Conservative War on Sexuality

 Conservatives love to talk about abortion being murder. They talk about baby's skulls being ripped out. Well, scientist made the "morning after pill" so that an egg wont be fertilized, even if sex occured few days before.

But would the Radical Right celebrate the "morning after pill"? After all, less skulls would be ripped out.

But nope, the issue isn't baby skulls, the issue is sexuality.

And now there's talk about the HPV (an STD different from HIV) vaccine.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050530&s=pollitt

Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV--and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer--goes poof.

[skip sentences]

The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.

Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they've probably never heard of.

So if we have the "morning after pill" to prevent pregnancies and a possible vaccine to prevent an STD, why should we be pee-ing in our pants about promiscuous sex? Hmm? Hmmm?

To the Radical Right, the issue isn't teenage pregnancy or STDs, the issue is having them tell us how to run our lives.

Christian conservatives have a special reason to be less than thrilled about the HPV vaccine. Although not as famous as chlamydia or herpes, HPV has the distinction of not being preventable by condoms. It's Exhibit A in those gory high school slide shows that try to scare kids away from sex, and it is also useful for undermining the case for rubbers generally--why bother when you could get HPV anyway?

So that means they dont mind having "sinners" (those who participate in non-marital sex) getting a horrible disease, just so they can say "we told you so".

What next, banning of football helmets

With HPV potentially eliminated, the antisex brigade will lose a card it has regarded as a trump unless it can persuade parents that vaccinating their daughters will turn them into tramps, and that sex today is worse than cancer tomorrow. According to New Scientist, 80 percent of parents want the vaccine for their daughters--but their priests and pastors haven't worked them over yet.

On the 13-year old girl in the homeless shelter who wanted an abortion

She was too young to have sex, too young to know her own mind about abortion--but not too young to be forced onto the delivery table for one of the most painful experiences human beings endure, in which the risk of death for her was three times as great as in abortion

And back to the abortion example?

If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC.

Conclusion

"It all comes down to the evils of sex," says Trussell. "That's an ideological position impervious to empirical evidence

Blacks and Rednecks

 Both the Far Left and the Far Right love to pit African Americans against rural Southern whites. After all, history tell us that both groups were on the opposite side of Jim Crow. Plus, African Americans support Democrats, Southern whites support Republicans.

But both groups share some cultural similarities.

Religiously, many in both groups are Baptists. The reverends are very expressive, and the followers are very devout.

The sport of American tackle football is very popular among Southern Whites and African Americans, more so than other groups in America.

I thought about those similarities before I ever heard about the book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell.

Sowell says that African American culture is heavily influenced by the Southern Whites commonly reffered to as "rednecks".

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20050505.shtml

Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including "black English," has its roots in the history of those whites who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" centuries ago in Britain, before they ever crossed the Atlantic and settled in the South.

[skip paragraphs]

Violence was far more common in the South -- and in those parts of Britain from which Southerners came. So was illegitimacy, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. All of this would become part of the cultural legacy of blacks, who lived for centuries in the midst of the redneck culture of the South.

I put the comments about religious oratory in bold, because you would notice when you listen to white conservative preachers from the South, and from black preachers (ie. Martin Luther King, etc.) they are very expressive and dramatic with a touch of sincerity to go along with it.

Of course, Sowell's comments about violence & "illigetimacy" (babies born to unmarried parents) are very controversial. But let's remember that more whites than blacks are on welfare. It's just that low-income blacks outside of the South tend to live in inner cities and therefore more visible to the media and city dwellers, whereas low-income whites tend to live in rural areas far from big cities, and therefore less visible to the media and city dwellers.

While the national conversation on African Americans focus on those living in urban ghettoes, there is also a large number of low-income African Americans living in rural areas in the South. But even in the South, there is a growing African American middle class, especially in Atlanta.

And while some Northern liberals love to stereotype Southern whites as "uneducated", "racist" rednecks who like to shoot guns and get drunk, a lot of Southern whites don't fit that stereotype. Some are very well educated, and not all Southern whites are in the KKK.

