Less Taxation, More Stimulation

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now what the tea party movement is all about. If you have been living under a rock, let us explain: it’s a bunch of libertarians and conservatives getting together freaking out about stimulus packages and bailouts and generally supporting a more limited government, balanced budgets, and free markets.

Chicago’s Admiral’s Club (a gentleman’s club) is very serious about these issues. They hosted a Sarah Palin look-alike contest on Wednesday to raise funds for the Tea Party Campaign.

“Politicizing sex or sex for causes seems to cheapen the act,” said Brooks Bayne, local Independent and active participant in the tea party movement. He didn’t specify whether he was referring to the act of sex or the tea party movement as being cheapened, though he did add that “having sex with someone who shares your political views is hot.”

A call to the club to inquire how much money was raised for the cause went unanswered.

Image from the Admiral’s Club. Via Ryan Paonessa.

Laura Bush Supports Gay Marriage and Abortion

Remember American Wife, the book by Curtis Sittenfeld, about an American first lady who is wife to a conservative warhawk and who stands beside him despite how much she disagrees with him on issues? Probably not because, well, who reads anymore?

Anyway, it was said to be loosely based on Laura Bush. In the book, the fictional first lady supports abortion. We bring this up because Laura Bush joined Larry King last week on his show Larry King Live and came out publicly about her stance on both abortion and gay marriage.

She told King that she understands “what George thinks and what other people think about marriage being between a man and a woman,” but she believes that “when couples are committed to each other and love each other that they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has.”

She also still believes that abortion should remain legal “for medical reasons, and other reasons.”

Some have criticized the former first lady for only making these statements only now that she has a book to promote. Her autobiography, Spoken from the Heart, was released earlier this month.

Information from PoliticsDaily.

Wisconsin Sex Ed: Between the Law and a Lawyer

When it comes to sex ed, some Wisconsin teachers are officially screwed. The state requires them to teach about contraception, but Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth has proclaimed that if any of them do, he’ll press charges.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks covers the issue at BlogHer: “Southworth believes classroom discussion of how to properly use contraceptives will lead not only to sexual activity between minors, but sexual assault on minors.”

She links a letter to school districts in Juneau County, where Southworth makes the following statement:

The teacher need not be deliberately encourage [sic] the illegal behavior: he or she only need be aware that his or her instruction is “practically certain” to cause the child to engage in the illegal act. Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior. Depending on the nature of the child’s behavior, the teacher could face either misdemeanor or felony charges with maximum punishments ranging from 9 months of jail up to six years of prison.

Can we get a WTF?

Madsen-Brooks offers some hard data:

It’s preposterous that teachers would reasonably believe that instruction on contraception could lead to sexual assault. According to data from the University of Wisconsin Health Institute, Juneau County’s teen birth rate is approximately 25 percent higher than the state average, and the county ranks 62 out of 72 Wisconsin counties in the Institute’s health behaviors index (which includes such data as chlamydia infection rates, smoking rates, smoking during pregnancy, binge drinking and the teen birth rate). Clearly, this is a county where young people need some instruction on health.

She raises a good point: a district attorney holds incredible power, and while generally elected, most voters tend to have no idea who their D.A. is. This is a big issue. Read her post to find resources and learn about your own D.A.

Information from BlogHer.

Sweden Bans Implants Citing Explosion Risk

Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (Läkemedelsverket) has banned three brands of silicone breast implants due to their risk of bursting. Gnarly.

They estimated that some 35,000 European women have had their breasts augmented with dangerous Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) since 2001. Sweden is following France’s example, who has done the same and is now offering the 1,000 affected women an alternatives.

“This is the type of information that we are trying to find out. We hope to be able to release information as soon as possible,” said Staffan Strömberg at the agency.

Strömberg said he does not see any reason for Swedish women who have these implants to be overly concerned at this time.

Image from journal.lv. Information from The Local, via @ericludzenski.

Democrats Hate Anime, And We Hate Them

Last week, NH State Rep. Nick Levasseur (D) issued an apology for updating his Facebook status with the following statement: “Anime is a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough.”

Classy, dude. Classy.

“I would like to deeply apologize for the insensitivity of this post,” the Manchester Democrat said in a statement. “It was a poorly thought out comment, posted jest on my private Facebook page. This, of course, does not excuse the comment. This type of statement has no place in public or private discourse. It does not represent any true opinion, political or personal.”

Watch the clip, via the HuffPo:

We try to be unbiased about this stuff and let you make your own opinions, but anime is just not something you mess with. The guy is a douche and we hope he gets a really nasty rash.

Anyway, here’s some anime hotties to make us all feel better.

Information via the Huffington Post.

Florida: Outlawing Abortion?

A Florida legislator wants to outlaw abortion in Florida.

“I just felt like we’re destroying a lot of Florida’s children, and we need to stop,” said State Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Keystone Heights.

The bill he filed in February would make nearly all forms of abortion a first-degree felony for the provider, punishable by up to life in prison. And it’s gaining traction.

