This morning, I fired up my Android G1 and checked my Inbox and found a link to a post on NPR.com, Sex Without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships.  The premise of the article is that there is no time, in a busy boy or girl’s life, to get stuck in a relationship:

Young people from high school on are so preoccupied with friends, getting an education and establishing themselves, they don’t make time for relationships. New goal: fun, not marriage.

Well, I have had some very strong opinions about this, especially when it comes to girls.  In my 2005 opinion, when I wrote Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s, I believed that the new “hook up” culture would be a blood bath where women would move forward with the intent of sexual empowerment while men would sit back and lick their lips and take advantage — but I don’t know anymore.

A number of experts accept this relaxed attitude toward sex outside of relationships as a natural consequence of the sexual revolution, women’s growing independence and the availability of modern contraceptives. But Deborah Roffman, who conducts human sexuality workshops for middle- and high-school-age students and their parents, sees that as a distorted view of liberation.

“It’s not a new model. I think most people would probably look back and agree that this has been a more traditionally, or at least stereotypically, male model,” says Roffman. “What I’ve seen over the last few years is girls adopting a more compartmentalized view, and feeling good and empowered by it.”

She’s not convinced that this is a good thing for women, and says that being able to say yes is only one way of looking at freedom. She would feel much better if young men also were developing a greater capacity for intimacy.

Being able to engage in intimate relationships where men and women bring all of themselves to the relationship is the cornerstone of family, Roffman says.

I addressed this in a much less elegant way, which is why I am not Dr. Abraham, in We Men Didn’t Get the Memo, wherein I posit that this “devil may care” attitude towards sex and the hookup could very well result in a Judo flip that puts men too far into the driver’s seat as women need to compete for men because, for men, it is about the path of least resistance to sexual behavior:

As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. We can date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe. The three-date rule? Ha! That’s the official rule, but now the first date counts from the night we first met. Oral sex on the first date has sort of become de rigueur — if you want a second date.

Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men.

And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. We men are bigger, stronger, and not all of us are so nice. I personally have a lot of experience with women who are survivors — survivors not just of dating or their 20s, but survivors of sexual abuse and rape. [We Men Didn’t Get the Memo]

Well, that was then, this is now.  Has it turend out the way I thought?  Well, according to recent books like Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School and Oral Sex Is The New Goodnight Kiss, maybe things aren’t as fun, simple, or innocent — girl-friendly — as:

We all attended health class in middle school and high school. We know about condoms and sexually transmitted disease. Sex is fun, and a lot of people would argue that it is a physical need. It’s a healthy activity.

Well, after four years and a year living in Berlin, I intuit that the psycho-sexual culture of America’s youth is becoming way more — but not exactly — European. Not exactly because from what I got from the article is that this new mood of hooking-up is driven by intimacy-avoidance rather than intimacy-seeking. Europeans, and Berliners in particular, are not averse to intimacy.  Are you intimacy-averse?

Europeans don’t date — even the Brits don’t date — they hang out in groups, go dancing, drinking, socializing, and sometimes hooking up and having one-night stands; however, the be all and end all of this friendly mixing is not to secure constant sex but to have fun. While we like to think of Europeans as being more open to sex and maybe even more promiscuous, I don’t know how true that is.

My German friend Frank tells me that they find their partners like this:

Well, we hang out together as friends and sometimes when we’re out we dance and drink and sometimes go home together.

Then, when you wake up in the morning, you decide: do I like this — do I like her — or don’t I? If it doesn’t work out, it is considered a one-night-stand, of course, but not with a stranger, with a friend, which is OK in the group.

However, if it does work out, there is a very strong nesting instinct and couples who hook up casually after a night out oftentimes live together, have children, and spend decades together — without all of the bullshit and expectations of the interviewing of dating and the officiation of marriage.

I have a feeling that this is where dating is going in America. And this is not the result of American cynicism or self-destructive behavior, but rather as a continuing evolution away from a “women-as-chattel” culture of marriage to something else.  Maybe a gender culture of “separate but equal,” that is less concerned with roles, with expectations, or with God’s Sacraments and more interested in living a life, “fulfilled.”

I don’t fancy this is a response to anything. Why?  Well, I was just reading a New York Magazine article called Class of ’09 that kept reinforcing the discovery that teens and 20-somethings these days really love, trust, and appreciate their parents — consider them friends and even share their musical tastes. Parents as mentors, something that is also a breaking down of traditional structures of family.

That said, could the other side of the double-edged sword be that parents have been doing less parenting and a lot of befriending.  Are America’s youth acting out sexually because their parents were too busy? Because their parents were too adoring? Because their parents were terrible role models?  Could it be a reflection of their parents’ behavior? Could it be the result of indulgent parenting?  Well, I don’t know.

Personally, I think that it is a good thing when kids love their parents and don’t think everything they do is super-uncool and lame, no matter how bad it may be for prime time comedies and sit-coms.

I don’t know how this is all going to shake out. I believe that there is going to be a lot of casualties, both emotionally as well as physically, before it all sorts itself out in the end.

What do you think?

I am going to post both articles below: the one from NPR and the one from my blog

Sex Without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships

By Brenda Wilson

Morning Edition, June 8, 2009 · The hookup — that meeting and mating ritual that started among high school and college students — is becoming a trend among young people who have entered the workaday world. For the many who are delaying the responsibilities of marriage and child-rearing, hooking up has virtually replaced dating.

It is a major shift in the culture over the past few decades, says Kathleen Bogle, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University.

Young people during one of the most sexually active periods of their lives aren’t necessarily looking for a mate. What used to be a mate-seeking ritual has shifted to hookups: sexual encounters with no strings attached.

“The idea used to be you are going to date someone that is going to lead to something sexual happening,” Bogle says. “In the hookup era, something sexual happens, even though it may be less than sexual intercourse, that may or may not ever lead to dating.”

Young people from high school on are so preoccupied with friends, getting an education and establishing themselves, they don’t make time for relationships.

New Goal: Fun, Not Marriage

“Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing,” says 25-year-old Elizabeth Welsh, who graduated from college in 2005 and now lives in Boston. She says that among her friends, dating is a joke. “Going out on a date to dinner and a movie? It’s so cliche — isn’t that funny?”

It seems it’s far easier to have casual sexual encounters or hookups, though several national surveys of college students found a stalwart 28 percent who remain virgins. The term “hookup” is so vague, however, it might well encompass someone’s idea of virginity — it involves anything from kissing to fooling around, oral sex and sexual intercourse.

“For me, it’s been anytime that I was attracted to a guy and we spent the night together,” Welsh says. “It has been sex; it has just been some sort of light making out. That’s the beautiful thing about the phrase. Whatever happened is hooking up.”

Bogle interviewed college students on a small and a large campus, as well as recent college graduates, to find out what was going on. The hooking-up phenomena has been traced back to the 1960s and the 1970s, when male and female students were thrown together in apartment-style dormitories, and there was a revolt against strict rules on having a member of the opposite sex in your dorm, lights out and curfews.

“What you see on college campuses now, even in some cases Catholic campuses, is that young men and women have unrestricted access to each other,” Bogle says. Throw in the heavy drinking that occurs on most campuses, and there are no inhibitions to stand in the way of a hookup.

The alumni Bogle spoke with were less into hooking up after leaving college, but she says that’s changing. It is catching on among young working adults, mainly because of the Internet and social networks.

The Evolution Of Dating

Dating itself represented a historical change. It evolved out of a courtship ritual where young women entertained gentleman callers, usually in the home, under the watchful eye of a chaperon. At the turn of the 20th century, dating caught on among the poor whose homes were not suitable for entertaining, according to Beth Bailey’s history of dating, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America.

Young couples would go out for a movie or dinner. The expectation was that dating, as with courtship, would ultimately lead to a relationship, the capstone of which was marriage. Precious few of these young women attended college.

According to experts, the main reason hooking up is so popular among young people is that in the United States and other Western countries, the age at which people marry for the first time has been steadily creeping up. As of 2005, in the United States, men married for the first time around the age of 27, and women at about 25 years of age.

Bogle says the hookup is what happens when high school seniors and college freshmen suddenly begin to realize they won’t be marrying for five, 10 or 15 years.

Prioritizing Career And Social Life

Marriage is often the last thing on the minds of young people leaving college today.

“My first few years out of college was about trying to get on my feet and having a good time,” Welsh says. Dating and a relationship interfered with that.

Avery Leake, 25, knows what this is like from the other side. He’s in a relationship now, but he says that, in general, most of the young women he used to meet “just wanted sex. They’re independent.” Being in a relationship was not important to them, especially if it interfered with their careers or their pursuit of advanced degrees, he says.

Leake found that he was also up against women who had as much money as he had, if not more, and he says dating had just become too expensive. “You used to be able to get away with paying $30 for a dinner and a movie,” Leake says. “Not anymore.”

Empowerment Or Loss Of Intimacy?

A number of experts accept this relaxed attitude toward sex outside of relationships as a natural consequence of the sexual revolution, women’s growing independence and the availability of modern contraceptives. But Deborah Roffman, who conducts human sexuality workshops for middle- and high-school-age students and their parents, sees that as a distorted view of liberation.

“It’s not a new model. I think most people would probably look back and agree that this has been a more traditionally, or at least stereotypically, male model,” says Roffman. “What I’ve seen over the last few years is girls adopting a more compartmentalized view, and feeling good and empowered by it.”

She’s not convinced that this is a good thing for women, and says that being able to say yes is only one way of looking at freedom. She would feel much better if young men also were developing a greater capacity for intimacy.

Being able to engage in intimate relationships where men and women bring all of themselves to the relationship is the cornerstone of family, Roffman says.

But young people like Elizabeth Welsh don’t see the hookup as an obstacle to future relationships:

“It is a common and easy mistake,” Welsh says, “to assume that the value of friendship and those relationship building blocks have no place in longer-term relationships.”

If you’re honest and open about what you’re doing, and willing to commit to a relationship, she says, a hookup and friendship can be fused into a lifetime partnership.

Partnership Still The Ultimate Goal

At 25, May Wilkerson would like a relationship, but not a family — not quite yet. She’s lived a lot of places: Argentina, Canada and Paris. Wilkerson says she hasn’t found much intimacy with the men she’s encountered.

In New York City, where she moved two years ago, people seem even more emotionally detached, and she thinks it is because so many of the people who come to the big city are focused on success.

“For many of us, the requisite vulnerability and exposure that comes from being really intimate with someone in a committed sense is kind of threatening.”

And the thought of being in love with someone, Wilkerson says, “is the most terrifying thing.”

Yes, she has been in love, but the guy wasn’t quite into it. There was one older guy who was serious; he used to bring her cupcakes. She couldn’t work up an interest in him.

Today, Wilkerson says people hook up via the Internet and text messaging.

“What that means is that you have contact with many, many more people, but each of those relationships takes up a little bit less of your life. That fragmentation of the social world creates a lot of loneliness.”

Hooking up started before the Internet and social networks, but the technology is extending the lifestyle way beyond the campus. Deborah Roffman says no one is offering this generation guidance on how to manage what is essentially a new stage in life.

The dilemma for this generation is how to learn about intimacy, she says: “How am I going to have a series of relationships that are going to be healthy for me and others, and going to prepare me” for settling down with one person?

Wilkerson doesn’t really focus on the concerns of people like Roffman, who fear that hooking up doesn’t bode well for the future of young people. She thinks young people will be able to sort it out for themselves.

“We all attended health class in middle school and high school. We know about condoms and sexually transmitted disease. Sex is fun, and a lot of people would argue that it is a physical need. It’s a healthy activity.”

Here’s my article from back in 2005:

We Men Didn’t Get the Memo

I call the new feminism Manolo Blahnik Feminism, which is a super-sexual, super-sexy, and super-confusing form of self-empowerment. Ariel Levy calls it “raunch culture” and I believe that it is going to blow up in American women’s faces.

I believe very strongly that there are too many dangerous contradictions in the new feminism, in the new American woman. And, what is to become of the more traditional American woman of Faith? And more importantly, what will become of us, the more traditional, American men of Faith?

I attended a panel on gender differences in the new feminism and my question to the panel was,

“I understand how empowering strappy stilettos, butt jeans, bare bellies, and camisole tops are for the modern woman. It is all about taking back the sex, taking back the gaze, reclaiming the control of what is cute, what is hot, what is sexy, it about taking back control, reclaiming feelings of pride in the body, pride in the shape and tan earned from an active, outdoorsy life. That’s all fine and good. Unfortunately, we men never got the memo. I never got the memo.”

In fact, I feel sort of like a fox in a henhouse. Why? Well, all of my old-world, unenlightened, seduction techniques work now better than ever! In fact, the truth is, I am really too nice for the Manolo Blahnik Feminist. In my recent dating life, I have been drawing the line in the dating sand too conservatively for many of my dates. The Manolo Blahnik Feminist wants to be taken, wants to find a real man, wants to take risks and have a great time; she pursues a doctrine of devil may care and she wants her man to be worthy of pursuit.

