Religion

The Sexual Freedom Project: Birds and the Bees

Meet Ying, who doesn’t really believe in the abstinence-only approach, and tells us why. She received much of her formal sexual education in Catholic school, and shares with us some of the topics they covered. She tells us about her traditional parents and their expectations for her.  And she has some wisdom for us about bonding with and learning about our significant others.

What do you think about sex before marriage? Learning about sex from the Catholic Church? What parents should talk about with their kids? And how well your parents really know each other?

Send us your thoughts at columbia@venusplusx.org — we want to hear from you!  Make us a video, write us an essay or a poem, or create some original art — we’ll thank you with a t-shirt.

More videos.

TRANSCRIPT

Hmm… “Abstinence only”… Uh, I don’t really believe in that
because, I don’t know, I think that people
get really sexually frustrated so…
Like why? I don’t know. I actually went to a
Catholic school between kindergarten until twelfth grade, so…
Sex in religion, so they talk to you all about like the diseases that you can get and like,
the relationships that you should go through,
and like when you get into “walking on eggshells”
and it’s dangerous, but… I mean,I guess
they didn’t really stress out um, maybe, I don’t know, having sex with people or anything,
they just kinda talked about relationships.
They talked about um, you know, sexually transmitted diseases, what they look like, and how, yeah, how you get it,
how you prevent it. My parents um, are very very traditional,
so they don’t even talk like about, like, the birds and the bees.
They just kind of like hope that I don’t have sex before marriage so… yeah. It’s definitely about cultural taboos.
Cultural taboos really, I feel like um, you know, even today
my boyfriend gets questioned about sex by our cleaning person,
like, in the morning at Yaffa. They just like, he justasks him like how many times a day that we have sex,
or how many… like they have no idea.
And I mean it’s kind of weird and
I’m sure it’s very like they have no idea about it
because they ask about it, but it’s like
at the end of the day it’s like these people
don’t bond with each other until they get married. And how much, how healthy is that?
My parents… My mom didn’t even have sex with my father until they were married.
Like, to this day she knows nothing about him…

Scalia’s Cry for Help: Impeach Me!

The most recent insanity expressed by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

…[T]he separation of church and state “doesn’t mean the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.”

…[S]ecularists concern over the overreach of religion into the government and every aspect of the public sphere is “utterly absurd” …

…[T]he Constitution’s only obligation is to protect Christian’s [sic] freedom of religion and was never intended to protect Americans from religious imposition.

Antonin Scalia Photo by Stephen Masker Flickr/creative commons

Antonin Scalia
Photo by Stephen Masker
Flickr/creative commons

The only pronouncement from Scalia that could be considered rational: I’m guilty of sedition. I am guilty of putting my religious fundamentalism ahead of all reason and justice. Impeach me, please!

Like an errant child, he is begging for our discipline, and we should oblige him by redoubling existing efforts to impeach him once and for all. There are other offenders of his ilk on the Court but he is by far the worst.

It is so very sad to see the psychological ravages of religious fundamentalism so sharply on display, especially by a person with immense power. Taken to its extreme, American religiosity erodes the very brains wherein it resides. Patient Zero is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a very, very sad case, indeed.

Scalia’s religiosity and his powerful position on the Court aren’t centered on anything good, nothing greater than his/the radical right-wing agenda aimed at obliterating any progress since the 17th century, even since the Dark Ages, when religious hierarchies controlled every aspect of human life. His views parallel Sharia Law in practically every respect.

Scalia’s extreme religiosity has distorted his thinking so much that he is no longer capable of rational thought, or his job in interpreting the United States Constitution. The shreds left of his humanity have become devoted to openly pursuing his objective of making religion, specifically his distorted view of catholicism, the law of our land. Several Court decisions over the last few years reflect this in-bred malignancy, even as he continues his campaign to make religion supreme, in our schools, for corporations, and in government. Pundits rightly label him a Vatican surrogate.

