Monty Python skit or real life? Church of England says "Sex is for married heterosexual couples only."

You are all the same
Gilded and absurd
Regal, fast to blame
Rulers by lost word
Men above men, or prats
With your high hats
You priest, you mullah so high
You pope, you wise rabbi
You're invisible to me
Like vapour from the sea

Arguably the best comment I've seen about this story.

Men in purple dresses dispensing directives about how and when to have sex.

Whatever.

Sex is for married heterosexual couples only, says Church of England, by Harriet Sherwood (The Guardian)

Pastoral guidance also calls for Christians in gay or straight civil unions to be abstinent

The Church of England has stated that sex belongs only within heterosexual marriage, and that sex in gay or straight civil partnerships “falls short of God’s purpose for human beings”.

Bishops have issued pastoral guidance in response to the recent introduction to mixed-sex civil partnerships, which says: “For Christians, marriage – that is, the lifelong union between a man and a woman, contracted with the making of vows – remains the proper context for sexual activity.”

The church “seeks to uphold that standard” in its approach to civil partnerships, and “to affirm the value of committed, sexually abstinent friendships” within such partnerships.

It adds: “Sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage are regarded as falling short of God’s purpose for human beings” ...

Women, sex, socialism and Slavenka Drakulić's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed.

Published in 1992.

When I saw the NYT article (below) last week about the sex lives of Eastern European women during communism, it immediately brought to mind a book I read a very long time ago.

Her Life Through Their Eyes, by Cathy Young (New York Times)

HOW WE SURVIVED COMMUNISM AND EVEN LAUGHED, by Slavenka Drakulić

 ... One does not have to embrace stereotypes about some uniquely female sensibility attuned to the personal (as if men never write about the personal!) to acknowledge the particular burdens that scarcity in Eastern Europe has imposed on women. Not surprisingly, Ms. Drakulić concentrates primarily on women's lives. Her perspective is that of a feminist, but the Eastern European experience gives her feminism a special edge. She is acutely aware of a larger helplessness that unites women and men: "It's hard to see . . . men as a gender. . . . Perhaps because everyone's identity is denied, we want to see them as persons, not as a group, or a category, or a mass."

For more on the author:

To some, Slavenka Drakulić (4 July 1949--) may not seem like a particularly remarkable figure in European history. She is not often proclaimed to be a hero who might inspire all people; nor was she, arguably, a particularly explosive dissident. However, in reading Drakulić's own accounts of her life under Communism in former-Yugoslavia, we may see that Drakulić herself places great value in what others may deem “the boring parts of the revolution.”

Now last week's article about female sexual pleasure in a time of Marxism-Leninism.

Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism, by Kristen R. Ghodsee (New York Times)

When Americans think of Communism in Eastern Europe, they imagine travel restrictions, bleak landscapes of gray concrete, miserable men and women languishing in long lines to shop in empty markets and security services snooping on the private lives of citizens. While much of this was true, our collective stereotype of Communist life does not tell the whole story.

Some might remember that Eastern bloc women enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time, including major state investments in their education and training, their full incorporation into the labor force, generous maternity leave allowances and guaranteed free child care. But there’s one advantage that has received little attention: Women under Communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure.

A comparative sociological study of East and West Germans conducted after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women. Researchers marveled at this disparity in reported sexual satisfaction, especially since East German women suffered from the notorious double burden of formal employment and housework. In contrast, postwar West German women had stayed home and enjoyed all the labor-saving devices produced by the roaring capitalist economy. But they had less sex, and less satisfying sex, than women who had to line up for toilet paper ...

"I think she was on her back when it happened but I was not paying attention because we were rolling around."

Australia grasps the obvious: It's a motel room, mate.

Woman injured while having sex on overnight work trip can sue employer; Australian court rules that woman, who was hurt when light fitting fell on her during sex in a motel, is entitled to compensation, by Alison Rourke in Sydney (Guardian)

 ... "This is not the 1920s, after all," (lawyer Leo) Grey told the court. Grey argued that sex was "an ordinary incident of life" commonly undertaken in a motel room at night, like sleeping or showering.

Lawyers for ComCare, the insurer of the woman's workplace, argued that while people needed to sleep, eat and attend to their personal hygiene, they did not "need to have sex".

"Having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone."

I've tried everything imaginable to lure Healthblogger back to the comments section. If this one doesn't do it, nothing will.

The moral case for sex before marriage, by Jill Filipovic (guardian.co.uk)

Condemning premarital sex and promoting abstinence are not working. Lasting, loving relationships are made through intimacy

... Our state and federal tax dollars have long been spent promoting "chastity". While conservative commentators are happy to assert that waiting until marriage is the best choice for everyone and people who don't wait aren't doing marriage "the right way", sex-positive liberals hesitate to say that having sex before marriage is an equally valid – if not better – choice for nearly everyone.

So here it goes: having sex before marriage is the best choice for nearly everyone.

Laurie Penny in The Guardian: "There is a curious frigidity to our understanding of youth and sexuality."

I've decided to healthblog, too. It's remarkably easy. My first entry, which reminds us that purity is a ball, comes courtesy of The Guardian's on-line service -- not to be confused with the UK's National Health Service, although by mentioning the latter, I'll (hopefully) be blacklisted by the tea fartings.

Our sex lives. Their agenda; Moral posturing paints the young as victims or villains of a sexualised society. We are just getting on with it, by Laurie Penny.

Dr Petra Boynton, a sex educator and academic, says the change in sexual behaviour isn't nearly so dramatic as the media make out. Most young people still don't lose their virginity until they are over 16, she says. "As adults we're very quick to look at young people and say 'Aren't they awful', without looking at the wider issues – like our appalling track record on sex education."

R.O.C.K.'s chapter in Athens stocks up on petrol and Bics.

The Guardian talks sex lives of the ancient Greeks, and we can only hope that the exhibition described within eventually comes to rest across the street from the creation museum up in Kaintuck.

The ancient Greeks were never at a loss for words when it came to love and lust – and an exhibition that opened in Athens today laying bare the practice of sex in classical times through an unprecedented collection of eye-popping art partly explains why.

Eros, the god of love and the great loosener of limbs, was many things: irresistible, tender, beautiful, excruciating, maddening, merciless and bittersweet. There was no position, no touch, no predilection too outre to pay homage to him. From the affectionate embrace to group sex, love came in many forms.

"The Greeks were anything but prudes," said Nicholaos Stampolidis, director of the Museum of Cycladic Art, where the show will run for six months. "Theirs was a society of great tolerance and lack of guilt."