Well, no matter what the Manolo Blahnik Feminist thinks she wants and no matter what she thinks she’s doing, she is actually walking into a very dangerous trap. It is dangerous because it assumes that we men are good, generous, and stable men. Men who may be able to party, to drink, and to indulge in very passionate, very realistic sex-play while still maintaining a level of respect, of fair treatment, and composure that can guarantee that when no means no, no means no. That is a lot of responsibility to unload onto anyway, no less an unknown entity, a casual date, a new friend.

We men are not responding to this self-empowerment with amazement and respect, we’re responding to it by licking our lips, by taking advantage, by rubbing our hands together, and by trying not to jinx this out of being. We don’t want any responsibility either, it seems. We don’t want to feel like it is our responsibility to mind our Ps and Qs when we’re being pursued ourselves. We no longer have the muzzle on and we have shaken off the choke chain, and we men in general are not a save environment for this kind of soul-searching, this kind of self-empowerment. There, I said it: we men are not a safe environment for raunch culture. And we are taking advantage because we are pretty well convinced that what is happening won’t last: the Manolo Blahnik feminist fancies herself the aggressor, the buyer, the pursuer, the seducer. And we men are what she is after. All we see is, “man that girl is fine – I’d like some of that.”

What is our responsibility as men and women of Faith? What is my responsibility as a man of Faith? I know that many of my female friends are desperate, lonely, and discouraged by this seller’s market. I know that I am war-weary and deeply fatigued by this constant over stimulation, both visually and situationally. What can I expect from my relationships? How to I keep to the tiller and steer my ship straight and true? In my life, I have to not only consider the more pedestrian issued of sexually-transmitted diseases and pregnancy, but my principles, my conscience, my morals, my values, and ultimately my soul!

And it isn’t easy. As men in such a seller’s market, we don’t have to choose. If things don’t work out to our liking, we can just date another willing girl every night. We can push sex much faster than we ever could believe – than I could ever believe. The three-date rule now starts not on the first date but from the drunken night we first met at a bar. Oral sex on the first date has become de rigueur – that is, if you want a second date.

Instead of getting control, the Manolo Blahnik Feminist has relinquished control to us men. To men, women become fungible assets and women of faith become invisible, blending into the wallpaper. Not because they’re ugly – they’re beautiful – but because in a world of of bellies, of thighs, of knees, hip-huggers, butt jeans, padded bras and camisole tops, anything but the bling is effectively invisible.

And even worse, this is a very dangerous game. This kind of exciting, naughty, passionate, irresponsible, reckless indulgence in “raunch culture” is going to result in one hell of a cultural hangover.

Many women will be unable to recover from this self-indulgence with any semblance of faith, trust, hope, or intactness. And many men, too, will be unable to choose just one woman, be able to really and truly commit to marriage.

When it comes right down to it, what modern man or woman could be expected to have the right stuff to have faith in marriage, the family, and children after indulging in such self-destructive, self-loathing chaos?

Not I. And all of this is taken out of the context of faith. This is all from the point of view of people, relationships, self-empowerment, feminism, and sex – all very humanistic concerns. As a man of faith, I have to admit that all of this is very discouraging to me and all the men I know like me. But even I have to admit, I have become desensitized, I have become desperate, and I am sorely over-stimulated myself.

I am not sure if modern women have it very good. Not nearly as good as would be expected. I attended college at a high point for feminism an academia, when a woman would still identify with being a feminist.

Not any more.

(Ed Note: This article is a rework and extension of Manolo Blahnik Feminism: The Right to Choo’s)

I have been pinned by the coverage of #leweb down in Paris on Twitter, especially during all of the excitement as Dr. Helen Fisher talked about sex, attraction, and falling in love. So, since everyone else has been taking the Chemistry love personality test, I thought I would do the same. So, with no further ado, here’s my results. Is any of is surprising? You, too, can take the test for free (and sign up, as a result) over at Chemistry.com

Hello Chris,

Welcome to your Chemistry Profile. The following analysis is based on your responses to our questionnaire. Your results identify your major and minor personality types, as well as the types with whom you’re likely to be compatible.

Your Major and Minor Personality Types Characteristics of all four personality types can be found within each of us, but there is almost always one personality type that is dominant. We call this the major personality type. The Chemistry Profile also identifies your minor or secondary personality type. You exhibit some aspects of this personality type, though not to the same degree as with your major type.

• Your major personality type = Director
• Your minor personality type = Negotiator

You are a DIRECTOR/negotiator You are an innovator. You are an inventive, thorough, independent thinker with a deep interest in how the world works. You quickly grasp patterns and relationships. And when you focus on a particular work-related or social puzzle, you often come up with novel theories and ideas about it. You have a strong need to achieve. You want to make an impact on the world. And with your aptitude for theoretical thinking, your investigative rigor, your logic and your determination, you are likely to win the honors your hard work deserves. You are a complex person, outwardly assertive, logical and intellectual, yet likely to see the many sides of an issue, feel deep sympathy for others and enjoy the spiritual as well as the concrete. You can be friendly, insightful and eager to please. These attributes, combined with your love of challenges and knowledge, make you an exciting, and at times, very sensitive companion.

How your personality breaks out

Explorer – 23% of your personality - Known for high energy, high creativity and spontaneity. Seeks novelty, risk and pleasure. Intellectually curious and not easily swayed by opinion.

Builder – 19% of your personality - Usually very popular. Deep attachment to home and family. Calm demeanor and low anxiety. Often consistent, loyal and protective.

Negotiator – 27% of your personality – Excels at seeing the big picture, long-term planning and consensus building. An intuitive thinker who is flexible, verbal and socially skilled. Imaginative, empathetic and nurturing.

Director – 29% of your personality – Daring, original, direct and inventive. A non-conformist. Skilled at abstract thinking and short-term planning. Often assertive and quite competitive. Tough-minded and efficient.

Dating Tips for Directors

• Not everyone is as direct, focused and “to the point” as you are. So make sure you give potential partners the time they need to express themselves. You will probably be surprised at their logic and intellect.

• Your competitive spirit is useful in the office but it doesn’t work in dating–unless you find someone who likes to challenge and debate. When that happens, go for it. Otherwise, try to listen actively.

• Aim at investigating some of the “grey areas” during an invigorating conversation. Much of the world does not see in black and white.

• Separate work from play. Try to get your assignments out of your mind while on a date—so you can truly enjoy your “down time” with a partner.

• Make sure to schedule enough time to get to know someone.

• Try looking directly into the eyes of your partner during a conversation; many people find this “anchoring gaze” a powerful form of intimacy.

While I have already thanked all of the wonderful, generous bloggers who have blogged about Operation Survivor since Labor Day, there has been a countinued outpouring of support. As a result, I have added all of the new posts, banners, Twitters in addition to the initial posts — as of 25 November, this is everyone.

1. 5 Minutes Around the World via 5 Minutes for Mom.
2. Banner via A Disgruntled Republican.
3. Survivor Corps Program-Help! via Swimming Against the Red Tide.
4. Survivor Corps: Founds Operation Survivor Project to Assist U.S. Military Combat Veterans in Transitioning to Civilian Life via A DC Observer.
5. Survivor Corps. Rise Above. Give Back via All 4 My Gals.
6. Banner via American and Proud.
7. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via American Thinker.
8. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via Americanthinker.
9. Returning Troops…a Noble Cause via Dodgeblogium.
10. Indigenist News Items for: 11-14-2008 via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo.
11. They don’t go away when Veterans Day ends via Around the Island.
12. Survivor Corps via Assoluta Tranquillita.
13. Survivor Corps via Jake’s Life.
14. Banner via Bearing Drift.
15. Vast Write Wing via Be Logical.
16. Survivor Corps Operation Survivor: A Worthwhile Cause to Consider via Mount Virtus.
17. Someone alerted me to the good work that Survivor Corps via Big Bark.
18. Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Big Bark.
19. Twittered via How to Change the World.
20. Do Not Abandon Our Vets via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
21. Help Our Troops This Veterans Day via Locust Fork Blog.
22. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via MySpace: Kathie’s Soldiers Angels Account.
23. Banner via Blog Mommas.
24. An Appeal via Don Surber’s blog.
25. Survivor Corps: Help a veteran break the cycle of violence via Hormone-Colored Days.
26. Support the Survivor Corps via Burbsblogs.
27. Veterans Day via Bodhi Baby.
28. Supporting Our Troops via Booker Rising.
29. Operation Survivor via Britannica.
30. As Per Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
31. Per a Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
32. Help veterans through Survivor Corps via South by Southwest.
33. Remembrance Day via Around the World in beautiful Shoes.
34. Veteran’s Day via Danny Fisher.
35. Survivor Corps via Charming Just Charming.
36. Veterans Day via Chip’s Quips.
37. Please Help Me Support Our Troops on Veteran’s Day via Chris Abraham.
38. I Will Not Be Broken via For the Heck of It.
39. Ray via Notes from the Cookie Jar.
40. Survivor Corps Helps Injured Vets Cope via Connecticut Bob.
41. Help Our Troops This Veteran’s Day via Culture11.
42. Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via Culture Kitchen.
43. Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via The Daily Gotham.
44. Donate to help our Troops via Make it Happen.
45. Survivor Corp-Returning Troops via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
46. Banner via Popcorn and Sushi.
47. Banner via Supercozy WorldHome.
48. Supporting Returning Troops via Donklephant.
49. Operation Survivor-Survivor Corps and TroopTube via Where the Hell Am I?.
50. In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
51. In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
52. Banner via Gapers Block.
53. Banner via Gary Presley.
54. Operation Survivor via The Political Junkie.
55. Veterans Day via On the Fringe.
56. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and Their Families via GoMekong.com.
57. Support Our Troops NOW via MamaBugs…Homeschooling Where the Air Force Sends Us!.
58. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via Hooah Wife & Friends.
59. Breaking the Cycle of Violence via Another Opinion.
60. New Book from the founder of Survivor Corps via The IAVA Blog.
61. Some Odds and Ends of the Election via The Liberal Life of a Navy Wife .
62. cross-post via Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog.
63. Banner via Iraq The Model.
64. In Honor of Veterans’ Day via James Kotecki.
65. Survivorcorps.org via Jelly Mom.
66. Banner via Into the Woods, Living Deliberately.
67. Survivor Corps via A Leg Up.
68. Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Informed Comment.
69. Helping Veterans (a day late) via Just Enjoy Him: Ramblings of a Mid-Life Mom.
70. Soldiers Angels Web Surfing via Mail Call! Supporting the Troops.
71. Survivor Corps via Kung Fu Monkey.
72. Banner via Kim Stagliano.
73. Survivor Corps via Knee Deep in the Hooah.
74. Banner via Kentucky Progress.
75. Courage via Last One Speaks.
76. Banner via Leucadia Blog.
77. Iraq snapshot (The Common Ills) via Like Maria Said Paz.
78. Banner via Lisa’s Cookbook.
79. For a Good Cause via The Local Crank.
80. Banner via LooneyBin4Sure.
81. Tis the season to help our troops via Manatee’s Military Moms.
82. Thoughts of a conservative mind: A worthwhile charity via A different kind of Conservative Blog.
83. Banner via Married to the Army.
84. Veterans Day via State of Ohio Blogger Alliance.
85. Veteran’s Day via Weapons of Mass Discussion.
86. Operation Survivor via Big Blueberry Eyes.
87. Survivor Corps offers peer support to injured vets via Media Dis&Dat.
88. Survivor Corps via Tanker Bothers – Soldiers in the War on Terror.
89. Survivor Corps via Tanker Brothers.
90. Miss Beths Victory Dance via Miss Beth’s Victory Dance.
91. Survivor Corps via Miss Cellania Blog.
92. side bar Banner via Mommy Bytes.
93. Survivor Corps. Help for Surviving Troops via Mommy Does it All.
94. Operation Survivor via My American-Iraq Life.
95. Banner via Myrtus.
96. Mine removal personal ambition for Missouri State instructor via News-Release.com.
97. Survivor Corps: Support for returning heroes via News Blaze.
98. Veterans Deserve Your Help via New Zeal.
99. Supporting Returning Troops via Northloop Neighborhood.
100. Read Terrance D.C. via Oh Boy it Never Ends.
101. Banner via only red head in taiwan.
102. Banner via On the Upside.
103. Banner via Papamoka Straight Talk.
104. Banner via Pardon Me For Asking.
105. Survivors of War via Ponderings on a Faith Journey.
106. posted link on blogroll via Political Grind.
107. Survivor Corps: Operation Survivor via Political Reps.
108. A Day To Honor Those Who Have Served Their Country via Political Vindication.
109. Banner via Praise and Coffee.
110. Banner via Preemptive Karma.
111. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Progressive Independent.
112. cross post via Quick Quotes Online.
113. In Banner Rotation via Redline.
114. Veteran’s deserve not just a word, but also a hand: Operation Survivor via Rich Kirkpatrick.
115. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Right Michigan.
116. Banner via Rightwingchamp.
117. Katrina Vanden Heuvel is an Idiot via Ruth’s Report.
118. Katrina vanden Heuvel is an idiot via Ruth’s Report.
119. Survivor Corps via Sanbans Lymphorama.
120. Helping the Walking Wounded on November 11 via Serge the concierge.
121. Banner via Seven Wheelchairs.
122. palin, survivor corps, heroes and more via Sex and Politics and Creeds and Attitudes.
123. Links, Awards and Other Good Blogishness via She Lives.
124. Peace, be still. It’s Armistice Day. via Short Woman.
125. Sick of It via SICKOFITRADLZ.
126. posted Banner and review of I will not be broken via Writing in FaithWriting in Faith: Previews and Reviews.
127. Banner via Socialism.
128. Survivor Corps – Electronic Media News Releases via Soldiers Angels Network.
129. Survivor Corps via Soldiers Angels New York.
130. Survivor Corps via Soldiers’ Angels New York.
131. Need a little Inspiration? via My Life As A Military Spouse.
132. Banner via Stepping Right Up!.
133. Survivor Corps via Straight, Not Narrow.
134. Veterans Day via The Adventures of Super Mommy & Spitup Boy.
135. Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day – American Thinker via Survivor.
136. Operation Survivor – excerpt from website via Arthriticyoungthing.
137. posted Banner via Screw Politically Correct B.S..
138. Banner via The Political Jungle.
139. Survivor Corps via Tao of Katie.
140. Help veterans through Survivor Corps via The Reaction.
141. The bridge, the sacrifice, more via The Common Ills.
142. Banner via The Inside Dope.
143. A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via The Moderate Voice.
144. A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via Funny Blog.
145. Veterans and PTSD via Where There’s a Will There’s a Way.
146. Tuesday, November 11. 2008. via This French Life.
147. we posted? via This Fucking War.
148. Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
149. cross post via News Updated Frequently.
150. Survivor Corps via Unveal Blues.
151. Banner via VDog and Little Man.
152. Banner via Virginia Left Wing.
153. cross post via Today on Vot3r.
154. Banner via mikesmercurialmaddness.
155. As Long as We’re Bailing Out CEOs… via World-O-Crap.
156. Wake Up Americans via Wake Up America.
157. Survivor Corps via Wake Up America.
158. Xyence via The Xyience Diet Resource.
159. Please Help the Veterans via Yaw and Mog.
160. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Young Philly Politics.
161. Survivor Corps Supports Returning Vets and Their Families! via Zimbio.
162. Mojo Mom says thank you to military families via Mojo Mom.