In the last 100 years, progressives (both religious and not) have succeeded in demanding equal protections and rights guaranteed in the Constitution, including such things as the civil rights of minorities and a woman’s right to exercise her own healthcare decisions. Scalia and his minions’ reactionary behavior and actions against these inevitable gains are militant in their expression, totalitarian by any measure.

Progressives are not “shoving their disbelief down our throats,” as Scalia and others contend. This favorite screed of the radical right wing is just a fear reaction from those who have never accepted, and will never accept, the intended idea of the separation of church and state, that each person has the right to their own (personal) religious freedom, an unassailable human right that protects all of us with freedom from religion.

We often forget to remind ourselves that the puritans who left England were basically banished to the The New World because of their religious extremism, and their philosophical progeny has been at work to destroy our Constitution practically from the start. It’s an uphill battle to contain this extremism, to call it out for what it is, and we must continue to wrest freedom from the jaws of radical religiosity.

As ordinary citizens we have the power. Find out what you can do today to end the reign of freedom’s fiercest enemies, starting by calling for Scalia’s impeachment.

Scalia must go. United States Supreme Court Justices can be impeached for sedition and intentional distortion of our founding Constitution. Please sign this petition, and campaign among your family and friends to help end the scourge of religious fundamentalism, here and abroad.

 

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Related:
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 1)
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 2)
Religion: Real and Fake
When Free Speech Becomes Sedition
Right-Wingnuts Bless Progressives

The Sexual Freedom Project: Influences

 


How do you describe it? What culture, family, or church constraints do you think interfere with full equality for all people?

Let’s hear your voice. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

More videos.

The Sexual Freedom Project: What stands in the way?

(También en Español)


What stands in the way of your sexual freedom? We want to know!

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

More videos.

On this Independence Day — Religion: Real and Fake

Stepping back in history for a moment to uncover the birth of religious freedom in this country, and how it was hampered by the Puritans, we are gladly representing a post we delivered a couple of years ago.

Religion: Real and Fake, originally published on July 20, 2012

Society suffers from a severe misunderstanding of the nature and role of religion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ongoing arguments about the “separation of church and state.” Blame the Puritans.

The basic idea in the U.S. Constitution is one of freedom FROM religion, expressed as “freedom of religion.” The tenets of any religion may not be imposed on its citizens who disagree. This concept is fundamental to the unalienable human right to absolute privacy of person, and pillar of sexual freedom and the bedrock of all other freedoms.

120px-Human_soul-1The pilgrims who came to Plymouth imagined that they could impose their concept of the divine will upon everyone who opposed them, that the free exercise of their religion meant forcing the world into compliance with their beliefs, a severe misdirection victimizing all sincere people. A few years later, Puritan fanaticism swept England herself into a great civil war. Such foolishness has characterized many fanatical conflicts throughout history, and can be seen today in the demands and schemes of theocratic groups worldwide, including today’s America.

A real religion is world religion. One could say there are as many religions in the world as there are people. Even atheists and agnostics objectify “god” and choose to exclude these hobbled, uninspired notions. World religion is superstition- and mythology-free and an immediately accessible and consistent guide to living in tune with the rhythms of cosmic destiny. This vitology—our urge to persist—gives each person a vision of immortality, an unending, improving, and harmonizing ecology of living.

Our faith is one of loving—desiring to do good to one another. This perpetual cycle of love shared is powered by all kinds of love, especially including the erotic, and it gives us a unified power for progress the world has yet to see. Our inherent and inherited capability for sexual pleasure and orgasm (erotic joy) is the living and loving communion that matures us individually to the service of Love and its destiny, and unites us as a team in shared fellowship—a loving siblinghood.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

 

 

What? Science? Who Needs Science?

