Clay Risen of the Atlantic recommends five German beers to try.

We’ve all heard the term ‘use it or lose it.’  Well, a recent study suggests this is very true when it comes to sperm (via Carnal Nation):

Reuters reports that having sex daily can improve sperm quality and increase the likelihood of pregnancy. Though some doctors have advised men to refrain from sexual activity for a few days before trying to conceive, new research out of Sydney, Australia suggests otherwise.

Dr David Greening of Sydney IVF, an Australian fertility center that helps clients conceive through in vitro fertilization, found that frequent ejaculations may improve the quality of sperm by reducing the length of time they spend in the testicular ducts. He explains that this reduced amount of time may decrease the exposure of sperm to reactive oxygen species which he describes as “potentially damaging molecules”.

If this is true, my sperm must be as strong as an ox… or at least (sort of) compensates for the alcohol, cigarettes and narcotics I put in my body on a regular basis that fuck up sperm (and sperm count).

- Adam Serwer

“Unless I’m missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state. Even California, the national bellwether state on liberalizing social trends. Even Maine, in the most liberal region of the country.

You can come up with all kinds of theories about why this is, blaming the voters for being bigots, accuse the churches of playing dirty, whatever. The plain fact is, every single time it’s been put to a popular vote (as opposed to allowing a tiny number of elites to vote on it), gay marriage has been a loser.

Do I think it always will be? No, I do not, in part because homosexuality is far more accepted by young Americans, and in part because heterosexual America has already conceded the philosophical grounds on which traditional marriage was based (which is why younger Americans are more comfortable with gay marriage). Nor do I believe that the voters are always right. But unless you’re prepared to call more than half the country bigots — and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice — maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there’s something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harrassed”

- Rod Dreher

I posted both of these as quotes because I don’t necessarily completely agree with either but they did provoke thought.

I know with his ‘dithering’ (word choice there was easy) on gay issues, it is easy to kind of use Obama as a scapegoat. After all, he’s said he ‘personally’ (not sure how that is different than ‘politically’ but okay) not for same-sex marriage. But I don’t think he’s responsible for what happened in Maine nor do I think he slighted those on the common fucking sense train by not throwing his hat in the ring.

I mean let’s be honest, it’s not like he really ‘backed’ those failed gubernatorial candidates; I mean, he did the bare minimum as the leader of the Democratic party and that’s it.

But I think ultimately, he’s smart to not do what Palin, Limbaugh et. al attempted to do and that’s use national influence to tip the scales on a local issue.

I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with a national figure, especially the President, trying to sway the voting in a state even if it is for a cause I support. While a lot of people on both sides of the issue have a vested interest on the outcome all over the country, what happens in Maine should be left up to Maine.

And unfortunately, things didn’t go our way… but I don’t think it is the President’s fault.

Hell, in my mind, all of this is moot anyway because (and go ahead and call me cynical) I don’t think the populace should have the ability to vote on laws that can deny rights to others. I think people are too stupid on the whole to handle that sort of epic responsibility.

Exhibit A… Alabama didn’t repeal its ban on interracial marriage until 2000. Nine years ago. And 40% of the population wanted to keep the ban.

Now honestly, do you really think any populace is reponsible enough to vote on whether gay couples can have the ability to get trashed in Vegas and get married on a whim only to annul said marriage fifty-five hours later like Britney Spears?

I don’t think so.

Rod Dreher does though. He seems to have the decency to have more faith in the American people can I could ever imagine having. But I’m not sure if he’s right here.

Sure, gay marriage, at least when it has been up for vote, is 0 for 2. And? All that means is that we haven’t progressed as much as a country as some would like us to believe.

It also means that yes, many people in this country have prejudices to the point they would happily deny people equal protection under the law if they got the chance.

I have no doubt in my mind that if given the chance, especially down here in the South, the sort of white people who give me a extra look when I walk down the street would happily vote to have me work their lawn for free like life 200 years ago.

This is a cold reality that Rod seems to pretend does not exist but it is this precise reality that rulings make rulings like Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia so important in the first place.

Because sometimes, the federal courts have to save the ‘people’ from their ridiculous selves.

Even more damaging were Kennebec County (delivering a net of 7,000 votes for Yes) and Penobscot County (11,000), both of which hold a strong number of votes and represent a mix of urban, suburban, and rural voters. This was the real battlefield where No on 1 lost.  These voters – and their cousins in other counties – are not “back country hicks” – even though some areas of those counties are remote.

I myself am from Penobscot country (Hampden, specifically – which incidentally went for Yes 53%-47% for those of you keeping score), and a great deal of these people represent the typical “suburban swing voter”.  In other words, many of them work white collar jobs, live in mostly nice neighborhoods within striking distance of a city, and are pliable for whichever side makes the better case.  We are not talking about culturally conservative “Deliverance” type areas here – this is the home of Maine’s soccer moms.

