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A Few Thoughts for our Anniversary. Tomorrow will be the thirty-sixth anniversary of the day Paula and I were married. On one hand that seems a rather inconsequential time frame, yet in the lifespan of a human it makes up virtually all of the prime years of a person’s life. She was 25 and I was 24 so we were not particularly young as new couples go; but we were in the prime of our lives. And, we had a lot of sex and we did it pretty much anywhere we felt like it. We used to laugh at how we were not going to be a normal couple but would keep having hot sex long after other couples had given it up. We decided before we had kids that our children would know full well Mom and Dad loved each other and showed it with our bodies. Even more, we decided when we were grandparents our grandkids would know it too. Those who have kept up with the postings of Our Decades of Open Marriage know that Paula and I largely lived up to our pledge. We most certainly were not the typical Southern parents (southern as in the USA, not France) of teenagers who act as if sex itself was something to be avoided. And as we moved through our fifties, we continued to be quite active and rather open about it all. In ages past, there was a certain level of fatalism where people simply knew life would throw things at them that they did not want; yet, in today’s youth/fitness-oriented culture we have a collective belief that it is normal to simply defy age & illness. In popular media, when we see our screen stars aging, they seem to defy the fact they are 60 & 70 years old and live active vigorous lives. Paula is totally obsessed with Tom Selleck and has been since she was a huge fan of Magnum P.I. back in the early 1980s’. Now she’s watching season 13 (or is it 14) of Blue Bloods. Her hunky hero is now nearly 80, yet still (in the show) appears just as fit and sexy as he was all those years ago. That defiance of age in those we see on television and in movies tends to be the norm till… well until they simply disappear. BUT… as everyone finds out as they move through life, the simple desire to have life on your own terms does not make it so. Right at a year ago, Paula began to feel a pulling sensation in her neck. Well… let’s go back another year…or two to the beginning of Covid. None of us predicted the pandemic and the effect it would have on our sex lives. As I’ve written about before, from the very first year of our marriage Paula and I knew that while we were so well matched in so many ways, our sexual desires were not. The fact we did not have sex till after we were married meant we did not know that until after we’d set up our own house. I wanted snuggling and romantic low-keyed sex and she wanted hard… eyeball-rolling… fucking. And she wanted a lot more of it than I could possibly give her… and she had not predicted that her physical response to other men (and women) would grow stronger, not weaker as she learned what her body wanted and how to get it. Not that I have ever regretted marrying her, but it presented challenges. Within a couple of years, even as I was still preparing to start my work as an evangelical minister, we began to talk about her taking lovers so as to have her sexual needs met. For over thirty years she has had many, many (certainly more than 100) sexual playmates and it has worked well for us. There were bumps on the road and times when we were monogamous (like the year after her father passed); but, the expectation was always that our sex life would be supplemented with people from the outside. Long ago, I began to teach that open marriage is not that the couple has sex outside of their marriage… but that they can do so without fear of damaging the relationship with their spouse. This approach was what worked for us. In this, Covid put a stop to actually going out and meeting other people. In a local lull of the pandemic, we got out of the house to go to a Halloween party at a sex-friendly nudist resort. We were so impressed, that at the end of the summer before last we paid $1,800 for a year-long membership. Though she’d just turned 60, we were all ready to start meeting new people and returning to the pattern that works so well for us, i.e. she would have lovers to maintain her libido and I would benefit from her happiness and the “spill-over” sex. Then came the pains in her neck. Over a period of a few weeks, her neck began spasms and twitches that were so severe it left her housebound, and often bedbound. For months we sought medical care and simply got no results, even as she began losing weight and spending most days in bed. After her first hospitalization, we finally were referred to see a highly regarded doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. By then she’d lost 1/3 of her body weight and I was getting truly worried. The doctor had a firm diagnosis; but we were told that there simply was no cure, only ways to manage the rare disease. At 61 years old, she was much younger than others he’d seen with this condition, but we started on a regime to mitigate the effects. The hard truth was (barring a miracle) that our life as we’d known it, was over. We would not spend our 60’s at nudist/swinger resorts meeting (and fucking) new and interesting people. We would not be that couple we had said we wanted to be. It took some time (and another hospitalization) before we finally fully accepted that fact. She can’t drive, and we rarely go anywhere. She’s had to largely stop babysitting our grandson and she only is up to visiting her 95-year-old mother once every week or two, and even then someone has to drive her. Rather than the active seniors we’d aspired to be, she is in many respects an invalid and I am her caregiver. It has been a hard transition. Saturday, was a big deal because she felt up to going out to Waffle House for lunch; however, even before the food arrived, I could tell she was in pain. So, our anniversary celebration plans are “tentative.” If she’s up to it we will go to someplace nice for dinner, but given the fact she woke up last night in pain with her neck twisted around, I don’t expect that to happen. We now have come to accept the new reality. We haven’t had sex in over a year now, and it is likely we never will again. That is just how life works. There is no reason for anger or bitterness. We are grateful for the active years we had. I am sure that my collection of photos and the stories of our past ‘adventures’ will grow in importance to us as the years go on. But, my own words come back to me: open marriage isn’t about having sex outside of our marriage, it is about giving each other the freedom to do so. We will continue to be grateful for every day we have together… and that is what makes a great marriage.

SO….  three weeks ago, I heard the same hurricane warning as did everyone else. AND, like nearly everyone else in our area, I dismissed it.  After all, the storm was to come ashore in Florida and head northwest, on the far side of Atlanta. How could that impact us?  We do get the effects of hurricanes here, usually in the form of a good rain but little else. It has been 30 years since Hurricane Hugo brought destructive winds this far north. SO… I did nothing, nor did anyone I know. The grocery stores were no busier than usual since nobody was stocking up on food, water, or batteries.  Nobody was even topping off their gas tanks. It had been raining steadily since Wednesday night,  so when the rain was coming down when I went to bed it was no cause for alarm.  Then at 7:00 AM, Friday morning the power went off. I know that since my CPAP machine stopped working and I woke up.  Still, it wasn’t like dark outside. So, we all gathered in the living room and watched the wind and rain for an hour. Then it was over. I was sure the power would be restored within the hour.  Just another nothing burger. At about 9:00, I got in the car to go get some batteries…. but I didn’t get far. It seems the reason I thought the storm was no big deal was that the wind was coming from the Southeast, and our home is on the northwest side of a large hill, so the winds literally blew over us and we sustained no damage.  That was not the case for those homes in our neighborhood at the top of the hill.  There are two ways in & out of our subdivision to the main road, and I found the normal one I use was blocked by down trees… trees like more than one.  So I turned around to take the other way out. It was blocked by both downed trees and downed power lines.  Two homes, 7 & 9 doors away had huge trees smashed through their roofs.  It was the first sign I’d seen that the hurricane had been much more destructive than I realized. Once neighbors used chainsaws to open up the road around noon, we went to check on Paula’s mother who lives about 15 minutes away.  It took us close to 45 minutes to get there because road after road was blocked and we had to wind our way through places where the trees had been cut.  In our area, virtually no road was free of trees.  Worse yet were all the down power poles. Not just down, but broken into pieces. By the time we made it to her grandmother’s house, we knew this was the most destructive storm anyone had ever seen. Our son said that 95% of all homes and businesses in the region were without power… including gas stations and grocery stores.   We were fortunate. Other than some water in our lower floor, we had no damage at all. We kept the fridge and freezer closed to preserve our food, but by Monday everything had to be tossed out.  During our trip to Grandma’s, we found a Dollar General that had power (before everyone else did) and were able to stock up on chips, crackers, juice, and candles.  I still thought we’d only be without power for a day or two… I was wrong. NOW, all of this was going on as I was recovering from my first surgery the week before, and prepping for my more invasive surgery to remove the metastatic renal cancer from my right lung.  So for a week, I was off my renal diet as we were living mostly on chips and crackers.  FINALLY, on Thursday evening, we got power back. Just in time for our hot water heater to warm me up water to use the anti-microbial soap prior to my surgery the next morning.  OH… we still didn’t have internet since the cable that connected us was down with the power poles and would not begin to be repaired until after the power company was finished.  On Thursday I called to ensure my surgery wasn’t one of those postponed.  For those of you who live in the US, you likely saw that Asheville, NC was devastated and our nearby city has the nearest Level 1 trauma center (whatever that is) to the disaster up in the mountains. The hospital was past capacity. Fortunately, they decided my cancer surgery could not be put off. So, I got to meet Rosie the Robot, who along with the surgical oncologist was slated to work on me. Well, I got to meet her before they put me to sleep. When I woke up, I had a lovely ketamine drip and oxycodone to keep me in a good mood for the next few days as goo drained out of a 1” rubber tube poking out of my right side.  Even when Nurse Rachet yanked me out of my comfy bed at 6 AM each morning to make me sit in a chair until 9 PM, the wonder drugs kept me happy. As I understand it, I had to sit up for my lung to reinflate and the goo to drain out. All was going well until Monday night. Nurse Rachet was getting my wires and tube ready to take a walk around the unit when Paula (who was in another chair across the room started doing something odd). Seeing me trying to cross the room (and thus pull out my IV, my tube, and all my wires, Nurse Rachet commanded me to sit back down because she would handle it.   In an instant, Nurse Rachet became Florence Nightingale as she says “She’s having a major seizure.”  And calls for backup. This is all very scary for me since Paula has never had a seizure and I can do nothing about it. She convulsed until foam formed at the edges of her mouth, then she went totally still. In under a minute my room was filled with women in the royal blue scrubs worn by RN’s at my hospital.  They simply rolled my bed out into the hallway and pulled Paula to the center of the room, hooked her up to my monitors, and put an oxygen mask on her. I was relieved to see the monitor saying her heartbeat was steady. Three minutes later, the hospital Rapid Response Team was there, then she was gone. All the while I was bewildered (remember I was on strong pain meds). What I do remember clearly is that as they were rolling her out, one of the Rapid Response Team said “Room 4” in the emergency unit was waiting for her arrival.  So I had to wait. My son and his wife (who is an RN in the same hospital system) arrived and went right to the ER. When they came to my room to brief me about an hour after this all started, they said she’d been put on a ventilator and taken to ICU.  The neurologist told them that the seizure was a result of the damage caused by her stroke almost 2 years ago. They were shown a scan just made of her brain that showed a large area on the right rear lobe was dark (dead).  We had no idea her stroke had done that kind of damage. SO, the next morning the charge nurse took me down to the ICU to see Paula. She looked like she was in very bad shape, even her lips had no color. She was conscious, sort of, but they’d had to restrain her hands to keep her from pulling out the tube that was down her throat. Later that afternoon I was discharged. I went down to Paula’s room in ICU. She was sleeping, but looked much better… and the tube was out of her throat.  My kids insisted I go home and rest for at least a little while before I went back to the hospital.  Miraculously, even after I’d been off the ketamine for three hours, I had no pain at all.  However, when I got home and lay down, they did not wake me and I slept for six hours. Since it was way past ICU visiting hours, I went back to bed. One bright spot was that the expected pain from my surgery never came. Since I didn’t take any of the narcotics I was given to control pain, I was able to drive myself to the hospital the next day. I spent the rest of the week sitting with her during the day and going home to sleep at night. A week ago she was finally released from the hospital and we were both home (with power) and we slept nearly all day and all night.  She is now diagnosed as epileptic, caused by a stroke, and will be on anti-seizure medication for the rest of her life.   THEN…. I couldn’t log onto my website for a week.   SO, I hope you will excuse me for not updating the website until now.