I daresay we’ll be get more so there might very well be another thank you email. Again, both Abraham Harrison and Survivor Corps thank you very much for all of your continued generosity and support!

Veteran’s Day this year is especially poignant since it has been 5 years since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. Thank you to everyone who helped Survivor Corps get the message out about Operation Survivor and all the amazing work that Survivor Corps does for vets, for returning troops, and for their families. Here’s a list of all of your fine work:

• Please Help Me Support Our Troops on Veteran’s Day via Chris Abraham.
• banner via On the Upside.
• Veterans and PTSD via Where There’s a Will There’s a Way.
• Support Our Troops NOW via MamaBugs…Homeschooling Where the Air Force Sends Us!.
• Peace be still. It?s Armistice Day. via Short Woman.
• Do Not Abandon Our Vets via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
• Helping the Walking Wounded on November 11 via Serge the concierge.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via Americanthinker.
• Veterans Day via Bodhi Baby.
• Veterans Day via The Adventures of Super Mommy & Spitup Boy.
• Operation Survivor via Britannica.
• Veteran’s Day via Danny Fisher.
• Donate to help our Troops via Make it Happen.
• Remembrance Day via Around the World in beautiful Shoes.
• Operation Survivor via Big Blueberry Eyes.
• In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
• In Their Boots via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
• Veterans Day via Chip’s Quips.
• Help Our Troops This Veterans Day via Locust Fork Blog.
• Banner via Socialism.
• In Banner Rotation via Redline.
• Veteran’s Day via Weapons of Mass Discussion.
• Help Our Troops This Veteran’s Day via Culture11.
• side bar banner via Mommy Bytes.
• Veteran’s deserve not just a word but also a hand: Operation Survivor via Rich Kirkpatrick.
• Survivor Corps: Help a veteran break the cycle of violence via Hormone-Colored Days.
• Veterans Day via On the Fringe.
• The bridge the sacrifice more via The Common Ills.
• Someone alerted me to the good work that Survivor Corps via Big Bark.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and Their Families via GoMekong.com.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day – American Thinker via Survivor.
• Helping Veterans (a day late) via Just Enjoy Him: Ramblings of a Mid-Life Mom.
• Survivor Corps: Operation Survivor via Political Reps.
• Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
• Survivor Corps Operation Survivor: A Worthwhile Cause to Consider via Mount Virtus.
• Veterans Day via State of Ohio Blogger Alliance.
• A Day To Honor Those Who Have Served Their Country via Political Vindication.
• Courage via Last One Speaks.
• banner via A Disgruntled Republican.
• An Appeal via Don Surber’s blog.
• Mojo Mom says thank you to military families via Mojo Mom.
• Survivor Corps via Miss Cellania Blog.
• For a Good Cause via The Local Crank.
• Operation Survivor-Survivor Corps and TroopTube via Where the Hell Am I?.
• In Honor of Veterans’ Day via James Kotecki.
• banner” via Into the Woods Living Deliberately.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Vets and Their Families! via Zimbio.
• Please Help the Veterans via Yaw and Mog.
• posted banner and review of I will not be broken” via Writing in FaithWriting in Faith: Previews and Reviews.
• banner’ via Pardon Me For Asking.
• Veterans Deserve Your Help via New Zeal.
• I Will Not Be Broken via For the Heck of It.
• Per a Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
• banner’ via Blog Mommas.
• banner via Myrtus.
• banner via Married to the Army.
• Survivor Corps. Rise Above. Give Back via All 4 My Gals.
• Re: Vast Write Wing – November 2008 via Be Logical.
• Survivor Corps. Help for Surviving Troops via Mommy Does it All.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Right Michigan.
• Indigenist News Items for: 11-14-2008 via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo.
• banner via Gary Presley.
• banner via Seven Wheelchairs.
• Operation Survivor via The Political Junkie.
• Need a little Inspiration? via My Life As A Military Spouse.
• Banner via Preemptive Karma.
• Operation Survivor – excerpt from website via Arthriticyoungthing.
• banner via Rightwingchamp.
• Survivor Corp-Returning Troops via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
• posted banner via Screw Politically Correct B.S..
• palin survivor corps heroes and more via Sex and Politics and Creeds and Attitudes.
• banner via Bearing Drift.
• banner via Kentucky Progress.
• Supporting Returning Troops via Donklephant.
• banner via Gapers Block.
• Katrina vanden Heuvel is an idiot via Ruth’s Report.
• Supporting Our Troops via Book Errising.
• Survivor Corps – Electronic Media News Releases via Soldiers Angels Network.
• A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via The Moderate Voice.
• posted link on blogroll via Political Grind.
• They don’t go away when Veterans Day ends via Around the Island.
• Survivor Corps offers peer support to injured vets via Media Dis&Dat.
• Survivor Corps via A Leg Up.
• Supporting Our Troops: Operation Survivor via The Daily Gotham.
• Survivor Corps: Founds Operation Survivor Project to Assist U.S. Military Combat Veterans in Transitioning to Civilian Life via A DC Observer.
• banner via Iraq The Model.
• Survivor Corps Supports Returning Troops and their Families! via Young Philly Politics.
• banner via The Inside Dope.
• Survivors of War via Ponderings on a Faith Journey.
• Survivor Corps via Charming Just Charming.
• Survivor Corps via Knee Deep in the Hooah.
• Tis the season to help our troops via Manatee’s Military Moms.
• A Belated Veterans (Day) Post via Funny Blog.
• Support ‘Survivor Corps’ this Veterans Day via American Thinker.
• Supporting Returning Troops via Northloop Neighborhood.
• As Per Request via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
• Some Odds and Ends of the Election via The Liberal Life of a Navy Wife .
• Returning Troops…A Noble Cause via Dodgeblogium.
• Survivor Corps Website via Untreatable Online.
• Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Informed Comment.
• Standing up for Max Cleland on Veteran’s Day via Big Bark.
• Read Terrance D.C. via Oh Boy it Never Ends.
• Katrina Vanden Heuvel is an Idiot via Ruth’s Report.
• Iraq snapshot (The Common Ills) via Like Maria Said Paz.
• Tuesday November 11. 2008. via This French Life.
• Survivor Corps Program-Help! via Swimming Against the Red Tide.
• Survivor Corps via Kung Fu Monkey.
• banner via Leucadia Blog.
• banner via Bearing Drift.

You have done an amazing thing for the vets and also for the mission of Survivor Corps domestically and around the world. Thank you for your posts and for your banner placement. Never hesitate to contact me personally or my team at Abraham Harrison. Also, always please feel free to contact the entire Survivor Corps team.

If you have not been keeping on top of all of the great comments streaming in to the AH Poll entitled “If John McCain died or became incapacitated, would Sarah Palin be competent to be President?” you are really missing out! Some of them are the most insightful, thoughtful, and brilliant collection of thoughts representing the best and the worst of the right and the left! Roll up your sleeves and batten your hatches because you’re going to have one hell of a ride. Oh, also, these comments are in reverse-chronological order so the most recent are at the top. If you want to keep track of them live, please go visit them where they love and breathe. Read below for the most amazing Sarah Palin comment thread of the Internets!

And, here’s an embed of the poll, if I’ve piqued your interest by now:

This is written by Jessie Whitfield and comes via The Best Article Every day:

1. Oral sex is illegal in 18 states, including Arizona (including DC and Virginia).

2. In Virginia, it is illegal to have sex with the lights on.

3. It is illegal for husbands in Willowdale, Oregon, to talk dirty during intercourse.

4. Sexual intercourse between unmarried couples is illegal in Georgia.

5. Engaging in any sexual position other than missionary is illegal in Washington, DC.

6. In Connorsville, Wisconsin, it is illegal for a man to shoot off a gun when his female partner is having an orgasm.

7. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, it is illegal to have sex with a truck driver inside a toll booth.

8. Having sexual relations with a porcupine is illegal in Florida.

9. It is illegal in Utah to marry your first cousin before the age of 65.

10. Sex with animals is perfectly legal for men in Washington state, as long as the animal weighs less than 40 pounds.

I am a little bit ashamed of spending a lot of the Summer in Virginia. And, I hope nobody turns me in for breaking 1, 2, and 5!

As you can see, I have been writing about Sadie Allison for years now — Dr. Sadie Tickles My Fancy with TickleKitty and See Sexy Dr. Sadie With Your Own Two Eyes On TV This Sunday — and just recently received 5 copies of Sadie’s new book, Ride ‘Em Cowgirl: Sex Position Secrets For Better Bucking. She’s a friend of mine — and she’s super cute and knows what she’s talking about! OK, I am sort of crushing.

Before that, Sadie penned three sex-help books, Tickle Your Fancy, Toygasms!, and Tickle His Pickle — but she has outdone herself with this book! Oh, and on page 97, the G-Spot is finally demystified! Come on fellas, you’re really missing out if you haven’t sorted out some of the magic little bits and pieces of lovemaking. Definitely a worthwhile endeavor for the both of you!

Here’s some of the stuff I have been able to steal from both Amazon and the Tickle Kitty website:

Enjoy an entire lifetime of sexual enrichment for the cost of a couple of cocktails!

• Fully illustrated to guide you. Over 100 tasteful point-n-play illustrations help you visualize your exciting new moves together
• Easy and fun to read. You’ll feel inspired by Dr. Sadie’s conversational style and hands-on encouragement
• Filled with secret touches. You’ll explore all the strokes, squeezes and sensations your lover wants (but isn’t telling you)
• She’ll start coming like crazy. Many of Dr. Sadie’s tips are designed to ignite the woman’s orgasms—including the wild and elusive “during intercourse” orgasm
• You and your lover are invited. Come discover how to reposition your bodies together for the most satisfying, fulfilling, mind-blowing lovemaking ever!

