Sex is important for people on a health/survival level.

So is eating. Just eating, just getting food in your stomach.

Stuck on this level are the people who weigh 600 pounds all gained on fast food, and promiscuous people who don't even know who they slept with last night or how many there were. These people are actually sick with a definable psychological problem. Somehow the necessity of life has turned into a compulsive behavior for them. But there are other levels.

The next level is enjoyment of food; appreciating well cooked meals, savoring tastes, etc. Similarly you get to a point where you want to have sex not just to scratch the itch but to get to this next level, of finding your own pleasure.

Then there is the gourmet, who makes a snobbish effort to find 'the meaning of the universe' in food and looks down on everybody who hasn't the eaten as much or experienced the amount of variety that he has. Endangered sea turtle eggs? He wants them. Korean dog tortured to death to make the meat tender? He'd like to try it. Bush meat from the Congo? Who cares where it comes from? How exciting, and I have the wine that goes with that! Termites stuffed into dung balls? Disgusting, but a true gourmet has to eat everything (yes, there is actually a class of foods called "offal" that people seek out and eat).

In sex this is the person who has hundreds and hundreds of experiences, who goes slumming among the whores of Havana for the 'experience', who seduces a society girl just for the 'experience', who takes some unknown girl up on the town water tower and does her hanging upside down on that little ladder, just for the 'experience'. Scat games, golden showers, butt toys with spikes--why, you're a prude if you haven't tried them at least once.

Setting aside for a moment that, unlike for eating, there is another person involved in sex, and such a jerk has probably hurt a lot of his partners (usually by hinting there is relationship in the offing when there isn't), what's he getting out of all this? Only the right to look down his nose on people who haven't done all the same things. To such a "gourmet", there is no such thing as principles, only inhibitions.

God forbid a person should suggest that we have moral standards and try to develop a healthy, constructive attitude towards food. Or towards sex.

If someone would come up with such an outrageous idea, the "sex gourmet" can mock and jeer and say, "you must be really terrible in bed".

Yeah, sure, whatever. But you know, there is a next level for both sex and eating, one that isn't experienced by checking off lists and cutting notches on the belt and racking up "great experiences" and "mind blowing explosions" (on the tongue or in the genitals). It's the spiritual dimension, and if you can't figure out what it is, I can't explain it to you.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Good luck to all in the journey.

I remember moving back home after about 20 years and my sister who had stayed home to keep the faith asked me what church I was going to join. I said I was not religious and not planning on a church.

She looked at me, puzzled, and said "But don't you want to make any friends?"

That's what it's all about. If God were conclusively proven to not exist, many people would still go to church. That's their social life.

It's also a way to select what people they will help out and associate with. A religious filter is an easy way to justify your prejudices.

Having been born fundie Christian and a Muslim for a time, I can easily say that fundie Christians scare me a lot more than Muslims do.

Fundie Christians don't believe in taking care of the environment because Jesus is coming any minute and the world is going to end anyway. They don't believe the war in Iraq matters because Jesus is coming any minute, and they believe an Israeli attack on Iran is foretold and sanctioned by the Bible.

Scary stuff.

Even scarier is the fact that Muslims, having cribbed Evangelical literature for their own nascent missionary efforts for years, now have an End Times movement of their own, even featuring the return of Christ in the clouds. It's borrowed wholesale from Christian apocolyptic thought, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's very attractive to them.

Now try pairing Muslim street anger with a sincere belief in Armageddon, with Christians on the other side just as anxious to "get it on" so Jesus will come back. We are screwed.

Boy, it didn't take long and the Sharia defenders are here, accusing us all of ignorance and not knowing what we are talking about. Poor old misunderstood Sharia law, it gets such a bad rap when its so wonderful and enlightened really.

I'm a liberal, but this misguided aspect of the liberal stance galls me.

Look, if this were an article about Mike Huckabee wanting to amend the constitution to bring it in line with the Bible, would ANY of you be defending that? Would there be ONE person writing about how judicious and fair and "advanced for its time" (gotta love that one) the undiluted Mosaic law is?

*crickets chirping*

So WHY are you defending other religious nuts? There isn't one Imam on this planet who's any more palatable than Huckabee and a lot of them are much worse. Grow UP, people. Just because some bigots who are anti-human rights are brown skinned doesn't mean they are any better than the white bigots who would strip away all your rights and freedoms.