I’ve written a good bit making it clear that I believe parents and other adults should view recreational teen sex as normal and should take the position that it can be healthy for the participants. However, I say " can be" , because there are pitfalls that can be deadly serious. As sex-positive parents and adults it is imperative that we do not abandon our expected mentoring role in the area of sexuality. So, I am offering these guidelines for teens (but most of it applies to adults as well). Since I am obligated to say my blog isn’t targeting underage people, I put this out as a professional for parents and other adults to pass on. However, the truth is that everything I write is with the awareness that teenagers, even very young teenagers, are searching the web for truth about sexuality. This site is exactly the kind of place they should be looking. Nothing, and I mean nothing here is bad for teens and, if I could, I would have a million teenagers reading it. Certainly, better this site than 99% of what teens will find on the web as they look for help in negotiating their lives. So here goes Dr. T’s “rules” for teens regarding sex. 1st Your Body is Yours ! No one has a right to use it sexually but you. You may share it with whom you wish, but remember, it remains yours. The inverse is also true, your friend’s body is his/hers, and you do not have a right , no matter what your relationship, to use their body. That friend has his/her right to share that body with you, but it is never yours to use as you wish. 2nd Be Legal I may not always agree with the laws of sexual consent, but they are enforced. In most of the US, it is a crime to have sex when you are under 16. For parents, in many places, it can be interpreted as child abuse to allow your child that is under 16 to have sex with your consent. You (your child) may be ready to have sex before your localities age of consent, but the cost of such behavior outweighs any benefit. When our daughter first told us that she was sexually active at 15, we explained the law in our state to her. We asked her to promise she would not do it again until her 16th birthday. We let her know we did not condemn her for underage sex, but we were legally bound in this issue and we didn’t have the money to fly her and her boyfriend to France to have sex. If your boyfriend/girlfriend is under 18 remember the “Two Year Rule”; in most states sex between minors (over the age of consent) is legal as long as the older partner is no more than two years older than the younger. And finally, beware of sending nude photos (unless you’re on a public nude beach) until you are 18. Some states have worked out the decriminalization of this, but I would not take the chance. We had to take our daughter’s web-cam for chatting topless, again not because we believed it wrong, but because of fear of the law. Parents should do their homework to know their local laws before they think their child needs to know. 3rd Be Safe I have long advocated the “2 Methods Rule” to teenagers I’ve counseled; a condom, plus a second method such as the pill. No birth control method is 100% fool proof, and teens can be fools. Nearly all contraceptive failure is due to user error. Ask your teen to talk candidly to adults they know and ask if all their pregnancies were fully planned. In most cases they will find that the adults have had unplanned “surprises”. My wife and I had two in our first 8 years of marriage. How many teens want to have an unintended pregnancy every four years? Not many I would guess. A commitment to the two-methods rule will bring that chance down to an acceptable level of risk. Of course, by using a condom and another method, the chance of STD’s are also brought down to acceptable levels. Teens need to be told, sex is an adult activity and adult responsibly goes with it. 4th Be Respectful Be respectful of yourself and of your partner. For years I have given this one piece of advice. Before you have sex, ask yourself will I be proud of what I’ve done tomorrow and a year from now? If you can say yes, then do it. If you cannot say yes, then stop. I tell guys this but also say they should ask themselves “From what I know of this girl I am with, will she regret doing this tomorrow?” If the answer is yes, then hold up till she’s ready. Beyond that, sex is not something to do to keep a score or to prove your manhood/womanhood. It is immoral to fuck a person under false pretense. No, you don’t have to have some deep relationship; sometimes Paula and I have sex with friends just for fun. That’s OK. But, don’t fuck to get a relationship, or because the other person thinks you’re promising a relationship. That’s not OK. Don’t fuck because you feel expected to, or to keep a guy’s/girl’s attention. That’s not OK. Having sex is something you do because it makes you and your partner feel good physically and emotionally. If it doesn’t do this for you both, then don’t do it. Yes this is a pretty short list of rules, but long lists are rarely followed, and these rules are for the benefit of everyone. I Know I have a few supporters out there and if you have ever linked anything those in your circle of influence, I would ask you to forward this short list so that together we can help todays teenagers.

The concept of an open marriage was first popularized in the United States during the 1970’s. In 1972 a book by that name was published and had an impact during the “Women’s Liberation” movement. That book primarily focused on a socially open marriage were the partners were free to have their own friendships outside of the marriage. At that time, that in itself was a radical idea. The extension of that concept to sex was only obliquely addressed in the book. However, in the public mind and usage open marriage meant that there was an agreement within the marriage that the partners could not only have friendships outside of their marriage, but they were free to have sex with those friends if they chose. While for most American couples, social openness has over the past four decades become just an accepted part of the modern marriage; sexual openness has never gain widespread acceptance, even in very liberal circles. Why this is, will be the subject of a future essay. What is interesting to me is how little most people, even sexually liberal people, understand how open marriages actually work. So, I thought I’d pen a few thoughts about our marriage which has been “open for over twenty-five years now. It was in 1996, when my wife and I agreed to have a sexually open marriage. We didn’t make this decision because either of us was in an affair or had just had one. In fact we’d both been monogamous since we'd met each other, over a decade before. It wasn’t that we were board or were dying to go out and have a fling. It was a cool rational decision to reject the concept that lifelong marriage, which we intended to have, meant we must forever give up the possibility of other sexual partners. This decision seemed natural to us in part because we had never had a socially closed relationship. Even before we were married neither of us saw a need to own the others social life. In our case, we explicitly extended that social freedom to include sexual encounters because Paula had the courage to tell me that she wanted more sex than I was able to provide at that time. In retrospect that honesty and willingness to address issues head on was foundational to the success of our marriage, not just open marriage, but our marriage in general. Further she openly told me that she was very strongly sexually attracted to other people. She was clear she was very much sexually attracted to me, but rather she simply knew she had desires to have sex with a good many people who crossed her path. Not to have love affairs, but to fuck. She was not focusing on one person in particular, but she just had a general desire to expand her sexual horizons. She was not going to cheat on me, but she knew she was somewhat frustrated in our sex life and was interested in having other sexual relationships. Our decision was simply to give her liberty to act on those interests if she so desired. It may be that our two-and-a-half decades of success in having a sexually open marriage has a great deal to do with the dispassion of the initial decision. Inevitably decisions like that made under the pressure of sexual or emotional desire by one of the partners will create a state of both internal and external coercion. Coercion in marriage will always reap negative consequences in time. So, getting ahead of that was important. Many a failed attempt at maintaining a positive long-term open marriage will trace the root cause of the failure to the fact the initial agreement to open marriage was made under the coercive power of lust or love for a third party. Not only was that not true in our case; but as a couple we were in the midst of reexamining the core moral values of the Fundamentalist Christian way of life we had been taught by our spiritual leaders. As I was then a full-time minister, and thus one of those leaders, I took it upon myself to compare the validity of the sexual rules of fundamentalist to the actual words of Jesus. In the end we could find no moral reason to forbid mutually consensual extra-marital sexual activity than we could find for many of the long list of “thou shalt not’s” we had been taught. Thus our transition to open marriage was simply an agreement. We agreed that should the circumstances arise where she had the desire and opportunity to have sex with someone else, it would not be a violation of the mutual promises on which our marriage was dependent. At the time I did not even ask for the same permission because I simply couldn’t imagine having the time, energy or desire to have any more sex than I was having at home. While it was purely theoretical at that point, it laid out a foundation. And, significantly, it did not lead her to act on that agreement for several years. From the very beginning, we viewed open marriage not as the act of having sex with outsiders, but the permission to do so. Perhaps that is one of the keys to our success. Since then we have been sexually active with quite a few other people. Over the years my wife has had sex with well over one hundred men and women, while I have been with less than half as many as she has. Both of us have had one-off sex with people we hardly knew and ongoing sexual relationships with friends. Additionally, she has had several serious love affairs. There have been times when she’d have sex with other people several times a week, and others where neither of us had sex with anyone outside our marriage for a year or more. For instance, in the midst of the Covid pandemic we have completely suspended seeing other people. There have been times when we were actively going to several swinger events in a month and other times that we didn’t go to one in several years. We have been to parties where she or I had sex with a number of people in a night, but far more where we did not “hook up” with anyone. However, what has underpinned all this is that literally at any time or with anyone we met we could have sex…if we chose to. That option is there 24/7/365, even if neither of us choose to take it. Our pattern of activity is not uncommon in the open marriage community. Couples will be active for a while, then inactive, then active again. In part this is simply due to what I call “real life” crowding out recreational time. Over the time we have had an open marriage, we raised our kids who had school events or had demanding extracurricular schedules or got sick, or had personal crises that took our full attention. Those things often impeded our ability to go out with new potential bedmates. When her father became sick and eventually passed away, we were monogamous for 18 months. But, after that we bounced back and had the most active sexual period of our marriage. And