Category Archives: In the News

More Gloom and Doom for Iran

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Watching the news coverage of the Iranian election, as the cameras panned the throngs lined up to vote, I saw what appeared to be a population of rational, logical, forward thinking people.  Except for the lack of women (a sign their rational appearance could be deceptive), the scene could have been in any democratic western country in the world.

I find it difficult to believe, especially since so many younger voters were active in this election, that the population chose to endorse inflation, unemployment and being ostracized by the west by voting for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad two to one.  How can an entire people of a large country be so entirely different from the rationale of the entire free world?  Can a religion actually be that powerful?

Photo by Ben Curtis, Associated Press
Photo by Ben Curtis, Associated Press

Not everyone in Iran fits the mold, attested to by the massive and immediate protests.  Perhaps these people want to join the brotherhood of man.  Perhaps they understand and want to exercise the human spirit.  Perhaps they want to identify with what the rest of the free world largely defines as normal.  They might even recognize the need for a rational dialogue with Israel.  Perhaps there’s hope.

Wives Who Watch or Participate

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Thinking about a husband having sex with another man is anathema to most women.  Actually seeing it is unthinkable.

For others it’s an integral part of their marriage.  Some wives are not only present, they participate.  They not only witness their husbands give and receive sexual pleasure with another man, they explore and receive sexual attention from two men at the same time.   Not that they were necessarily predisposed to intimacy with someone other than their husband, they were, however, able to contemplate being married to a bisexual man with an open mind, weigh the consequences, accept the circumstances, and then decide to be connected to this part of her husband’s nature.  For many, coupled mutually agreed upon and acceptable parameters, the experience turns out to be liberating and personally rewarding.

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These women have decided they do not want their husband’s bisexuality to divide their marriage, or be denied, or see him live out his life in quiet desperation.  They don’t want to worry about him meeting other men secretly.  Even when they have decided he should have a special friend, they don’t want him living a separate life one or two nights a week at some vague rendezvous away from home.  They have prepared themselves spiritually. morally and psychologically to be part of her husband’s relationship with another man.

For wives searching for common ground with their bisexual husbands, this scenario can seem complicated and daunting.  On many levels, depending on the wife’s long held beliefs, it is.  However, based on the accounts I have read, bringing a new dimension into the marriage can also be stimulating, rewarding, and even exciting.  Often a man and wife become closer, based on the fact that this is a newly discovered way to be part of each others soul.  A new understanding has revealed itself, a new closeness, revealed by way of compromise found in very few of today’s marriages.

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A Marriage Manifesto…Of Sorts

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A gay man experiments with language, love and law.

By Tom Ackerman

http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/sexandgender/755/
November 17, 2008

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.

Turns out it’s fun.

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”

“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years, “How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”

“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

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Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

A marriage is a lot of things. Culturally, it’s a declaration to the community that two people are now a unit, and that unity should be respected. Legally, it’s a set of rights and responsibilities. And spiritually, it’s whatever your beliefs think it is.

That’s what’s so great about America. As a Constitutionally secular nation, or at least in reality a vaguely pluralistic nation, we can all have our own spiritual take on what marriage is. What’s troublesome is when one group’s spiritual beliefs deny the cultural and legal rights of another.

But, back to the point. They say their beliefs don’t recognize my marriage, I say my beliefs don’t recognize theirs. Simple. It may seem petty, and obviously the legal part of the cultural/legal/spiritual trilogy is flip-floppy, but it may be the cultural part that really matters.

People get married to be recognized as a permanent couple. To be acknowledged by friends, family, and strangers as being off the market, in a relationship, totally hooked up, yikes… it’s impossible to say without saying ‘married.’ We wear rings to declare this!

So, we can take this away. We can refuse to recognize marriage in the cultural sense. It is totally within our rights, as Americans, to follow our beliefs and recognize or not recognize what we like.

I guess this is a call out to all Americans with beliefs similar to mine.

If you believe that all people should have equal rights, and if you believe that marriage is one of the greatest destinations of a relationship, then perhaps you believe that nobody should have marriage until everybody does.

That’s what I believe.

Guardsmen Film Nude Female Soldiers in Shower

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WASHINGTON – A criminal investigation is underway for at least seven National Guard male soldiers who allegedly photographed and filmed female officers in the barrack’s showers at Fort Dix, NJ.

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Today’s statement from the Pentagon claims that the guardsmen filmed female soldiers from the 266th Military Police Company in the fall 2008 before they where deployed to Iraq. Commanders in that country where told about the incidents on May 21 and began the investigation within 24 hours.

The website Stars and Stripes reported that Army spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said that “as many as 21 female soldiers may have been victimized by the men.”

“We’re taking this very seriously, as we would any allegation of misconduct,” Garver told Stars and Stripes. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

God help me, in today’s world I know this is utterly unacceptable behavior.  Female soldiers should be treated with sincere and absolute respect . . . but . . . on the other hand . . . MASH is still alive and well in the US Army!  Reading this brought up images of Lt. Houlihan, Hawkeye, Klinger and Trapper.  I know, I know . . . perhaps we could laugh hardier had it been the women filming the men.  Picture a world, if instead of criminal charges, the Army conficated the pictures and the female “victims” simply set out to get even.  Wouldn’t it be a more fun place to live?

Sex-ting

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My God!  So it’s come down to even this.  We Americans are so uptight about nudity, we are willing to criminalize our children.  How did this kind of thinking ever survive the Sixties?

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No one in their right mind would condone child abuse committed by an adult … they are child abusers plain and simple; they need to be locked up.  But this issue is entirely different.  It’s like comparing a common cold with cancer.  A thirteen year old girl sends her friend a nude picture of herself: she’s not a wayward young girl–she’s a purveyor of child pornography.  A seventeen year old boy has sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend: he’s not a misguided kid in love–he’s a child abuser and so labeled for the rest of his life.

So this modern day phenomena called sex-ting has gotten the self-righteous moralists in our society up in arms.  Once again, the sky is falling, never mind the natural curiosities in all normal children.  Instead of teaching them self-respect, that the human body is a beautiful thing, not something young people should be e-mailing to their friends, but something to be shared with someone special when they grow up … instead they’re being kicked out of school, arrested, labeled as sex offenders,  their lives ruined and their self-body images contaminated.  Is this what we want going on in our society?

Why not try some good parenting, preserve their innocence, and help them understand self-respect?

Still Miss California

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By my estimation, any female that looks like this can say or do no wrong.

Evidently Donald Trump agrees, stating her old partially nude photos are “lovely”.  Few, if any, of us agree with her point of view on gay marriage, but she has a right to her own opinion.  Besides, it’s what she does as opposed to what she says that reveals her true persona.  She was trying to win a beauty contest, for crying-out-loud.

Exposing the inner-self of a good Christian.