The St. Augustine Record comments:

Several states have tried, but failed, to outlaw abortion in the years following the landmark Supreme Court case. Florida twice tried to enact legislation that banned late-term abortions, in 1998 and 2000, and both times the state lost in federal court because the laws were seen as too broad.

Van Zant’s bill is a politically explosive issue to tackle in an election year, and many other Florida legislators say they don’t expect it to go far.

[...] Abortion bans have been introduced in four states — Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health think tank with offices in New York and Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Nash, a public policy analyst with the group, said Louisiana and Utah each successfully banned abortion in 1991. Federal courts declared both those laws unconstitutional.

South Dakota voters shot down two ballot measures, in 2006 and 2008, that would have banned abortion.

Lousiana’s Legislature passed, and then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed a total abortion ban in 2006, to become law only if Roe is overturned. Fourteen others states have total bans, either from before or passed since Roe, which, like Louisiana’s, remain unconstitutional.

If Van Zant’s law were to be challenged in the high court, it would face a group of judges that has become more conservative, although one thus far unwilling to overturn Roe.

Information from the St. Augustine Register.

Condoms In Porn? Nope

In November, we told you about Darren James, a former porn star who contracted HIV in 2004 and unknowingly spread it to other porn stars. James has been trying to make it illegal for porn stars to have unprotected sex since, but it’s not going well.

Los Angeles County officials said it would be difficult to try to regulate the porn industry through the county’s Public Health Department. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s public health chief, estimates that there are some 200 production companies with about 1,200 actors working in the industry centered in San Fernando Valley (AKA Porn Valley), located northwest of Los Angeles.

“We have no ability to police this,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Information from the AP, via the Chicago Sun-Times.

Cindy McCain Supports Gay Marriage

Cindy McCain, wife of Republican senator and former Republican candidate for president in the 2008 election John McCain, has taken a public stance in support of same-sex marriage.

Below she appears in a poster for NOH8, a group fighting the ban on gay marriage here in California.

She and her daughter Meghan oppose Senator McCain’s belief that “the sanctity of marriage is only defined as between one man and one woman.”

According to the NOH8 campaign:

Aligning yourself with the platform of gay marriage as a Republican still tends to be very stigmatic, but Cindy McCain wanted to participate in the campaign to show people that party doesn’t matter — marriage equality isn’t a Republican issue any more than it is a Democratic issue. It’s about human rights, and everybody being treated equally in the eyes of the law that runs and protects this country.

We at Sex and the 405 approve of people standing up for what they believe even if it runs counter to one’s family or organization. That takes courage. Of course, our editor thinks that if we really cared about human rights, we’d eradicate the entire institution.

But then, she’s divorced. Of course she does.

Information from NBC.

Slippery Slope: Government Regulation of Sex Toys

Last month in Canada, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, a Liberal Minister of Parliament, sent a letter to the Conservative Federal Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, expressing concern about the sex toy industry and asking the government to take action in regulating sex toys.

The letter, which you can read in its entirety here, read, in part:

I am writing to express my concern for the urgent need for responsible regulation in the adult toy industry. In Canada, we are not yet doing enough to protect women against the very high concentratuons of materials linked to reproductive and other health issues.

… Our current legislation is insufficient. There are safe alternatives to pththalates and [bisphenol A] that are readily available.

It sounds like a good idea, right? Like they say on Facebook: It’s Complicated.

I’m gonna turn it over now to Cory Silverberg, blogger at About.com’s Sexuality Guide, who’s written about this topic at length:

In order to regulate sex toys first one needs to define the product category for proposed regulation. What qualifies as a sex toy? Currently in the U.S. sex toys are defined legally in some states (often as devices intended for genital stimulation). But they don’t exist as a defined category by health regulators. The same is true for many other countries where the term “sex toys” won’t be found in legal or regulatory documentation.

Even among sex toy retailers and manufacturers terms like dildo, vibrator, penis ring, butt plug can mean very different things. Is a sex toy defined by how it’s intended use? How it’s commonly used? Is a sex toy defined by who uses it or what kinds of bodies it gets used on? There is no generally agreed upon taxonomy of sex toys. There isn’t even an organization or body (public or private) that would be in a position to develop such a taxonomy.

But until we’re there, I’m certainly not comfortable with a government deciding what is and isn’t a sex toy, and regulating the products they think are while ignoring the products they decide aren’t.

And that’s just the beginning. Read his impassioned piece Why Government Regulation of Sex Toys Is a Bad Idea.

I’m with Silverberg on this one. I believe in educating consumers and leaving the government out of as much as humanly possible. But then, I’m a conservative. That’s just how we roll. Or used to. Yeah, yeah.

Mexico City Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

Mexico City legalized same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples on Monday by a vote of 39 to 20 in the legislative assembly. Five abstained from voting. In another motion, the assembly voted 31 to 24 in favor of legalizing adoption by same-sex couples, with nine abstentions.

The revision will change the definition of marriage to “a union between two people,” as opposed to what it says now: “a union between a man and a woman.”

This comes two years after legislators approved same-sex civil unions.

Mexico City is the second major Latin American city to legalize same-sex marriage after Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Information from CNN.