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POPSUS Teen: We're here. We're sexual. GET USED TO IT. So it's not just their minds that is to be ignorant? The delusion of abstinence to produce dumb breeding machines and army fodder? Do you remember how difficult it is to keep 'bad' thoughts out of your mind? The harder you try the harder it gets. I've an image of the Christian youth on his knees, blessing himself with one hand while wanking with the other. One of the most important intellectual realizations that I had was knowing that a church's god and my sex were incompatible. I've never regretted my decision. I'm just a human. Let others be mini gods.
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POPSEnding Moderate Drinking Tied To Depression The mice were tested for depression-like behavior using a widely recognized method called the Porsolt Swim Test. The mice are placed inside a beaker filled with water and allowed to swim for six minutes. Mice are good swimmers and have no problem completing this task. The amount of time they spend immobile (floating and not swimming) is measured as an index of despair or depression-like behavior. The more time a mouse spends immobile, the more "depressed" it is thought to be. "This research provides the first evidence that long-term abstinence from moderate alcohol drinking -- rather than drinking per se -- leads to a negative mood state, depression," Hodge said.
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POPSIgnorance-only Sex Education It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together? - PZ
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POPSThe Romeo and Juliet Effect: Why Christians Keep Having Sex Before Marriage A pretty interesting article, apparently written by an "evangelical" explaining why teens will continue to have sex before marriage & where society fails in stopping it. Personally, i have no issue with sex before marriage as long as both are consenting and mature enough to understand the ramifications physically, psychologically & socially. The meat of the article is further down, with some pretty interesting figures such as: The flash memory of mobile phones taken from (Saudi Arabian) teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence.
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POPSPlease, Let's Talk About Sex! "Let’s start there. Talk to your kids about sex tonight, with confidence and a straight face. “I’d prefer you waited to have sex. That said, whenever you choose to do it, make sure you use one of these condoms.” It works."
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POPSIs Sex Necessary? Cool article... like some of the benefits of sex/masturbation: - Improved sense of smell - Reduced risk of heart disease - Weight loss, overall fitness - Reduced depression - Pain-relief - Less-frequent colds and flu - Better bladder control - Better teeth - A happier prostate? PS.. since this is health-based, I didn't feel it needed to be rated
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POPSThe Fundagenitals Strike Again A hint of desperation begins to appear as the Bush presidency runs out of time. In their never ending quest to control women and prevent them from obtaining health care, they're running to pass legislation that attempts to make an end run around the law by using the pretext of religion to deny a woman access to contraceptives by conflating them with abortion. Luckily, so far their narrow religious tenets have been held in check by more tolerant voices. But make no mistake, these Religious Right activists will not stop their campaign to impose their views on the rest of the nation.
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POPSSex Education From Austin Cline's blog, an illuminating exposé of Christian's attempts to sneak religious dogma into public schools.
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POPSCan Sips at Home Prevent Binges? It would be easy to preach abstinence to children until they’re 21, but is it naive and even irresponsible to think that teenagers won’t experiment? Might forbidding even a taste of wine with a meal actually encourage secrecy and recklessness?
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POPSPalin Has Chosen to Exploit Her Own Daughter's Pregnancy I am disgusted by the way Governor Palin has thrown her 17-year-old pregnant daughter under the bus for political gain. She is exploiting her daughter's misfortune in order to use her to make her anti-abortion point to the extreme right-wing of the Republican party. This woman should be removed from the ticket for abusing her child in this manner.
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POPSAbolishing Abortion? I have often thought that advanced ultrasound technology would be a powerful weapon in the war to abolish abortion. You can say all kinds of things to rationalize killing a fetus, but when a woman sees her child in living color on the screen, only a hardened few will not succumb to natural maternal instincts.
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POPSSeven Cardinal & Contrary Virtues Most people are aware of the seven deadly (or cardinal) sins, but few are aware that there are two sets of seven virtues as well, one set standing in direct contrast to the sins. I find it interesting that a page devoted to atheism had a concise and easily found description of these attributes, but the religious sites I visited required wading through reams of theology much too extensive to clip. There is a clip on the Seven Cardinal Sins posted at http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/B17AB9AE-948C-4C29-8867-F0FC3434B26B/ by Sheroug.
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POPSAnother Bush Appointee Slips Up Yes, it's time once again to pull on the hypocrisy hip boots. Seems to be a trend in this administration. Of course the Deputy Secretary of State claims he was only receiving massages.
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POPSLadies: NO Pants, please. I'd be very wary of any zealot with nutty views like this. I'd keep him well away from vulnerable children. This just isn't normal. Even worse than celebrant priests.
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POPSThat's What I Said! The killer: the Democrats were the ones who made it happen, a mere two weeks after Congressional leaders announced that they were going to let Title V, Section 510 abstinence-only-education funding die without reauthorization. Prior to this painful backstab, the Dems had given us the impression that these medically inaccurate programs, full of "false, misleading, or distorted information" -- as confirmed in Representative Henry A. Waxman's "The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs" report -- would be cut or eliminated by our new Congress. Instead, we're faced with an additional $27.8 million for this reprehensible approach to human sexuality education, not only hailing the failing White House Chief's delusional efforts, but providing a whopping tax dollar waste of $141 million to CBAE.
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POPSVirgin or Slut: Pick One The message to young men is more subtle. In this fairy tale written, produced and directed by abstinence-only advocates, teenage guys are both potential villains -- the oversexed, hormone-crazed young men who must be refused continuously by good girls -- or potential knights in shining armor -- saving enough money from their summer jobs to buy sparkling rings that will save their sweeties from the hell of slutdom. In between pornified culture and purity balls, in between the slut and the virgin, the stupid, lascivious dude and the knight in shining armor, in between the messages directed at young women -- your body is your power vs. your body is dangerous -- and young men -- your gaze is your power vs. your gaze is dangerous -- are real young people trying to develop authentic identities and sexual practices. And they are struggling mightily. (L.c.)
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POPSAIDS in Africa, Defying "conventional wisdom" "Outside Uganda, we have few good models of how to promote fidelity, since attempts to advocate deep changes in behavior have been almost entirely absent from programs supported by the major Western donors and by AIDS celebrities. Yet Christian churches—indeed, most faith communities—have a comparative advantage in promoting the needed types of behavior change, since these behaviors conform to their moral, ethical, and scriptural teachings. What the churches are inclined to do anyway turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention."
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