It would be a little distracting with people having sex all over the place in public, though. We’d be more like those Bonobo monkeys. Oh, I’m sorry I took your parking space. Let’s have sex and make it all better.

For me it’s interesting to see what people reveal about themselves in their condemnations. These saggy pants, and their underwear showing… it makes me feel all funny… it’s just that I find they make me think of sex. Or the person who knows without a doubt that being gay is a choice — so you have gay feelings too? And you’ve decided to be straight?

Going to the short of Wikipedia, I thought it might good, too, to see what hypocrisy was:

“Nils Brunsson asserts that inconsistent social demands and norms require organizations to speak one thing to the public, but do another in private–to falsely present themselves to their environment in a way that is a pretense, a lie in regards to the realities of internal operation and action.”

I suppose it can be a strength. Or it could be self-doubt and cowardice.

I think it is perhaps a little over the top to suggest

Agreed. It was meant as a figure of language. My point was in fact more practical.

Airports be controlled by police and that includes bathrooms, where bombs might be hidden. And if officials in their routine rounds catch people using bathrooms as hides for unlawful activities like drug dealing or offensive behavior, they must do their duty. I’m not particularly sympathetic to people having sex in public places.

But, undercover agents investigating sexual activity in airport bathrooms?. That means using people’s money to pay the salary of a guy dedicated exclusively to sitting there waiting for something to happen. That’s what I find astonishing. The specificity of purpose, and the full time dedication, and all the money that’s invested in what seems more an obsessive neurotic behaviour than public service.

There definintely should be a law against at least *some* of them doing it…

As for the undercover police officers. Well, as an occasional user of them, I’d prefer not to have to deal with guys having sex in there while I’m peeing, so I guess I favor discouraging people from doing it. However, I do think that homophobia in society often forces people to do such things. But whatever the answer, I think it is perhaps a little over the top to suggest that a society in which that takes place is more oppressive than the gulags.

His fellow Senators seem concerned with the actual behavior, which I think is irrelevant, and unconcerned with his hypocrisy, which I think is abhorrent.

I am personally not interested in the least in either. But what I find astonishing is this paragraph in the newspaper piece you link to,

Mr. Craig, 62, was arrested June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by an undercover police officer investigating sexual activity in a men’s room.

Undercover police officers investigating sexual activity in airport’s bathrooms? What the heck does that mean? I wonder what kind of society could that be…. Laws about underwear? I don’t think even gulags reached that level of police control…

I think it may be harsh to judge him hypocritical because it’s likely that he truly does hate homosexuality, especially because of his own uncontrollable urges, and his fight as a senator against mano y mano love is a larger representation of his own fight with his own inner ass-ramming demons.

Hypocritical? Probably not. Conflicted, self-hating, confused, in denial, and in the wrong line of work? Definitely. But doesn’t this describe the majority of politicians anyway?

And about the baggy pants thing… nobody’s mentioned a certain point yet, and whether that’s because it’s largely unknown or because it’s common knowledge and it’s gauche to bring it up as a universally known fact and irrelevant to the proceedings, I’m not sure. However, the baggy pants fashion trend began in prison. When a prisoner unbuckled his belt and let his pants slide down under his butt cheeks and walked around like that, it meant he was in need of protection and was available to be somebody’s bitch. Either that, or he was already marked as somebody’s bitch and was forced to wear his pants like that as a sign to competing suitors that this bitch is taken, I’m not entirely sure which. Anyway, baggy pants facilitated this process. Some idiot out in the ghetto got so used to being a bitch that he never altered his style, and other idiots on the outside took this to be something cool as having done time is a status thing, and so adopted the fashion without realizing how it actually started.

Now, I’m not saying that this is a good reason to ban something that is basically a personal choice, definitely not. But perhaps the answer here for old white rich men who are afraid of young people and their scary trends is, as with so many other things, education. Start taking down all those obnoxious ‘Jesus loves you’ billboards from all over the place and replace them with ones that have a picture of someone dressed in that manner and pose the question: “Does this mean you want to be the white man’s societal prison bitch?”

23 – Island

Naw, it’s not really the same. But I certainly see where you’re coming from. I find it hard to imagine people, religious or not, being unable to discern the sheer scale of the differences.

I mean, race and sex is pretty fundamental to us, individually. Religious beliefs are a little more fluid.

That doesn’t mean you can’t be duplicitous with your religious convictions as well. But in the case of Catholics and contraception / abortion — well, I think there are people who believe different things even within Catholicism.

If you want to make a Duplicity Scale of 0-10

1. Black man paints himself white and does all he can to keep black people in the backs of buses and doesn’t all the offense to God of a black man marrying a white woman. — that rates pretty high on the duplicity scale.

2. Gay man does all he can to make sure that other gay men are societally squashed. — very high, but probably not as high

3. Christian man allowing a woman to choose to have an abortion. Christian man supporting the killing of people with guns. — gosh, you tell me.

I mean, for this guy it’s a little sad, more than anything. After all, here’s a man who likes other men’s fun bits. But he got married. Maybe he was bi, and chose a straight lifestyle, but those fun bits are just too fun. And maybe he really hated that part of himself, for whatever, dare I say crazy, reason. And in a strange and ironic way, he devotes a good deal of effort to hurt people who are like himself. Maybe he wants gay people to have to sneak around in bathrooms or something. Or maybe he just wishes he wasn’t that way, and that nobody was. The man’s obviously confused.

But it does reveal the larger issues. It’s just really sad it has to be that way for him — and for so many others. And sadder still that he does all he can to keep it sad like that.

Kennedy may be Catholic, and the Pope may say that contraception and abortion are sins, but I know you can find widespread disagreement even within the Catholic Church on those issues, and exceptional cases, too. In other words, it’s not at all surprising to find a Catholic that might disagree with doctrine.

But it is a little surprising to find someone who wants to oppress themselves.