Product Description
Why is this today s best sex position guide? Instead of twisting you into impossible pretzel poses, Dr. Sadie illustrates hundreds of ways to shape your favorite sex positions into a more passionate orgasmic fit for the two of you. Comfortably! Even better, Dr. Sadie s fun, empowering hands-on coaching inspires intimate new explorations and sensational erotic touches. You ll reveal your lover s deepest sexual desires (and yours, too!) while triggering powerful orgasms like never before especially hers! Whether you re newly intimate together or long-time lovers ready to take the monotony out of monogamy this is the one lovemaking guide ready to create a lifetime of excitement, passion, confidence, supergasms, and un-wipe-offable smiles every morning after. Try it! And read it together…in bed!

Check out what’s inside Ride ‘Em Cowgirl!:
1. Your Passion Cocktail—How to shake awake your lovelife
2. Supergasms—The secrets to supercharging your orgasms
3. The Art of Penetration—Sensual entry secrets just for him
4. The Art of Being Penetrated—Sensual entry secrets just for her
5. Missionary Possible—New pleasure angles when HE’S on top
6. Doggystyle—Enjoy new come-from-behind victories
7. Ride ‘em Cowgirl!—Exciting moves when SHE’S on top
8. Spooning—Rediscover the world’s most romantic position.
9. Clitilicious—How to arouse her orgasm trigger every time
10. The G-spot—Finding and stimulating her deep pleasure spot
11. Backdoor Boogaloo—Why couples now say yes to this old taboo
12. The HE-spot—Finding and stimulating HIS hidden pleasure spot
13. Voluptuous Loving—Positions designed for our larger lovers
14. Pregnant Poses—Exciting positions for the soon-to-be-mom
15. Outercourse—An exciting alternative of good messy fun
16. Location! Location! Location!—Reasons to skip the bedroom
17. Vive La Difference—Exciting new ways to fit your lover to you
18. Sexy Playthings—Choosing the right sextoys for you

Appendix: Safety First—How to practice safer sex every time

Position Index—So many positions, so much time!
Excerpts from Chapter 9: “Clitilicious”

As opposite as the sexes often seem, women and men share one important sexual similarity—the workings of their sexual pleasure centers. Here’s why:

• The clitoris is micro-clustered with millions of the same type of erotic nerve endings found in the head of the penis.
• Men become erect during arousal—and so do women! As the clitoris swells with blood, it swells in size. Next time, feel it grow from small and subtle to round and firm as foreplay
  heats up.
• There’s rarely an orgasm without direct stimulation to the head of the penis. Likewise, there’s rarely an orgasm if you ignore the clitoris.
• The clitoris and the penis respond best when slippery-wet. Did you remember to pick up a good sex lube?

By understanding these similarities, it’s easy to see why it’s vital to stimulate the tiny but powerful clitoris directly, especially during intercourse. Guys…please read that last sentence again!

20 ways to supercharge intercourse

Between the two of you, you’ll find 20 warm, soft, active little clitoral stimulators that you’ll never misplace, need no batteries, and can lift the woman to the highest orgasmic peaks on earth.

They’re your fingertips—just add sex lube!

The fingertip secret is to touch the clitoris with slow, gentle caressing motions, matching the pressure and pace to the level of her arousal. Just be sure there’s lots of lubrication, start slow and soft, and you can’t go wrong.

Whoever is doing the arousing, vary your fingertip motions till you find a pattern that works: up ‘n’ down, side-to-side, round ‘n’ round, or even figure eights. For a real treat, try these motions with the tip of the penis.

About the Author
When you need answers about lovemaking, look to Dr. Sadie Allison, founder and CEO of Tickle Kitty, Inc., and ticklekitty.com. Dr. Sadie is a leading authority on human sexuality today, and author of the award-winning bestsellers Tickle His Pickle, TOYGASMS! and Tickle Your Fancy. She appears frequently on TV and radio, including E! Entertainment Television, Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, Dr. Drew s Loveline and the Bob & Tom Show. She is a sought-after speaker, and is often quoted in national magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Men s Health. She s a Licensed Doctor of Human Sexuality, having earned her degree from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She s also a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists (AASECT). Her Tickle Kitty brand of sex-help books, sensual pleasure kits and sex lubricants enable her to assist more individuals and couples find greater joys in sexual pleasure.

Editorial Reviews
Review
YEE HA! for Ride Em Cowgirl!, Sue Johanson, host of TV s Talk Sex –Sue Johanson, host of TV s Talk Sex

Read this together and enjoy the pleasures to come., Ian Kerner, Ph.D., Author, She Comes First –Ian Kerner, Ph.D., Author, She Comes First

Dr. Sadie Allison combines sex education with erotic temptation so everyone can learn and enjoy. She s one of the great emerging sexologists of the 21st century., Dr. Ted McIlvenna, President, The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality –Dr. Ted McIlvenna, President, The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality

I adore Abigail Jones just because she’s Abigail Jones but also because of her mind, her politics, her ethics, her writing, and for her sense of humor. I have written about Abigail before in the form of Restless Virgins and Abigail Jones and Abigail Jones’ Newest Fan is Josielle for “Restless Virgins”. I don’t know if you have heard about the Children’s Book, “My Beautiful Mommy,” but it is pretty appalling.

A new children’s book, “My Beautiful Mommy,” helps parents tell their young kids why mommy, who just came home from the hospital in bandages, will now have a new nose and a thinner waist. Whether it’s your next-door-neighbor, her daughter, or Heidi Montag, plastic surgery has become business as usual.

Well, I am not the only person who is completely appalled — so is the lovely Abigail Jones, who wrote this scathing op-ed for the International Herald Tribune, my personal newspaper of choice in Berlin, Germany, titled The Mother of Perfection:

A new children’s book, “My Beautiful Mommy,” helps parents tell their young kids why mommy, who just came home from the hospital in bandages, will now have a new nose and a thinner waist. Whether it’s your next-door-neighbor, her daughter, or Heidi Montag, plastic surgery has become business as usual. But it wasn’t always this way.

Back in Victorian America, women embraced the ideal of natural beauty, associating makeup with the artificial faces of prostitutes and showgirls. In the 1910s, when the flapper was the measure of femininity, Vogue signaled a significant shift, urging readers to (discreetly) use lipstick and rouge to enhance their beauty. Decades later, Clairol’s legendary 1956 ad campaign – “Does she or doesn’t she? Hair color so natural, only her hairdresser knows for sure” – publicized another turn; women in the Eisenhower years were hiding the gray, enhancing the red, and becoming blonde, but they still wanted it to remain a private matter. Unnatural changes to one’s physical appearance were meant to be a secret – unless you were Marilyn Monroe.

Today, however, blonde highlights have become as typical as red nails. There’s the “mommy makeover.” From blogs to Facebook to reality TV, private life is more public than ever. Given the obsession with appearance and perfection, beauty has gone public, too, and plastic surgery is the latest frontier. Such physical changes are practically impossible to disguise, but the point is that many women don’t want to hide them at all.

Ashley Tisdale got a nose job. So did Ashlee Simpson. There’s Joan Rivers’s face, Tara Reid’s stomach, and Pamela Anderson’s chest, all of which we’ve seen plastered across the pages of gossip magazines, the photographs magnified and analyzed for inconsistencies or modifications.

Most celebrities don’t end up like modern-day Frankensteins Jocelyn Wildenstein and Michael Jackson, yet this pursuit for eternal youth is real. Plastic surgery, however, is hardly just a Hollywood pastime.

Women all over the United States are altering body parts in search of physical perfection. By now, everyone knows what a “mommy makeover” is (in case you missed it: liposuction, tummy tuck, and breast lift, with or without breast implants).

Yet aiming to regain one’s pre-pregnancy body is only part of the story. Women turn to a range of surgical and nonsurgical procedures to help turn back time, and, last year, they constituted 91 percent of all cosmetic surgery patients.

How many of these women have children? It’s a critical question, because aside from the emotional effects plastic surgery can have on patients, how does a mother’s plastic surgery affect her kids?

Teenagers are growing up in a society where you can buy what you weren’t born with. After a brief recovery, you, too, can have a button nose and slim waist or lips like Angelina Jolie. MTV’s “I Want A Famous Face” exposed teens’ obsessions with beauty in possibly the worst of the plastic-surgery-meets-reality-TV glut.

The show, which aired in 2004, featured young people getting surgery to make them look like their favorite Hollywood stars. Amidst pop culture’s quest for extreme beauty, who do girls look up to? Their moms, the very women who now pay thousands of dollars to look just like their daughters.

Though “mother” has always been heralded as the heart of the family, the attractive – and gracefully aging – matriarch, the rules are changing. Some women will do anything to stop the clock. Whatever happened to the idea that it’s the daughter’s turn? Today, the mentality has flipped: It’s mom’s turn, too. But women’s efforts at preserving their youthful appearances often put them in competition with their children (hello Dina Lohan and Kris Kardashian).

The publication of “My Beautiful Mommy” shows that plastic surgery belongs on that laundry list of issues (drugs, sex, alcohol) for parents to discuss at the dinner table. Many mothers will continue to get plastic surgery, so as long as they care for their relationships with their kids, maybe that’s enough. After all, is it worse when mothers strive to perfect themselves or when they strive to perfect their daughters?

What makes all of this very cool and very cute is that there are 5 body-types that you can try stuff out on and then have the models do a little fashion show for you, which is a double-threat: this sort of thing is practical for women who order online and want to see how these garments ride while also being irresistible catnip to every single geek online as well, the sort of men who will probably end up making an order at their very first opportunity.

I am not a client but I am happy to contribute to the company’s success. I live in Berlin now but I appreciate the cheekiness and sauciness of the Brits when it comes to their marketing and ad strategies — the US is so impossibly prudish when it comes to ad campaigns.

Three cheers for Knicker Picker!

My goodness! I got a shout out from the lovely Josielle over at her blog, Oui Ma Fifi, about a book I recommended by my friend Abigail Jones, Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School. Josielle, Thanks for the shout out, I am sorry you were so tuned into the book that you lost a day to reading but I am so happy you enjoyed it! (Via My Promise to the AACPL)

Unfortunately for me I just received Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival at a New England Prep School by Abigail Jones and Marissa Miley. I say unfortunately because it’s a fascinating book and I’m having a hard time putting it down in order to do things I need to do before we leave. I can’t multi-task and read at the same time. I’m not that good. So THANKS Chris Abraham for the recommendation. Actually, I’m being serious, thanks Chris, it’s a good find.

I got to spend some time hanging out with Martin Marty at Renaissance Weekend a couple years ago. All I knew about him was gleaned from lunches, dinners, and panels together. During last night’s run, my friend Marty Marty started speaking into my iPod earbuds in the form of an interview on Speaking of Faith, America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty Download MP3, Listen, Podcast, and uncut interview with Martin Marty (1:38). God bless Martin Marty and thank you, Krista Tippett.

Transcript of America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty

Billboard:

Krista Tippett, host: I’m Krista Tippett, today a conversation about religion in America, with one of the great public theologians of our time, Martin Marty. For decades, Martin Marty has been watching developments that are now the stuff of daily headlines: the rise of religious fundamentalism across the world, the decline of the Protestant majority in American culture, and the vigor of evangelical Christianity in American life. Marty offers historical and personal perspective.

Mr. Martin Marty: I’ve often thought — I’ve often said, ‘If Billy Graham had been born mean, we’d be in terrible trouble,’ because he had so much power, so many gifts, and so on. One of my distinctions in religion is not liberal and conservative, but mean and non-mean. You have mean liberals and mean conservatives, and you have non-mean of both.

Ms. Tippett: Martin Marty on America’s changing religious landscape. This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us.

[Announcements]

Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett. For decades, Martin Marty has been watching developments that are the stuff of daily headlines and partisan rhetoric: the vigor of evangelical Christianity in politics, the decline of the Protestant majority in American culture, and the rise of religious fundamentalism around the world. Today we’ll probe the historical perspective of this leading scholar of religion. We’ll discuss what’s really new in religion as a force in American culture, politics, and daily life.

From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty.”

Martin Marty has been called the foremost interpreter of religion in America today. The National Book Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are just a few of the honors he has amassed. He’s served on U.S. presidential commissions and directed a visionary research project on religious fundamentalism. The University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught for 35 years, has created the Martin Marty Center to continue his work on public religion.

But for all his celebrity and scholarship, Martin Marty draws crucial insight from his own personal grounding in the mainstream religious life of American culture. He began his working life not as a scholar but as a pastor. He was born into a Lutheran family in 1928, in the Nebraska of Dust Bowl and Depression, where his father was a teacher and a church organist.

Mr. Marty: We were a churched family, of course, it was my father’s profession, and I’ve reminisced with some folks about how I got babysat next to the organ bench and had to sit through long funerals as a child, and somehow it didn’t turn me off from it all. I have a brother and a sister, and the three of us were well-schooled in literature and music and art, and also a very close basic sense of the faith of ordinary people, and I’ve tried to keep some sense of that in my lifework.