now our kids are grown, our grand-son and Paula’s ninety-three-year-old mother get the time that once went to our kids. All that to say this; an open marriage is not so much about the frequency of fucking other people as it is the fact that fucking other people is always an option. Not just a tolerable option, but one that we both know the other will positively support and will be happy we had a moment (or a few hours, or a whole afternoon/night) of sexual bliss. So, when we meet new people and they ask about what we have done over the years, it can sound like we constantly jump from one bed to the next. Yet, that perception is not correct. In actual fact; the spaces in between wild times are longer than the wild times themselves. After all, even if we counted up and found Paula has had sex with a hundred different men and fifty women, that would still be only a few new partners per year. So no, open marriage is not about constant sex, but it is about constant love, trust and support. All in all, open marriage has worked for us. If I were to guess it will only be old age and infirmity that will permanently close our marriage to others. And that too is just a part of life. A final note: the photos on this post are of my wonderful wife Paula and a man she had met only hours before. She decided not only did she want to have sex with this guy she just met, but she wanted me to take photos of her doing it. She called me and asked if I would be willing to take pictures of her having sex with this hot guy. That ability to share special moments is part of the reward of not claiming ownership. While that time she obviously told me she was going to have sex, she is under no obligation to do so. Many times over the years she has had sex and not told me. Sometimes, months or years later she will tell me “Oh, I had sex in that hotel once,” but to this day there are sexual liaisons that I have never heard about, and likely never will. Of course, I, have no idea how many, but that is her privilege.

A couple of days ago I once again watched my favorite version of Dickens’s,   A Christmas Carol . The musical one starring Albert Finney. I think the makers of the film hit all the notes just right. You might not know it, but many scholars credit that short novel published in 1843 as the beginning of the modern notion of Christmas.  It wasn’t that he created new ideas the way that the 1823, poem Twas the Night Before Christmas did,  but it popularized the idea that Christmas was largely a secular holiday of goodwill, generosity, family, and festivities. The holiday we now celebrate as Christmas is very, very old. Perhaps as old as humanity, particularly in north west Europe where the winters are long and harsh. Of course, thousands of years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in the far-off eastern Mediterranean, his birth was not “the reason for the season”, but rather the winter solstice, the longest darkest night of the year for my Germanic ancestors for whom the cold and dark was the harbinger of death.  The celebration of the end of shortening days and the promise of rebirth in the spring was the reason for the celebration with friends and family with the Yule Log, the fir tree in the home, mistletoe, and all the rest predates all recorded history.  Culture is a funny thing, in that it can be suppressed for centuries, yet it does not go away. As the Germanic influence spread to the south and east in the first millennium, so did the notion of the solstice celebration. So much so that it had to be countered by the growing Catholic Church. As those maniacal megalomaniacs who led the quazi-political organization has done for over a thousand years, rather than try to suppress the “pagan” celebration, they simply coopted the solstice and decreed that it was actually a Christian tradition.  It has always been a lie that the “reason for the season” is the birth of Christ. But the truth has always been an impediment to religious absolutists, so this is part of a pattern, not an aberration.     While the Christianization of the solstice was highly successful in Southern Europe, it was never complete in places where the Germanic languages prevailed (i.e. the English-speaking world).  So it is no surprise that the modern version of Christmas was founded in the Germanic and Anglophile cultures. It is not a coincidence that manufactured toys only became a factor in Christmas celebrations in Germanic and English-speaking countries in the same era as Twas the Night Before Christmas  and A Christmas Carol .  However, throughout the Victorian era, the secular version of Christmas was limited to northern Europe, North America, and the British Empire. The global cataclysms of the first half of the 20th Century had the side effect of, for the first time ever, creating a global culture. It just so happened that after WW2, American culture became the defacto global culture.  For instance, the 1931Coca-Cola version of Santa Claus is now the global vision of Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 by Chicago-based retailer Montgomery Wards. Despite the ongoing efforts of religious conservatives to propitiate the lie that “Christmas” is mostly a religious holiday, ” it began as a family/social holiday and still is for most people across the globe. My evolving version of Christmas reflects the modern version that the holiday season is first about family and friends with only a nod to religious affiliation. As a child in the 1960’s my family did go to church every Sunday and I was taught the nativity story, but even then it was a side-line, not the main event of Christmas. Me, my brother and sister, circa Christmas 1968 As a child in Houston and then in suburban Dallas Christmas was all about family and the big Christmas tree.  We would visit both sets of my grandparents either in the days before or right after Christmas morning.  Christmas at Mamaw & PaPaw’s was wonderful and predictable.  They had their white flocked tree with a sleigh and reindeer set among the presents that we loved to play with. Mamaw made enough food to feed an army and it was a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell painting with the long table loaded with the turkey and food from end to end.  As a child, I simply took all of this for granted. It was the way Christmas was supposed to be.   Around 1974, both sets of my grandparents and my family (my dad took the photo)  At the family get-together at “Pop’s” house I saw all my cousins but with all the time the grown-ups spent talking it seemed to drag on forever.  Pops, my father’s father, was a master woodworker, so each of us kids were given handmade toys.  I cringe to recall that at seven years old, I thought the hand-made toys were second-rate to the plastic junk I really wanted. How I wish I had some of those crafted masterpieces now.   The main event was gathering around the tree on Christmas morning. Each year my brother and I were confined to our room at 7:00 PM and we listened to the Santa sighting reports until we went to sleep. Our living room had been decorated since the first of December, but the best gifts only showed up overnight after being delivered by Santa Claus. Since Santa always brought my mother a new nightgown/negligee, we kids had to wait till Mom put it on, and did her hair and makeup before we could start opening presents.   sometime in the last 60's Dad was the emcee and handed out gifts that we opened one at a time. It was quite a production.  And, as our family was the prototypical American post-war baby boomers. The “Christmas haul” was bountiful.  We always had both toys and … uggg… clothes.  Christmas morning was mostly about playing with our new toys. I have a distinct memory from about 1974 putting on my new, blue rollerskates. Not the old-style steel-wheeled clip-on skates but shoe skates with clay wheels like the ones we wore at the roller rink.  Racing up and down the street (in short pants) took up the majority of the day for me. early 1970's Less clear in my mind was the Christmas in about 1967 when I got my first real bicycle… the cool kind with a sissy bar in the back and racing slick tires. Another Chrismas tradition for our family was the Playboy Christmas issue or calendar (or both) in Dad's stocking. Circa 1972 I had no idea how idyllic my Christmas’s were. I just assumed all kids had the same experiences. And perhaps that is the way it should be. I was oblivious to the harsh realities for kids who did not live in the homes of the professional American middle-class. But looking back, I realize that the joy of Christmas was not the toys, but the security and love of family and community.  I lived in a bubble that actually saw my life as exactly like what I saw on The Brady Bunch, though I had no idea it was the exception rather than the rule, even in the USA of the 60’s & 70’s. Circa mid-70's. I'm the one in the middel I My second vision of Christmas began as I was training for Christian ministry/social work in the inner city of Chicago. Even so, it took several years for me to realize that what I saw in both the Northside and the Southside homes I visited was the norm for American kids, not the world I’d grown up in. By the time I left Chicago in 1986, I had a new appreciation for the life I’d been given as a child. As financially strapped newlyweds, right out of my undergrad, Paula and I first had a tree so small that we put it on top of the package that held the jewelry box I’d bought her rather than under it.   Money was tight, not just that year, but for most of my kid’s childhood. It took me almost 20 years to earn as a minister/social worker as much as I’d made as a bellman at Chicago’s Palmer House. I recall one year, when our daughter was very young, how Paula cried because she’d thought we’d have the money to provide for our own children the kind of Christmas she remembered. As a young parent, I very much wanted my kids to have what I’d had, but with my choice to spend my life trying to save the world rather than make money, it was just not possible. Yet looking back, those Christmases were wonderful with more hugs than gifts. Our second Christmas together Perhaps the highlight was the Christmas when our kids were three and five years old.  I worked with teens in Indiana. Someone must have told them how little I made and … well it was true. We had almost nothing for presents for the kids, but the teenagers I worked with took it upon themselves to ensure my two children had a Christmas to remember.  Even as I write this, I can’t keep the tears from my eyes thinking about what those kids did for me and mine that year.  Of course, it was not the gifts that piled under our tree, but the fact that the teens, on their own, chose to do that for us. Christmas 1996 It was only when our kids were teens, after I took a job with the local public school district to run their social work program (and Paula was working full-time for Victoria’s Secret), that we were able to provide our kids with the kind of Christmas we’d enjoyed as children. For five or six years I spent Christmas Eve arranging the kids Christmas presents in just the right way so that when they came up the stairs in the morning, they would get what I remember as “the Christmas morning experience.” It normally took over an hour to get everything just right. My dear wife thought I was silly for doing it, but it was important to me. Looking back, I’m very glad I did. Circa 2007 Finally, I moved into the third stage of Christmas where the kids are grown and gone. In some ways Christmas all but disappeared from our home.  We didn’t even put up a tree for something like five years as we went to our kid's homes for Christmas celebrations.  But even so, it was still about family even if there were no decorations in the home in which my kids spent most of their childhood. This year, things seem more normal with the tree up and packages waiting for Christmas morning (tomorrow).  I guess it has been the cataclysms of the past year that brought the realization that each and every Christmas I am still alive to enjoy has made me consider the meaning of Christmas for me personally.   Last night, Paula and I again watched Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life . It was hard not to take the story very personally as the film made the point that a well-lived life is reward enough. Just because I haven’t changed the world does not mean I have not made my time on earth worth while. So, I offer all of my readers wishes for a very Happy Christmas with friends and family. ...and hope you forgive my trip down memory lane