On Monday, we wrote our analysis of the disastrous 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, which gives greater religious freedom rights to closely held for-profit corporations and less religious freedom rights to natural persons (their words). We also urged you to express your dissent by signing on on to support Planned Parenthood in its defends health care access for women.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

 

“The decision now says people have the right to ignore science; humans can ignore facts. Science can be contested, disproven, and proven, with experimentation, and the advancement of knowledge. But Hobby Lobby just got a religious exemption from the health care law and basically all science!” — Michelle Garcia at the Advocate 

Closely held for-profit corporations comprise 90% of American companies and millions of workers, and companies are now empowered to intervene in the health care access for women and the men that love them by denying coverage for commonly used, FDA-approved pregnancy prevention pills and devices, such as an IUD (intra-uterine device). We fully agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the dissenting opinion, warning that the Court is about to enter “a minefield.”

The New York Times previously tried to explain this, and VenusPlusX, Mother Jones, and others such as Garcia do very well in unpacking the bad science behind the decision. These 5 white men in the majority are uniformed and/or intentionally in denial by misunderstanding that the birth control methods they feel are so at odds with their religions interfere with embryo implantation when in fact they simply prevent fertilization.

These science-deniers and extreme-right wing nuts have driven down the Court’s favorability to 30%, and threaten the balance of government. Last month, VenusPlusX, discussed the impeachment of certain Supreme Court Justices, and this should add more fuel to the fire.

Garcia also makes another very good point of why this decision should worry every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) person. Generations of LGBT activists have always understood that when it comes to progress, equality rights follow women’s rights. Legislation and lawsuits favoring LGBT people are based on this fact, and shows the two movements have be (and should be) inexorably linked for decades.

As a queer woman, it makes me want to shake every LGBT person who doesn’t see the broader implications of this. What if a company could tell employees that they won’t pay for insurance that covers HIV treatment or health care to transgender people because of owners’ “sincerely held religious beliefs”? Justice Samuel Alito, in writing the majority opinion, promised its scope was “very specific.” Still, some of us side with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and foresee a potential onslaught of legal challenges testing the limits.

When I unfurl my brow and relax to get a good night’s sleep I think about the upside of right-wing theocratic extremism — it brings out the voters. The more desperate the right-wing nuts are and the more sloppy they become help focus progressive action. In America, we can use the issues where Republicans fall short (women’s rights, immigration rights, LGBT rights, immigration rights, workers rights, and on and on) to vote them out in November, insuring a super-majority in the Senate will be available there to appoint new progressive Justices as maybe needed in the next few years; and, regaining the House to replace the do-nothing bunch there now.

291679976_f8e1803bf5_oIt’s the political season. Put your boots on the ground to stand up for those whose human rights are under attack. We have to get our own house in order before we can affect similar changes in trouble spots across the world. Two follows one, three follows two, and so on and so on so just take that first step towards change.

See A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom to understand why VenusPlusX believes issues like these are of supreme importance.

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Breaking Down Taboos

We just love this guy. Here he is prompts us to ask ourselves if we are open and honest about our sexuality, how we have you defied taboos, fear, guilt, and how much religion affects our own sexual freedom and/or fears.

Please share your thoughts with us. Make us a video, write to us, create a poem or a work of art. Take advantage of this opportunity to express yourself, and get a free VenusPlusX t-shirt as a thank you.

More videos.

To learn more about The New Age of Sexual Freedom, click here.

TRANSCRIPT 

All organisms that are capable of sentience deserve our consideration. Anything that’s capable of appreciating the spectrum between well-being and suffering deserves our moral consideration. Yeah, I feel like being open and honest with people who are a part of your life or who have [been] could be affected by your sexuality, I think is really important. We have to break down a lot of the taboos that circulate around sex. So, people can’t feel like engaging in something merely out of self-interest, or because there’s no long-term benefit from doing it, ghat they should feel guilty for that sort of thing. They shouldn’t…but there are a lot of forces in our society I would point out, religious (laughs) sources that make people feel like they should feel guilty for doing what they find pleasurable. This is an untenable position it seems to me. If everyone’s informed and consenting, then there’s nothing wrong with any form of sex in my opinion, and people need to feel that way too, I think. And they’ll be happier and healthier for it.


