The sex thread

[_Roger Morrison]

How in the world did this thread get turned into a worthiness interview for Harmony? I'm so disappointed. I've been reading a book by Spong called The Sins of Scripture and he went into great depth about how religion have historically messed with the sexes and sexuality. I had hoped to find similar context here.

Glad you enjoy Spong. IMSCO, he IS one on the leading edge of Religious-clean-up. Do you receive his "News Letter"? Some very good stuff. As for your question:

I think you/we are witnessing THE very fundamental principle that Spong brings to the table re religious errancy as it is confronted with critical reality: Demonize those who question the Authoritarian traditions/policies/edicts of an Establishment. This one being the Religious/Mormon Establishment. In their antiquated approach to dialogue they still think bluster and insults will serve their purpose. As it has in the past.

Fortunately today, literacy Trump's illiteracy, and those fume-and-bluster types are revealed for what they are: annomalies. Be not discouraged, truth will prevail. It is in Your young hands. Go with it!! Warm regards, Roger

[_Trevor]

This is postmodernism, an artifact of that very era, and a primary example of why it ultimately spells, if left to run its course, the end of western civilization, its intellectual patrimony, and the values and progress it has brought the world. This Nietzschean epistemological cop out is not worth responding too, at least in these terms.

Actually, that was me identifying your artifact. My identification of it is not in itself "postmodernism." You simply identify my disagreement with you as my "postmodernism." This is because of your tendency to identify everything in terms of the ideological struggle you are reading into everything around here to sustain your endless impertinent posting.

Is ideology to be found? Yes, but it is woven into the discussion in much more complex terms than your overly simplistic reduction of things. One would think that you would be a little more circumspect about making such ham-handed intellectual errors, since you find them all of the time in criticisms of the LDS Church, but the pot still has trouble seeing it is as black as the kettle.

The sixties are "ancient history"? Behold the Sony Playstation generation. The incentives and sociological dynamics the Pill created are hardly difficult to discern, unless you are a partisan of those incentives and dynamics, in which case all will certainly look rosy.

Loran, I was addressing her claims about human beings always having suffered from immorality ("Immorality started with the earliest humans")... the 'always' part suggesting her knowledge of a deeply ancient past. In other words, the conversation I was trying to engage in was about matters that far predate the 60s. It amazes me how you try to wrench every discussion back to your obsession with the 60s.

I have said before, and I will repeat: I am not interested in engaging you in debates about 20th century ideology wars. Find someone else to take this up with. If you want to engage me on the points I am actually discussing, I am happy to do so, but the minute you try to turn it into your argument about ideology (if that is not what I am talking about), I will identify it as such and discontinue engaging you. You sound like a broken record.

[_beastie]

This is because of your tendency to identify everything in terms of the ideological struggle you are reading into everything around here to sustain your endless impertinent posting.

This is an excellent summary of coggin's posting style, and is why I ignore so much of it. It's almost like there's a constant right-wing radio show blaring in his head, which makes it difficult for him to respond to anything but that.

[_BishopRic]

How in the world did this thread get turned into a worthiness interview for Harmony? I'm so disappointed. I've been reading a book by Spong called The Sins of Scripture and he went into great depth about how religion have historically messed with the sexes and sexuality. I had hoped to find similar context here.

It was...for a minute yesterday. These threads are getting hi-jacked into hurling insults. When that happens, the real substantive posts get buried without response. Too bad, because this is a topic that I think everybody could learn about. Maybe if a few would spend a little more time with their partners on a Saturday night rather than hurling insults here, they would have a much better sex life?!

[_beastie]

It was...for a minute yesterday. These threads are getting hi-jacked into hurling insults. When that happens, the real substantive posts get buried without response. Too bad, because this is a topic that I think everybody could learn about. Maybe if a few would spend a little more time with their partners on a Saturday night rather than hurling insults here, they would have a much better sex life?!

While there is an element of that throughout the board, it gets particularly bad when coggins goes on a binge*, which is what just happened. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen it many times before.

*I'm not insinuating coggins is actually drinking again, but suspect there is some mood issues still manifest that were probably also involved in his former problems with alcohol

[_BishopRic]

And you perceive yourself to be a moral, faithful member?

I find your comments disgusting and pathetic, Charity.

\

Hey, it was Ric who said there should be premarital sex. I think men generally are pretty hypocritical about such things, and just wanted to know, since he thought it was a great idea, if he thought it was a great idea for his wife, too. That is a reasonable question to ask. And you notice, he hasn't answered, though he has responded to that post. I have a idea it is because he is stuck in a corner.

I wasn't asking for a number. He could just say, if I want to have other sexual partners before marriage, she can have the same license.

Believe me, Rick was not backed into any corner. I'm betting that Rick was a little busy on a Saturday night.

Yes...I have a chance to post between patients at work, but I put this forum thing on the back burner when I can spend time with family and friends.

I have to laugh at Charity's implications. I would have never expected any of my partners to live a different standard than I had for myself. The idea that it's okay for men and not for women is quite antiquated in my mind, despite some subscribing to it, I guess.

Just fyi, I am engaged to the beautiful Tori now. We've been together (and monogamous) for over 2 1/2 years, and I have no interest in changing our monogamous (did you notice the word "monogamous" Charity?) relationship. I am 100% satisfied with the perfect romantic life we have...and we're both over 50 years old!

After my divorce, I felt I needed to learn what true romance was. It took a few relationships to figure out what I was looking for. I think that is quite normal.