These are all photos of Paula over the years When our daughter was in high school, I was dragged into acting in a few stage productions at the local playhouse. One year I was the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz. As all the munchkins and jitterbugs were played by children and teens, we had a large number of children present backstage. The woman who played the Wicked Witch of the West was a very talented actor in her early thirties and more relevant to this post, was very attractive. She was slim but had unusually large breasts, at least 36 DD’s. As most theater people are not shy about their bodies, over the rehearsal months we saw a lot of those breasts. No, she did not fully expose herself to the teens and children milling around. We are in South Carolina after all, but on occasion, a surprising amount of her generous bust was on display. As a long-term drama person, she thought nothing of it. On the crew was a group of high school age home school students who used this experience as part of their schooling. In the American South, where we live, most homeschool students come from fundamentalist Christian homes. Not surprisingly, the younger kids hardly noticed her, but the teens did. For me, watching the sheltered teenagers watching the witches’ breasts was quite an opportunity to learn more about how teens react to nudity. At one of the first dress rehearsals, the witch was sitting gand etting on her “green face” as the director fussed with the munchkins on stage. As she had to change clothes and makeup between Kansas and Oz she stripped down to a pair of micro-shorts and a very abbreviated halter sports bra, in which a great deal of her bust was on display. It was the first time the teens had seen her change like this. The next day, when she was again changing, a teenage boy, who had clearly lived a very sheltered life was talking to her. I have no doubt before he joined this production, he had never spent time with someone like her (she lived with her boyfriend…. such a sin). Over the prior month of rehearsal, he had discovered she was just a regular person, not a demon. I heard him say with clear admiration in his voice, “I’ve never known anyone like you. You are so comfortable in your own skin.” I knew exactly what he meant, with my fundamentalist background I interpreted this to mean “I’ve never known a woman that doesn’t seem to care who sees her boobs.” The witch also understood and said, “They’re just mounds of fat, nothing special.” She was wrong though. Yes, a woman’s breasts are just mounds of fat with latent mammary glands, but to say they are nothing special to humans is simply not true. Anthropologists make a convincing argument that human females evolved “swollen” breasts because, unlike other mammals, humans do not have a physiological signal when they are fertile. They don’t get in heat and are receptive to sex at any time. The female has protruding breasts to tell males she is sexually developed enough to mate. Breasts are not just lumps of fat. Contrary to the insistence of some feminists that breasts are not sexual; they are, in biological fact, the primary way females advertise they are sexually available and desirable. So it should be no surprise that males are drawn to this visible symbol of female sexuality. It isn’t objectification or male chauvinism, it is basic biology that makes the breast the focus of male attention. Sure men also are drawn to asses, but that is an even older biological response, harkening to our quadruped roots, one must only see a dog in heat to see where that came from. It has been suggested that people in the modern world are only obsessed with breasts because they are nearly universally hidden. However, reviewing historical and anthropological records would suggest that indeed exposed breasts do become normalized in societies (normally tropical) where they are usually left uncovered. Even in places where women nearly universally leave their breasts exposed, upright perky breasts are still admired by men as a sign of sexual desirability. Yes, by keeping them hidden modern humans have amped up that focus to the point of fetish, but it is not the base reason for the fascination with the female breast. Boobs, tits, knockers, hooters, melons, ta ta’s, fun bags, the list could go on and on. Men and women are obsessed with breasts and always have been. Even in eras of highly conservative values such as Victorian England and post-war USA, breast were put on display. Sure the ‘real thing’ was hidden under layers of fabric, but that just meant they had to be all the more accentuated by corsets and bullet bras. When I was shooting glamour photos professionally, the face of my client was the primary focus, but her breast was most definitely one of the secondary points I brought into the composition. This would also be true in the photos I collect from other talented glamour photographers. Bare breast, draped breast, breast with the nipple just peeking through; they all have their own allure. As a photographer, I like smaller or midsized breasts for the simple fact they don’t move around. Large unsupported breasts seem to move of their own accord and are very difficult to photograph; except for surgically augmented ones, they stay put. A client from nearly 20 years ago shot with my full manual Nikon. And then there is the notion of valuing women solely for their breasts. The truth is that most men are not particular and are aroused by the sight of just about any woman’s breasts. Women however are prone to make judgments of other women based on their breasts. My experience is that women judge other women’s breasts far more harshly than men ever do. I would suggest that the approval of women is a larger factor in the desire to get breast implants than to please men. And, increasingly this effort to impress or show-up other women is to no avail as women with ‘natural’ breasts are increasingly critical of those with augmented ones. Big soft breasts, small muscular breasts, half bowl breasts, perky upturned breasts, breasts pulled down by their own weight, big areolas, tiny areolas, the variety goes on and on. Men tend to have breast types they are most attracted to. A study in the 80’s found that men with physical jobs tended to like large breasted women, while men with desk jobs tended to be more attracted to smaller breasted women. What that means….. I don’t know; but it does show that there are patterns to sexual attraction based on breasts. So I will close by saying my wife’s breasts are perfect. They were perfect for the first 20 years of our marriage as 34 B’s, they were still perfect as 36 DD’s during her late 40’s & 50’s and now she is back to 34 B’s, and they are still wonderful. No, she did not (as my own mother did) get implants to make them bigger, her breast size has just changed over time. So I will make the radical proposal that the size and shape of breasts are not nearly as important as the woman to whom they are attached. But, like it or not, breasts matter.

A Few years ago my wife and I both came to the conclusion that we are not real fans of having casual sex by the conventional definition, i.e., sex with persons with whom we have no ongoing relationship. Now, that’s not saying we haven’t done that once or twice in the past year, because we have. But, those times were “just one of those things”. The point is, we don’t go looking for that kind of sexual encounter. I’m sure part of that is that we are both over 50 and neither of us have that burning imperative, when we go to a swing club or party, that we must have sex with someone new. And it’s not that we think such casual sex is wrong or as some put it empty. It’s just not for us. On the other hand we certainly don’t believe that sex should be reserved for relationships that are deeply committed either. I am quite sure the myth of the specialness of sex is an outgrowth of property based monogamy (with women being the property). It became codified into nearly every religion that has a professional clergy as a way to maintain social stability and thus the clergy’s social position. Even though this myth is still perpetuated via the modern secular clergy, psychologist/psychiatrists, it does not derive from real science but from the desire to justify what they already believe by using unjustified cause-effect statements. The position that my wife and I are comfortable taking is the proposition (that I’ve made before) that sex is a normal and positive part of adult social relationships. In other words, sex is for friends. In our post tribal world, most of us have precious few people to whom we can go to when we have a joy to share or need comforting in our sorrow. I don’t mean the new “Facebook” meaning of friendship, but a real relationship of trust and caring. A friend is the person that you don’t need to put on for and don’t expect them to put on for you. Perhaps the best definition of friendship for me is that person for whom I don’t have to clean the house if they come over. Friendship is all about shared experiences and mutual support. As humans one of the best ways to do both is through physical touch, skin touching skin. Sexual touch is the most complete version of touch, which makes it a natural activity for friends. Sexual sharing is all about skin on skin touching. It is just full body, genital included, skin on skin touching. One may counter that sex is mostly about erotic passion and release. I would disagree. Perhaps my age is showing again, but the most important thing about sex is not the erotic passion and release of orgasm. The most important thing about sex, it is skin on skin touching. If orgasm is all someone wants, masturbation is a more sure way to gain orgasm than any other, but no one can get the deep pleasure and sense of serenity that full body skin on skin contact provides via masturbation. When I’ve taught about sexuality, I use the analogy that a full sexual experience is like a symphony. It has multiple parts including an opening (often with surprises), and a slow building section that can be either sensuous or relaxed, a rhythmic center, a climax then a quiet reflective post climatic refrain. Sure it is possible to listen to the climactic three minutes of the Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture over and over, but by doing that you rob the music of its real power. Or perhaps more accessible to some readers, if you just saw the last scene of the Les Misérables, it would have nice music but it wouldn’t bring forth tears because there was not the preceding build up. However, it would be hard to imagine anyone attending to the whole musical where that last song that does not get a tear welling up. With that background, I contend that sexual interaction is, or should be, a normal and positive part of adult friendships. With this in mind I offer the following definition of “Casual Sex” Casual Sex: (1) informal sexual interaction of a caring, but casual, nature between persons who have an ongoing mutually supportive relationship (philia), but are not romantically involved (amore); (2) mutually pleasurable sex between friends where the relationship is defined by something other than romantic or sexual attraction.