Cinco de Mayo and Boy's Day

1) This day in 1862, the Mexican army defeated the French invaders in Puebla.

The French invaded because Mexico owed money. The French thought it would easy to invade Mexico. They were wrong.

The Mexicans celebrate this day as Cinco de Mayo (5th of May).

If I had more $$$, I'd celebrate lavishly.

2) In Japanese culture, today is Boy's Day. (The girls already had their day on March 3)

3) Being that I am part Mexican, and a male, I deserve special treatment all day today :)

LA riots 13 years ago, XXX 2 comes out today.

The LA riots broke out 13 years ago today in reaction to the not-guilty verdict given to the white cops who beat up Rodney King(who was African American).

Ironically, today, the movie XXX 2: State of the Union comes out today.

Though the movie has NOTHING to do with the LA riots, it stars Ice Cube who had some commentary on the LA riots on his late-1992 album "The Predator". Ice Cube himself is from South Central LA.

It was said that his 1991 album "Death Certificate" predicted the LA riots. Especially the song "Black Korea" in which he expressed anger towards Korean store owners in LA and mentioned he wanted to burn their stores. Other songs in the album expressed more anger towards America's treatment of African Americans. Some said the LA riots were the fault Ice Cube's lyrics. Others said that Ice Cube was just making commentary on life in South Central LA. and he was giving a warning that mainstream white America was ignoring at the time.

Ice Cube later albums, while still hardcore, didn't have as much angry commentary as "Death Certificate" or "Predator". Some of the militant African Americans are dissapointed about that. Ice Cube said that those albums were done in the early 1990's and he's not interested in doing them again.

Though Ice Cube wouldn't admit it, America in general has been nicer to him since the LA riots.

The fact that a hardcore African American like Ice Cube has become a big movie star in the last decade shows America has become more tolerant of African Americans.

Back in the early 90's (I was in elementary school) all the major action stars were white (ie - future Cali gov Arnold, Jean Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris etc.). Now we have a more multi-racial slate of action stars (ie Vin Diesel, The Rock, Ice Cube)

I remember that I was in the 5th grade when the LA riots broke out in 1992. I got a call from my uncle living in LA in the afternoon (Hawaii time). Being that it was the afternoon, I didn't get a chance to watch the news yet. Anyways, my uncle mentioned about some fires out in the streets of LA. A few minutes later, my older brother came home. I mentioned to him about a call from my LA uncle. My brother already heard the news - there was a riot in LA.

About a week later, a new student came to my elementary school. It was a white boy from LA. So I asked him if he came here to escape the riots. He didn't want to answer my question. Who knows, the timing might've been a coincidence.

Grant Crowell visit to HPU

 

A decade ago, then UH-student Grant Crowell made a cartoon mocking Native Hawaiian supremacist Haunani-Kay Trask.

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/art/news/022305cartoon.shtml

Trask called Crowell a "racist" and demanded his expulsion from the university. Around that time, Ward Churchill made a visit to UH and said that it would be good if Crowell was executed.

This in contrast to Churchill's whining about "censorship" when people reacted in anger to his pro-Al Quaida stance.


Crowell is now a graphic arts designer living in Chicago. He came to Hawaii Pacific University yesterday to talk about academic freedom.

He spent most of the time discussing the controversy he went through a decade ago.

After the speech, I asked him how non-activist Native Hawaiian students (yes, they do exist) reacted to his cartoon. Crowell said those non-activist Native Hawaiians loved his cartoon and were happy that someone is standing up to Haunani-Kay Trask.

However, those same Native Hawaiian students were intimidated by the Hawaiian supremacists. It is possible if a Native Hawaiian takes a strong stance against Trask and her cronies, they might have a more militant relative screaming at them at the next family gathering. (Extended families and family gathering are extremely important in Native Hawaiian culture)

Back to Horowitz's Speech

The speech was a week ago, but there's so much to talk about

1) Horowitz mentioned that California public universities once had free tuition to every California resident who qualified. Now, the tuition is rising! Horowitz blames this on "overpaid and under-worked professors".