For many reasons, romance was not normal in my marriage. Part of that stemmed from a very tight-lipped, emotionally abusive environment my wife had been raised in. It was not her fault! I always believed that and believe it today. She is happily re-married, and I will be too -- in June. We have taken separate spiritual paths since then, but we both love and adore our four children, and I can say unequivocally, that they are better off with two parents living their truth in happiness, separately, than two together, stifled into living a life in conflict with their hearts.

I think true intimacy is only possible when each partner is accepted by the other 100% as they are. I'm sooooo happy to have found that relationship today!

[_Coggins7]

Actually, that was me identifying your artifact. My identification of it is not in itself

"postmodernism." You simply identify my disagreement with you as my "postmodernism." This is because of your tendency to identify everything in terms of the ideological struggle you are reading into everything around here to sustain your endless impertinent posting.

I have correctly identified the general intellectual template you have used to critique my claims, which is a postmodern one. This is why your "critique" isn't really a philosophical critique at all, but an epistemological evasion, in classic postmodern style. What you have essentially said is that no critique of the sixties (or, by extension, anything else), is any closer to the truth, or in anyway more substantive or accurate, than any other. This is the epistemological relativism, or nihilism, for which postmodern thought has come to be associated, and for which its adherents are, in their own minds, justifiably proud.

Statements such as "but it is simply another modern view. A historical myth. Nothing particularly special about it" would, in another era, been immediately flagged as circular reasoning. In the postmodern era, this is seen as a statement, in classic Nietzschean style, of deep critical dissection. Clearly, all it really is is an abandoning of the philosophical ship (its also a sharp two edged sword for the one using this form of argumentation)

Is ideology to be found? Yes, but it is woven into the discussion in much more complex terms than your overly simplistic reduction of things.

Another classic leftist evasion. I have nowhere reduced anything complex to anything simple. Indeed, I've only made a few brief statements thus far, a few general assertions. The fact that you don't like them is another question.

One would think that you would be a little more circumspect about making such ham-handed intellectual errors,

Which were?

Coggins7 wrote:
The sixties are "ancient history"? Behold the Sony Playstation generation. The incentives and sociological dynamics the Pill created are hardly difficult to discern, unless you are a partisan of those incentives and dynamics, in which case all will certainly look rosy.



Loran, I was addressing her claims about human beings always having suffered from immorality ("Immorality started with the earliest humans")... the 'always' part suggesting her knowledge of a deeply ancient past. In other words, the conversation I was trying to engage in was about matters that far predate the 60s. It amazes me how you try to wrench every discussion back to your obsession with the 60s.

The modern Left, and especially those who helped foment, create, and maintain the cultural revolution of the sixties and seventies, would very much like us all to forget what it really wrought, I understand that quite clearly.

As to Charity's assertions, those assertions are clearly based, from where I stand at least, on an assumption that human beings and their incentives, motivations, and fundamental psychological structure, has changed little since the beginnings of civilization. It is your seeming inability to process the idea that human beings have always struggled with the concept of "immorality" in the context of basic social norms and mores, and with the larger cultural effects of sociopathic behavior, that strikes one as odd.

I have said before, and I will repeat: I am not interested in engaging you in debates about 20th century ideology wars. Find someone else to take this up with. If you want to engage me on the points I am actually discussing, I am happy to do so, but the minute you try to turn it into your argument about ideology (if that is not what I am talking about), I will identify it as such and discontinue engaging you. You sound like a broken record.

Bye.

[_Coggins7]

This is an excellent summary of coggin's posting style, and is why I ignore so much of it. It's almost like there's a constant right-wing radio show blaring in his head, which makes it difficult for him to respond to anything but that.

Amazing how lefties can run, but can never hide, isn't it?

[_Jersey Girl]

BishRic

Just fyi, I am engaged to the beautiful Tori now. We've been together (and monogamous) for over 2 1/2 years, and I have no interest in changing our monogamous (did you notice the word "monogamous" Charity?) relationship. I am 100% satisfied with the perfect romantic life we have...and we're both over 50 years old!

Aw, that made my heart flutter just a little! Congratulations to you both!

[_Coggins7]

Interesting to blame the march of scientific advancement as the cause of 'moral degeneracy'... IF I understand you correctly??

Which apparently you do not. I see no place in which Charity imputed blame to technological advancement for "moral degeneracy". Where do you see this? She made a very, rather pedestrian observation regarding the sexual revolution aspect of the cultural shifts that occurred beginning in the mid to late sixties to the effect that the huge turn to premarital sexual activity, sexual promiscuity as a viable personal option, and the general breakdown of older sexual mores was generated, to a great extent, not just by ideological shifts (which set the philosophical and attitudinal scaffolding), but by the technological breakthrough of the Pill, which made the entire thing feasible in a practical sense. Abortion on demand then made the consequences of much of the, what was then called, the "New Morality" a moot subject, removing both the stigma and responsibilities of unwed motherhood from the cultural landscape.

Where do you draw the line with such a supposition--science leading, not simply contributing to--'licensiousness'? Seems religious-retrogressives have attempted to defame a great number of scientific discoveries as interfering with "God's" ways?? In your mind, does "reliable birth control" serve any useful purpose?

You're setting up a strawman here. Charity is not blaming technology for the sexual revolution. Nor have I seen her anywhere blame the invention of the VCR or the Internet for the spread of pornography.