One of the reasons I began blogging was to clarify and organize my thoughts on topics. I am trying to lay out a systematic approach to the discussing the topic of sexual orientation. Based on my years or research and experience here is what I’m thinking. Yes this is a direct challenge to Queer Theory. Perhaps it might help you in thinking through this. Part I - Truisms Humans are born with an emotional need for belonging, affection and validation. Humans are socialized to how to get their emotional needs met. Until puberty humans do not develop a biological urge to have sex, though children are socialized to act in ways that mimic an internal sex drive. By the time humans are aware of their sexual urges, they have already been socialized on how to express them and how to get them met. The socialization process is vastly complex, too complex to systemize. Genetically carried traits significantly impact the how the socialization impacts emotional and sexual desire. Humans can get their emotional and sexual needs met from the same person (or type of person) or from deferent people (or types of people) Part II - Implications Prior to the onset of puberty, children do not have sexual needs; thus they do not have sexual preferences. What is often interpreted as early sexual orientation is the development of gender based patterns in meeting emotional needs. When people say “Sexual Preferences” it usually is meant to mean several components of emotional attraction as well as sexual attraction; however, and there is reason to suggest all the different types of attraction will line up with one person, one gender or one group. Emotional/Sexual attractions nearly always change over the life cycle and are impacted by very many things, including but not limited to: societal expectations, availability, life events, values changes and social status. Efforts to shape, limit or encourage other peoples sexual/emotional attractions is a futile and often harmful project. Part III- In Regard to Straight & LBGTQA et al. No one is born heterosexual or homosexual because adult sexuality comes with puberty. The complex nature of childhood gender role development defies an ability to attribute causes. The concept of mono-sexual homosexual (i.e. gay & lesbian) is a socio political construct that is very modern in origin. The rise of self-identity based on sexual interests as a common behavior has no precedent in human history and is a result of the decline of traditional ways of identity making (religion, class, family, profession, etc.). Sexual identity should be seen to be more about identity and community than it is actually about sexual desires. Most people will find themselves emotionally and or sexual attracted to both males and females over their adult life course, nearly half will act on that desire at least once. Homoerotic imagery is a key element in mainstream commercial porn to feed and fill the gap between homosexual desires and behaviors. Social history shows that absent social prohibitions to the contrary, most people will act on sexual attraction to both sexes There is a growing rise in the acceptance of people who do not identify as part of the queer community to occasionally engage in homoerotic behavior. The reason the gay/lesbian leadership attack the bisexual identity is that the very existence of bisexuals undermines their claim to be fundamentally “different” based on their perceived unique homosexual urges. The proposition that western society could return to the normalizing of bisexual behavior as it was in the Hellenic world undermines Queer Theory which acts like a quasi-religion. Hence the L/G leadership insists that humans must be mono-sexual

I honestly never thought this topic would ever hit the mainstream, but it has. What surprises me most is that those who are talking about critical race theory in the popular press and in the political sphere ... on both sides... don't seem to have a clue what they are talking about. A few weeks ago one of my left of center friends challenged my claim that critical race theory (CRT) is a dangerous and anti-liberal ideology. It seems that a great many people simply just assume that since CRT exposes systematic and structural racism and it is opposed by the right wing, it must be good. That is simply not the case. Just because someone talks about a disease does not mean they have the cure. Snake oil salesmen have been doing this forever. CRT at its core offers the same false and oppressively vison for society as do fundamentalist religions. It is just the same snake oil with a different label. SO... for those of you who actually want to know what does the term Critical Race Theory mean, I offer this short critique I wrote a few years ago. A Short Critique of Critical Race Theory I spent over a decade deeply immersed in the fundamentalist Christian community. I have both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from flagship institutions in two different wings of the movement. As such I know what fundamentalist religion is. I’ve seen it up close. Despite their claims to the contrary, fundamentalist religion is founded on the utilitarian concept of “the greater good”. Such religions believe they have the inside track on ultimate truth; and, that the “here and now” control they seek to inflict on others, is justified by some greater long term good. Their practitioners are convinced that all people must yield to their vision of reality in order for society to reach a higher level of existence, justice and happiness. Religion rejects the scientific method because their beliefs trump what appears to be measurable fact. They see the world as an illusion hiding the underlying supernatural truths that lie beneath. Finally, fundamentalist religion, specifically fundamentalist religious institutions, are self-serving. When push comes to shove, religious institutions (like all institutions) act in their own self-interest rather than the interests they publicly espouse. The political leftists in the US and in Europe have pilloried religion since the enlightenment; however, in the past half century, the “new-left” has embraced an all-encompassing religion of their own. Their religion is non-theistic, but it has all the hallmarks of fundamentalist religion. The name of that religion is Critical Theory. And in this short paper I lay out why I am concerned their religion aims to supplant democratic liberalism with a totalitarian quasi-theocracy. However; addressing critical theory is not a simple matter because Critical Theory is not a theory of society, or a wholly homogenous school of thinkers or a method. Critical theory, rather, is a tradition of social thought that, in part at least, takes its cue from its opposition to the wrongs and ills of modern society’s on the one hand, and the forms of theorizing that simply go along with or seek to legitimize those society on the other hand”. (Bernstein, 1995, p. 11). The term critical theory was coined by Max Horkeimer in a 1947 article which was primarily an attack on what he believed to be the misplaced belief in the scientific method, and in specific, he attacked the Cartesian dichotomy of separating the object and the observer (Bernstein, 1995; Thomassen, 2010). Additionally, as a member of the Frankfort School, Horkeimer combined this constructivist view of reality with Marxian conceptions of economics, materialism and class domination. Horkeimer said “the [critical] theory never aims simply at an increase in knowledge as such. Its goal is man’s emancipation from slavery” (Thomassen, 2010, p. 20) . The essential difference, between traditional Marxism and critical theory however, is not just that the proletariat is replaced by other groups; but, that identity formation of the new sorts of groups does not require direct action (i.e. revolution), rather, the new group identity requires action in the political arena. (Bernstein, 1995,p. 20). Other German philosophers, chief among them Jürgen Habermas built on the foundation laid by Horkeimer to continue to develop the critical theory. One particular challenge to the Marxist in Western Europe in the 1950’s was the need to update Marx’s vision of the inevitability of a proletariat uprising, which by that time was clearly not going to happen. The predicted collapse of capitalism just didn’t and wasn’t going to happen in a world of growing affluence for the working class. How were they going to tell a bunch of factory workers who lived in nice homes, had cars and TV’s that they were oppressed? One approach was to say their wealth and leisure oppressed them. Habermas wrote how wealth and consumerism has led to what he called alienated leisure, and even a welfare state, like France, can be a dehumanizing force as it exercises control over the individual (Edgar, 2005). That approach didn’t get very much attention. A more productive line of thought lay in finding new reasons people were oppressed. The success of critical theory lies in its focus on unmasking hidden structures and meanings that lead to oppression of social groups using the traditional political theory of Marx blended with the psychoanalytic theory of Freud (Thomassen, 2010). Habermas, extended and clarified, adding to Marx, the psychoanalytic ideas of Freud to reenergize discredited Marxism. In this he changed Freud’s efforts to uncover repressed feeling of a single person, to encompass society as a whole. Habermas, sought to put whole nations “on the couch” to understand how society is driven by meanings that are hidden from every day view (Thomassen, 2010). Importantly, only the analyst (i.e. the critical theorist) can divine these hidden oppressions or alleviate them.. Thus, critical theorists seek to find new groups who are oppressed, tell them they are so and offer themselves as the solution to their oppression. So, why do we suddenly have a hundred different groups claiming to be oppressed minorities? Because the critical theorist is on a religious mission to find as many groups as possible, and convince them they are oppressed. Thus, modern critical theory has many faces and focuses but all look so very much like religion. Two core beliefs have defined the philosophy (quasi-religion) from the outset: a rejection of scientific proof, in favor or a belief system (i.e. faith) and the duty to seek to uncover hidden oppression (i.e. sin). Because of this, the critical theorist has a life-long evangelical mission to tell those who do not know they are oppressed that they are indeed slaves and that the gospel of critical theory will set them free (preaching and evangelism) (Carspecken, 1996). For illustration I will, based on classical liberalism, specifically address my concerns based on two very popular incarnations of critical theory: critical race theory and critical feminist theory. The first precept of critical race theory is “Critical race theory recognizes that racism is endemic to American life”. (Dixson & Rousseau, 2005, p. 9). This is not presented as a possibility, but as an indisputable fact. As constructivist, critical race theorists legitimize such unequivocal “fact” statements founded on their constructed reality based on finding hidden agendas visible only to critical theorist (McKnight & Chandler, 2012). This core belief justifies critical race theorist, Gloria Ladson-Billing, to use her position as President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), to proclaim that there is not just an achievement gap, but an education debt owed by European-Americans to be paid to African and Latino Americas (Ladson-Billings, 2006b). In her address to the AERA, she makes a case that race and race alone drives educational achievement. All other factors are functionally irrelevant. The justice, or even factual truth, of suggesting, as she does, that African-American children cannot succeed because “racism is normal not aberrant in American society.” (Ladson-Billings, 2006a) is simply not considered in her address. Thus, in her vision of critical theory of justice the white population, including the children in schools today, owe what she specifies as economic, sociopolitical and moral debt to every child of color, no matter their particular circumstances (Ladson-Billings, 2006) . Schouten (2012) strenuously objects to the whole notion that there is a moral debt owed for education as suggested by Ladson-Billings. Rather she counters with a classically liberal answer that there is a moral obligation to those who are disadvantaged. She acknowledges that the disproportionate number of low performing African-Americans is certainly rooted in historical bias, and that disproportionate resources are required to remedy the statistical inequity. However, the assistance should not be geared to groups based on past injustices, but to individuals based on current need. She wrote, “They therefore have a claim to be benefited, as they are themselves victims of an injustice; the injustice of being badly off.”(Schouten, 2012). There is a significant case to be made that poverty, not race is the driving factor in the difference between races in school success; however, this runs counter to the critical race theory commitment to treat “race as a defining principle rather than a variable within research” (Leonardo, 2012, p. 430). When income is addressed by critical race theory, it is often in the context of Bourdieu’s Marxian tradition rather than income. Nowhere is CRT’s relationship with class analysis more clear than its uptake of Bourdieu’s (1977a) concept of cultural capital. It is one of the most frequently used and critiqued class-oriented concept in the CRT literature on education. There are several species of the appropriation. First, in an endorsement of Bourdieu’s concept, cultural capital is used to explain school biases against more or less essential(ist) cultures of color, their family value systems and priorities. Consistent with Bourdieu’s ideas about class stratification but applied to race, CRT scholars indict the White standards of learning in schools, from the English forms that are recognized to the behaviors that are punished or rewarded and the historical contributions that are valorized or omitted. (Leonardo, 2012, p.438) I find it significant that in the current US Department Of Education figures, African-American’s comprise the exact same percentage in the U.S. undergraduate colleges and universities (15%) as they do in K-12 and nearly the same rate for graduate education (14%) (Aud, Hussar, Kena, & Roth, 2012). The data indicate a more complicated situation with Latino students in the 2011 DOE report (Aud et al., 2011) notes that the dropout rate for immigrant Latino’s is over three times that of native born Latino’s and further notes that Asian immigrants also have the same disproportionate dropout rate, despite the overall success of Asian students in US schools. This would indicate that the issue may well be surrounding the process of immigration rather than race. Even still the Hispanic college undergraduate population is 14% of the total. I’m sure you have not heard that African-Americas are no longer underrepresented minorities in colleges and universities. Why? Because the criticalists control the academic press and to them this is bad news, not good news. I have presented this line of argumentation about critical race theory to highlight the underlying problem with the use of all types of critical theory. They give themselves, carte blanch to assigning negative motives to others and when one says “I’m not a racist” they just respond with their belief system, “Your denial is proof you are a racist.” This is very similar to a Baptist telling someone “You’re a sinner going to Hell”, when the accused says they don’t believe in Hell, the Baptist says “Ah, your denial is proof you’re going to Hell.” See how this is basically religious in nature. This approach leads to a huge body of “research” that shows little but the prior beliefs of the researchers. Typical for the articles I read for this project was a peer reviewed article on how young African-American college men worked out race in predominantly white colleges (Wilkins, 2012) . Throughout, the researcher made motive claims with no evident connection to the subject’s statements. When her subjects made statements that did not conform to the tenants of critical race theory, the author again assigned negative motive. Thus successful behaviors by the subjects were negatively labeled and the author condemned her subjects as being oppressors themselves. The conclusion is brazen in its condemnation of the subjects refusal of specific agendas the authors believes are required based on race; “But more, by dismissing both black women and, often, black organizations, as immoderate spaces, black men abandon their collective responsibility to fight racial inequality, focusing instead on individual strategies of mobility and leaving the work of fighting racism up to women.” (Wilkins, 2012, p. 57). My readings in preparation for this project indicate that this type of approach is not an anomaly, but common practice. This is not to suggest that the profound achievement gap is not important, nor does it suggest that there are not differences in life circumstance for children that are highly correlated with race. What this does suggest is that there is a fatal weakness in the argument for using critical race theory as the core tool to measure educational justice. Critical race theory is closely related to critical feminist theory in philosophy and method with sex being substituted for race when presenting oppression in schools (Hannan, 1995; Okin, 1994); The intersection of race and feminist theory is common such as in the Wilkins article above, yet it shows a willingness to choose interpretations of the subjects statements to prioritize the researchers agenda. It becomes apparent that critical feminist choose ideology over objective statistical measures. It is not that critical theorist do not use statistical data on inequality, but they only condone statistical data as valid when it is convenient to support their beliefs. Despite the fact that long term trends show that females are far more successful than males on nearly every educational measure, critical feminist continue to search for evidence that girls are disadvantaged in education, and to seek programs to promote girls performance (Bianco, Harris, Garrison-Wade, & Leech, 2011; Kafer, 2011; U.S. Department of Education, 2010). Overall the critical feminist response is to downplay the significant achievement gap between males and females that has been growing for over two decades (Froses-Gremain, 2006). Worse yet, in certain segments of the critical feminist community, there is resentment at the idea of addressing the achievement gap that favors females (Mills & Keddie, 2010; Zyngier, 2009). I think, if you made it this far into my rather dense essay, that you can see how critical theory acts just like a religion, based not on facts or evidence, but firmly on a belief system. Marx is Moses, Das Capital is the holy writ, with Freud as a co-prophet, and Habermas as the apostle Paul making the new religion palatable and understandable to the larger world beyond the zealots. Across the land, primary in Colleges and Universities this religion is enforced with an iron hand. Eighteen year old undergrads not only aren’t told the core of this religion, but are crushed and belittled if they resist. As a doctoral student, older than most of the professors expounding on this I had to fight tooth and nail to get a draw. When confronted with the Marxist core of critical theory, several of my professors simply lied and denied the facts while they tried to belittle me as they desperately tried to sell their religion as liberalism to the younger students. But as the greatest philosopher of the late 20th century, John Rawls, pointed critical theory stands in stark contrast to the claims of universal rights based on a common humanity. So next time you hear, something presented as social justice that seems to do quite the opposite, think of this essay. References Aud, S., Hussar, W. :., F., Kena, G., & Roth, E. (2012). The condition of education 2012. ( No. 2012-045). Washington DC: US Dept. of Education Center for Educational Statistics. Bernstein, J. M. (1995). Recovering ethical life: Jürgen habermas and the future of critical theory . New York: Routledge. Bianco, M., Harris, B., Garrison-Wade, D., & Leech, N. (2011). Gifted girls: Gender bias in gifted referrals. Roeper Review, 33 (3), 170-181. doi: 10.1080/02783193.2011.580500 Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide . New York: Routledge. Dixson, A., & Rousseau, C. (2005).