Ms. Tippett: Much of Martin Marty’s investigation into American religious life has centered on the dominant majority religion at the heart of our culture, the many denominations of mainline Protestant Christianity. But in our time, surveys show that majority is disappearing even as many Americans perceive the influence of evangelical Protestant Christianity to be growing. In his 2004 book, The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism, Marty describes the centuries from 1607 to 1955 as an era in American history in which “Protestants ran the show.” That began to change and take on new dimensions in the 1960s, an era vivid in the American popular imagination for political movements and the Vietnam War. For Martin Marty, it was also a decade of astonishing religious turning points whose significance went unnoticed. I asked him to walk me through the religious watersheds of the 1960s that began to erode the dominance of mainline Protestantism.

Mr. Marty: The biggest single event that hit this country happened in Rome, and that’s the Second Vatican Council. That is, Protestantism always knew what it was because it knew what Catholicism was, and it was over against that. Suddenly, Catholicism is friendly. It moves out into the public sector. The GI Bill puts Catholic young people into universities. They soon became the most educated group in the country, and Protestants were thrown off balance by that.

Secondly, it’s the beginning of the surge of evangelicalism within Protestantism, which — in those days, I imagine a lot of the Protestant leaders kind of sneered at Billy Graham and looked down their nose at tent revivals and so on and didn’t pay much attention to see how it was coming. And suddenly in the ’60s, I visited Berkeley, you had the Jesus People, little girls getting baptized in their bikinis, and change of worship from a certain kind of formality. The rock bands were coming in. And another huge infusion was an awareness of the religions of the East. You might keep going to your Presbyterian church, but you start doing yoga and you start doing Buddhist disciplines, etc. And you didn’t stop being Presbyterian, but you were of a different sort. You didn’t take it all for granted.

Ms. Tippett: I also think that something we’ve lost a memory of is how much tension there was between Catholics and Protestants, right, in this country, between different kinds of Christians, in a way that is absolutely unimaginable now. And I mean, personally for you, was that shift surprising?

Mr. Marty: I, in 1956, was invited to join the staff of The Christian Century, which was the towering Protestant voice. Today it still is, if not towering, a strong voice, but it’s ecumenical. It has a lot of Catholic writers; it has a lot of evangelical writers. But at that time, it was Protestant, and it was anti-Catholic. In 1950, on the cover of The Christian Century, there was an article, “Pluralism, A National Menace.” Pluralism was they’re worried about Catholicism. When I joined the staff five years later, pluralism was the best game in town. My first visits to campus, you always had one priest, one minister, one rabbi; that was called pluralism back then. But through that all, the Protestant still was in a privileged position. It simply was a kind of a reflex: ‘We’re the largest. We’re the ones who left our stamp on America’s literature, its poetry, its statecraft, etc.’

I’m going to say something in case I’m sounding critical.

Ms. Tippett: You can sound critical if you’d like to.

Mr. Marty: I’d be happy to be critical, but I don’t want to be distorting what I want to be. And that is to say, for all of that reflexive sense of establishment, I think I’m being a neutral, value-free historian when I say I don’t know any time in human history that somebody that powerful yielded that gracefully. In the previous century, Protestantism was often used — white Protestantism — to enslave, and it was used to justify the reservating of the Indians. But in the 20th century, Protestants have sort of said, ‘All right, you’re making your case. We’ll make room for you.’ They weren’t doing that much before the mid-’50s, but from then on in, they have done it even at the expense to their own identity.

Ms. Tippett: And I’m sure you’ve read these statistics that are now coming out, that perhaps today or tomorrow or six months from now, there will no longer be a Protestant majority in this country. And it depends on how people measure these things but, still, it seems significant when what is replacing the number of people who say that they’re Protestant are more people who say that they have no religion at all. In fact, it’s very high among people who were born in 1980 or later. And then there’s a category that’s doubled, of people who call themselves just Christian, right, who don’t identify with a specific tradition. How do you explain these statistics?

Mr. Marty: First of all, I think that Protestantism and Catholicism have very common fates here. They both have had trouble holding their younger generation. In some respects, the Protestants, Catholics, and Jews of the northern part of the United States share a lot with Canada, which is far less involved with church, or Western Europe, which is far, far less involved. Incidentally, that little section, I call it the spiritual ice belt: Western Europe, the British Isles, Canada and the northern U.S. We are really exceptions in the world, and we are really having a hard time catching up with understanding the rest of the world.

Protestantism is not in trouble around the world. I am a Lutheran, and we’ve had 300 years to get about eight million people. In 15 years from now, the African Lutheran churches will have added as many people as it took us 300 years to get. And that’s true of many other Protestantisms and Pentecostalisms. Every day there are 23,000 new Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, and half of them would be called Protestant, if often in the Pentecostal version. So around the world, it’s not a losing force. No longer, however, does it make the reference it once did to Western Europe and its daughter, the United States.

What will that mean for the United States? I don’t think we’re going to wake up some day and see total change. There’s a strange thing that hundreds of years after the vital life of a religion is past, there’s still a strong influence. We’re still living off some of the Greek religious influences. We’re living off a lot of medieval Catholicism. Our very universities are inventions of that. Our hospitals are inventions of that. So in a sense, meanings, ideas — in this case, ideas of liberty, freedom — that came very often from Protestants will live on even if not everybody goes to church. Still, the churches have been the places where these stories get renewed regularly.

Ms. Tippett: OK. I mean, I just wonder, personally, is this something that troubles you?

Mr. Marty: I don’t think I wake up in the morning having great worries about that. You can tell from what I’ve said I have a global view of humanity and of religion, and it moves around a lot. In the 1930s a great Catholic, Hilaire Belloc, said, “Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.” Well, that was true then. Now the cathedrals are empty, but their granddaughters are full in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. I certainly think that some things borne by the Protestant message would be a great loss. One of its gifts to America was its sense that we’re scripted. It’s a scriptural faith, it’s a Christ-centered faith, but it doesn’t mean that all virtue and all morality goes with you. And I think that’s been a nice irritating voice in classic Protestantism, which is, no matter how far along you’d come, God was holding you to a higher standard.

Ms. Tippett: Religious historian and author Martin Marty. One of the most popular of his over 50 books is Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in American. He is considered by some to be a bridge between the devotional and scholarly worlds of liberal mainline Protestantism and evangelical Christianity.

Ms. Tippett: Let’s talk about evangelical Christianity, which at the same time that there are some statistics of people becoming less religious, there’s certainly a sense that religion in some ways is more of a force now. I mean, I think there would be people who would take your phrase, “When Protestants ran the show,” and say that a certain kind of Christianity is becoming almost a controlling force or, you know, we have an evangelical Christian in the White House. I mean, how are you observing what’s happening now, with your broad view of things and of history?

Mr. Marty: I think those of us who write this kind of history are a little puzzled by the naiveté of the — well, people in journalism, in the media, in the general public, who think all this just got invented in the last four years and couple months. It has very deep roots. I trace it not to the ’20s. Nobody cared about the religion of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover. And Roosevelt was a mainline Protestant, Episcopalian, and he could draw upon these themes very much. Harry Truman was a salty Baptist. Truman and Carter and Clinton, the three Baptist presidents of the century, know the Bible best. They can just recite reams of it at any moment. Eisenhower started having Billy Graham come by. When we say “evangelical” today, it’s almost a long shadow originally of Graham. Today, evangelicalism is multi-headed. It’s all over the place. You can’t really generalize about it much anymore, but in its purer form, it came up in that way.

And, yes, in ’64, they really galvanized around Barry Goldwater and the kind of conservatism. And they didn’t get very far because he didn’t get very far, but they got angry about being dismissed and so on. In 1976, when Jimmy Carter ran, he’s the first one who would say, ‘I’m born again,’ first one to say, ‘I had a personal experience with Jesus,’ but they soon dropped him because they didn’t like him politically. Ronald Reagan was not born again, but he was friendly to them. But you could see this long trend coming.

Robert Handy, one of our major historians, once wrote a little book on The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935, because the mainline churches were already beginning to lose some of their membership, their status. They were depressed. But Joel Carpenter, another historian, has since pointed out, through it all the fundamentalists who’d been disgraced in the 1920s started organizing. They bought radio stations. They started Bible colleges. They had magazines. And they were building a world inside the world. And suddenly along come people like Billy Graham and presidents who favor it, and you have a very different kind of pattern, so that by the time — I would say by the time of Ronald Reagan, it became so vivid that the normal clergy in the White House would be evangelists, usually, until recently, of a rather moderate sort.

Ms. Tippett: It also seems to me, though, that a mistake is made in media in lumping together — as you said, evangelicalism is a — there’s a multiplicity of evangelicalism, and evangelicalism has a very different history and theology in some cases from Pentecostals and certainly from fundamentalists, although there is some overlap. How would you explain the distinctions?

Mr. Marty: All right. To the sociologists, the slightly more than one-fourth of America that would be called evangelical includes fundamentalists, evangelicals, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, and conservative Protestant denominations. And they really have tremendous differences except when they converge on highly focal and, let’s say, useful political points: gay marriage or something of that sort. But for the most part, they’re much more diverse.

Until around the turn of the last century, all Protestants were called evangelicals; all evangelicals were called Protestant. During the century, though, you started having the liberal churches accenting more the Biblical story applied to social life, economic life, cultural life, whereas those who were evangelical started dealing with private life, personal life. That still goes down in our own time.

Ms. Tippett: Why did that happen? How did that happen?

Mr. Marty: Well, I think the Protestants who ran the show had the sense that you can pass a law and get rid of slavery, you can join secular people to get antitrust laws, you could have child labor laws. All the while then, the revivalists, Billy Graham’s ancestors — the greatest being Dwight Moody, a Chicago evangelist — looked out at the world and saw it in trouble, and he said, ‘The world is a flood, and God gave me a lifeboat and said, “Moody, rescue all you can.”‘ And I think they concentrated on heaven, on saving souls. And then on moral issues, they chose those over which an individual could have control: You shouldn’t gamble. You shouldn’t swear. You shouldn’t drink.

Now what’s so interesting today is, what have come to be called social issues in recent campaigns are not social, they’re personal enlarged. In other words, the evangelicals and the fundamentalists and the Catholic conservatives concentrate on what goes on in the bedroom, and they don’t talk much the way classic Protestants did about should the government be involved with poverty, with waging peace, all of those kinds of things. It’s been their genius to organize that in our own time so they have great political power. The Republican Party in particular has seen that that can be amassed and help get votes for things outside of the bedroom.

Ms. Tippett: Although there certainly are Catholics and evangelicals who are mobilized around poverty and those more classic kinds of social justice issues.

Mr. Marty: Oh, my, yes. Catholics are very much upfront. And some of the strongest social involvements of today are among evangelical Protestants. But that kind of Catholic and that kind of evangelical and that kind of Protestant are themselves in a kind of a loose coalition today. Not as powerful as the personal morality people, but there’s a lot of power there. A lot of witness goes on.

Ms. Tippett: Religious scholar and author Martin Marty. I’m Krista Tippett and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today we’re exploring Martin Marty’s historical and personal perspective on the changing religious dynamics in American culture. For a half-century, he has studied the effect of increasing pluralism on American Christianity. He’s also been a visionary scholar of religious fundamentalist movements around the world.

Ms. Tippett: I want to talk about the Fundamentalism Project that you did but, I mean, before we actually talk about fundamentalism, I’d like to note something that I thought was very interesting. I was reading your address that you gave at the conclusion of that project to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. You titled it, “Too Bad We’re So Relevant: The Fundamentalism Project Projected.”

I’ll just read this quote: “The Fundamentalism Project scholars have found that fundamentalists tend to turn intimate and private issues into public affairs. Concern for the zones of life closest to the self — world view, identity, sexuality, gender differentiation, family, education, communication — tend to take priority over macroeconomic concerns.”

So my question to you is, is there something at the origins of fundamentalism that is also moving our culture as a whole right now?

Mr. Marty: OK. One quick word about fundamentalism. The fundamentalism we studied, to which you’re referring, is not your friendly neighborhood fundamentalist down the block. Our assignment was to study the militancies. When we started this, a historian friend said, ‘When you’re studying American fundamentalism, Marty, remember there are no machine guns in the basement of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.’ We were really studying a different kind of thing there, and yet there are certain things everybody had in common.

In the roots of fundamentalism in our culture, it started, of course, anti-evolution, anti-biblical criticism, and then it started taking a moral cast. But its moral cast, again, was the things that you should take control of. Virtue, advice were their big terms, not social justice and social change. Take what is a virtuous person; pass laws to promote that virtue. And I certainly am leaving a wrong impression if I’m suggesting that bedroom and clinical issues don’t have social consequences. They have huge social consequences. If divorce becomes more easy and grows and families disintegrate and children don’t have models in the parental world and they’re not educable, it’s a huge difference in the culture. So they don’t have a monopoly on it either in its invention or its present carrying out, but I think more of them restrict their energies to that and, again, it’s a very politically popular thing to do.

