CARNAL NATION

When Time Out’s 2009 sex survey results came in, the editors of the British entertainment tabloid seemed astounded to discover their countrymen evidently are as randy as the most perverted American.

Both women and men rated their kinkiness quotient at about 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 13 percent of men and 5 percent of women describing themselves as “practically perverted” (a 5 rating). The self-evaluations were born out by respondents’ fascination with fetishes. Many reported the now-mundane as turn-ons: handcuffs, feet, ears, necks, ankles and gentle spanking. Two replied “armpits,” and one mentioned “sweaty socks.” Less common but more titillating answers included “bubble-wrapping women,” “men in fishnets,” hermaphrodites and transsexuals, “being a pet,” sex with a lover and his father at the same time, feathers, pregnant women, “tacky girls” and “girls in Arsenal shirts.”  [Read more]

Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) was only four years old when H.L. Mencken died in 1956, but since then, he seems to have taken Mencken's famous definition of puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be happy" as a personal code to live by. After doing his level best to make sure that abortion would never again be paid for by health insurance, Stupak is moving on to censoring sexual websites. In the name of protecting the children, of course.

Stupak recently introduced legislation called the Online Age Verification and Child Safety Act, which would make online age verification mandatory for "any pornographic website accessible by any computer located within the United States to display any pornographic material, including free content that may be available to the purchase of a subscription or product." The penalty for selling adult products or services to a minor under the bill would be a fine and imprisonment for up to ten years.  [Read more]

Everything you need for a hot night is in the palm of your hand. Your iPhone can find you a date, help you choose a restaurant, and let your friends know how the evening is going in various formats. With the launch of two new iPhone apps, you can now ensure that your date will live up to your standards even before you meet. PeopleFinders has created "Stud or Dud?" and "Are They Really Single?", which search through public records to find out the type of information you might want to know before that romantic dinner. Information like whether or not your date is married, if he or she has a criminal record, or if he or she is a registered sex offender.  [Read more]

It probably goes without saying that if people spent half as much time on their own, actual marriages as they do pontificating on who should or should not marry, there'd be a lot less divorce in this country. But as history has shown, such stinging truths have little, if any, place in the American dream as long as there exist such things as scapegoats and sanctimonious morality. It should come as no surprise then that the year 2010 will be another year of more hand-wringing than hand-holding over the institution of marriage.

In California, there are no less than 5 initiatives to repeal Proposition 8 in the works for next year's elections. Prop. 8 infamously reversed a court decision allowing same-sex marriage in the Golden State and amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. All five initiatives would make gay marriage legal, and they would all exempt clergy from performing marriage ceremonies that conflict with their religious beliefs. One wonders if this provision would also be used for/against heterosexual couples because I can think of several marriages that are ungodly in all the worst ways. In any case, each of these initiatives requires the signatures of 694,354 registered voters in order to be placed on the ballot next year. Chances are that at least one will make it through unless, of course, dividing by five doesn't add up to the requisite number.  [Read more]

Anti-abortion rights group American Right to Life has promised that when Sarah Palin reaches the state of Indiana to promote her new ghost-written autobiography, Going Rogue, she can expect to face demonstrations against her pro-choice politics.

Yes, you read that right. Sarah Palin, the right-wing pinup girl for teabaggers everywhere, is being condemned for being too leftist on the matter of abortion. Even though, as Mother Jones notes, Palin has said that even if her own daughter were raped, she would "choose life" and make her have the baby, she's just not prolife enough. A new report put out by the group as part of its "Prolife Profiles" seems to rate Palin as being just a few steps away from being a radical feminist. American Right to Life's criticisms of Palin include her appointment of Morgan Christensen, a former board member of Planned Parenthood, to the Alaska Supreme Court; failure to endorse the Federal Personhood Amendment, which would define "personhood" as starting at the moment of fertilization; and refusing to say that the so-called "morning after" pill should be illegal. The profile of Palin says that she uses terminology that is "liberal," "socialist," and "pro-choice" in her speeches and on her Facebook page, and classifies her as being in "Tier 4," which contains "leaders and organizations [who] fundamentally deny the personhood and God-given right to life of the unborn by advocating a permanent 'legalization' and often even funding of the intentional killing of some preborn children for various reasons." Other persons in Tier 4 include pro-abortion extremists like Billy Graham, George W. Bush, and Pat Robertson.

"Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his." 

That's a quote from Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, which in 2004 won the Bad Sex In Fiction Award, given out each November by the British magazine Literary Review.

This year, the just-announced list of nominees includes such luminaries as Philip Roth (for the old-man-seducing-the-much-younger-lesbian-with-a-green-dildo scenes in The Humbling) and musician-turned-novelist Nick Cave, whose The Death of Bunny Munro chronicles the adventures of a sex-crazed door-to-door cosmetics salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," Cave's publisher told The Guardian.

But the competition seems especially fierce this year. For instance, here's one Amazon commenter's dismissal of Jonathan Littell's nominated The Kindly Ones: "Once you've read one masturbatory, sado-sexual fantasy about having sex with your twin sister described in gynecological detail while simultaneous sticking lit candles in your rectum and enjoying the sensation of hot wax on your naked buttocks, you've read them all." Then there's Richard Milward's Ten Storey Love Song, which is named after a Stone Roses song (good) but which is also written without chapters or paragraphing (bad).

Full list of nominees after the jump:  [Read more]

As part of the Communist party’s efforts to clamp down on the corruption that is threatening its rule and sullying its reputation, Chinese officials are being told to dump their mistresses, avoid hostess bars, and shun extravagances. The bold language of the new morality push is making a clear link between moral lassitude and corruption. After all it has been shown that 95 per cent of China officials investigated for corruption were found to be keeping mistresses.  [Read more]