And we are still not saved: Critical race
theory in education ten years later. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8 (1), 7-27. doi: 10.1080/1361332052000340971 Edgar, A. (2005). The philosophy of habermas . Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Froses-Gremain, B. (2006). Educating boys: Tempering rhetoric with research. Mc Glill Journal of Education, 41 (2), 145-154. Hannan, D. J. (1995). Gender equity in the american classroom: Where are the women? English Journal, 84 (6), 103. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9510172609&site=ehost-live Kafer, K. (2011). Wasting education dollars: The women's educational equity act. ( No. Backgrounder #1490). Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35 (7), 3-12. doi: 10.3102/0013189X035007003 Leonardo, Z. (2012). The race for class: Reflections on a critical raceclass theory of education. Educational Studies, 48 (5), 427-449. doi: 10.1080/00131946.2012.715831 McKnight, D., & Chandler, P. (2012). The complicated conversation of class and race in social and curricular analysis: An examination of pierre bourdieu's interpretative framework in relation to race. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44 , 74-97. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ962318&site=ehost-live; http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00555.x Mills, M., & Keddie, A. (2010). Gender justice and education: Constructions of boys within discourses of resentment, neo-liberalism and security. Educational Review, 62 (4), 407-420. doi: 10.1080/00131911.2010.482202 Okin, S. M. (1994). Gender inequality and cultural differences. Political Theory, 22 (1), 5. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9407053853&site=ehost-live Thomassen, L. (2010). Habermas: A guide for the perplexed . London: Continuum. U.S. Department of Education. (2010). Women's educational equity. Retrieved 9-19, 2012, from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/equity/index.html Wilkins, A. (2012). “Not out to start a revolution”: Race, gender, and emotional restraint among black university men. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41 (1), 34-65. doi: 10.1177/0891241611433053 Zyngier, D. (2009). Doing it to (for) boys (again): Do we really need more books telling us there is a problem with boys’ underachievement in education? Gender and Education, 21 (1), 111-118. doi: 10.1080/09540250802580844

Beginning on the mother-daughter trip to Miami, Misty began working on using her friends, family, and parent’s friends as models for her expanding glamour and erotica portfolio. In that there is nowhere in the text of the novel to share with my readers her work and the context in which she shot the photos, I thought I’d make this side story to let you see her work. Rather than a narrative, I will present Misty’s photos and then a short description of the circumstances and will group the photos based on affiliation, for instance, the first set will be of the original ten Euro Club girls. This post will be of Misty’s friends, and a second post (when I get it done) will be of her family, her parents' friends, and erotica.   Euro Club, (first generation)     Caitlin : Caitlin's photo was shot on the road that ran in front of Misty's house.  Misty wanted the photo to show Caitlin’s strength of knowing who she was without apology.  Growing up as the daughter of an unapologetic sex worker coupled with her “second family” who treated nudity and sex as normal; Caitlin declared herself a nudist at seventeen and never looked back.   Connie : Misty did Connie's nude shoot right at her family’s farmhouse. The location is special to Misty since she had so many wonderful memories at the Broderick farm growing up. Out of the frame, Connie's mother and sister watched the whole time. Though Lauren begged for Misty to shoot her nude too, her pleas did no good... though Misty did relent some, and with Mrs. Broderick’s permission she shot Lauren with her sister, though none of Laurens’ “bits” were visible.   Haley : Haley's glamour picture was done at her family’s horse farm the same day Misty shot her mother and sister as well.  As my readers may recall, this photo shoot was described in Chapter 53.    Hope : Misty decided to do Hope's photo right in her home’s game room. To be cheeky she posed her friend right in front of the family portrait.   Iris:  Misty wanted Iris’s photo to reflect on her complete comfort with her own body.  So, on a pretty early spring day, she posed Iris in the backyard. Sure, she got a little cold, but art sometimes has a price.   Jeanette : This photoshoot was one of the very first Misty did with her new home studio in Chapter 54.  Jeanette proved to be very patient as Misty learned how to use her new lights. JoAnne:  JoAnne was the very first of her friends to pose nude for her back at the end of the summer.  Misty decided she wanted to do something different for her third nude photoshoot with JoAnne, so she decided to use the decorations from her parent's Arabian Nights party with her home studio.  She then asked Kurt (her boyfriend) and John Paul (Hope’s boyfriend) to play acolytes. Misty only pretended to be surprised when the glamour shoot turned into a sex shoot.   Kelli: While they made some phone pics of the lingerie Mrs. C. had bought for Misty’s sexual debut over a year ago, Misty asked Kelli to let her shoot her in the living room with proper lighting in her outfit.   Misty: Caitlin helped with this self-portrait with her beloved Mini on the same pretty day that Misty shot the photos of Caitlin on the road in front of her house.   Rebecca: Misty did several glamour and nude shoots of Rebecca over the fall and winter. This particular day, she also shot nudes of Rebecca’s mother using the same backdrop and props.  Though initially, Ashley said that she wasn’t ready to do a nude mother/daughter portrait yet, by the time Misty had finished her set, she was ready to pose with Rebecca.     Euro Club, (first generation)   Since none of the second group of club girls had turned 18 that school year, all the glamor photos had to either have the model in some sort of attire or to be “apparent nudes” in which the model was unclothed but their nipples and vulva were hidden. While staying inside the strict letter of the law as she understood it, Misty took her cue from Heather’s high school photos and pushed those boundaries as far as she thought she could get away with.  Hence photos in sheer & peek-a-boo outfits were on the table as were shots that caught some areola or pubic hair.   Amelia : This photo of Amelia was taken in Misty’s studio the night of the Valentine’s party, while Misty and the other girls who did not go to Jefferson Davis High, waited for the school dance to end. The swimsuit was one of the Campbell’s loaners.   Bailey : When Misty had gone with Mrs. Hildebrandt to shoot her at the mansion where she met “Mr. Big” every Sunday morning, she needed a photo assistant. Bailey was the obvious choice since Mr. Big’s identity was quite the secret. Mrs. Hildebrandt didn’t need much convincing to let Bailey put on some of her lingerie to pose using the same sets Misty used with her mother.  Misty did her first mother/daughter lingerie shoot that day. Tthough she shot what Bailey and her mother wanted and gave them the files, Misty didn’t keep any photos she thought crossed the line.   Celia : Celia’s passion is for her violin and Misty wanted to capture that. The shoot was truly special.  Misty had never listened to a world-class violinist before and it was mesmerizing… and that she was nude simply added to the effect. The real challenge was to get the lighting right even as Celia moved around. For her part, Celia seemed to just lose herself into her music and paid no attention to Misty at all.  Eventually Misty stopped even trying to avoid capturing her girl parts since, in her mind, these were art photos, not glamour.   Gabby: Gabby also got several shoots simply because she was at the house every Thursday.  She asked to pose in the outfit she’d worn during the Valentine's Day party. Having worn it all night, it was the first time she’d ever gone so exposed. In the end, Mrs. C. gave her the top which became her go-to outfit while at the Campbell home.   Hannah:  Misty did her best to reflect her models’ personalities. In this case, she knew what to do for the bookish (but free-spirited) Hannah.  Hannah loved Misty’s photo concept, and she’d been the one to suggest deliberately showing a little pubic hair to push the boundaries. Misty intentionally created the silhouette of her breasts on the backdrop for the same reason.   Hillary: Hillary was one of the few club girls to bring her own lingerie with her. She’d loved how JoAnne had shown off her pubes in her club bikini at the end of the summer, so she wanted a photo doing something similar. Lindsey: She’d complained vociferously that Misty wouldn’t let her show her boobs on camera. She pointed out that she’s done nude selfies and let guys take naked pictures of her for several years. Misty would not budge. However, for her studio photo shoot, Misty did shoot Lindsey in this mesh swimsuit that she’d found online.   Maria Jane:   Given her difficult history, Misty was careful to make sure Maria Jane did not feel exploited during her shoot. It was Caitlin who’d suggested shooting her in a classic  50’s Playboy-style pose sitting on the pool table. While she was totally comfortable being naked, she had a hard time relaxing for the camera.   Megan:  Megan brought her own lingerie to the shoot. Misty was happy she had just the right backdrop to go with it.   Sarah: While Misty had done quite a few shoots with Sarah, including at the topless and nude beaches, she liked this one for the club album. The image was of simple casual nudity…  just like Sarah lived.   Tori: To Misty, Tori was just too cute to dress up in lingerie. Putting her in this top that Misty sometimes wore at night proved perfect. Again Misty created the silhouette of her bust to add a visual element to the picture.   Ex officio club members     Everliegh: Even though Everleigh was not a club member, she blended in perfectly. Just hanging out naked in the Campbell’s home seemed to be so comfortable her that Misty suggested she lay on the pool table for a photo. Which she did gladly. Mimi: Though Mimi posed nude for Misty several times over the winter and spring, this photo of her in the outfit she wore for the Valentine’s party was Misty’s favorite. She’d come so far since the end-of-school party the prior year and lifting up her skirt in the game room full of people said it all.    Naomi: Misty struggled with getting an image that she thought captured Naomi’s personality. She tried several different lingerie and dressing her up in her mother’s body jewelry.  In the end she decided on a simple, classic nude which was more of art-nude than glamour. Naomi agreed that was her, plain, simple, and sexually precocious...which was exhibited the day of the End-of-School party when she had sex (with her second boy ever) in Mr. C.’s home office with the door wide open… while Mrs. C. and Everleigh chatted.