Meanwhile, Dale Carpenter is Mr. Brightside:

With close popular votes in two states in the last year, little prospect of additional anti-SSM state constitutional amendments, coming legislative action in more states and D.C., the first-ever electoral victory for civil unions in an election last night in Washington state, gay marriage completely secure in four of five states that still have it, and a federal marriage amendment in rigor mortis, the question is not really whether, but when and where next.

And lastly Andrew Sullivan who always has a great way of trying to figure out just what the hell this all means:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art – their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.

The truth about civil marriage – why it is the essential criterion for gay equality – is that it alone explodes this core marginalization and invisibility of gay people. It alone can reach those gay kids who need to know they have a future as a dignified human being with a family. It alone tells society that gay people are equal in their loves and in their hearts and in their families – not just useful in a society with a need for talented or able individuals whose private lives remain perforce sequestered from view.

This is why it remains the prize. And why our eyes must remain fixed upon it. In my view, the desperate nature of the current tactics against us, the blatant use of fear around children (which both worries parents and also stigmatizes gay people in one, deft swoop) are signs that what we are demanding truly, truly matters.

Special thanks to Andrew Sullivan

Jacob Weisberg believes it's only a matter of time before this...

Not yet unfortunately, but Jacob Weisberg thinks it is just a matter of when and not if on the legalization of marijuana, gay marriage and travel to Cuba in this country:

Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18^th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36^th state to ratify the 21^st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.

And this are made legal in this country. It will be a moment long overdue...

Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they’re instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the ’20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.

- Laura Ingraham

Seriously, are these guys even trying anymore or just freestyling off the top of the head because they know those who want to believe the bullshit will believe whatever they say?

Journalists should strive for accuracy, and fairness. Objectivity is impossible, and is too often confused with balance. And the problem with balance is that we are not living in a balanced time. For instance, is it patently obvious that at this point in our history, the leading luminaries on one side of the American political spectrum are considerably less tethered to reality than those on the other side. Madly trying to split the difference, as so many of my mainstream-media colleagues feel impelled to do, does a disservice to the concept of the truth.

I seem to slowly develop dull aches in my cranium anytime I have on a cable news network for a significant period of time. I even find myself needing to take breaks from the likes of Maddow and Olbermann who (as a liberal of course) I like.

But the cold reality of life is that there’s only so much interesting shit that happens in a day. So what we get from the ‘news’ networks is this strange and perverse combination of infotainment, nonsensical prognostication (here’s what will happen… no, this will happen, wait… this will…) and charlatanism that sells every little even as big, huge, massive news (the small elections that happened yesterday anyone?)

I was still fairly young at the time but I remember the rise of the twenty-four hour cable news network and remember even then wondering how the hell you could talk about the news of the day for an entire day.

I think I’ve gotten the answer to that question… you can’t. Not in any meaningful way at least.

Along with tarot cards and goat entrails, a lot of people believe they can divine hidden meaning from the results of off-year elections, like the ones in Virginia, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday. I’m skeptical. For one thing, nobody bothers to wait for the polls to close anymore–the “meaning” of the results has been hammered out in advance. A GOP sweep will be taken as proof that conservatives are resurgent and President Obama’s agenda is in trouble, while Democratic wins in New York and New Jersey–Virginia is hopeless–will demonstrate that conservatives have gone off the deep end. (Any other combination will mean a dull night for cable television.)

A year after Obama’s landslide victory and the expanded Democratic margins that brought in the House and Senate, the political landscape has changed, but not nearly to the degree that the “pre-” post-race analysis would have you believe. It’s changed marginally–and only marginally–in the direction that almost anyone could have predicted a year ago: As campaign promises give way to actual policy tradeoffs, as the political world stubbornly fails to morph into something resembling those embarrassing old Coke commercials where everybody holds hands and sings, Democrats are falling back to earth a bit and an impatient, naive sliver of the electorate is growing jaded. But that’s it.

Though it is completely hilarious that Bill Owens won the race in NY-23 (the first Democrat to do so since the 19th Century) I’m not sure there is any tea leaf to read there except that national figures, like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, have far less influence on local elections than they would want to believe.

As for the Democratic losses in New Jersey and Virginia, I think people were likely thinking more economical and less ideological.

You don’t need to be a political scientist to figure it out. If you’re the incumbent and the economy goes to hell, you are probably going to lose regardless of what side of the aisle you sit on.

This applies nationally as well… ask Bush I and ask the Democratic Congress of 1994.

So while this election isn’t a referendum on anything, it does offer a caution to the Congressional Democrats up on the proverbial chopping block in 2010. If the economy isn’t on some sort of upswing by that time, expect a lot of them to be out of a job.

via Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Drugs are less about getting high, and more about making huge pots of money. As for risk, it is possible to fit enough heroin to supply this country for a year in the back of a cube van; a year’s supply of cocaine will fit in a shipping container.

