Thousands of lives will be saved and dozens of airline crashes will be avoided thanks to clever intervention of Turkish Airlines, Europe’s fourth-biggest carrier. Along with a ban on nail polish, Turkish Airlines is banning lipstick for female flight attendants. A spokesperson for Turkish Airlines said the new ban is in keeping with the company’s love of pastel shades in all uniforms. Vivid colors on the part of the cabin crew impairs visual integrity.

Apart from the beneficial effect on visual integrity, the ban will please the 99% of the country that is Muslim. Of course that is only an unintended byproduct of the brilliancy. Turkish men are like bulls who go mad at the sight of red. Even more so since bulls are really colorblind. Turkish men and Muslim men generally who see women in red have a 500% higher rape incidence than men who are spared the disgusting sight. Earlier this year, The flag carrier caused a stir when newspapers published mockups of a new Ottoman-style uniform for stewardesses with ankle-length dresses. After lots of protest, the insistence on these uniforms was dropped.

Bill Maher has done a wonderful show satirizing the fashion industry in Muslim countries. Catch it, if you somehow can.

I had a 36 hour pass and since I was stationed at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, it was a quick bus ride home. For some reason, instead of going to my actual home, I found myself in an apartment on Howard Avenue in the heart of Brownsville. Believe me, I have no idea why. Five guys were standing around naked. One stood on a small ottoman, playing the Mozart clarinet concerto while below him a young woman was sucking on his penis with real vigor. I remember it was causing him some difficulty hitting all the right notes, and he almost fell off. I knew only one of these five guys and that fellow was singing his own version of the famous Neapolitan street song, Funiculi, Funicula popularized by Mario Lanza. Only this guy was substituting the words “stinky finger, stinky finger.” Granted that in this company, I was out of my depth so I stood there amazed, (astounded and astonished, too) for ten minutes or so and then left. Someone called, “Don’t leave until you first have some hits of mary jane (marijuana). Politely I declined, as I always did and still do. The episode was short but the memory lingers on.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJd-SHzqUC4 If you can sing even a lick [pardon the expression in this context] you’ll know when you should jump in with the revised lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3EJqvKhYzY A half hour of your time well spent. That woman. What’s her name, who sleeps in my bed every night went to college on a full scholarship because she could play this damn thing like nobody’s business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB6U3rzcGkU

The big news for the past several days is that the Supreme Court has finally gotten around to holding oral arguments on same-sex marriage. The bad news is that hundreds of people have been gathering day and night on the steps of the Supreme Court, holding placards and demanding something be done.

What exactly do they want done? Oral arguments are a charade. Not a single justice has not yet made up his mind on the matter. The arguments are only an occasion for the justices to show off their skills at rudeness. I cannot recall a time when any of the attorneys was able to get out three sentences without being interrupted. It is not unusual for interruptions to begin during the first sentence. The justices don’t want to hear what the presenters have to say; moreover, the presenters are given a limit time in which to make their pitch. The interruptions do not stop the clock. In a few months, the Court will hand down its decision on both the states’ laws and the federal one. That’s the time for people to show up singing and screaming. The only justice who has it right is Clarence Thomas because he alone never participates in the questioning. People think this is because he is too dumb to think of questions. Not so. Clarence is on record as saying that oral argument time is just a show that proves nothing. He is right.

Also overlooked is the fact that the gay rights people are absolutely crazy. What they want is to have the same rights as heterosexuals. Good grief! Is there anything worse than heterosexuality? I speak as an insider.

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Okay, here is something worse –newspaper articles about gay marriage. Read this one and weep: [From the Economist.]

“In June 2008 the Supreme Court of California overturned a gay-marriage ban, making it the second state (Massachusetts was first) to legalise such unions. Some 18,000 couples took the opportunity to get married before Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that banned gay marriage, won the support of 52% of the state’s voters at a referendum five months later.

But the passage of Prop 8 turned out to be just another step in a complex three-way jig between politicians, judges and campaigners. Gay-rights groups successfully challenged the law, first in a San Francisco district court and then on appeal. A stay was granted, meaning Prop 8 remained in force, as the case made its way through the judicial system; on March 26th it became the first gay-marriage case to reach the Supreme Court. (A second, on the Defence of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to married same-sex couples, was due to be heard on March 27th.)

Many of the 80 minutes the court devoted to Prop 8 were given over to procedural discussions of “standing”—the question of whether the proponents of the amendment had the right to argue their case in court. Californian officials have declined to defend it, so it has been left to ProtectMarriage.com, a pro-Prop 8 group, to make the case. (Similarly, Barack Obama’s administration will not advocate for DOMA; congressional Republicans will do so instead.) In 2011 California’s state Supreme Court granted standing to the Prop 8 backers. But some legal eagles have urged the Supreme Court to rule otherwise, and the justices appear receptive.

