Internal Monologue

Enabling Haloscan comments made all the comments invisible, so I restored my old template. Now they can be seen again. I hope I can use Haloscan just to send Trackback pings manually.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

More evidence I'm right! Does puritanism help people become less sexual, or does it merely make them covertly sexual? Can Google help us answer that question? Perhaps! Who's doing more Google searches sex, debauched places like Amsterdam, or repressed places like Saudi Arabia? If you share my views on the subject , the answer is obvious, and according to Sullivan, we're right : The countries with the most searches for that word is - surprise! - Pakistan, followed by Egypt, Iran, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Hmmm. It couldn't have anything to do with all that Muslim repression, could it? Arabic is the most popular language for "sex" searches. Islamism, like Christianism, doesn't conquer sex; it just fetishizes it and forces it underground. This also ties in with the whole "bible belt" = "strip club belt" in the United States, which I look at in one of my first posts . (Also inspired by a Sullivan post. We seem to sha

Here's an e-mail I sent to Andrew Sullivan : Hello Andrew, you might already aware of this, but there are some churches actively fighting the misnamed "Marriage Protection Amendment". My own denomination, the Unitarian Universalists , has been in support of legal marriage for same-sex partners officially since 1996 . (Before it was even cool!) Individual UU ministers have been performing committment ceremonies long before then, and the UUA formally  endorsed such ceremonies in 1984 . It sounds like your Catholicism is very strong, so simply "jumping ship" and becoming a UU is not something in which you'd be interested. But some of your readers might be interested in learning about religious communities and organizations where their homosexuality is welcomed fully. The United Church of Christ  (whose wonderful ads have been refused by major networks ) is also an organization welcoming to people of different sex

Those who think that singing the national anthem in Spanish is somehow corrosive to our national character should perhaps consider the fact that according to this Nightline story from ABC, 61% of Americans could not even recite the lyrics. Crooks and Liars has video of Nightline asking various lawmakers to sing our national anthem, and most of them seem to be part of that 61%. It's pretty funny in a "Michael Moore at his best" sort of way. John McCain does seem to know the song, which bodes well for his 2008 bid. Now if he can sufficiently kowtow to the Christianist right-wing, he may get a shot at the nomination.   P.S. I wonder how many people think the last word of our national anthem is "PLAYBALL!!!" shouted in a very loud voice.  

In case a re-united Monty Python wants to make a sequel... I had this thought long ago, but it just occurred to me to place it here. Over the ages, a lot of fuss has been made about the Holy Grail, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. Knights have quested for it, Indiana Jones and his father quested for it, it has become synonomous that which is most sought after. But what about the bread plate used by Christ at the Last Supper? How come no one has gone on a quest for that? Is it already sitting in a shrine or museum somewhere? Is it somehow less imbued with holiness than the Grail? Is it some kind of Art Garfunkel/Dave Stewart/Curt Smith/Andrew Ridgeley figure, forever destined to be over-shadowed by its better known counterpart? Is there any theological reason for this difference? Or is it the result of early factionalism within the Christian church? How come Monty Python didn't go on a quest for the "Holy Paten"? Or maybe it's because they didn't even

I repent! After having read this site and its brother site I believe abstinence-only education and virginity pledges are the way to go. Despite additional evidence to the contrary : Not only are kids who take virginity pledges just as likely to have sexually transmitted diseases as kids who don’t, but they are even more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior.