srparedon – editorials (archive)

April 2003

April 1, 2003; Washington, DC–These perilous times have led record numbers of you to speak out. You have taken to the streets, to the Internet, and to countless town meetings and civic gatherings to articulate your opposition to unnecessary war. I assure you that I, George Walker Bush, your President, elected by almost as many votes as the front-runner, have heard you.

“Thoughtful, sober deliberation leads me to conclude that the times demand a change in direction. Foolish pride will not keep us on a collision course with disaster. It is never too late… Continue reading →

March 2003

High school civics class teaches that courts protect individuals’ civil liberties. Defending the Bill of Rights– with its guarantees of freedom of expression, equal treatment under the law, and protection from arbitrary state power– is, we are told, best done by a judiciary insulated from political pressures endured by other branches of government. And, indeed, the courts have at times protected freedoms that others have sought to erode.

But it is a myth that courts are immune from popular influences. The anti-sex hysteria that has plagued our country for the past quarter century has tainted… Continue reading →

February 2003

Nowadays, almost anyone calling masturbation “self abuse” does so for comic effect. Only a few religious zealots continue to promote the idea that masturbation constitutes literal abuse, leading to insanity, infirmity, and­ eventually­ eternal damnation.

But not so long ago, “self abuse” was what many called masturbation. Religious leaders were joined by medical “experts” in warning of masturbation’s ills. Those who defiled their bodies through self abuse were told to expect feeblemindedness, impaired vision, a host of nervous disorders, persistent fatigue, and even cancer. For treating their God-given bodies with disrespect, self abusers would also… Continue reading →

January 2003

Imagine yourself at home some evening, in your bedroom, getting down to some serious love-making with your boyfriend. You’ve played often, so you know just how to use your mouth and cock and ass to get each other off real good. Just when you’re as connected as two guys can get, in burst the police, guns drawn­ “You’re under arrest for deviate sexual intercourse­ you’re coming with us.” Then you and your boyfriend are cuffed, taken to the police station in your underwear, and charged with sodomy. You are found guilty, and face a fine and… Continue reading →

December 2002

Turn to the back of this magazine and you’ll find dozens of personal ads from prisoners. And every month hundreds of readers respond to these ads, marking them as some of the most popular ads in the personals section.

From time to time, we get a letter or call from a reader upset that his prisoner penpal turned out not to be the lean 28-year-old advertised, or that he was asking for money, or that he was actually incarcerated for life and thus unlikely ever to be able to share in the romantic dreams outlined… Continue reading →

November 2002

In the mid-1980s, some psychotherapists began peddling “repressed memory therapy” (RMT). According to them, sexual abuse was often so horrific that victims would banish memory of it from their consciousness, sometimes for decades. Only with the help of a therapist trained in RMT could patients troubled by a wide-ranging host of symptoms get at the source of their woes; almost invariably, RMT practitioners found that their patients had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a male authority figure. That a patient did not initially remember such abuse was taken as evidence of how terrible the… Continue reading →