Ms. Tippett: But here’s my question: This description that you gave of fundamentalism, that people turn to intimate and private issues and that these take priority over macroeconomic concerns, could actually, I think, describe maybe a majority of Americans this year. So what I’m wondering is if there’s something that you see that gives rise to that tendency within fundamentalism that is actually alive in our culture as a whole right now.

Mr. Marty: I think two things are going on. On one level, around the world people are having trouble with their identity, their belief — whom do I trust, who trusts me? And so a phrase we used in The Fundamentalism Project, around the world, there is a massive, convulsive ingathering of peoples into their separatenesses and over-againstnesses, to protect their pride and power and place from others who are doing the same thing. Now, look at American life. We don’t do it the way they do it in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. We don’t veil women or anything like that, but we’re clustering more tightly. ‘We’re the virtuous, and they’re the vicious. We’re the good, they’re the evil.’

Ms. Tippett: I guess I’m still wondering how you understand the human and spiritual–maybe not theological, but the spiritual roots of this focus that seems to have become so definitive in our public life, on private issues of morality as the issues of morality.

Mr. Marty: I think that all through Christian history, anything related to sexuality was troubling and exciting. Clerical celibacy for 1700 years in Catholicism shows this, how much of an upheaval was caused when Martin Luther got married and when the Protestant clergy married. Every change in sexual mores is troubling because that’s so close to the roots of creation and transmission of life. Now what’s happened in our own time, I argue, every church body from the Mennonites to the evangelicals to the Roman Catholic Church are torn up over two words: sex and authority. By sex, I mean everything in the biological cycle, from in vitro fertilization or stem cell research, abortion, birth control, cohabitation outside of marriage. All these things are troubling all the churches, some of them sweeping…

Ms. Tippett: And dividing people in them.

Mr. Marty: Oh, yes. Some people sweep these things under the rug or close their eyes to it or whatever. But I think it’s very hard to get to the root of your part of the question as to why this longtime concern for personal morality, sexual morality, suddenly became so politically powerful. On one level, let’s be honest, it’s very exploitable. Everything else I’ve talked about — caring for peace, caring for justice, caring for feeding — these are all relative things. How much foreign aid budget you’re going to put into it, how much energy you’re going to put into it. With abortion, you either have an abortion or you don’t. You either perform gay right marriage or not. So it can be a big matter of identity and boundary, and I think that’s very popular in a time when people lose their identity and their boundary. I always say that the laws on gay rights and the practices toward them will be changed when every tenth evangelical minister’s daughter comes out. That is, when it gets close to you, you see these differently.

Ms. Tippett: So liberal — let’s say, Democrats and even liberal religious people who also have been struggling to find a voice in this last period will often hearken back to the days when it was the social justice issues that mobilized people and that had political force. Did those issues somehow achieve that force in the ’60s because they became more personal for people and, I mean, could you imagine that happening again?

Mr. Marty: Oh, I think so. The personalization of civil rights, you suddenly had a face: Martin Luther King. You suddenly had causes: the four little Birmingham girls who were bombed. These are very, very vivid things so that the president of the United States had to get on television one night, and after you’d seen the pictures of the dogs attacking children and police attempts to put down blacks in the South, suddenly it did become personal.

I should also say in fairness — I’m really trying to be as accurate as I can — these involvements of white Protestants in peace movements and civil rights movements that was never massive. That was often leadership. Some people would call them generals without armies. And there’s where I think we historians have kept saying a lot of evangelicals were up close, they were getting their hands dirty. The Salvation Army, for example, is an evangelical movement, one of the oldest. So we don’t have any absolute lines here at all. I just think that the sudden choice to organize on the virtue-vice line, the ‘we’re entirely right and they’re entirely wrong’ line, was very exploitable in politics, and in many, many states that has come to prevail as the main political agency. Nobody would have dreamed of that 20 years ago.

Ms. Tippett: Historian and author Martin Marty. This is Speaking of Faith. After a short break, more of his reflections on the nature of fundamentalism, separation of church and state, and the future of religion in America.

Mr. Marty: I once spoke in eastern Iowa and they said, ‘Well, you live in pluralism.’ I said, ‘Where’s the oldest mosque in American? It’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’ And they have Postville Lubavitcher Jews north of them, and they have transcendental meditation south of them, and they have gypsies east of them, and Amish west of them. That’s the America we have. It doesn’t mean it’s all easy, doesn’t mean everybody likes everybody.

Ms. Tippett: Visit our Web site, speakingoffaith.org. Subscribe to our free weekly podcast so you can listen to this and other archived programs again. Listen when you want, wherever you want. Discover more at speakingoffaith.org.

I’m Krista Tippett. Stay with us. Speaking of Faith comes to you from American Public Media.

[Announcements]

Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I’m Krista Tippett, today exploring America’s contemporary religious landscape with Martin Marty.

Martin Marty is a celebrated historian and interpreter of American religious life. This hour he’s been reflecting on the religious dynamics of contemporary America from his perspective of half a century of scholarship. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the present, he’s been involved in many large-scale analyses of American Protestantism in particular, including its cultural influence and its pluralistic impulses.

And from 1987 to 1993, well before religious fundamentalism had become a feature of daily news headlines, Marty directed a global fundamentalism project that was commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That project studied militant religious fundamentalist cultures around the world, and resulted in a five-volume publication. I asked Martin Marty what he learned that surprised him and what shapes his reaction to fundamentalism now.

Mr. Marty: The first thing we learned was that it is religious. That is, we didn’t let the psychologists in the first couple of years. This was a six-year study. We wanted to make sure that we caught the religious dimension and were convinced of that. And therefore fundamentalists, by and large, saw us as being fair. Our main instrument was the tape recorder. We sent out a couple hundred scholars around the world and they would ask, ‘Why are you this?’ and ‘Why do you raise your family that way?’ We studied it in 23 religions, by the way, Jains and Sikhs and everybody; it wasn’t just Christians and Muslims and Jews.

What else did we learn? Number one, fundamentalism is not the old-time religion. Fundamentalism is a very modern packaging. That is, it’s born when there’s an assault on values that you have and are uncertain about. There has to be a threat to you as a group identity or to you as an individual. So the most important word in fundamentalism is you react. Very few fundamentalists are concerned about things that traditionalists and regular conservatives and orthodox are. You can’t get a phone booth full of an argument on the most important Christian doctrines like the divine trinity and the two natures of Christ and the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. They care about evolution. They care about being left behind as the world ends. But there’s a very selective agenda. The whole left-behind theology is not the old-time religion. It was invented in the 1840s, which is really the modern world.

Ms. Tippett: For someone like you.

Mr. Marty: That’s right. I move glacially, not with a hurricane. And many other features were modern. Everywhere we studied them, they were better at the use of mass media than modernists were.

Ms. Tippett: Now, that’s interesting.

Mr. Marty: Yes. I once spoke in a church in — I think it was Dallas, and the pulpit looked like a 747 panel. A red light would go on, a baby’s crying in nursery 23C, and another blue light and that means a Jaguar’s lights were left on in parking lot D, and I could raise the temperature and the volume and everything else. And the minister in his sermon later on blasted technology, which he was using. In other words, he blasted the energy put into it, I suppose you’d say.

Well, I can go to a liberal Methodist church and I’m pretty sure the microphone won’t work. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution was done through tape recordings from France. Al-Qaeda is very much at home with the Internet.

Ms. Tippett: Very savvy, yeah.

Mr. Marty: Mass media helped produce fundamentalism because — first stage was born in the early radio; the second stage, Billy Graham, early television; the third stage now, Internet. What do you do? It comes at you with full force. You might try laws against obscenity and pornography. You might try to boycott Disney World. That doesn’t do much. You’re better off starting your own television networks. ‘Mass media are what messed up the intimacy of my family life; I’ll turn it right back upon itself.’

Ms. Tippett: So as late as on September 11th, 2001, the word “fundamentalism” became a part of our public vocabulary. And I’m curious, as you watched that happen and have watched all the discussion since then, having spent this good block of time studying fundamentalism a decade earlier, what have you found to be missing in our analysis of fundamentalism recently?

Mr. Marty: I think, unfortunately, the word is used to clump everybody together. The overuse of the word “fundamentalism” — I should be claiming a patent on it because we did those five big fat books on it. But one of the themes of those five books was there are an awful lot of things out there and there’s a lot of internal diversity. We would remind people — for example, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s had 450,000 members in Indiana, in the North, and every meeting had a Protestant minister, it had a cross, it had the open Bible, it had prayer, and the rest of Protestantism and the rest of Christianity would say, ‘That’s not a bit representative of the one billion of us out there.’ So I think when al-Qaeda came on the scene that was our first message: Show the diversities. Make it easier for moderates to be moderate. Don’t demonize the enemy. Do all that you can to show their varieties and to make it easy for them to be diverse.

Ms. Tippett: Esteemed religious historian and author Martin Marty. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty.”

Ms. Tippett: You’ve lived a good long time as a public theologian and a religious thinker, and you quote a lot of great thinkers in all your works. I wonder, if I asked you who you think of as the most formative and influential religious figures in American life in the 20th century, who would you want to describe?

Mr. Marty: Among the well-known people, I would have to say the two Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, who towered at Union Seminary and Yale when Protestantism was strong. They both were strong for the prophetic principle. They weren’t good at leading you into worship, though they did write prayers. But they were up close. They were in the thick of things.

Reinhold was a “cold warrior.” He was a consultant in the Truman era to the Dean Achesons and then the John Foster Dulleses. He’s there. But his interpretation of human nature — on one level, there was a group called Atheists for Niebuhr, but he once said, ‘You’ll never understand me if you don’t know that I believe in Christ crucified.’ He always went back to his roots in the gospel, but they also appreciated his analysis of human nature was so realistic, and his interpretation of history and the place nations played.

Ms. Tippett: Here’s a favorite quotation of the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, with which Martin Marty ended an address at the White House in 1998.

Reader: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

Ms. Tippett: From Reinhold Niebuhr.

My guest, Martin Marty, is describing some of the most interesting and influential religious forces in his lifetime.

Mr. Marty: I certainly would have to put Billy Graham in the front rank. And I may not have always been in the same camp, we’ve exchanged a few nice letters and have never had a sour word in 30, 40 years, but there’s no doubt about it that I’ve often thought — I’ve often said, ‘If Billy Graham had been born mean, we’d be in terrible trouble,’ because he had so much power, so many gifts and so on. One of my distinctions in religion is not liberal and conservative, but mean and non-mean. You have mean liberals and mean conservatives, and you have non-mean of both. But he’s not a mean. And I think you’d have to say that’s just been an enormous influence on many people.

Paul Tillich, of German import, was highly influential theologically. But I really think that people whose names you’ll never know were influential.

Ms. Tippett: Right. And who are some of those that are important to you?

Mr. Marty: Well, a custodian at a high school I went to. You’d come there in the morning and, as busy as he might be pushing a broom, he read your face better than the counselors did as to what your trouble was.

I personally have a lot of interest in the arts and I have hung out with people who are in music. Recently I was at the dedication of a new organ in honor of Paul Manz, a great, great organist who brought back something as corny-sounding as hymn singing into the great cathedrals. He and I have been on a couple of CDs together. I assure anybody listening that I don’t sing, I narrate. But certainly Paul Manz would be in my front rank of people who shaped me.

A theologian named Joe Sittler, not among the best-known theologians in America, blind in the last years of his life, nearly deaf, had a way with words and a way of discernment and a good-humored understanding of ethics that made the world richer for me.

Reader: A reading from Joseph Sittler in the 1986 book Gravity and Grace:

“St. Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions, makes a great and beautiful statement: ‘Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.’ Back of that statement lies a proposition which says that the human is created for transcendence … that we are by nature created to envision more than we can accomplish, to long for that which is beyond our possibilities.

“We are formed for God. …Faith is a longing. Humankind is created to grasp more than we can grab, to probe for more than we can ever handle or manage.

“…This restlessness may make us want to throw in the towel — or to pull up our socks. You can either be creatively restless, as before the unknowable, or you can simply collapse into futility. One of the goals of the Christian message is to join together the people of the way, the way of an eternally given restlessness, and to win from that restlessness the participation in God, which is all that our mortality can deliver.”

Theologian Joseph Sittler, from the book Gravity and Grace.

Ms. Tippett: You often mention a Dutch philosopher.

Mr. Marty: Oh, yes.

Ms. Tippett: How do you say his name?