…

[Eugene] Oscapella said, “If you’re a mom-and-pop producer of marijuana, mandatory minimums will scare you out of business.” Yeah, so? “Organized crime will step in; the government has moved the competition out of the way.”

This is an unintended consequence of the worst kind: Banning a substance makes it wildly lucrative; punishing the small fry makes it easier for the bad guys to do business.”

- Joe Fiorito discussing why potential new ‘tougher’ drug laws won’t work in Canada (or anywhere else for that matter).

Dan Savage on how Halloween has sort of become ‘Pride’ for us straight folks:

I’m often asked—confronted—about gay pride parades when I speak at colleges and universities. Usually it’s a conservative student, typically someone who isn’t happy about my being invited to campus in the first place. We gay people like to pretend that we’re all about love and marriage, the conservative student will insist, but look at your pride parades! Look at those guys in assless chaps and all those bare-chested lesbians dancing! Just look! The exchange almost always ends with this:

Conservative student: “Straight people don’t flaunt our sexuality like that. We don’t have straight ‘pride’ parades.”

Me: “You should.”

…

You made a good choice, straight people, a better one than the booze companies were trying to make for you. Whereas the pride parade is now the big public celebration of queer sexuality with all its squalor and glamour, Halloween is now the big public celebration of straight sexuality, of heterosexual desire, every bit—tit?—as squalid and glamorous.

We don’t resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what it’s like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to be on your guard and under control at all times. While you don’t suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. You move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on your mind. Exhausting, isn’t it? It makes you long for moments when you can let it all hang out, when you can violate the social taboos you honor most of the rest of time, when you can be the piece of meat you are and treat other people like the pieces of meat they are.

It’s that kind of pressure—pressure to conform and maintain—that makes you want to pull on a pair of assless chaps and march down the street, the kind of pressure that cries out for some form of organized mass release. It’s the kind of pressure that a pride parade—straight or gay, Mardi Gras or Halloween—can release.

The post’s title, while clearly a nod to Dan Savage’s feature (I encourage you to read the entire thing) is also a nod to my gay and lesbian peers who will be celebrating Pride this weekend.

Having been in the thick of a few Pride parades (including an epic one at Southern Decadence in New Orleans I’ll discuss in a bit) I can tell you first hand, the gays know how to throw one hell of a party.

But I didn’t always feel this way.

When I attended Southern Decadence that year, I was a budding deviant: growing more accepting of my appreciation for conventionally ‘feminine’ aesthetics (corsets, makeup and knee high boots) I was excited to finally be in an environment where I could look like a character out of Rocky Horror Picture Show without anyone batting an eyelash.

And for that, my experience there was incredible; to be appreciated and embraced for my queer proclivities, as opposed to being sneered at and heckled (which happened while we were on the way) was an amazing feeling.

But at the time, the unabashed sexuality of the entire scene caught me completely off guard. Sure, I had done the whole Spring Break and Mardi Gras ‘show us your tits’ thing but to see a traveling, nurse themed, gloryhole set up, I can admit, as a young straight… I just wasn’t ready for it.

In fact… I was genuinely offended by it.

My argument was similar to the conservative student Dan Savage used in his feature…

“Straight people would never do or could even get away with something like this,” I mused angrily (and stupidly) to my best friend later that day.

Smarter, more mature and more of a deviant than I ever anticipated three years ago, I say the same thing Dan does… we should.

While the little Goth kid in me cries a bit at what mainstream culture has turned Halloween into, it delights me that otherwise upstanding straights across the country have used the holiday as an excuse to indulge their carnal and sexual impulses.

As ‘deviant’ as I am being poly, being vociferously sex positive and being relatively gender fluid (at least from an aesthetic standpoint) I will never and my fellow straights will never, face the sort of social adversity gay people have and continue to face.

But we face various pressures of sexual repression in our own right, particularly as we get older. The whimsical spirit of Halloween is the perfect environment for us to get drunk and engage in a delicious poor decision or two (just remember… safer sex practices are your friend).

I always have a good laugh at those people who groan every year about how Halloween just gives woman an excuse to dress (and subsequently behave) ‘slutty.’

To which I respond… and?

Not that I believe anyone needs an excuse to be (ethically) slutty but if Halloween gives an otherwise buttoned up woman an opportunity to loosen up a bit, if only for a day or a weekend, why should she deny herself?

Dan Savage suggested it and now I do too… let’s get some Pride of our own this Halloween straight people.

This will be your last chance at decadence and self-indulgence before you have to suffer fools family gladly for Thanksgiving and Christmas (I’ll have to play polite with my family that day before eating Chinese food and watching movies with my partner like a good Jew) and you should take full advantage of it.