If you are <sniped from article>"Nimble minded, fluxive in spirit, refusing to be duped by the narrow and rigid, the bishop or the radio blowhard or the sweater-vested idiot. You think for yourself, act for others, love without regard for church or country or sad conformist dogma."
then this is an article for you. You'll have to read it to know the sentence that came afterwards......... Scott -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Calling all kinkster hippie sluts By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, March 21, 2012 Hello, deviant. Hello, kinkster pervert hippie slut. Hello, you who are reading this right now, fondling your whips or shopping for fine fetish wear or perhaps merely squirming gently in your office chair, eager to find out more about all these titillating keywords because, you know, mmmm. I know how it is. Have you been feeling it, too? The heat of recent media attention? The sour breath of bland, conservative evil on your nicely tattooed neck? Perhaps you've noticed. Sluts and sex, gays and deviants, perverts and hippies, yoga teachers and tattooed miscreants have been in the news a lot recently. More than usual, even. And that's saying something. It's not difficult to see why. There's a very weird, grisly Republican presidential race underway right now, featuring some of the least appealing, most disagreeable conservative candidates to limp across the national stage in decades. And that's really saying something. It's all a result of the sad fact that the once-noble GOP has devolved in the past few decades from a semi-reasonable party of stiff values and staid institutions, into a kowtowing, far-right, fundamentalist drainage ditch full of Christian fear, Bible literalism and anti-everythingism. Voilá: one hell of a kinkystrange little witch hunt, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That's right, nothing. It's tempting to suggest there is a malicious attack afoot, that sex and intellectualism, kink and individuality and "alternative" lifestyles of every kind are under severe threat by the ultra right, all spearheaded by Rick "I (Heart) Dan Savage" Santorum's hilarious pledge to ban hardcore porn, banish gays, inbreed church and state, slap women back to 1952 and return sex to its rightful place as shameful, procreation-only guiltfest even your grandparents would be embarrassed not to have. Don't forget confused sweatpuddle and ex drug addict Rush Limbaugh, who was kind enough to remind everyone that you absolutely do not call a young, intelligent woman a "slut" without express written dominatrix contract consent, and/or unless she asked you to do so as you spank her, quite hard, with a leather paddle as she screams and giggles uncontrollably and then you both romp like feral cats and sip some añejo and get in the tub. Oh wait. Maybe that's just over at my house. For the record? I personally know some superlative sluts. They are hugely intelligent, educated, kind and completely fabulous in a hundred ways. This is largely because they reclaimed "slut" as a personal power word about, oh, 30 years ago, just before shattering the glass ceiling, running for president and outperforming men in college degrees. I know! Those wenches. Translation: It's 2012. Women get to decide who can use such a fine word, and when, and with how much tequila and giggling. See, Rush? It's not that calling someone a slut is wrong per se. You just gotta earn it. By the way, do you know why it's so delightful to write about guys like Rush and Rick Santorum right now? Why the latter is such a media magnet and everyone from me to the NYT is falling all over themselves to cover the creepy emissions coming from his pinched brainstem? It's not because he's viable. It's not because he's interesting. It's not because he's articulate, thoughtful, or remotely engaging. It's not because he's going to be around much longer. Quite the opposite, really. It's because Rick Santorum represents the least informed, most intellectually hollow, sexually immature, spiritually cowardly, out of touch aspects of American culture -- and he represents them splendidly. The lowbrow entertainment value the guy offers is off the charts, especially in contrast to dull-as-concrete Mitt Romney. Rick does not miss a beat when it comes to the flaccid culture wars that Reagan started all those years ago. Abortion! Porn! Gays! Sex! Birth Control! Sin! Drugs! Vaginas! Muslims! Rock music! Dancing! R-rated movies! He's like a caricature of a self-hating morality crusader. Rick is not the slightest bit intelligent, but he is smart enough to know one thing: this is all he's got. His one note. And he's playing it like a goddamn demon. Because he can. He's like an incontinent raccoon accidentally coming within hissing distance of getting into the Westminster Dog Show. What? How the hell did that thing get in here? Hilarious! Surreal! Temporary! Meanwhile. Have you heard that Burning Man has maxed out again this year, has a massive waiting list for tickets, upwards of 55,000 eager heathens from all over the world, ready and willing to traipse out into the scalding desert for a drug/sex/love/art/camping/dance/costume extravaganza that still scares your grandmother and freaks out the entire Midwest? Have you noticed gay marriage making steady, if lurching, progress across the land? The massive decline of the younger generations citing adherence to any organized religion? Married couples no longer the majority in America? The normalization of sex and kink, deviance and relationship play? At least, in the culturally developed major cities and funky college towns? This is the message: Be not afraid, hipster pervert book-reading intellectually curious slutmonkeys of America. The current crop of GOP hand-wringers poses zero threat to, well, much of anything at all. Maybe oil imports. Environmental legislation. History textbooks. The happiness of their own wives and children. That sort of thing. But as for lifestyle, culture and intellect? They're about as dangerous as Kool-Aid at a whisky tasting. But I do agree with Rick about one thing. There's far too much awful porn out there. Quality is terrible. Gross-out factors are far too high. "Extreme" is everywhere. We are drowning in bad raunch. What's more, I just read that there are something like nine new reality TV shows about... tattoos. Tattoos! I love tattoos. Good ones, anyway. And there are far too few of those, too. But... nine? See, from my vantage, this is the only culture war worth worrying about. Quality smut, ink, art. Respectful perversion. High minded, reverential deviance. Whither our standards, fellow miscreants? What has become of thoughtful or rarified self-expression? Has it all been co-opted to the point of bland numbness and tacky reality shows on Bravo? Is 90 percent of everything really crap? But maybe that's another column. Ah, but perhaps you think I am not speaking to you. Perhaps you think you are far too everyday vanilla, mom n' pop, in-bed-by-9:00, gotta feed the kids, WTF are you talking about to relate to any of this. Perhaps you think you're far too, in short, "normal." Don't be so sure. Do you enjoy sex? Books? Complex ideas? Your body? Sunlight? Have you read this far? Is your heart expansive and your perspective ever in flux? Can you pinch the ass of tired worldviews and make them jump like an over-amped teen at a Skrillex concert? Then I'm speaking to you. You are, in the far right's view, a pervert of the worst kind: Nimble minded, fluxive in spirit, refusing to be duped by the narrow and rigid, the bishop or the radio blowhard or the sweater-vested idiot. You think for yourself, act for others, love without regard for church or country or sad conformist dogma. And let me just tell you, they hate that most of all. You slut. Mark Morford's latest book is 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism'. Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com. For his yoga classes, workshops and retreats, click markmorfordyoga.com. Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate, and is frequently cross-posted to Huffington Post. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more. 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