Author: Andrew Sullivan

Vox Nova pushes back against Josh Marshall's carping on O'Donnell for being "crazy" on masturbation:

Granted her views aren’t culturally mainstream, but they hardly qualify as crazy.  It’s not as though O’Donnell now wishes to stone adulterers and homosexuals or criminalize impure thoughts and sexual self-stimulation.  Those would be crazy. 

Vox has a point. It is mainstream Catholic orthodoxy that masturbation is as wrong as gay sex. Leading theocon Robbie George is on record defending the position and only opposes state regulation of jerking off because it would require, well, a police state that would make the Stasi look mild. Sarah Posner cautions Democrats against "overplaying the masturbation bit":

But does she still think women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan endanger our national security? That seems like, uh, fertile ground for determining just how far her views on sex and sexuality go.

More on those views here. I think the more the orthodox Catholic position on wanking is out there the better, because the position is rooted in exactly the same theology as the position on marriage equality and contraception.

A mischievous thought: when will someone ask O'Donnell, as a single woman, if, since her conversion to Catholicism, she has ever masturbated? She cannot have had any sex, right? And that includes sex alone. Since she has made this a public stance, and since, apparently, she cannot lie (even if it would mean handing over Jews to Nazis), she has made the question perfectly legit.

This seems to me to be what Jake Tapper is for. But I suspect O'Donnell will be as available to the press in 2010 as Palin was in 2008. And she is now asking that her previous statements be ignored:

“I was in my twenties and very excited and passionate about my newfound faith. But I can assure you, my faith has matured and when I go to Washington, D.C. it’ll be the Constitution on which I base all of my decisions, not my personal beliefs.”

The theocons will probably have a conniption. She used the Kennedy-Cuomo "personal beliefs" argument. But she still wants to ban all abortions except when the life of the mother is at stake. What is her position on the civil rights of her gay sister? Is wanking now ok? You cannot now just walk away from these positions. You have to either reject or reaffirm them. So which ones does she now reject?

Crested Butte, Colorado, 2.26 pm

Greg Pollowitz plucks a clip from the CSPAN archives:

Christine O’Donnell, communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, led a discussion on the depiction of women in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The discussion focused on Bradley Birzer’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, published by ISI Books. According to Birzer’s analysis, the religious spirituality informing Tolkien’s books was specifically Roman Catholic. In addition, he suggests that the female characters Galadriel and Elbereth were designed to exemplify traits of the Virgin Mary.

The "Galileo Was Wrong" conference is no hoax. A reader writes:

I called the Hilton Garden Inn in South Bend. It's real. There are a number of posts on geocentricity on Mark Wyatt's blog. Volumes I and II of "Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right", by Dr. Sungenis and Dr. Robert Bennett, another speaker at the conference, are sold on Amazon. You can also go to Geocentrism.com and see a link for the conference.

From a Delaware blog on last night's Delaware forum:

Christine O’Donnell’s spokesman Evan Quietsch went on the Rick Jensen Show yesterday afternoon on WDEL, and said that O’Donnell will not show up unless she was provided all the questions to be asked of the candidates before hand.

Was she?

(Hat tip: Jesse Griffin)

Judge Judy is the new queen of daytime.

Concluding a profile of Saul Alinsky, Jesse Walker gives the Tea Party movement some advice:

If they’re serious about building a real alternative to the Bush/Obama megastate, as opposed to merely being used by the Republicans and discarded as soon as the GOP is in a position to relaunch the K Street Project, the activists need to build countervailing power of their own, rooted not merely in talk radio and the Internet but in the indigenous institutions that shape people’s everyday lives. In some areas — bank bailouts, eminent domain, the crackdown on civil liberties, America’s imperial foreign policy — they might even reach across the invisible lines that separate their favorite segments of civil society from the churches and councils that mobilize people on the grassroots left, to work together on issues of shared concern even when they aren’t about to back the same candidates. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to cross a boundary, even if there’s a risk that a stranger might hit you in the head with a rock.

If only a left/right alliance would cooperate to end the drug war, get a grand compromise on the debt, and rein in defense spending and police state creep. But seriously, does Jesse really believe that the Tea Party would do any of these things?

Yes, they are, for the most part, emphasizing economic and fiscal issues, which is wonderful, even though they have no actual realistic plans to cut spending by the amount they would have to if taxes are not to rise. But that does not mean they have in any way forsaken the social issues substantively. Name a tea-party candidate who is pro-choice. Name one who backs marriage equality. Name one who wants to withdraw from Afghanistan beginning next year. Name one who has opposed torture. Name one who has the slightest qualms about police powers. Name one who would end the military ban on gays serving openly, and take even the slightest political risk on any of these subjects.

I welcome the belated right-wing opposition to out-of-control government spending. But the one thing you have to note about tea-party fervor is that none of it existed when they had real leverage over a Republican president, who spent us into bankruptcy. That tells you something. And if you think a party led by Palin will not embrace every neocon crusade or Christianist social policy, you're dreaming.

California's alcohol industry is opposing Prop 19. Here's Steve Fox's response:

Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear … Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. They know that marijuana is less addictive, less toxic and less likely to be associated with violent behavior than alcohol. So they don’t want adults to have the option of using marijuana legally instead of alcohol. Their mission is to drive people to drink.

Pete Guither's two cents:

Rather than trying to get the alcohol industry to stop funding legalization opposition, we need to spread the word that alcohol funds legalization opposition.

Here’s why… When people see that alcohol is afraid of marijuana, they’ll make the connection that marijuana legalization will result in a reduction in alcohol use (and possibly in some of the problems associated with alcohol). This is a positive perception change for us.

Yes, she says condom distribution facilitates HIV-transmission.