Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
30, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
1, 2003
A Love Supreme
Our
Assholes Belong to Us!
By
Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
It's a miracle, Brothers and Sisters! A miracle
long overdue wrapped up in a Love Supreme. That is, the United
States Supreme Court issued a number of just and liberating decrees
in the last week of June before the 2003 summer break, but the
most prominent was the Lawrence vs. Texas ruling that
sodomy between consenting adults--straight or gay--cannot be
prosecuted as a crime. So sing: Hallelujah! Our assholes belong
to us! Our assholes do not belong to the state! Can I hear
an amen? Can I hear an awomen? Let sexual freedom ring all
over this land
"But what exactly is sodomy?"
you may well ask, Brothers and Sisters, though surely you know
from Bible study that it has something to do with Sodom, sister
city of Gomorrah, both of which got burnt to a freedom-fried
crisp by a very jealous God as its citizens were enjoying, well,
sodomy. Since the Bible (at least the PG-rated version) doesn't
out-and-out describe an act of sodomy, Bible-thumpers are free
to give it a variety of colorful, fear-provoking meanings. Sometimes
the word is used to mean "gay sex," since the citizens
of Sodom, or Sodomites, were mainly these guys who wanted to
have sex with these other guys who were actually angels. The
guy-angels were visiting Abraham's brother Lot, just having a
cup of tea and chatting about the impending Armeggedon, when
a gang of rowdy Sodomites started banging on Lot's door demanding
to "know" his guests, and we all know what "knowledge"
meant in those days.
The Bible considers Lot to be a good
guy, the only "righteous" man in Sodom actually, because
he will not allow the Sodomites to sodomize his guests, the angels.
Fair enough; nobody should be sodomized nonconsensually, not
even angels. But how does Lot try to stop the rabid crowd? By
offering up his two "virgin daughters" for them to
sodomize instead! Moreover, the story of "Sodom and Gomorrah"
ends with Lot's daughters getting to "know" their father
and both getting pregnant by him! This same Daddy Lot is the
one "righteous" man God rescues from the burning cities.
Well, that's the Bible for you.
But back to Sodom. Though the Sodomites
did not sodomize Lot's daughters (they preferred the angels),
they could have, because technically, sodomy is any kind
of sexual intercourse that is not penis-in-vagina. That includes
oral sex, anal sex, or sticking it in your ear, if you are so
inclined. Or sitting on a flagpole, as Justice Antonin Scalia
seems to enjoy fantasizing about.
Despite the weird Biblical connotations
of the word, many (probably even most) adults in America practice
or have practiced sodomy. I mean, we're talking about regular
oral and anal sex here! Up until last week, if you committed
any kind of sodomy in certain states--like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida,
Utah, Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama and Kansas--whether you were
a dude doing another dude from behind, or a chick fingering another
chick, or a woman going down on her husband, all of which would
be consider sodomy--you could be arrested and thrown into jail.
Probably you wouldn't get arrested,
because probably you wouldn't get caught. But if some cops felt
like breaking down your bedroom door or if a neighbor wanted
to mess with you (like they did with John Geddes Lawrence and
Tyron Garner, the couple in Lawrence vs. Texas), you could
be busted just for having anal or oral sex with a fellow consenting
adult. Thirteen states had this on the books. And now they have
to take it off the books. And hallelujah to that, Brothers and
Sisters! God and Goddess bless the Supremes!
Of course, not everyone is celebrating.
Shortly after the ruling was made, century-old Senator Strom
Thurmond (R-SC) actually dropped dead, and one can't help but
hope the venerable old bigot knew that Lawrence and Garner were
not only gay, but an interracial couple. Also following the ruling,
rabidly sex-phobic Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) could be seen
weeping and rubbing his butt in the Senate steam room, as fellow
professional homophobe and director of the Pro Family Law Center
Scott Lively sobbed "Apparently they have gone the whole
route and fully legitimized sodomy in America. This is going
to have terrible consequences for our nation."
Yes, Brother Lively, terrible consequences
for you and your Brothers and Sisters-in-Sanctimony (though it
does give you a *sexy* excuse for extra fundraising), and liberating
consequences for freedom-lovers every where! Step lively, Brother
Lively, this ruling could lead to decriminalizing all sorts of
things we do consensually in our private lives.
Not everyone had something to say about
the ruling. Ayatollah Asscraft didn't say a word. Maybe he's
actually happy about it, because he thinks this makes it legal
for him to continue fucking Americans in the ass with his Patriot
Act(s). Also, no comment was issued by The Great Pretzel Swallower
himself, George W. Bush. Though Dubya owes his presidential life
to the Supremes, he's too busy looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction
to talk about Weapons of Ass Destruction right this second
No matter. The Supremes have ruled! Ethical
hedonists everywhere, proud to be Americans, are celebrating
a miracle that's long overdue. It's good for gays, of course,
so often threatened with discrimination based on these decrepit
mean-spirited laws. But it's great for all of us--straight, gay,
bi or into flagpoles--who value freedom from government intrusion
into our consensual sex lives. Praise be to the power of the
Sun, the Moon and the planet Uranus! Our assholes belong to us.
Dr. Susan Block
is a sex educator, host of The Dr. Susan Block Show and
author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her
website at http://www.drsusanblock.com
If you'd like to contact Dr. Susan Block
with questions, comments or contributions, please email liberties@blockbooks.com
Weekend Edition
Features
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|