Novel solution for sexual offenders

Especially for the ones that harm children. Cruel and dastardly solution, but effective. Of course, getting anything like this rule even remotely near the lawmakers is a non starter here in the United States. The Czechs have better checks on this account...

A doctor makes an incision in a man's scrotal sack and, deftly wielding his scalpel, quickly removes both testicles. In the Czech Republic that simple operation is the punishment for male sex offenders. But to the Council of Europe, the region's leading human rights body, the procedure is "invasive, irreversible and mutilating." In a report issued last week the Council called the punishment "degrading" and demanded it be scrapped immediately. Over the past decade, at least 94 prisoners have undergone the treatment in the Czech Republic, the only country in Europe to continue to surgically castrate sex offenders. The Czech government insists the procedure is a medical issue, permanently reducing testosterone levels to lower an offender's sexual urges. (More here)

Socially conservative teenage sex

New Yorker has a helpful piece on the reasons behind the high incidence of unwed teenage evangelical women becoming pregnant and the naive nonchalance that evangelicals display to this phenomenon. Helps also understand why socially conservative Christian families like Bristol Palin's seem to be OK with what seemed like devastating news to others...

Like other American teens, young evangelicals live in a world of Internet porn, celebrity sex scandals, and raunchy reality TV, and they have the same hormonal urges that their peers have. Yet they come from families and communities in which sexual life is supposed to be forestalled until the first night of a transcendent honeymoon. Regnerus writes, “In such an atmosphere, attitudes about sex may formally remain unchanged (and restrictive) while sexual activity becomes increasingly common. This clash of cultures and norms is felt most poignantly in the so-called Bible Belt.” Evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception. This could be because evangelicals are also among the most likely to believe that using contraception will send the message that they are looking for sex. It could also be because many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease.

Sharon Sprung, 'P in Red', Oil on panel, 40" X 44". A photograph that I had taken while at her exhibition at Gallery Henoch earlier this year.

Friday linkages

Do you believe in the inherent goodness of human nature and believe that violence and going to war is always counterproductive or do you believe that humans tends to get nasty and brutish devoid of contractual relationships and going to war is a device that repairs broken contracts? A book by Nicholson Baker believes ardently in the former and is getting a lot attention since he argues that the 'justest' war of them all – World War II - was un-necessary. Analysis here.

A neocon who thinks – though that might seem like an anomaly, this essay by Robert Kagan (a long one) has an interesting point of view: In a post cold war era, it is prudent to note that re-alignment of power does not seem to have been directed to the detriment of America but at the two large powers: China and Russia. In Asia and the Pacific, Japan, Australia, and even South Korea and the nations of Southeast Asia have all engaged in “hedging” against a rising China. This has led them to seek closer relations with Washington, especially in the case of Japan and Australia. India has also drawn closer to the United States and is clearly engaged in balancing against China.
The following is telling: Some have suggested that failure in Iraq would mean the end of predominance and unipolarity. But a superpower can lose a war — in Vietnam or in Iraq — without ceasing to be a superpower if the fundamental international conditions continue to support its predominance. So long as the United States remains at the center of the international economy and the predominant military power, so long as the American public continues to support American predominance as it has consistently for six decades, and so long as potential challengers inspire more fear than sympathy among their neighbors, the structure of the international system should remain as the Chinese describe it: one superpower and many great powers.

Philip Weisss on why married men stray (especially after the state of New York is seeing a ‘straying incident’ every couple of months, this is true - Eliot Spitzer, his successor David Paterson and most recently Vito Fossella). Is sexual straying a personality disorder inherent in men or is it a biological manifestation outside of a man’s control?