Critical Exponent

If U.S. officials who are complaining about election fraud in Ukraine applied the same standards in Ohio, then our own presidential election certainly was stolen.

The 2-to-1 decision relied in large part on a decision in 2000 by the United States Supreme Court to allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scoutmasters. Just as the Scouts have a First Amendment right to bar gays, the appeals court said, law schools may prohibit groups that they consider discriminatory.

Forget health care, oil wars, and decent employment. “Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a Senate committee Thursday.”

An individual associated with the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (!!) says

Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance….That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids…[emphasis mine]

Another salient quote from the article:

Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association suggested that more study of “erototoxins” could show how pornography is not speech-protected under the First Amendment.

Interesting article by Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation:

In the aftermath of election ‘04, centrist Democrats should not be flirting with faith but re-examining their affinity for candidates too mumble-mouthed and compromised to articulate poverty and war as the urgent moral issues they are. Jesus is on our side here, and secular liberals should not be afraid to invoke him. Policies of pre-emptive war and the upward redistribution of wealth are inversions of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is for the most part silent, or mysteriously cryptic, on gays and abortion. At the very least, we need a firm commitment to public forms of childcare, healthcare, housing and education–for people of all faiths and no faith at all. Secondly, progressives should perhaps rethink their own disdain for service-based outreach programs. Once it was the left that provided “alternative services” in the form of free clinics, women’s health centers, food co-ops and inner-city multi-service storefronts. Enterprises like these are not substitutes for an adequate public welfare state, but they can become the springboards from which to demand one.

Consumerism has become the national pastime and the de facto membership badge of American society. We are bombarded daily with messages to consume to keep up, to consume to be happy, to consume to show love. And who doesn’t want the good life? It’s so easy; you don’t even need money to achieve instant happiness; credit will do!

It seems like we drive ourselves to distraction with superficialities rather than with accomplishments. Perhaps the trappings of consumerism are new but superficial diversion has been present throughout civilization; after all, “bread and circus” is not a new concept.

Anyway, The New York Times Magazine is out with its Design Issue this week, and it deals with marketing directed at kids. You can read the lead story here.

In youth marketing, the mom campaign is often referred to as ”the gatekeeper model”… In this case, [the agency] would apply one of its models, specifically, ”The Seven Faces of Mom.”… There is New Mom on the Block,Great Expectations Mom, Vicarious Mom, All-Perfect Mom, Connected Mom and so on.

Liberal religious figures, concerned about broad moral issues such as world poverty as well as the perception that ”moral values” helped win the election for President Bush, are stepping up their organizational efforts to support left-leaning candidates and their causes to prepare for the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election.

GLAAD has released an alert informing viewers of the distortions and simplifications in tonight’s 20/20 broadcast of “A Murder In Laramie: The Mystery And The Myth.”

The New York Times has an interesting article on how gay and lesbian students are causing many schools to choose their homecoming “kings” and “queens” in a less stereotypical way.

The New York Times had an article today about Phil Burress, an activist in the movement against same-sex marriage rights over the past nine years.

The Times says “It is easy to think of the campaign to ban same-sex marriage as a recent phenomenon, … [but] the movement’s backbone is built on little-known activists like Mr. Burress, a former union organizer who has devoted the last decade of his life to stopping gay marriage.”

I find it fascinating how this “self-described former pornography addict” is characterized as “closed-minded and intolerant of dissenting views;” one source for the article says “he and other spokesmen for the campaign believe that if you don’t subscribe to their view, there is something morally wrong with you.”

This sounds like yet another instance of a person trying to escape a life that feels out of control and unfulfilling not by deciding to live deliberately and reflectedly, but rather by throwing oneself at a new idea heart and soul and hanging on for dear life, lest any consideration of the world outside or any acknowledgement of shades of gray toss one into the chaos again. We humans crave comfort and stability, and perhaps the diversity of human experience, particularly when it enters into conflict with any dogma that is central to how an individual shapes his or her life, is a threat that must be annihilated, all the more so if one fears that the alternative is the abyss.

I’m sure the thinks he’s on the right side of the issue (pun intended):

“I don’t have a homophobic bone in my body,” [Burress] said. “What I’m concerned about is having these things forced on our culture.”