Althouse

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• "One day I hope to become a mother. But for now I have sex just because I like it. Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies..."
• "Patients were typically confused when presented with a clinic that looked mostly like a house and a little like a church."
• Sunrise — 5:05, 5:20, 5:24, 5:26
• I've got 10 TikToks for you tonight. A nice round number. Let me know what you like best. I'm predicting #6.

"One day I hope to become a mother. But for now I have sex just because I like it. Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies..." Posted: 03 Jul 2022 04:35 AM PDT "... that's a problem. This radical minority, including the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court, probably won't stop at banning abortion. If we take Justice Clarence Thomas at his word — and there's no reason not to — the right to contraception could be the next to fall. Why? Because many in this movement are animated by an insatiable desire to punish women who have sex on our own terms and enjoy it.... They are part of a movement intended to curb the hard-won freedom to pursue careers and joys outside the confines of wifehood and motherhood.... In the America where I came of age, I was told my life was worth more than my ability to have babies. And my sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.... Later, when I was a student at the University of Michigan, the movement for sex positivity was thrilling and liberating. We learned that pleasurable sexual experiences between consenting adults of all genders and orientations were to be celebrated.... "  Writes Mara Gay, in "The Republican War on Sex" (NYT).

"Patients were typically confused when presented with a clinic that looked mostly like a house and a little like a church." Posted: 03 Jul 2022 04:17 AM PDT "They described to me how anti-choice protesters would prolong and exploit this confusion to keep patients away from medical care for as long as possible, employing medical misinformation or simple guilt. When a car did make it into the clinic parking lot, the protesters could not physically approach whomever got out of it without trespassing, so they just yelled at them. They had an elevated platform for this purpose, built right up against the clinic's property line...."   Writes John Skiles Skinner, in "I escorted women into an abortion clinic. Protesters were relentless. A decoy operation staged next door to Planned Parenthood in Lincoln, Nebraska, knew all the tricks" (WaPo). They chose to talk about sex a lot. They tended to be opposed to birth control and were fond of explaining 'God's plan for human sexuality.' One woman illustrated this plan with unasked-for details about her virtuous married sex life. She felt that abortion and hormonal birth control were murder, and that condoms were undignified. Her husband learned to suppress his sexual urges, she said, and they now had sex only for procreation....  I was confused by some protesters' opposition to birth control and focus on virtuous motherhood. Because I was raised by blunt and truthful people, I first assumed the weekly standoff at the clinic was caused by an honest difference in opinion about abortion. This didn't jibe with the protesters' hatred of contraception....  All of society was telling me I was part of a cultural conflict over the question of when human life begins, but my experience was showing me the conflict was broader. The protesters appeared to want sexual expression and gender roles to be governed by conservative Christianity....  Publicly they claim the goal of saving unborn children. I sense that just below the surface there is a more ambitious dream: conservative Christian dominion over human sexuality and gender." These are important questions: Is opposition to abortion really about saving the lives of the unborn? Or does opposition to abortion really come from a different place, a desire to control sexuality? Everyone can see the problem of killing the unborn, even those who want abortion to be available. The argument Skinner makes — and I've seen it before — is that what really puts you on one side or the other on this issue is whether you believe that society should channel people into expressing their sexuality within traditional marriage. *** And WaPo, get the word editing right: It's not "the protesters could not physically approach whomever got out of it." It should be "the protesters could not physically approach whoever got out of it." Isolate the phrase that begins with the who/whom word — "whomever got out" — and the mistake is easy to see.

Sunrise — 5:05, 5:20, 5:24, 5:26 Posted: 02 Jul 2022 05:21 PM PDT Write about whatever you want in the comments.

I've got 10 TikToks for you tonight. A nice round number. Let me know what you like best. I'm predicting #6. Posted: 02 Jul 2022 05:08 PM PDT 1. Irish guys doing American accents to talk about the 4th of July. 2. The real deal behind this Bali beach. 3. A very charming rendition of "Gymnopedie." 4. The hottest birds. 5. A Kamala impression. 6. The meticulous restoration of an ox-tongue iron. 7. A porcupine tail hairbrush. 8. Sandy Dennis laughs and screams. 9. A puzzling Zillow listing. 10. "POV: you're at a diy house show." (This is a whole page of "duets," so click around. The first one, in the upper left corner is the original, and then others have added their interaction with him in a split screen.)

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