Skin

My buddy macker is one of the more tolerant flavors of Xian. He thinks I am going to hell, but he can still be my friend. Funny, I call him a friend - after about four years, we've never met, and I can count on one hand the times we've ever spoken on the phone. Ain't the internet grand?

Would that all Xians were so tolerant. Even though I think that in his particular case, it may be that he thinks tolerance is simply a more effective tactic for subverting heretics. Hey, if it walks like a duck...

Sometimes he gets a little wounded, I think, at my never-ending potshots at organized religion of all stripes, though he tries not to show it.

Hey, I'm a gadfly, an iconoclast, a mocker, a cynic about just about anything. It doesn't help that the religious keep tossing me batting practice meatballs to swat clean out of the park. Need I mention the higher level poobahs in the Catholic church concealing repeated criminal sexual abuse by their parish priests? Didn't think so. (Do I get to mention I was ranting about this ?)

Allow me, good folks to introduce to you one of the more common varieties of the human to be found in these parts, the homo xianus dogmatus. You never have to look far to find them in Texas. In fact, it's hard to get away from them. They'll even come and bother you while you're eating in a nice restaurant.

Case in point. Today, reading the local news, I saw that a group of the faithful are up in arms about a nudist resort, and are trying to work the local legal establishment to make life difficult for them. The full story is here. A few highlights are as follows...

Andrew Teesdale, of River Oaks Baptist Church, says that if we don't allow nudity in adult bookstores, we shouldn't allow it at public beaches.

He is correct, though. We don't allow nudity at public beaches. (or most of them, anyway) In respectful deference to your unhealthy hangups, Mr. Teesdale, we don't allow shameful public displays of the flesh at the DMV, or in schools, or almost any public places. (I had to add that "almost" in there, as I was thinking of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras) Or do we?

According to some Muslims, Mr. Teesdale, that makeup-slathered mug of Tammy Faye you can see on the Boob Toob is a shameful display of flesh more morally hidden under a veil. (I can agree with the conclusion, though not the rationale)

Should you be ruled by that Muslim's opinion of right and wrong? No? Well, why should those nudists be ruled by yours? Because Jeebus sez so? Fine. When he comes down outta heaven to tell us, then we'll side with you.

It's not like these folks are lobbying for the right to run around nekkid in the streets, offending your sense of propriety. The simply want to do what they want in privacy. Alas, this may be an argument too intricate for the typical dogmatus to easily comprehend.

This species comes, of course, in both genders, hence their unfortunate ability to reproduce. Baptist schoolteacher Sherry Davis, (the Baptist variant of the species is among the most intolerant and evangelical) according to this report, believes nudity invites perversion, pornography and crime, thus exibiting another tell-tale marker for the type, an IQ approaching the sub-moron level. This inablity to construct a rational argument in most examples of the breed leads to a simple reliance on statements of belief.

The species also shows a remarkable degree of undue curiosity. She says: "We don't know what may be going on behind those fences."

I don't know what's going on in your bedroom, Sherry. You might be banging Great Danes in a hot tub full of mushroom soup for all I know. (By the way, that wouldn't be against the law in Texas.)

But I don't have any right to know, and you don't have an inalienable right to know what's going on behind those fences, either. You may have a legal right to demand that those fences exist, to protect your tender sensibilities, but it then becomes a hypocritical contradiction to then demand to know what goes on behind them. If you wanna know, woman, take off your clothes and your archaic ethics, and join them. If you don't want to do that, then just go away.

The fact of the matter is, so long as it is consensual, and everyone is of a legal age, then there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The men can be buttfucking each other in a daisychain forty feet around, while the women all pile on each other in a big lesbian clusterfuck in the center of the circle to spur them on, and it's all legal.

(I thought I'd toss in all those salacious words in that last paragraph to drive up traffic a little bit. Looking at my logs, the most common hit I get from google is from people in Germany looking for ponygirls, all hitting this fairly tame entry.)

But, unfortunate as some of us might think it to be, the reality is much more mundane. I've been to a nudist colony, and a few nude beaches, and I can tell you what's going on - a bunch of middle-aged folks are drinking (that probably pisses you off, too) and laying around in the sun getting a wicked sunburn on their peckers and buns. Most, if not all of them, would look a lot better with their clothes on, and you don't even wanna watch a volleyball game - the slabs of flab flopping around is not pretty. It's about as erotic as going to church, even less so, in some cases.

They're not there to engage in wild sex parties, there are other places for that, and better ways to meet folks so inclined. Don't ask me how I know. :-)

Truly, there's not too much overlap in the sets of people that do one or the other. The circus-sex freaks are mostly sleeping during the weekend days, trying to recover from the previous night's bacchanalia. They don't see the point of shedding their clothes, and not getting down with somebody, while many nudists are just as vanilla in their sex lives as the bluehair prudes that are trying to ban their freedom to walk around in the outfit they were born in.

Prediction: these attempts to run these nudists out of town on a rail will fail. There are numerous nudist camps in Texas. They are clearly permitted under the law. There are even some on public lands Any attempts to stifle them will run into formidable constitutional barriers protecting freedom of expression.

Were those not enough, and they will be, all the resort would need to do is start holding services on Sunday mornings, and declare themselves a religious organization, claiming that their faith requires them to walk around periodically in the nude, to remind them and the world that material possessions are fleeting, and to keep them humble in the eyes of others. I could whip up a theological treatise supporting this one in no time flat, complete with quotations from the Good Book. Heh. Let the Jeebus freaks try and fight that one.

Men, especially, will know what I mean about being made humble. My first experience at a nude beach was Black Beach in California. The water was cold. Nothing like having your tallywhacker shrivel up to about one tenth of it normal size and try to tunnel back up into your crotch, in the midst of a bunch of nekkid Cali beach bunnies, to show you what real humility is. :-)

The only possible way the resort can lose would be if the bluehairs have a boodle of money for the court battles, civil lawsuits and such, and the resort doesn't. Unfortunately, our legal system is set up such that the side with the most money wins, not the ones whom the law actually favors.

Were that to happen, it would be an unwelcome victory for the more repressive residents of the human zoo.

I've noticed that the people who are most "militant" about their beliefs (religious, political, what have you) are those whose egos rely on the superior feeling they glean by being "right" all the time.

Can you imagine the CONCEIT of someone who declares that they know exactly what God wants from us, and everyone else who believes differently is clueless?

Through millions of years of evolution, thousands of years of scholars studying ancient writings (including the Bible), no one can figure it out EXCEPT FOR THE (insert name of religious dogma here, i.e., Baptists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.)

They have the market cornered on truth. Only they can speak for God (again, the conceit!) Only they will be given the keys to heaven.

You would think those people would be so full of love for their fellow man that they would have time to volunteer anonymously, share love and positive vibes, and be the peacemakers.

Yet those are the people who will be the FIRST to tell you all about it if they do something for charity. They are the ones who will circumvent all logic to win a religious debate. They are the ones who judge, and try to legislate and FORCE people to adhere to their moral codes. It all translates into ego gratification. They justify this by saying they're doing God's will, trying to awaken the masses, etc.

Theologically, I may not know much, but I would be willing to bet a year's worth of beer that God is pissed off! These people can expend all their energy judging others, explaining why they themselves are right and superior, and feeling all self-satisfied at the end of the day as they lay their self-righteous head upon their pompous pillows. But I bet God sees what they keep so busy trying to keep from recognizing in their own hearts: it's all a bunch of grand posturing for their own selfish purposes.

Evangelist, heal thyself!