Some of the crowd who queued for five days to witness the hearing must have been disappointed by the focus on process. But to judge by their hand-wringing, when the justices issue their verdict in June it will not be a surprise if they reject the case on these grounds. (That would leave the district-court ruling overturning Prop 8 in force, although further legal challenges could follow.) Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote between the court’s liberal and conservative wings, seemed “deeply conflicted,” says Matt Coles of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lobby group. At one point the judge wondered if the court had erred in agreeing to hear the case at all.

If standing is granted, the justices then have several options. Most dramatic would be a ruling that all state bans on gay marriage contravene the equal-protection clause of the 14th amendment to the constitution. This “50-state solution” is sought by the Prop 8 plaintiffs and gay-rights groups, but it did not get much of an airing before the court.

Less sweeping would be the “nine-state solution”: to overturn bans in California and the other states (including Colorado, which recently passed a civil-union law) that recognise same-sex unions but fall short of marriage. This curious argument, proposed by the White House and presented in court by Donald Verrilli, the solicitor-general, was attacked by both wings of the court. The odds against it have lengthened.

The last option is a California-only verdict. The justices could uphold the appeals court’s ruling that to grant the right to marry only to withdraw it later is unlawful. That would overturn Prop 8 without implications for other states. Or they could uphold the will of California’s voters and leave the law in place. That would disappoint thousands of couples who hope to wed (although polls suggest that Prop 8 would soon be overturned at the ballot box anyway), but would provide solace to states that wish to preserve their bans.

Religiosity strongly predicts opposition to gay marriage: 84% of weekly churchgoers voted for Prop 8. But arguments based on faith, tradition or squeamishness cannot be adduced in court. This has forced advocates into awkward corners. It is in the state’s interest, Charles Cooper, lawyer for ProtectMarriage.com, told the Supreme Court, to keep marriage heterosexual in order to regulate procreation. “Nobody thinks that’s what marriage is about,” says Michael Klarman of Harvard Law School, “but that’s the argument they must make.”

What if the court were to rule expansively? Gay-marriage opponents warn of another Roe v Wade that cuts off debate and poisons politics for decades. Their foes cite Loving v Virginia, the 1967 case that overturned bans on interracial marriage without triggering much resentment. That seems the better comparison, and not only because it concerns marriage. Nearly half of Americans oppose gay marriage but more back it, and their numbers are growing quickly (see chart). Fully 64% think gay marriage is inevitable.

If not rights, then votes
It is not hard to see why: support among almost every demographic group is growing, and youngsters are the most liberal of all. Sniffing the political wind, last month many Republicans called on the justices to ditch Prop 8. Hillary Clinton has added her support. In the 2004 election cycle Republicans used gay marriage to whack Democrats; the reverse could happen in 2016.

The change in public opinion found political expression four times over last November. After a string of losses for campaigners Maine, Maryland and Washington became the first states to legalise gay marriage via the ballot box, and voters in Minnesota rejected a proposed ban. Legislatures in six other states and Washington, DC, have approved gay marriage. Several others, including Illinois and Minnesota, are debating bills; some could pass before the court’s ruling.

Both sides of the debate have found uses for this turnaround in fortunes. Six months ago defenders of “traditional marriage” were crowing about their electoral invincibility; they now say America is conducting a vigorous democratic debate that judges should allow to run its course. This argument may appeal to cautious justices.

As for gay-marriage campaigners, their successes have helped repair a split that emerged when the Prop 8 case was filed in 2009. Backers argued that marriage was a civil right that should not be held hostage to electoral whims. Others, fearing backlash from a premature court ruling, preferred a quieter approach, including state-by-state political campaigns.

The political track now looks more viable, but the growth in support that made election wins possible has also reduced fears of backlash. “The momentum on the ground makes people less concerned about whether we are before the court before we should be,” says Brian Moulton, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, a lobby group. The cause has been helped by ever-louder support from Mr Obama, who appears to see gay marriage as the great civil-rights struggle of the era.

If so, it is being waged for couples like Ms Healey and Ms Dávalos. They plan to marry if Prop 8 is scrapped, but without fanfare. “Marriage is much more serious than a ‘yippee-for-me’ day,” says Ms Healey. The importance of marriage, she adds, is the only thing her opponents get right.”

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If you read this article from beginning to end and didn’t skip anything, you deserve a coconut whip made by the loving hands of Jungle Jim himself.

Only Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas’s pubic hair dresser know for sure but my guess is that Anita would say, “Sir, I knew King David, and you are no King David.” Such issues become intriguing in the light of the recently published, God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis. By Tom Hickman. Square Peg; 234 pages; £12.99. Buy from Amazon.co.uk.