I find it interesting that the most common thing Paula and I were asked about when we spent more time with teens and young adults was about the experience of having a threesome. Years ago, not long after I’d left the Christian ministry, a college student who as a teenager had looked to Paula (the minister's wife) for guidance during her high school years came to visit. In her visit she asked Paula straight out if we had ever done a threesome. It was quite a surprising question because we didn’t think she had any reason to suspect we hadn't been monogamous while working with her in our last Christian organization. Still Paula didn’t hedge when presented with the question and said yes we had. The young woman then told Paula that her new husband and she were thinking of having one and asked Paula's advice as to how to go about it. This wasn't the only time this has happened. Some years later we'd taken one of our daughter’s friends (who was fifteen at the time) with our daughter to a local restaurant. The girls were talking away about school and dating and such when the teenager asked us "Have you guys had a threesome?" Now the idea of a fifteen-year-old asking her friend's parents if they had sex with a third partner would have been unthinkable when I was a teen, but the world has changed. Now to be fair, this teen girl had seen the nude photos of Paula we had hanging in the bedroom and at the time we had a very large photo of Paula in a rather see-through chain-mail thong bikini in the main hallway. There was also no way that Michelle hadn't told her friend about her mom going nude at the beach or how her parents rarely shut their bedroom door, even when they had sex. It wasn't like her friend saw us as prudes, but still to ask us in front of our daughter if we'd had a threesome was quite bold. I must admit that I hesitated, but Paula did not and said we had. Now, I will be right up front that I have not seen any current research into how common it is for couples, particularly young couples to have a threesome. A 2004 survey by ABC News said 14%, but we know that casual polls significantly under report sexual behavior that is considered taboo or even unusual. So, it really is hard to give any answer with a even a moderate degree of certainty. However, what I think I can say is that they are significantly more common now than they were even 20 years ago. if I were to guess, I would say that well over 1/3 of couples under forty have had one. When we were first married, to admit publicly that we'd shared our bed with another woman or man would have been shocking enough to result in social ostracism. Today it is merely unusual. Why are threesomes so "in vogue" now? I think it might be that the threesome is a way for a couple to put their toe into the open relationship water, without feeling out of control. Certainly it was a part of our process, in that my wife first became sexually involved with her best friend, then had a threesome by including her friend’s husband and later a threesome by having her friend join us in bed. Threesomes have a lot going for them in the life of a long-term relationship or that of a married couple. It allows the couple to introduce a new sexual element while keeping their sex life unmistakably centered on their relationship. It takes more trust, for instance, for me or my wife to know the other is on a date alone with a man or woman, than it does for a couple to jointly date someone. In poly parlance, this third person is a “secondary”. I think it is a good thing that as of late there has been a good deal of discussion about the ethical treatment of the people who are the playmate of a married couple. In most cases the concern revolves around young single women who are secondary's of older married couples and are treated as expendable living sex toys. However, I am quite sure that putting such limits on the discussion leaves out the majority of "secondary's" who are involved in threesomes. Though the talk is nearly all about a woman sharing the bed with a couple, the reality is in our experience, nearly as many couples share their bed with a man as with a woman. This is not just what we do, but from our many friends who have had threesomes this is also true. For the last decade or so, I can't recall any time we had a threesome with a woman. This brings up the first question about a threesome, what do you (as a couple) want out of the experience. Will it just be sex and no more, or do one of you want to have a "boyfriend/girlfriend." To us the ideal situation is the threesome is with a friend, but some couples want their threesome partner to be a complete stranger, not someone they will run into at social events. Paula also likes secondary’s who are boyfriends, with romance in the mix. The next question is: will this other person in your bed be a man or a woman. A related issue is what form of 3 some do you want. Do you want a “V” with the two same sex partners only connected by their sex with the opposite sex partner, or do you want a triangle were the three participants give and/or receive sexual pleasure equally with the other two. In our case both Paula and I are very comfortable giving and receiving sexual pleasure from either men or women, this gives us the maximum flexibility in choices. To us it makes no sense to have a threesome when two of the three partners can’t touch each other sexually……. Well, that’s not entirely true, she does like the two people playing “Tag team” at giving her pleasure. We have also had 3-somes where the woman didn’t want me to be sexual with her, so that was also a “V” arrangement but with Paula as the center of a female-female-male (FFM) three some. Just a note, in our experience it is rare for self-described heterosexual men in a threesome to turn down receiving oral sex from me. In fact it's only happened once. So it is a real question: how open are each of you to giving and/or receiving pleasure from someone of the same sex? It seems to be common to assume women are more open to same sex enjoyment than men. I would suggest that a study of research and sexual history would disprove that. In a married couple’s threesome, the focus is on mutual enjoyment and sharing an erotic high. To share your shared lover fully (male or female) is the natural state. Nearly all “straight” people in a threesome, when offered pleasure from someone of their sex, can fully enjoy it as part of their sharing with their spouse. Many others, particularly those who get their joy out of seeing their spouse pleasured, can fully enjoy giving their spouse’s playmate pleasure no matter what genitals are between their legs. The most shocking thing about my first time in a threesome when a man’s penis filled my mouth was how it was simply no different than going down on a new woman in a threesome. So it should not be assumed that wives are more open to homoerotic behavior than husbands. We have tried all the different variants. We have agreed that, for us, that the ideal situation is a man to share our bed who is open to pleasure from another man, even if he doesn’t call himself bisexual. That is not to say that is best for others, but for us, as a couple in our 50’s, having a pair of penises promises the best satisfaction for her and for us. Additionally, she likes alpha type men who can fuck for hours. This relates to our sexual styles. I tend to be a slow romantic lover, which she likes a lot, but there is a certain unique pleasure that she gets from being fucked hard, fast and long. She tends to like very masculine men and women as lovers for this reason. She has dated several former pro/semi-pro athletes and found they fit the bill nicely. Notice, the point here is what we as a couple need, not what couples in some general sense need. All this to say, if you are considering trying out a threesome, deicide what niche the two of you want this person to play in your relationship and make a point to let that person know what that niche is so they can fill it. Otherwise, what happens is either the hoped for advantage of a threesome never materializes and/or the lover will tend to fill a role already claimed by one of the existing relationship partners. This is very bad as it can undermine the valued extant relationship. In these cases the relationship may well survive, but will be damaged. The open-relationship/open-marriage concept is erroneously blamed for this problem, hence you get counselors and therapist that say non-monogamous relationships are a mistake and can’t last. We believe that many, if not most, relationships would be stronger and happier in a sexually open state; but, from that first threesome, negotiated non-monogamy must be entered into with clear plans and goals. So, if you are currently monogamous, and are interested in trying out a more open arrangement, consider a threesome. Talk it through, and see what needs could be met by a playmate in your bed. Explore your own willingness to put out an effort to see your mate pleased and how committed you are to your relationship/marriage. In almost all newly opened marriages, the siren song of conventional morality makes one or both partners uncomfortable before, during and after the first sexual encounter. We want you to know these feelings are likely coming, and only move forward when both of you are fully ready. When we have been asked about threesomes by those (and other) people, my wife always says yes we have and do have threesomes; but she also gives them a firm warning that unless you are prepared for it, a threesome can do more harm than good.

Last month I went to see my nephrologist (kidney doctor). I’ve been seeing a nephrologist all my life because a rare kidney disease runs in my family (and kills people).  So my appointment was not really a big deal to me since they always just say that my kidneys are slowly losing function, but at the rate of deterioration we’d seen over the last 40 years, they would not fail totally until I am about 80. WELL… this time the doctor comes in the room and says “We have a problem.” It seems that something has changed in the couple of years since I was last tested, my calculated function dropped from 48% to 13%.  He said I am now at “End Stage Kidney Disease” and at the rate of deterioration, they will soon fail entirely.   That came as quite a shock.  He went on to say that he would send my information to the kidney donor system, but it generally takes four years to get one.  Though he didn’t say it directly, he seemed to indicate that he didn’t expect me to live that long.  I looked it up, and the mean survival rate on dialysis is only 3 years even though it is possible to live on dialysis for up to 20 years. This past week I got a letter from UN0S (the organization that allocates donated organs in the US), they said that I would not be put on the wait list for a donated kidney until I lose more weight. So, I won't even start the waiting period for now. This is quite ironic since my little “post-career” job is working with my state’s affiliate of UNOS to help match donated organs with recipients.    I had never really considered how little thought I gave to the idea that I would live well into my 80’s like my father and grandfather.  All my planning had just assumed that I had at least twenty more years to get all the things done that I needed to do. Time is simply not something I’d given a great deal of thought to. Over the last month, I have done a lot of reflecting. The truth is that I have nothing to complain about. I’ve had a great life and have had opportunities to make my life count for things bigger than myself.  I spent most of my career working with people (mostly children and teenagers) that need help. I do not regret one bit how I have allocated my time on earth.  On top of that Paula and I have lived a life that most people can only dream about having. No, we do not have a big house and fancy cars, but we have had a life of love and joy. I have two wonderful adult children and one grandson (though I would like my son to get on the stick and give me another grand before I go).  One thing I most definitely want to do is to finish reworking and illustrating “In Search of the Final Freedom.” At the rate I’m going that will take about two more years.  One thing about modern dialysis is that I can now do it at home. While being hooked up to a machine for 9 hours a day every day seems terrible at first, I was told I can sleep or work at my desk for that time.  The question is, what will happen to my great opus once I’m gone. I really don’t know. I know I’ve said it before, but I am quite thankful that I took the time to write down our “adventures” that now make up the 400+ pages of “Our Decades of Open Marriage.” Each time I get another chapter to post, I remind Paula of this or that thing we did in years past.  That project is coming to an end since there are only seven more parts before our social life came to a close with Covid then Paula’s illness. That project too seems like something I want preserved, but I’m not sure how to do that. The one thing that eats at me though is what will become of Paula when I’m gone. She is only 63 and her mother is still alive at 97.  For years,  I never worried about her because I knew full well that if something happened to me she could get a new husband in the blink of an eye. The one downside of my career focus on helping make the world a better place is that we have absolutely no savings or retirement. I went back to get my PhD for the express purpose of getting a college teaching job that I could keep doing into my late 70’s.  But she got sick so she can no longer go out and meet eligible men and even if I’d gotten that plum teaching job, it would not have made my kidneys last longer. I’ve talked to our kids already about it, but the whole subject makes them very uncomfortable. So, for now, I am exercising every day, living on a very strict “renal diet” to preserve what remaining kidney function I still have. I was doing those things even before my recent visit to the nephrologist. I’ve already dropped my BMI to the point I should be able to get on “the list” when I go back to the nephrologist in April.   And of course, Paula is praying for a miracle.   I’m sorry if this is sort of depressing, but I know my productivity on the website has been lower this past month. This is the explanation.