-charged and likely protest-filled streets of Tampa, Fla., during the Republican National Convention in August, water guns will be strictly prohibited. Concealed handguns, on the other hand, will be perfectly legal.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said this week that banning handguns from downtown Tampa during the convention, as the city’s Mayor Bob Buckhorn requested, “would surely violate the Second Amendment.”

“It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law,” Scott said in a letter to Buckhorn Tuesday, emphasizing the words “law-abiding.” “It is at just such times that the constitutional right of self defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.”

Tampa officials are expecting thousands of protesters to descend on the Florida metropolis for the GOP convention. While no handguns will be allowed inside the convention, which is being protected by the Secret Service, concealed carry license-holders will be able to carry their weapons in the streets surrounding the convention.

It painfully obvious that the Republican Party (and its numbnuts Florida governor) has forgotten the lessons of St. Paul in 2008:

Now, mix in a healthy dose of licensed firearms carriers, and watch a few cops and a mess of bystanders die (something no one wants).

(Thanks to The Spouse for the tip!)

Honesty just doesn’t come easily to some people

There is a kerfluffle going on in North Carolina these days.

For those of you not in the know, there is a state amendment up for popular vote on May 8th in the Tar Heel State. It would dictate that valid marriages could only occur between one man and one woman.

Let’s ignore the fact that same-sex marriage is already illegal in North Carolina; the legality of the issue is not at heart here.

And now the spouse of the amendment bill’s author dished on what the real issue is:

Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral campaigning, says poll workers outside the early voting site at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem reported to him that the wife of NC Sen. Peter Brunstetter remarked today that her husband sponsored legislation to put the marriage amendment on the primary ballot ‘to protect the Caucasian race.’

Nance paraphrased the remarks, as told to him by those who were present: ‘During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.’

So there ya are. Much like Minnesota, the homophobes and wingnuts are trying to prevent a select minority from enjoying the same civil rights that everyone else enjoys: the right to be married, with all the legal privileges therein. In order to short-circuit judicial review of such blatant violations of the 14th Amendment, these yahoos demand a popular vote (a popular vote on civil rights??!) and then solicit massive funding from out-of-state interests.

Being honest just isn’t in their blood.

(Thanks to Joe for the tip.)

“Mr. Debs Goes to Washington”

You all remember Eugene Debs, right?

He was an Indiana state legislator and founder of the first industrial union in America. He has been the only person to run for the Presidency of the United States while in jail (in 1920); he got almost a million people to vote for him in that election. He is America’s most famous socialist. (A *real* socialist, Mr. Hannity, puh-leaze.)

He dismissed the validity of the electoral process, because of the “back-room” deals often made within it. He felt that the true way to bring about socialism was for the working class to organize, educate, and liberate itself by itself.

Neocons should fear this man’s political great-grandchildren in the Occupy movement.

Here’s to Mr. Hitchens

My favorite Hitchslap: “That which can asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Here’s your morning dose, video-style!

I mourn the passing of the gentleman. He was abrasive, and I didn’t always agree with him, but his arguments were difficult to refute and compelling to watch and read.

(Thanks to Atheism, Philosophy, and Science for the tip.)

Same shit, different day

Everyone over the age of 40 should remember this magazine cover:

(I bet you hid your copies of NatLamp from your mom, didn’t you?)

Today, the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives did something that was similar but  not quite so funny:

Can you say “the Republican War on Women”?

Side note: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nicely summed up the situation when she referred to the Democratic party’s proposal, which was to generate money for the student loan fund with an additional tax on oil and gas companies (that don’t pay their fair share of taxes anyway):

“We [Democrats] prefer tax subsidies for big oil rather than the health of America’s women.”

“Crystal energy is high on the vibrational scale of Angstrom units”??? What the *hell* does that mean?

Sometimes blog posts practically write themselves.

The Spouse pointed out this exquisitely beautiful pile of selenium crystals, and an exquisitely high pile of pseudo-scientific horse manure:

(Notes: #1–I refuse to redact the names of the guilty. #2–My Facebook language setting is “Pirate”.)

The picture of the crystals is real; it was taken in the selenite crystal chambers in the old Naica Mine in Mexico.

The commentary about the crystals is not real; it’s from the mind of someone who cannot take her reality straight without a chaser of wishful thinking and a tumbler-full of complete bullshit.

“Your true colors, shining through”

The religious crapnuts are again showing you what the world would be like, if they were in charge.

Ever heard of Fred Karger? He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. He’s the candidate you never saw on the televised debates; he’s the candidate that the other candidates never chose to face.

Why? Because he’s moderate (gasp!), pro-choice (gasp!), and pro-marriage equality (gasp!gasp!). And he’s gay and open about it.

‘Nuff said, right?

Here’s his latest campaign video (for the California primary):

This video was posted on YouTube, and then taken down within 24 hours. Here’s the notice Karger’s campaign folks got:

Look through the video yourself, and try to see what “community guidelines” were violated.

The two guys smooching is my best guess. Should that give this video the old “heave-ho” at a time when you can see naked breasts and outlines of erections through tight underwear throughout YouTube?

Really?

Send the anti-equality wackjobs a message and do the viral thing with this video, ‘kay? Show YouTube the veracity of Great Internet Truth #12.

Since when do we vote on civil rights?

It is currently against the law in Minnesota for anyone to get married save one man and one woman. That law has existed since the 1970s.

However, that’s just not enough for a bunch of out-of-state interests. They want to make sure that the law cannot change, even if demanded by legislation.

Minnesota will have an entry on the November ballot to make one-man-one-woman a state constitutional requirement. The measure was passed by the Republican-led state legislature, and will be put before the voters this year.

Needless to say, there is a lot of lobbying and campaigning on the issue. One of the biggest visible groups supporting the amendment is the Minnesota Family Council. Formerly known as the Berean League, this is the same group that fought tooth-and-nail for years to keep anti-sodomy laws on the state books. It’s interesting to note that not a single straight person was ever brought up on such charges; the laws were only used to prosecute gays and lesbians.

Here is only the latest in a series of expensively-produced video ads supporting the amendment:

It’s also worth noting that the MFC has raised over a million dollars for their effort, almost all of it from seven wealthy out-of-state donors. ($100 bet says that one or more of them are closely affiliated with the Catholic Church, just as NOM is.) Minnesotans United for All Families, one of the largest groups opposing the amendment, has also raised about a million dollars from over 50,000 supporters.

Guess which group is the real grassroots effort. (The Spouse and I went canvassing for them last Saturday.)

The saddest thing about this amendment is that it is not even necessary; existing statutes prevent gay marriage in the state. The proposed amendment is a move by homophobic bigots and religious haters to ensure that the state never has gay marriage.