We may want to look into that now that UH tuition might soon go up.

It's so ironic that the Radical Leftists profs claim to care for the poor, yet those same profs want the students to take more core requirements ($$$$) and buy new edition of expensive textbooks ($$$$) . It is the actions of those professors that are hurting low income students. Because of this, more students have to work longer hours just to pay for books and tuition AND students need to take out more loans which they have to pay back.

The Radical Leftist profs claim to care about the poor? Bullshit!

The worse offenders on assigning textbooks were Debra Lieberman (snobbish UC Santa Barbara grad/pscyh prof who assigned 3 textbooks and tested us on pointless, trivial info), and Dr. Foltz (retired English prof who demanded that students keep their textbooks, but I sold em back anyways).

And Tobin Jones defended Dr. Foltz on that? What an ass kisser! And Tobin Jones claimed to care for the low income slum dwellers of Atlanta and Chicago? If those folks were to take Dr Foltz' s class - their $$$ and time would be wasted!

Sociology prof Katherine Irwin assigned a $200 book set ( a rip-off when you see the size of the books) and to make it worse, at the end of the semester, the bookstore wouldn't buy it back. Irwin apologized to the class. Since she's usually a nice lady, I'm optimistic she learned from her mistake.

And for the reward for the nicest prof on textbook savings was Sociology prof Dr. Swift who assigned us small books because he didn't want to over-burden our wallets.

2) Mark Burch on Horowitz

http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/04/23/426a084ba3349?in_archive=1

He was soundly defeated by a courageous group of truth and reality advocates. Every time Horowitz told a lie, he was corrected by an audience member, who then was rudely told to "Shut up!" by demented looking right-wingers.

I saw Burch there, and he wasn't one of the loudest yellers. However, his statement needs examination.

The audience shouldn't interrupt a speaker, even if they dont agree with him/her.

Those rude leftist yellers didn't trust the rest of the audience's ability to figure out what was true and what was crap!

Those "demented looking right-wingers" (Burch's words) were (gasp) trying to get the leftist yellers to (gasp) let Horowitz finish his statements. How dare those "demented looking right-wingers" tell those leftist yellers to (gasp) wait your turn to speak!

A man in the front wanted to ask Horowitz a question. Yet those communist yellers in the back kept yelling at Horowitz. You're dam fucking right someone had to tell those communist yellers to shut up!

Too bad Horowitz left before the man was able to ask the question.

3) Horowitz exxagarting his pain?

http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/commentdetail.asp?ID=17824&commentID=548565


Date: 4/25/2005 3:40:03 PM
Name: BarFar
Subject: Ill-Bred Professor

Comment:
David, By my count there were three professors at your talk, all three of whom you know. All three were at the breakfast for you that morning. Don't forget us. You did acknowledge the political science professor, but only for her attendance at the nasty un-reception. She also attended the breakfast, and the talk, as did two economists who have been at UH for over 30 years. But in addition to us, you had a significant number of other supporters in the audience. We just aren't as rude, crude, obnoxious, pig-headed, and un-Hawaiian as is the extremist left. The loudest noises any of us made were to cheer you and to shout "Shut up!" at the ugly screamers of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

And a libertarian-leaning friend on my political email list had this to say about that comment above

Aw, geez, why does Horowitz have to hurt his reputation by treating his allies like this? Could it have hurt to mention these professors? Or does he prefer writing up David-and-Goliath scenarios ("I stood alone against the Hawaiian Leftists!")?

Testing

Here's my letter to Honolulu Advertiser

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Apr/26/op/op10pletters.html

Tests are essential in evaluating students

This in response to Shelli Aiona's letter complaining about high-stakes tests. The letter claimed that testing doesn't truly indicate what the children learned.

That's like saying, "Big games don't truly indicate an athlete's skills." If an athlete doesn't prosper in high school games, chances are he or she won't prosper as a college athlete. If a student doesn't do well on algebra tests, chances are he or she won't do well in calculus.

If we don't have tests, how else are we going to know if the students are really learning?

Pablo Wegesend
Honolulu