Mr. Marty: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who was a Swiss-German Jew and Christian. He’s one of those geniuses that you can quote 20 pages of and then the 21st page is so nutty you’re not sure you can use it. But I’ll give a quick illustration of what I get from him. For example, he says — and this is extremely important in my life. He says you can write the history of learning in the western world in three Latin phrases.

The first is, in Latin, Credo ut intelligum — “I believe in order that I may understand.” It’s the birth of the universities in Europe, Bologna, Paris, Oxford. You believe to apprehend the universe; truth is divinely revealed and can be appropriated. And that’s the charter that believers should never be afraid of learning.

Secondly, modern learning, without which we couldn’t do, is Descartes. René Descartes. Cogito ergo sum — “I think, therefore I am.” Modern university is born on skepticism and doubt and inquiry and criticism, and you want that. I don’t want a med school in which they’re just taking things on faith. I want them to be extremely critical. But he said, ‘That, too, gets sterile.’ And so he says, in the 20th century, that we also have to learn that truth has a social character. I’m learning from this conversation with you. We learn from conversing with someone else, we learn from the meaning of “I” and “thou.”

And his third motto was Respondeo etsi mutabor — “I respond although I will be changed.” I’m not changed when I argue with somebody because I know an answer and I got to defeat them. I’m always changed in a conversation because they’re going to surprise me. It’s kind of a game, it’s kind of play. And I think that that’s the kind of learning we need more in the churches, in theology, in politics, and in personal life.

Ms. Tippett: You’ve done a lot of projecting in your life. I mean, I found one book written in 1971 where you were projecting the church in that century, and there was projecting in The Fundamentalism Project. I wonder what you have been wrong about, as you look back, and also I wonder, as you look forward, where you are finding your hope and nurture.

Mr. Marty: Well, looking ahead, it’s a very foolish thing for a historian to do because we have nothing to say until something’s happened. I mean, our specialty is the past. But when you’re involved in the worlds in which I’m involved, you do hang out with the people who do projecting and you go along with them. My biggest misses were I didn’t foresee three huge things: One, the explosion of evangelicalisms; number two, the highly individualized spirituality of which you spoke earlier, the people who are on a spiritual search but they’re doing it at the coffee shop, at the mega bookstore, or they’re doing it in a little chanting group, and they’re not doing it in the churches. That’s certainly a force I hadn’t foreseen. And then I think the vitality that has come with the new pluralism, and that’s because I did a lot of writing before 1965 when the immigration laws changed.

Ms. Tippett: That’s another one of those points in the ’60s that you say how important that was for our religious life, that we never talk about as a turning point in the ’60s.

Mr. Marty: Well, it’s huge. It was the year of the Selma March. It was the year of the engagement in Vietnam. It was the year of all the LBJ Great Society legislation, and Congress made a little change in the immigration laws, after 41 years. And it was just in time for all the boat people. It’s just in time for people from Africa to come direct, and so on. And it was just a huge change…

Ms. Tippett: Because it gave rise to a pluralism and a multiculturalism in a new way.

Mr. Marty: Yes. It makes new demands on hospitality, etc. Lewiston, Maine, suddenly has people from Somalia. I once spoke in eastern Iowa and they said, ‘Well, you live in pluralism.’ I said, ‘Where’s the oldest mosque in American? It’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’ And they have Postville Lubavitcher Jews north of them, and they have transcendental meditation south of them, and they have gypsies east of them, and Amish west of them. That’s the America we have. And when you go to a hospital today, your doctor’s probably Pakistani and your nurse is Filipino, and your clinician is Jewish, etc. That’s our future. It doesn’t mean it’s all easy, doesn’t mean everybody likes everybody, but it does mean that your interpreting is being done on a larger scale.

And, again, the two biggest of those — and I guess you could say I probably didn’t foresee that either, since we’re talking about what I didn’t foresee — is that half of everything we’re talking about today is done by women. And that was not true in the ’50s. When I was writing the third volume of my three-volume work on American religion, I said to my class, half of whom were women, ‘Help me out. I need women who are big in religion in the ’50s. I can’t have an index of all men.’ And they couldn’t find hardly anybody. And then one of them said, ‘I’ll bet they were seething.’ And I said, ‘OK, Julie, you’re going to right a history of seething women of the ’50s,’ and she found interesting stuff. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Catherine Marshall, all these people whose husbands are up front, and they’re seething. They’re all ready to change along the way. So I didn’t foresee how sudden and total that is.

It’s hard to think your way back to when very few women added work outside the home if they had children at home. And I think the…

Ms. Tippett: That’s a piece of pluralism we don’t really think about, in terms of how people are active in our public life. Women are more of a force in that way.

Mr. Marty: Oh, yes.

Ms. Tippett: Religious historian Martin Marty. We’re exploring how his historical and personal insights shed light on the religious dynamics of contemporary America.

Ms. Tippett: I think that there is a real sense among many people in our time that the whole relationship between church and state–as we define that, it’s not really just church and state anymore, right, it’s mosque, synagogue, church, and state, and many other variations of religious expression, but that that is shifting profoundly. But I wonder, with your perspective as a historian, you know, how new, how profound is this shift and how do you view this?

Mr. Marty: On one level, the image of the wall of separation never worked. We did never have a wall. For example, tax exemption of churches probably pays more to the churches in America than being established governmental churches in Europe ever did. I like James Madison’s word, there’s a “line of distinction,” a line of separation between religion and civil authorities.

I think of it more, too, as zones. Most people know when you’ve really overstepped. Most people don’t want religion utterly in a box. When the astronauts looked at the Earth on Christmas Eve, they read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” I think Madalyn Murray O’Hair and one or two other people protested, but most people thought, ‘That’s great.’ And when you have the space shuttle disasters, the president gets up and is at his most eloquent invoking religious language. Well, if you read real separation of religion and the state, you wouldn’t do that.

It gets more complex in some other areas. There is much more eroding of that line than there had been. I think, though, again, many of us who are nervous about crossing the line are also interested in religion in public life. I’m all for the teaching about religion in public schools. I think you should know that Martin Luther King was a black Baptist and what that did for him. You should know why the Puritans came. You should know why your Hindu neighbor does something different. But a lot of people want to convert that and say, ‘But we should teach the majority religion as the truth about life, and we should worship in that tradition.’ And that’s where we get nervous, and yet there’s a strong popular appeal. ‘If only we had prayer amendments. If only we had stipulated prayer.’ And here’s where a Protestant of the old school or a real Protestant would say, ‘Watch out. Give religion privilege and it gets corrupt. And look at Europe if you want a sample of that.’ So in my view, religion has its place all over the public sphere as long as it is persuasive and voluntary. And the minute it gets to be coerced and privileged and assumed, somebody’s going to run it at the expense of others or it’ll get fat and corrupt.

Ms. Tippett: Where do you look for nourishment and hope? Where do you look around and say, ‘This is exciting. I’m happy for my grandchildren to be living in this time’?

Mr. Marty: The most important thing in my world, when I mention public life I don’t mean only politics. A lot of people equate the two. Politics is one branch of it. Public life is town meeting, it’s the mall, it’s the supermarket, it’s the college, it’s all those things. And I’m greatly cheered by artists, by musicians, by people who live out their vocation. It’s almost a hobby for me to pursue people who just never get their name in print and do heroic things.

I’m cheered by — I never know how to speak without proper nouns. I like a group called Opportunity International, which is one of a number of microeconomic ventures around the world that lends money, put 140,000 people around the world to permanent work last year. Now, they’re religiously motivated people and they give me tremendous hope, as do the people on the other end, 92 percent of whom pay their loans back in two years, which inspires me. That kind of thing.

In the city where I live, Chicago, there are all kinds of groups that provide leadership in the inner city without condescension, without imposing on them. There are others that train people. In one of these groups, the Christian Industrial League, trains people, mainly Mexican men, to start their landscaping companies and women to start their homemaking companies — not just to do the work, but to start companies. And they plant the flowers that we see in the city of Chicago. Come see them.

And family is very important. I draw nurture from the family. We love friends. I can’t say enough — I once wrote a book about friendship. In a cold, brutal world, you can’t do much better for somebody else than to stimulate friendship. And the model there again is God. As distant as God’s supposed to be, God also condescends and is our 3:00-in-the-morning friend. So I’m nurtured by all those kinds of things.

Ms. Tippett: Martin Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. The Martin Marty Center has been founded there to promote public religion endeavors. He’s the author of more than 50 books, including, recently, The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism, When Faiths Collide, and the Penguin Lives volume on Martin Luther.

Contact us at speakingoffaith.org and read listeners’ reflections on this conversation. Also, sign up for the free Speaking of Faith podcast. You’ll never have to miss another program again. Listen on demand, when you want, wherever you want. Discover more at speakingoffaith.org.

The senior producer of Speaking of Faith is Mitch Hanley, with producers Colleen Scheck and Jody Abramson and editor Ken Hom. Our Web producer is Trent Gilliss, with assistance from Jennifer Krause. Kate Moos is the managing producer of Speaking of Faith, the executive editor is Bill Buzenberg, and I’m Krista Tippett.

All of my female friends talk about the episode on Sex and the City, Episode 9, Season 1, called “The Turtle and the Hare.” It’s the episode in which Charlotte becomes addicted to the Rabbit and all her friends have to perform an intervention. The Rabbit exists and it really does amaze and it is called the The Rabbit Pearl

I make it a regular gift; unfortunately, it really is as fulfilling as it is portrayed in Sex and the City, so be careful about giving it to a lover or girlfriend. Don’t do it. It isn’t worth it. If you are a woman, you need to buy the Rabbit Pearl, and you need this one. All the others are not the original Rabbit Pearl from Japan. Don’t buy a cheap knock off, buy the real thing from Tickle Kitty as it is described below:

Rabbit Pearl: $74.95
This high-quality Japanese-made toy stimulates all your pleasure zones! While the soft pink shaft swivels to stroke the walls of the vagina, the rotating pearls stimulate the vaginal opening and the soft bunny ears flicker against the clitoris. Individual variable speed controls allow you to manipulate the shaft rotation and the intensity of the vibration separately. Translucent pink vinyl, variable speed vibrations, 5 x 1 ½. Requires 3 C batteries (not included).

Rabbit Pearl vibrator from Wikipedia

Rabbit vibrator or Jack Rabbit vibrator is a vibrating and twirling sex toy made in the shape of a phallus with a clitoris stimulator fastened on the shaft. The name of the device is derived from the fact that the clitoris stimulator looks like a pair of rabbit ears. Rabbit Vibrators appeared recently as a response to the growing female needs in more pleasurable sex toys and gained a special popularity after one of the episodes of the world-known HBO’s TV series Sex and the City. Rabbit Vibrators allow receiving more pleasurable sensations, since they are designed for stimulating the vaginal erogenous zones and clitoris simultaneously. The device is applied for masturbatory purposes or during partner love plays.

Construction and types

The traditional Rabbit Vibrator is made in a pink color, but currently other colors are also available. Any Rabbit Vibrator consists of the main components: shaft and clitoris arouser. The producers have been inventing more complex constructions. The most remarkable discovery is the insertion of the rotating beads inside the shaft. The beads that can be made of plastic or metal rotate after turning the device on and help to stimulate the erogenous zones more intensively. Some vibrators’ shafts are covered by spikes, bumps or ribs for creating the similar effect.

Rabbit Vibrator with triple stimulation: for clitoris, vaginal and anal erogenous zonesThe base of the tool is usually a control panel. It contains several buttons and switches for speed control and functions selection. Some of vibrators are equipped by remote control with or without a wire. There can be also a few vibrating motors: for shaft, head and clit stimulator activated and controlled independently. This device is developed for the needs of different customers whose respond to the sexual stimulation may be not the same.

The clitoris stimulator attached to the shaft is designed mostly in the shape of bunny ears. But there can be also other variants: dolphins, monkeys, birds and just simple figures. The main purpose of these stimulators is to snuggle against the clitoris and provide it with the proper stimulation.

Rabbit Vibrators can be distinguished by its functions: waterproof, multi-speed, rotating, gyrating, escalating, pulsating, quiet, etc. Multi-speed devices are much comfortable in use, since the speed level can be adjusted from slow to high for the intensity a user wishes. Waterproof function allows using the toys in or out of the water. There are some models including all these functions in one single device, or just some of them. There can be also some Rabbit Vibrators of the triple action, i.e. they include an anal stimulator on the other side of the shaft.

Materials

Normally Rabbit Vibrators are made out of a jelly-like substance (poly vinyl chloride), silicone (semi-organic polymer), rubber (elastic hydrocarbon polymer) or latex (natural rubber) materials. They are soft and pliable enough to create the feel of the real body. Silicone vibrators are easier to clean and care for, since this material is not porous, therefore no bacteria or foreign matter remains on the surface. Silicone retains heat and has no odor. Jelly material is porous and cannot be sterilized in boiling water and has a scent of rubber that some find unappealing. In order to escape this smell some producers aromatize the products with more pleasurable scents. In adult sex shops, Rabbit Vibrators made from vinyl, plastic, metal, elastomer materials can be also found. They are much less porous than jelly, or non-porous at all, but the texture is smooth and firm.

