"...the implicit aim of sodomy laws was to punish all non-procreative sexual acts, regardless of who performed them."

After all, that's tradition and they forever blather about tradition.

So, outlaw kissing. Kissing doesn't make babies.* Outlaw breast fondling. What's a man doing around those mammaries, anyway? Perv! Milk robber! Outlaw handholding. Restrict sex to in and out, and only at those points of highest likely fertilization.

Nice article, Mr. Bayard. I agree that misogny drives homobigotry. It's boys' fears of being girls that keeps boys beating boys who love boys.

If homosex disgusts a man or a woman, I think that's also driven by self-loathing. If a man is disgusted by two men kissing, it's because that man can see no beauty in a man. Therefore, it follows, that that man, if he's married, should not impose his lips upon his wife. He is, after all, disgusting. Likewise with a woman disgusted by two women kissing. Why should she impose her disgusting self upon her husband?

I've had boyfriends who've said, "If I were a woman, I'd date women. Men are disgusting."

And I looked at them and asked, "So, you're disgusting? Thanks for the warning. No sex for you."

And many women feel the same way. I have girlfriends who will kiss women, but stay out the basement because...it's icky.

It's self-loathing.

* Only green M & M's do!

It's a sign of pragmatism. Disasters happen. And the rescuers often come too late.

Fretting about an expired spouse, however, is silly. The writer's spouse will die. So will the writer. And this reader. And we'll all be forgotten, forever and ever. All we've got are the minutes between us and our extinction. So, why worry and waste those minutes?

First off, I must confess that anyone who employs "psychobabble" sounds like they're babbling. It's so dismissive. So black and white. It frames the speaker as the Manifester of Reason and the Other as the He Who is Superficial and Silly.

So, it's about cleanliness? You're the owner of a vagina, right? Ever smell like a fish market? I sometimes do and I know I'm not the only one, having peed in public restrooms. That fishiness is decay, the same decay that you smell in a fish market. Have you ever killed a fish? Gutted it and sniffed it right there? It smells...fine. But let it lie in the Sun for a few hours and you've got every woman by mid-afternoon. You and I have caves of decay.

And now let's go to male anatomy. Are you straight? Ever had a guy penetrate you? Well, here's a horrid secret: guys pee from their penises. Pee is waste. In high enough concentrations, it's toxic. And that pee-stick is what they stick into you.

Cleanliness? Bah.

Sex is dirty. Humans are dirty. Smell a homeless person: that's you and me in a few days without all the chemicals we apply.

But sex is sparkling compared to your reasoning.

Another glob of specious assertions.

So, you're concerned about health and nature and God?

Open your mouth. Behold your cow teeth. Those molars were made by time and God for crushing leaves. Veggies. They weren't made for eating Quarter Pounders. Yet, so many eat Quarter Pounders. And the cost? $4,000 per American household per year. And healthcare that tens of millions of American children can't afford.

Another point: One of my pal's is one of the foremost AIDS researchers. He's often in Africa, where AIDS is rampant among straight people.

"Why don't straight people here contract it in equal numbers?" I asked.

"It's a matter of time," he said.*

ehillesum wrote: "When society at large does not keep gay men in line, they act terribly irresponsibly. AIDS in America is largely a disease that gay men who participate in anal sex have contracted and their irresponsible ways are no doubt to blame for that."

So, fat people are to blame for America's healthcare crisis? And smokers? And people who talk on their cell phones while they drive, since their reaction times are worse than those of drunk drivers, and are thus 4 times more likely to cause a crash?

And how should society "keep gay men in line"? More lobotomies? Concentration camps? Raids on gay bars? Castrations? Should we build even more prisons and cage them?

Do tell.

Man, you live an unexamined life. You've got your smug conclusions and all the world has to do to be better is for all those other folks to change their evil ways.

*And when it comes, you'll likely blame gay people.

It wasn't reported because Kevin de Cock said it.

Bigguns de Wag

And, given strap-ons, I add: Boys, guard your bottoms! Girls, be gentle!

An anal interest in applications of others' anuses = PERV!

Smoking gives me the willies. The dearest grandfather died of lung cancer. Then my Dad, who started smoking when he was 9, died of emphysema, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and mouth cancer. Neither could eat at the end and both looked like Auschwitz survivors, except neither survived. They both died gasping and starved.

Some mortality data:

Lung cancer kills more Americans each year than breast, prostate, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers combined.

Lung cancer kills more than three times as many men each year than prostate cancer.

Lung cancer kills more women each year than breast, ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancers combined.

During 2008, there will be about 215,020 new cases of lung cancer (114,690 among men and 100,330 among women).

And, again, obesity costs every American household $4,000 per year.

But the fundies never rail about fat folks or smokers, do they? It's focus on the anus, day after day. Pervs.

And I hate those evil Baptist cig-makers who sold my father and grandfather their drug.

Hi!

@ allie: You rock!

@ kufir77: Do you live in Topeka? Is your name Fred? Do you have a daughter named Shirley?