The Sexual Freedom Project: Stop Genital Mutilation

In light of Kwani’s 3-part series on male genital mutilation (circumcision), we are revisiting this particular Sexual Freedom Project video to keep this important conversation going.

Have you made the connection between male and female genital mutilation and the issue of sexual freedom?

How about forced sexual reassignment surgery practiced on intersex infants?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps

So recently I’ve heard a lot about female genital mutilation going on in certain parts of the world. It seems to me that if we’re to respect sexual freedom, that has to be a practice that we criticize first. Uh, that seems kind of beyond the pale. A real slap in the face to human rights.

More videos here.


The Sexual Freedom Project: Origins of Monogamy

We wanted to take another look at this video because monogamy is increasingly an important debate when otherwise solid relationships are irrevocably destroyed by one-time or occasional infidelity.

Is monogamy in our genes? Or is it artificially imposed upon us by the state, religion, corporations, or social custom? Why does monogamy endure? What are its pros and cons? Is jealousy just based on fear of loss? Will polyamory someday be more accepted and prevalent, and decrease or increase jealousy?

We want to hear your voice — write your story, poem, song, or essay, or make a video or a piece of art. If we feature your response on the site, we will send you a VenusPlusX t-shirt as a thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

TRANSCRIPT by David Kreps.

Well I really believe that in the older times there was no couples and everybody belongs to everybody and there was the tribes and all this “Masarykov Theory” about how the beginning of the society was, and blah blah blah. I really believe that that’s how it was in our genes. But, so how do we build this society that is not like that anymore? But we’ve been educated in this society. We can’t really avoid thinking like that. It’s, there’s, I mean we are not the old tribal people so we obviously don’t think like that. But I really believe that in our origins, [what] we were like than and now we kind of became another kind of creature that is not that natural, but kind of weird, but that’s how it is. So you can’t really fight it. You got to just …’Ok, I’m going to feel jealous if you go to have sex with another person, so it’s better not to do that.’

More Sexual Freedom Project videos.


Male Genital Mutilation: Doublethink, Self-Deception, and Insecurity (Part 1)

A child bleeds from the genitals during an unnecessary surgery with adults in attendance, none batting an eye.

This is genital mutilation; however, we in the western world are immersed in a form of doublethink, considering our vehement disapproval of female genital mutilation (FGM). Is there such a difference between FGM and male circumcision that one is ok and the other abhorrent? The justifications given for either tend to be interchangeable.

Male circumcision is awful in the best of circumstances, performed by professionals in sterile environments, with clean tools. It’s not always like this — in tribes, it’s often a rite of passage which unifies the community, and males are cast out if they “fail”, from seeking medical attention due to defects (for example). The operation can be done in questionable environments, with questionable credentials (even in the United States), and the results can be catastrophic.

Advocates of male genital mutilation often use poor rationale: he should look like his dad, girls will like him more, it’s what god wants — these are among many assertions that one might hear that don’t hold water.

An archaic practice of conformity, the by-product of ideals humanity ought to have outlived by now, considering advancements in medical science,  knowledge, and secularism. Image from Rachel Esther via Flickr

However, there’s an argument that appeals to objective thinkers – that genital mutilation provides health benefits. Arguments that are science-based provide strong rhetoric, even when contrary to scientific consensus. Yet the facts remain — both forms of circumcision (male and female) are mutilation, and alleged evidence to the contrary is inadequate.

Arguments which appeal to logic are particularly insidious as they are not disregarded easily — thinkers may be tempted to take any evidence that reassures them, as many will be circumcised, prefer circumcised genitals, or both. I would love to believe that my penis has been enhanced by genital mutilation, but the truth isn’t always so convenient.

Click here for part 2, where we will examine evidence in favor of circumcision.