I am nothing short of blown away by it - and as such I highly reccomend that everybody give You Tube some love and affection. Any site that will let me upload a live performance by Godspeed You Black Emperor! of a song that has never been released as an album track, well they deserve every accolade there is (a severed heads video is coming next!).
First up;
The Science of Gay Animals
Money Quote:
"Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in "penis fencing," which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages. As this list of activities suggests, having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia."
Nature it seems, refuses to conform to any of our sexual predjudices. That said, over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers takes the author to task for some of her conclusions on sexual selection.
Does supporting Gay Marriage make religious objectors into Bigots?
“Once sexual orientation is conceptualized as a protected legal status on par with race, traditional religions that condemn homosexual conduct will face increasing legal pressure regardless of what courts do about marriage itself.” She predicts, “people and groups who oppose same-sex marriage will soon be treated by society and the law the way we treat racists.” - Maggie Gallagher
I admit that on a personal level, I think it does, and I think deservedly so. It's one thing to have a religious objection to something (say, eating pork products), but its quite another to have a religious conviction that someone else is a second class citizen. There are solutions to how to avoid this problem, and they are (of course) rooted in the precepts of liberalism and liberty.
Jonathon Rowe, writing at Postive Liberty has perhaps the best (if most flippant) response:
I admit that on a personal level, I think it does, and I think deservedly so. It's one thing to have a religious objection to something (say, eating pork products), but its quite another to have a religious conviction that someone else is a second class citizen. There are solutions to how to avoid this problem, and they are (of course) rooted in the precepts of liberalism and liberty.
Jonathon Rowe, writing at Postive Liberty has perhaps the best (if most flippant) response:
"We pro-gay rights folks promise to treat you anti-gay people at least as well as you have treated gay people. Enjoy. And remember, you’re always free to change your lifestyle choice."
A lengthier (and less confrontational) response from Rowe to Gallagher's concern is here. Fellow Positive Liberty writer Jason Kuznicki also writes on the issue here, and makes the case that the proper analogy for tolerance of gay rights isn't the civil rights issue of race, but rather the respectful tolerance required for different religions to co-exist as private, rather than civil matters.
Gender Politics
A feminist finally points out the obvious, that reclaiming the word 'Vagina' isn't any big deal, the real task is to reclaim the word 'Cunt'. (I can't believe I just typed that word into my blog...sorry Mom!)
A Killer Rythym
An article by the relatively unknown philosopher Luc Bovens that points out how the Catholic Church's preferred method of birth control, the 'rythym method' may actually terminate more pregnancies than abortion doctors, has touched off a firestorm of controversy among right to lifers and anti-birth control forces. Ha!
A Christian Defense of Sodomy?
I can't decide whether this is a spoof, or not.
Do you have the 'Horny Gene'?
I suspect strongly that I do. I also suspect that I got it from both parents. Finally, I suspect that neither would deny this possibility all that strenuously.
For all you comic geeks, Doctor Octopus is coming soon to a robotics lab near you.
For all you sci-fi geeks watching Battlestar Galactica, the burning question is, is Baltar a Cylon?
Finally, The sceptic in me couldn't resist posting this review of how fake psychic John Edwards bombs out doing 'cold readings' on Larry King Live.
A lengthier (and less confrontational) response from Rowe to Gallagher's concern is here. Fellow Positive Liberty writer Jason Kuznicki also writes on the issue here, and makes the case that the proper analogy for tolerance of gay rights isn't the civil rights issue of race, but rather the respectful tolerance required for different religions to co-exist as private, rather than civil matters.
Gender Politics
A feminist finally points out the obvious, that reclaiming the word 'Vagina' isn't any big deal, the real task is to reclaim the word 'Cunt'. (I can't believe I just typed that word into my blog...sorry Mom!)
A Killer Rythym
An article by the relatively unknown philosopher Luc Bovens that points out how the Catholic Church's preferred method of birth control, the 'rythym method' may actually terminate more pregnancies than abortion doctors, has touched off a firestorm of controversy among right to lifers and anti-birth control forces. Ha!
A Christian Defense of Sodomy?
I can't decide whether this is a spoof, or not.
Do you have the 'Horny Gene'?
I suspect strongly that I do. I also suspect that I got it from both parents. Finally, I suspect that neither would deny this possibility all that strenuously.
For all you comic geeks, Doctor Octopus is coming soon to a robotics lab near you.
For all you sci-fi geeks watching Battlestar Galactica, the burning question is, is Baltar a Cylon?
Finally, The sceptic in me couldn't resist posting this review of how fake psychic John Edwards bombs out doing 'cold readings' on Larry King Live.
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