Ric Haberstroh

“There are millions and millions of HIV infected people in Africa and they are not going to forego sex because Colleen and her Pope want them to in order to propogate their faith.”

It will not be necessary to abstain from sex in Africa to control HIV infections but precisely timed intercession may be required of liberals to properly install every latex protective device.

Hey, if “Triple C”, Dubya, and the pope say that condoms are evil, then they must be. Who are we to say otherwise? Isn’t the Pope infallible? How could he be wrong about this? Answer, he is still just a man.

Ric and Didymus,
Obviously the pope is right. It is rather obvious what causes STD’s so the only way not to get or spread them is via self control.
Of course we would never want anyone to practice self control in this day and age. I mean what would everyone do all day long if we were not self absorbed with our wants instead of trying to be self serving to a higher authority. By higher authority I do not mean the pope.
Keep up the good work you two and practice what you preach and see what happens over the course of your life time.

Men obviously prefer not to take a shower in a raincoat, but the evidence is clear: condoms work. The papacy is a joke and mentally removed from the actual world. It refuses to grow up. I say, give it 50 years, and Vatican City will be annexed by Italy. And the windfall to humanity — which will finally be devoid of this retrograde thinking — will prove to be a mental boomtown.

People are not obese because of “hunger”. People are
obese because gratuitous eating when not even hungry releases floods of heroin-like chemicals into our
central nervous system and there’s an issue of
addiciton.

Many other things release the same flood of endo-morpine-like chemicals. Gratuitous sexual congress over and above any response to a hormone-created urge, for instance.

Doing what one is not supposed to do also does–apparently to quite a degree considering the population of our prisons.

I would bet my favorite body-part that the endorphins released from gratuitous eating, sex, dominant behavior and partaking of “forbidden fruits” are far greater drivers of human behavior than hormonal drives.

Further, you’re not even taking into account the presence and importance in humans of pheremones, something until recently thought to only create behavior in “lower” animals…

The point I want to make to you is that there are a whole galaxy of things people may do which can unleash a cascading feedback loop of pleasure which is every bit (if not more) powerful than the pheremonal/hormonal drives and which most people manage to pass by because of social taboos/legal proscriptions.

Whatever the origins of the papists objections to those things which facilitate gratuitous sexual behavior, in an age of herpes, HIV, drug resistant syphilis and gonorrhea (and a host of other such STDs), it’s also enlightened self-interest to learn to eschew gratuitous sexual encounters just as one eschews the tremendous satisfaction of beating on everyone one encounters who is an idiot or disagrees with some heart-felt belief one has for the enlightened self-interest of all thos lovely legal fees and the time in “stir” one would spend.

I’m sure the papists are against any devices one might avail one’s self of which would facilitate beating on everyone one does not agree with and getting away with it without being apprehended by police and convicted too–WHAT A BUNCH OF MORAL PRIGS AND SPOIL-SPORTS!

If you doubt that people continue to indulge in
extremely risky behaviors when relative safety is easily available to anyone and everyone doing the behaviors which can be risky or relatively safe, just try going down the road at the posted speed limits sometime and see if you’re not “eating dust” continually.

Believe me, those posted speed limits all have very good logical reasoning behind them and are carefully contrived to the best of the abilities of the traffic engineers to do their due diligence. They probably do a better job of what they do than the condom manufacturers do of what they do. I’ve rarely seen a situation when a sign warning of lower speed limit ahead is not spaced such that if one merely takes one’s foot off the accelerator upon reaching the warning sign one will not be traveling at the lower speed limit upon reaching the sign limiting speed to that rate-of-travel—providing one was originally doing the former limit…

Yet people continue to indulge in the risky behavior of ignoring the best efforts of the traffic safety engineers they’ve paid so much to have figure out their best course-of-action on the road. Do you then think they will not also, upon occasion, continue to skip the “raincoat” when they’re accustomed to having gratuitous casual sexual encounters?

Far safer they’re not in the habit of doing so.

Believe me, they won’t die. They might die if they’re accustomed to having gratuitous casual sexual encounters, usually with a condom but the opportunity comes along one time with a particularly seductive sex-object—possibly in a situation where the partaking of “forbidden fruits” and attendant excitement overcomes all caution–and where no prophylaxis is available. In all likelihood the same person who thinks they’re going to get to their destination any significant amount of time sooner from speeding will also not be able to bear the thought of risking losing that opportunity and will take that life-threatening risk as well.

Looked at that way, the papists have a pretty good point. How the hell can one more cheap-thrill be worth the horror of finding out one has an HIV infection? I don’t know, I guess it’s the same as the thrill of going ten mph over the posted limit being worth having a lap full of Bambi some dark night.

I personally don’t “get it” and what I really don’t get are people who allow their children to ride bicycles without wearing a helmet–or who make the kid wear it but don’t take any effort to make sure it’s worn in such a manner as would do them any good and then further compound the error by not wearing one themselves–the message there being “when you get bigger and your head is even farther off the ground and will be going even faster by the time it hits the pavement, you won’t need to wear that clunky funny-looking helmet then”…

Maybe you’re right though–maybe those who are terminally dumb ought to just be encouraged to get fatal diseases and remove their dumbness genes from the gene pool. Unfortunately some of these diseases
take a long time to kill and don’t have the self-limiting aspect of somehow interfering with the ability to procreate during the long drawn-out demise or life-long debility they cause…

Africa’s a damn good example of that.

I sure don’t agree very much with the religious ideas of the religious right, but their life-style ideas and their ideas on issues of defense, crime-and-punishment and many many more social issues certainly tend to be better than those of the lefty loose-morals crowd.

SNAFU,
I will adhere to your argument. Maybe we should let those who are terminally dumb get fatal diseases… and we will remove their “dumbness gene” from the human gene pool.

The vast majority of women who get abortions are the least educated [or maybe just dumb] and they are more likely to be unemployed and single [probably due to their dumbness gene].

Let your argument play its full course. It a couple of generations abortions will be obsolete. Then it will be only the truely gifted who are left to finished God’s work.

I’ll meet you at the finish line.

People were doing it like rabbits long before condoms were invented. Of course that’s why the priests were banging little boys; not STD’s and no chance of pregnancy. Apparently rape isn’t a mortal sin, ask those recently excommunicated in South America. Sure as hell wasn’t the rapist.
Catholicism is failing miserably in this world and good riddance to it!

Hey, Bill… Let’s create our own church and cash in on the void that will be left.

EJ, I don’t think anyone likes them.

USF1965- uh, I would say using condoms IS displaying self-control, as well as responsibility. Why are you assuming just because someone is having sex they are out of control or careless?

And I don’t get why people think liberal-minded people or Democrats are somehow morally lacking. I’ve met plenty of very caring liberal people, and I know some horrendous conservative people.

…and why would anyone listen to an old man who has no sex and knows even less about it when he talks about sexual behavior???

KJ… Kudos on your post. Yes, in my experience, conservatives are more likely to be heartless and cruel. Many seem to be lacking the sympathy gene.