Richard Rudgley, a British anthropologist, admitted on a television programme some years ago, that once you start noticing them, you “tend to see willies pretty much everywhere”. They are manifest in skyscrapers, depicted in art and loom large in literature. They pop up on the walls of schoolyards across the world, and on the walls of temples both modern and ancient……Yet the penis has also been shamed into hiding through the ages. One night in 415BC, Athens’s street-corner statues were dismembered en masse. Stone penises were still causing anxiety in the late 20th century, when the Victoria and Albert Museum in London pulled out of storage a stone figleaf in case a member of the royal family wanted to see its 18-foot (5.5-metre) replica of Michelangelo’s “David”.

Tom Hickman, a Sussex-based writer and journalist, tells the story of its ups and downs with enthusiasm and a mostly straight face in “God’s Doodle.” I like the theme but not enough to investigate. Like any onanist, you are on your own.

In July 1994, Megan Kanka, a seven-year old New Jersey girl, was raped and murdered by her neighbor, a man twice convicted of sex crimes. All across the nation, outraged parents wanted assurances that this sort of thing would never happen again. Two years later, Bill Clinton signed a bill requiring all states to take action. “Megan’s laws” were born. Typically, these laws require states to notify communities when sex offenders move into their neighborhoods and create lifelong registries to track them. Unfortunately, the laws do not discriminate among the thousands of ways someone can offend. A father who sodomizes his daughter and a 20-year old boy who has sex with his 14-year old girl friend can be put on the same register.

“Sex offender” is an umbrella term for persons who have nothing in common, but the prevailing misconception is that all sex offenders are alike. Before we join those who advocate life imprisonment, castration or even death, we would do well to get beyond the media stereotypes. One common kind of sex offender is the youngster who is ensnared by the beautiful underage girl who passes easily for twenty-three. The media, to deny him any sympathy, call him a man and his “victim” a girl. In jail, the “monster” meets murderers, bank robbers, drug dealers and pimps who regard his crime, not theirs, as atrocities. They take to beating and humiliating him regularly.

So greatly do sexual offenders agitate the emotions that the rest of us do not want to know the specifics of molestation, lest inquiry marks us as perverts, engaging in once-removed voyeurism. However much we “google” to learn what most molesters actually do, we will not learn a thing. Nor will we learn that 80% of pedophiles do not desire genital contact with their victims. (Wilson & Cox, The Child Lovers: A Study of Pedophiles in Society, p 235)

The most common pedophilia is fondling and usually the offender is a teenage girl acting as a babysitter. Common sense tells us that fondling is mere exploration and curiosity about body parts. If we caught all those who fondle 3-year olds who are being bathed, our prisons would be overrun with depraved “monsters”.

The sexual crimes that frighten us most are not the most horrendous – rape and torture – because we can make sense of these. A man who lusts after Catherine Zeta-Jones and finally rapes her is loathsome but not puzzling. We dread the incomprehensible pedophile whose actions allegedly inflict life-long trauma on our children. Contrary evidence does not impress us. For example, a study of 326 college students found that their unwanted childhood incestuous experiences caused them no special adjustment problems. (Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1999)

Other than fondling, exhibitionism and voyeurism are the most common forms of molestation. These are inexcusable but the moral police are frightening us to death. We imagine that sexual assault is on the rise but the Department of Justice reports a decline of 35% over the last ten years. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sexual abuse of children and teenagers is down 45%. Moreover, 40% of the offenders are themselves children 17-years old or younger. Mostly, these are boys having sex with girls a year or two younger than they are.

Pedophilia is not an objective category but depends on our moral codes. “Depravity” short of rape, torture or murder is largely in the jaundiced eye. Here in the United States, over 200 million people feast on the bits and pieces of cows’ corpses. We think nothing of this but Albert Schweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi saw this as truly depraved. In any case, the age of consent is not written in stone. In Canada and Austria, it is 14. Netherlands is considering 12. This shocks American prudery but no less a mainstream jurist than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg authored a report when she worked for the ACLU recommending the age of consent be lowered to 12. “Sex Bias in the U.S. Code”, Report for the U.S. Commission lon Civil Rights”, 1977.)

The sex registry is a death sentence. William Elliott was put on it when he was 19 for having sex with a girl just shy of 16. A righteous vigilante butchered him. (Literally.) (Boston Globe, April 18, 2006) Elliott’s mother said, “My son was not a pedophile. He loved that girl. Without the registry, he’d still be alive.” This thirst for vengeance by maniacal defenders of the Just and Right is widespread. We need to revamp the sexual crimes code and make it sensitive to fine distinctions. Once we get a grip on our perverted idea about perversion, common sense will show us the rest of the way.

