re: most men don't expect strangers to take a snapshot of their package when they wear shorts in public

That's because men generally wear fairly long and baggy shorts, not crotch huggers. Besides, from what I've heard, women are much more interested in checking out a man's ass. No?

re: There's a vast difference, though, between slipping a camera between a woman's legs and taking a poignant photo of the homeless man sleeping in a doorway

Perhaps you should ask the homeless man how "poignant" he thinks your snapshot is. He'd probably tell you to fuck off, then embark upon an incoherent rant about the space aliens that have taken over his brain.

re: While checking out the lizard exhibit...

Freud would have a field day with this one.

re: On the other side of this online trend are women who are also publishing photos of unwilling subjects -- only their subjects are the men who sexually harass them in public.

Or so they may claim. How many of these "harassers" might actually be ex-boyfriends, who previously took the pics of their formerly quite willing girlfriends? Or who are perhaps even completely innocent bystanders who, doing what men naturally do, merely scoped out the babe in question? That's why the burden of proof is always on the accuser.

I'm afraid that we live in a society where the government has us all under constant surveillance, and where technology has now advanced to the point where citizens themselves have joined in. Everybody is watching everybody. Walk down a street in most major cities, or walk into a shopping mall, bank, etc., and Big Brother is photographing your every move -- and everyone else has a digital camera at the ready.

I'm also reminded of the opening scene in Steven Segal's B-movie epic, Under Seige 2, where the camera from a high-tech space sattelite zooms in on a babe sunning herself topless on a beach, while the guys in the control room drool. In fact, aren't all movies and television shows innately voyeuristic? Particularly when we watch "love scenes"? I mean, not many of us would otherwise be watching a strange couple in bed. Or watching some babe that we don't know take a shower, for that matter. Etc.

Is there an answer to the loss of privacy we all suffer? Well, I guess we could go "Unabomber" and roll back technology, or perhaps women could adopt a Taliban-like dress code. Barring any of this, I do not see any practical way to stop sicko paparazzi from operating in public.

Martial arts lessons might be helpful, though.

re: I can perfectly well agree with the Catholic church that the texts chosen for the Bible are the good ones...

This isn't literature we're talking about here, but a selection of religious texts based upon their specific theological view. It is quite possible that many of the texts deemed heretical were superior in a purely literary sense to those canonized, but that wasn't the criteria by which they were judged.

re: I really don't see why you find that so difficult to understand.

Perhaps because it makes no sense whatsoever.

re: the opinion that women should be allowed into the priesthood (and even as far up the hierarchy as the Papacy itself), which has been defended here, is also a theological matter, which, like all theological matters, also takes notions of ethics into account.

You are confusing political notions of "ethics" with Catholic theology as it relates to the priesthood. Study the catechism and get back to me.

re: ...you insist that Protestants are, by definition, anti-Catholics. No they aren't; they don't agree with Catholics on the interpretation of the texts chosen by the Catholic Church, but that is not the same as being anti-Catholic.

I disagree fundamentally with Republicans. I'm therfore anti-Republican. Protestatnts disagree fundamentally with Catholics. That makes them anti-Catholic.

Main Entry: an·ti

Pronunciation: an-tī, an-tē

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural antis

Etymology: anti-

Date: 1788

: one that is opposed

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti

re: Does the fact that you identify as 'Scorpio68er' -- thus giving importance to astrological signs and horoscopes -- make you 'anti-Catholic'?

The name's 69er. Scorpio69er.

[insert James Bond theme here]

:)

I'll just catch up on my other reading, starting with Walter Map.

:)

There is nothing "specious" about calling a Protestant anti-Catholic, any more that it is "specious" to say a Democrat is anti-Republican, or corporations are anti-union, etc.

re: Martin Luther himself was not anti-catholic, he simply felt morally compelled to voice his dissent

A gross simplification, to say the least.

SEE:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438b.htm

P.S. I'm officially done with this thread.