Various manufacturers have been looking for more perfect materials that could respond to the demands of the customers in more pleasurable materials. The up-to-date researches in this field helped to create such patented materials as Crystalessence (thermo plastic rubber), Futurotic (thermal plastic elastomer), Jel-Lee (poly vinyl chloride), AquaGel (poly vinyl chloride), SoftSkins (thermal plastic elastomer) and some others.

Use and Pleasure

Rabbit Vibrators has been designed especially for women’s pleasure with attention to the double stimulation of clitoris and g-spot as the most sensitive areas in female body. They are used for vaginal penetration with the rabbit-shaped stimulator positioned against the clitoris or against the anal region. This is the most common method of application. Rabbit Vibrators are used also for anal stimulation as any penetrating sex toy. Therefore men can become users as well.

During use of the Rabbit Vibrator the proper lubrication may be required, because lack of moisture may cause irritation and painful sensations. Many vibrators come with the suitable lubricant in the package.

What is the most natural thing to have in the bathroom, right next to the tub? A rubber ducky, that’s what. The rubber ducky is iconic in America. What else is iconic in America? The vibrator! What could make the rubber ducky better? Mating the rubber ducky with a vibrator. When I saw the I-Rub-My-Ducky Vibrator I was astounded and amazed. A rubber ducky vibrator is a brilliant idea!

Read the Sesame Street Rubber Ducky song with the I-Rub-My-Ducky Vibrator in mind:

Rubber Ducky

Rubber Ducky, you’re the one.
You make bath time lots of fun
Rubber Ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.
Rubber Ducky, joys of joys
When I squeak you, you make noise
Rubber Ducky, you’re my very best friend, it’s true!

Everyday when I make my way to the tubby
I find a little fella who’ cute, yellow, and chubby.
(rub-a-dub-a-dubby)

Rubber Ducky you’re so fine
And I’m lucky that you’re mine
Rubber Ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.

Everyday when I make my way to the tubby
I find a little fella who’s cute, yellow, and chubby.
(rub-a-dub-a-dubby)

Rubber Ducky, you’re so fine
And I’m glad that you’re mine
Rubber Ducky I’m awfully fond of…
Rubber Ducky I’d like a whole pond of . . .
Rubber Ducky I’m awfully fond of you.

Waterproof I-Rub-My-Ducky Vibrator $19.95

Why is this rubber ducky smiling? Better yet, why will YOU soon be smiling?

For the sex toy ruse of all time, now you can actually leave your personal vibrator out for all to see. Yes, it looks like a rubber ducky, and floats like a rubber ducky, but it’s actually an underwater clitoral stimulator that’ll turn your bubble bath into your own orgasmic Cloud 9!

Just fill the tub, grab your rubber ducky, squeeze his back, and steam up the mirrors! The perfect gift for the woman with a sense of adventure and a sense of humor! Quack. Quack.

Floating waterproof rubber ducky. Whisper quiet. Requires 2 AA batteries (included).

I reread this article, DC Women Only See the DC Men That They Let Themselves See, and I was very excited to revisit it. I hope you enjoy it. I don’t even remember reading and and receiving it. It was based on DC Men and the Number One Wife. Got a Wonkette link from it, too.

In response to Dating DC Men and Number One Wife, a buddy of mine responded with his own experience. “Simply put, DC Women only see the DC Men that they let themselves see, and so they can’t bitch when they get treated badly or when they can’t find a good guy,” is my favorite line.

“Now, I am not really the prototypical DC Male, being, as I am, prone to monogamy even when I have a friends-with-benefits (I mean, really, who has the time to juggle any more?). And, certainly, my FWB is something of a relationship placeholder until I meet someone with a slightly better mix of sex appeal and conversation skills (and who likes to play cards).”

“I think the DC Male could just as easily be described as a natural response to the liberation of women in this town. Let’s face it, in DC there is always someone smarter, more powerful, more interesting … hell, the itinerant nature of the town virtually assures a fresh flow of the new and novel. How does your average male compete with the knowledge that 1) the very next reception you attend could also be the beginning of that whirlwind love affair that just so happens to include your present ‘other’ and someone who is definitely not paying your mortgage; and 2) that your present ‘other’ is smart enough to know that, at least in some respects, she can always do better (or, at least, she has now been taught that settling is for Midwestern girls, thus the buffet line of sample men is the perfect place to run roughshod over any occasional gentleman who may cross her path)? ”

“DC is the perfect pressure-cooker for irrational romance…better, dare I say, than even New York. And as hard as most men may argue it, women are simply better at getting swept away in the ‘moment’ with that suave, multi-lingual, unbuttoned-button-down jackass who will just as soon give them the clap as he would to give them commitment.”

“Simply put, DC Women only see the DC Men that they let themselves see, and so they can’t bitch when they get treated badly or when they can’t find a good guy. Good, kind, single guys abound … they are just not going to walk up to you at Salsa night and give you some crap line to show how cool they are. They are going to be hanging with their friends, because a few actual and good friends are so terribly hard to find these days. They are going to be reading a book with a beer in the corner, because a good lay may fade from memory, but knowledge lasts forever (or until Alzheimer’s). They are going to be at a play or the symphony, because true beauty is felt and embraced by the soul, not just through the eyes and the pecker. They are going to look boring at the outset, because they have felt some part of the pain of this world and have gained the wisdom of experience in not blithely opening themselves up to another can of romantic whup-ass.”

“But, in the end, they are the ones who are going to look after everyone else, who will answer the most pressing and important questions of our times, who will raise the next generation of good people. In short, they are the most interesting and desirable of them all, because they are real. And, if DC Women can’t seem to find a good guy, then fuck ‘em. Call it modern natural selection, because I know a good DC Male can be happy and single, and no matter who they are with, the typical DC Woman will always be alone.”

This buddy of mine is no nice guy and has discrete lovers and friends-with-benefits and so forth, which does nothing to change the fact that he is indeed earnestly searching from miss right.

I was rereading Dating DC Men and Number One Wife and realized that the acronym for number one wife is NOW.

“Now” has a lot to do with it, I think. Proper relationships are time- and energy-intensive. We Washingtonians are an awful mixture of a-type, ambitious, workaholic, social, neurotic, and never-satisfied and number one wife allows a man to have a wife without needing to maintain one.

Divorce makes me so sad but the idea of post-divorce dating makes me suicidal.

“We separated as friends a year ago, sharing custody of two teenagers who adjusted surprisingly well to the split. I’ve got the big house in the ‘burbs, and Craig and his girlfriend Heather live in his condo on the lake (by my calculation, she was two years old on our wedding day, I feel compelled to mention). Something really shifted inside me when Heather moved into Craig’s place. I realized that it was time to give up the secret fantasy that Craig and I might get back together again someday. That’s when I finally took my wedding picture off the shelf in the family room and packed it away and said to myself, it’s time to move on. So that’s what I’m doing.”

I don’t know if Sarah Susannah Katz means to sound guileless, but in Single in the suburbs her experience with Match.com just sounds so desperate while her ex just kindly moves on.

Then, Single in the suburbs, part 2 — egad!

“I begin to think about how my ex-husband Craig plunged back into dating with a vengeance as soon as we separated. Like I’ve said, this is a small town, and I received almost daily debriefings from well-meaning friends. They’d share accounts of my ex-husband’s escapades, which included dating three out of five waitresses at what used to be our favorite downtown seafood restaurant and a romp in the woods with a history professor at the departmental barbecue.”

Well, my advice for Sarah Susannah Katz is to throw away all of her jeans — they’re all mom jeans, I assure you, and get some COH or 7s butt jeans.

Of course, all the dates in part 2 are disasters. Must have been the jeans.

Single in the Suburbs, part 3

Oh, and I would like to translate what your friend Kevin actually meant when Kevin said:

“I’m still raw from a break-up, it’s too soon for me to get serious. So if it’s OK with you, I’d like to try friendship first. How does that sound?”

What Kevin actually means is:

“I’m still enjoying being totally single and having lots of sex, it’s too soon for me to get serious at all. So if it’s OK with you, I’d like to try just having lots and lots of casual lemming sex in the form of friends with privileges which will go nowhere because I will never respect you and leave you at the first sign of someone more fitting to be my girlfriend and next wife. How does that sound?”

Poor baby, poor baby. Sweet poor Sarah Susannah Katz.

In response to Dating DC Men and Number One Wife, a buddy of mine responded with his own experience.

“Simply put, DC Women only see the DC Men that they let themselves see, and so they can’t bitch when they get treated badly or when they can’t find a good guy,” is my favorite line.

“Now, I am not really the prototypical DC Male, being, as I am, prone to monogamy even when I have a friends-with-benefits (I mean, really, who has the time to juggle any more?). And, certainly, my FWB is something of a relationship placeholder until I meet someone with a slightly better mix of sex appeal and conversation skills (and who likes to play cards).”

“I think the DC Male could just as easily be described as a natural response to the liberation of women in this town. Let’s face it, in DC there is always someone smarter, more powerful, more interesting … hell, the itinerant nature of the town virtually assures a fresh flow of the new and novel. How does your average male compete with the knowledge that 1) the very next reception you attend could also be the beginning of that whirlwind love affair that just so happens to include your present ‘other’ and someone who is definitely not paying your mortgage; and 2) that your present ‘other’ is smart enough to know that, at least in some respects, she can always do better (or, at least, she has now been taught that settling is for Midwestern girls, thus the buffet line of sample men is the perfect place to run roughshod over any occasional gentleman who may cross her path)? ”

“DC is the perfect pressure-cooker for irrational romance…better, dare I say, than even New York. And as hard as most men may argue it, women are simply better at getting swept away in the ‘moment’ with that suave, multi-lingual, unbuttoned-button-down jackass who will just as soon give them the clap as he would to give them commitment.”

“Simply put, DC Women only see the DC Men that they let themselves see, and so they can’t bitch when they get treated badly or when they can’t find a good guy. Good, kind, single guys abound … they are just not going to walk up to you at Salsa night and give you some crap line to show how cool they are. They are going to be hanging with their friends, because a few actual and good friends are so terribly hard to find these days. They are going to be reading a book with a beer in the corner, because a good lay may fade from memory, but knowledge lasts forever (or until Alzheimer’s). They are going to be at a play or the symphony, because true beauty is felt and embraced by the soul, not just through the eyes and the pecker. They are going to look boring at the outset, because they have felt some part of the pain of this world and have gained the wisdom of experience in not blithely opening themselves up to another can of romantic whup-ass.”

“But, in the end, they are the ones who are going to look after everyone else, who will answer the most pressing and important questions of our times, who will raise the next generation of good people. In short, they are the most interesting and desirable of them all, because they are real. And, if DC Women can’t seem to find a good guy, then fuck ‘em. Call it modern natural selection, because I know a good DC Male can be happy and single, and no matter who they are with, the typical DC Woman will always be alone.”

This buddy of mine is no nice guy and has discrete lovers and friends-with-benefits and so forth, which does nothing to change the fact that he is indeed earnestly searching from miss right.

I was rereading Dating DC Men and Number One Wife and realized that the acronym for number one wife is NOW.

“Now” has a lot to do with it, I think. Proper relationships are time- and energy-intensive. We Washingtonians are an awful mixture of a-type, ambitious, workaholic, social, neurotic, and never-satisfied and number one wife allows a man to have a wife without needing to maintain one.

“How is it that there are single girls everywhere and single guys nowhere?” one DC girl asked another. The second girl responded, “I think it is more that most guys are always ‘dating’ someone…but also somehow single too.”
Men in DC generally have a discrete lover tucked away somewhere. I call this woman number one wife. The term comes from polygamy where there are many wives but only one favored wife. It explains why DC men are so cavalier. In a way, we are already married. We cannot be crushed if a first date doesn’t work out. There is nothing to lose.

Until that magic moment when the DC man walks into a room and falls for the one, number one wife isn’t going anywhere. The DC man can easily make happy hour, hit the gym, hang out with the boys, go on a date, and then – smoky and a little drunk – go over to number one wife, have sex, and then fall asleep under the covers. Warm, comfortable, and snuggly together – totally at ease and fully accepting.

If number one wife doesn’t become wife number one, then she is often the second wife because this relationship was always based on mutual acceptance, making it durable. Love is messy. The relationship with number one wife readily survived all the common things that absolutely derail marriages.

When dating the DC man you can be sure he is dating – and sleeping with – other people even if you are already intimate. There is probably a number one wife in the picture.

Rest assured, number one wife knows all about you.