I once heard a prosecutor say that people who have or ever had prurient interests were potential sex offenders. This sure narrowed the field down for me. Back in August 1972 and once before, I think it was in March of 1955, I met two guys who never had prurient interests. There are 400,000 registered sex offenders here in Barack Obama’s United States and, (my best guess), another 280 million unregistered ones.

Calling someone a sex offender is at least as useful as describing a person you know as one who wears shoes and lives in the western hemisphere. With two big clues like that, you can pinpoint whatever you need to know about this fearless gumshoe. Twelve years ago, 17-year old Wendy Whitaker performed oral sex on a classmate who was just about to turn 16. The state of Georgia wisely convicted her of a sex crime and put her in prison for ten years. She has now been released. She is married but blundered into buying a house within 1000 feet of an unadvertised church daycare service. A judge has commanded that she and her husband move out by Thanksgiving. Wendy is certainly an unabashed sex maniac if ever there was one. In Ohio, a 15-year old girl sent cellphone photos of her naked self to friends. A prosecutor is considering whether the girl is a Tier One sex offender who should be registered as such for a decade and have to wear shackles on one of her legs. I say, “YES.” I know a vicious pervert when I read about one. You hardly need me to remind you that gay men are at the apex of vicious sex offenders. It is especially unbearable to learn that some gay men actually love other gay men. Is that perversion or what? You really want to know what gay sex has to do with being a sex offender? Why you may as well puzzle over the connection between Gaussian curves and growing tomatoes. If you don’t know that one, you are hopeless. If you need to know more about the horrors of gay sex (What? Do you live under a stone?), go to “grinder” and “android” websites.

You are too smart not to see the close connection between being a gay guy and being a 17-year old girl giving a blow job. I am not going to lay it all out for you just because there are six people living in Cameroon who don’t get it. And have you heard there are men under 45 who think Raquel Welch is sexy? Now that is too preposterous for words. I hope finding her attractive violates some statute about sex because this is going way too far. At the very least, such people should have their brains examined as Alex had his examined in Clockwork Orange. After that, Alex had his brain modified and, as those of you who saw the movie know, became the very model of a model citizen.

Three cheers for those who fighting the good fight for DECENCY.

I began the serious, formal study of punishment in 1962 and finished my doctoral dissertation on it in 1965. I have never stopped thinking as hard as I am capable of about the subject. Over the more than 45 years since I began, I guess I have read thousands of scholarly and popular articles along with dozens of books on every aspect of punishment you can imagine and, I dare say, on some aspects you have not imagined.

Perhaps caught up in the flush of a new, brilliant article I exaggerate, but it seems to me I have never read anything so good and so sensible as Peter Moskos’s “Bring Back The Lash” – a defense of flogging as a replacement for incarceration. Peter, too, is a long time student of punishment, a sociologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the Graduate Center of CUNY. His work is also informed by his having been a Baltimore police officer. The article “Bring Back The Lash” is adapted from his most recent book, In Defense of Flogging. I cannot give a precis of the article that will do it justice and so I simply plead with you to read it in the May-June issue of Washington Monthly (perhaps our very best liberal magazine and well worth the 45 bucks a year it charges). Here is the link: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/bring_back_the_lash029136.php?page=all&print=true

I take exception to only one small part of Peter’s thesis because this is on a matter I may have studied more deeply than even he has and which is enlightened, I am sorry to say, by very personal acquaintance with a sex offender. Peter writes, “I am not proposing to completely end confinement or shut down every prison. Some inmates are, of course, too violent and hazardous to simply flog and release. Pedophiles, terrorists, serial rapists and murderers, for example, need to remain behind bars…”

When I saw the word “pedophiles” my hair instantly bristled. It may be that Peter intends this word in its narrowest sense, as referring to a psychiatric disorder in which an adult is exclusively interested in very young children as sex objects. If so, I have no objection but the current trend among authorities who “treat” and punish sex offenders is to paint with very broad brush strokes and to use the term “pedophile” to apply to all of them. Why else lock them up for extraordinary periods of time and force them to be on sex registries for the rest of their lives?

A young 20-year old man who has a consensual sexual relationship with a 14-year old girl is doomed forever. His trials and tribulations will not end until he is dead. Professor Moskos should most definitely advocate flogging instead of incarceration and endless hounding for these poor souls and not add them to the grab bag we call “sex offenders.” This is but one example. We need to draw fine distinctions among sex offenders and recognize that one procrustean bed will not fit all of them. Those who are running the parole systems are oblivious of this or are pandering to what they suppose the public demands. This is a great injustice, and I hope that, in his book, Professor Moskos deals with it adequately.