Will that be a kinky coffee, Sir?

It seems like a good time to mention Coffee, Cake and Kink, "the only kinky cafe gallery in the UK".

Based in Covent Garden, London, it serves excellent coffee and cake – as one might wish – but also sells books and art, and stages exhibitions and events.

As a little taster, this coming Wednesday sees a discussion group on 'The Inner Whore', from 7-8pm, £5 including coffee or tea.

"Who doesn’t enjoy vivid erotic day dreams?" asks the Coffee, Cake and Kink's website.

"Sexual fantasies are a universal occurrence: we all have an Inner Whore within trying to express itself. But how far do we go to fulfill our fantasies in real life? Alternative lifestyles, art and popular media reinvent personal fantasies, creating myths for our time.

"People of all sexualities are welcome to share their personal eroticism with us."

If you're in town, it's well worth a visit.

Revealing all for charity

Well done to John Young, who beat nearly 200 other players to become the World Strip Poker champion at the weekend.

Besides his £10,000 winnings, bookies Paddy Power donated a further £10,000 to Cancer Research when he removed his final garments at the end of the competition.

Not that strip poker is a new concept, but where could bookies take this charitable idea next?

Well, it’s Rugby League's Challenge Cup Final at Twickenham next Saturday; perhaps Stan James, the bookkeeper that sponsors the sport on Sky TV, would care to offer monies if the winners strip off after getting the trophy?

After all, there are going to be some fine figures of manhood on display…

Secure in your libido

It seems that researchers from Hamburg-Eppendorf University in Germany have discovered that women lose their libido when they're in a secure relationship.

Apparently, women are randy as anything early in a relationship, in order to cement the bond with the new partner, but there's no need later – unless they're looking at potential new mates.

Blokes, of course, get to be permanently libidinous, regardless of the state of their relationships.

Yet sex is apparently less important to middle-aged British women than to their Continental counterparts.

Has something changed since the latter survey? Has the rest of Europe caught us up (horrible thought)?

Whether it has or not, the result is that I'm wondering which category I'm in.

I'm in early 'middle age', am almost permanently hornier than hell (apart from two days in my cycle, which leave me feeling depressed and not like 'me'), yet I've been in a 'secure' relationship for about 17 years.

Are such surveys merely meant to confuse us and/or render us insecure?

Mind you, research earlier this year ‘discovered’ that the female libido is boosted by coffee.

I don't even drink that much.

Is there something 'wrong' with me? Am I not 'normal'?

It's been asked before, but just what do surveys and research like this achieve?

Someone's looking to make a fast buck out of all this, of course, as an Australian company has created a spray that will increase female libido.

It might have started out as a way of dealing with medically-related loss of libido, but that's how Viagra got going too.

Oh well – who'd want to be 'normal' anyway? ;-)

Nothing liberated about it

Someone once suggested that the rule of law is based on consent – impossible laws won't be respected if the majority think they're stupid.

So the news that nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds lost their virginity below the age of consent comes as little surprise.

Limited research has been done on the relationship between age of consent and onset of sexual activity with a partner, but there have been suggestions that the higher the age of consent is set, the earlier young people will start sexually experimenting.

Or put another way, the UK has the highest age of consent in western Europe – 16 – and the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and single mothers.

The lowest age of consent is in the Netherlands (12 between peers and 14 generally). Guess what? The Dutch also have the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy and single motherhood in western Europe.

The US too suffers from high levels of teenage pregnancy, yet has high ages of consent in some states and a government that is committed to a failing policy of abstinence.

Some provisional research has suggested that young people in countries with a lower age of consent actually start experimenting with a partner much later. Perhaps it's to do with a high age of consent maintaining a sense of the 'forbidden' – and therefore the daring – surrounding sex.

But the behaviour of teens in the UK has nothing to do with genuine sexual liberation. It's a peculiar by-product of the commoditisation of sex without our culture, together with the left-overs of puritanism and Victorian prudery.

It's the case that certain 'newspapers' can print editorials bemoaning the rate of STDs in young people, but the rest of the paper is full of topless models, kiss 'n' tell revelations (one recent example actually saw a woman who 'kissed and told' gaining a TV role as a reward – what's the message there?) and salacious gossip and scandal. The hypocrisy is dazzling.

Children are increasingly sexualized by the teen magazine market – pre-pubescent girls worrying about boys, make-up and the like – while female pop performers, from Britney to TaTu, make money by aping sexualized images of schoolchildren for older men. In the latter's case, they even claimed that they were under age lesbians.

And another sign that liberation has nothing to do with what is going on is one of the other findings of the BBC Radio 1 poll: some 38% of young people do not always use a condom with a new partner, with drunkenness cited as one of the most common reasons.

Little wonder that STDs are rising fast too.

Sex education seems to remain patchy, despite all the promises of government. In many schools, it's still limited to the strictly biological.

And the chance of getting a debate about the age of consent and all the rest of these issues? Remote; not least because Tony Blair's government not only remains wedded to religious schools, but even to increasing their numbers.

Still, after changes to the national curriculum that come into effect this September, more children will be able to discuss Creationism in their science lessons, even if they can't be told how to put on a condom in any other class.

What a sense of priorities!

And how thoroughly depressing.

A rapist's charter?

It's great to get messages from people who've read something here and felt moved to invest even more time by leaving a comment. So far, everyone's been positive – many thanks to you all – no Daily Mail readers and no Ann Coulter.

One lives in hope, but in the meantime, there's plenty of idiocy to laugh at.

With this in mind, thanks to Mike for dropping in here and commenting on the 'load of wankers' story. This led me to his own blog, Confessions of a Horny Old Guy, which in turn led to Single and celibate, which tells us that masturbation is A Bad Thing.

"Many people interpret Genesis 38:8-10, where it talks about Onan spilling his seed on the ground, as God's message against masturbation because what Onan did displeased the Lord," says blog author Petula Wright.

They might well do, but Margrave of the Marshes, the excellent autobiography of that excellent and sadly lamented DJ, John Peel, throws rather clearer light on the theology.

"It seems that Judah went in unto Shuah and she bore a son and called his name Er. Then Judah went in unto Shuah again and she bore him another son and called this one’s name Onan.

"A few years later, to cut a long story short, the Lord was displeased with Er, by now a married man, and smote him. And not content with this, He told Onan to go in unto Er's wife and lie with her. Onan, being a decent sort of chap by all accounts, thought this was a bit tough on the widow and, not to put too fine a point on it, spilled his seed upon the ground rather than in his brother's wife. For this refinement of feeling, he too was smitten. So Onan, whatever you may have believed hitherto, was, in fact, a thoroughly moral man and not the wanker everyone thinks he is."

Does this mean that our Pet believes that masturbation is more 'sinful' than rape? Or that rape is fine if God commands it? Or even that, on a different level, this story was anything about masturbation at all? Seems that it's not so much a question of 'thou shalt not wank', but 'thou shalt rape when I tell you to'.

Jesus didn't help matters, of course. Given that the Judeo-Christian God is supposed to be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, you'd have thought that He would be able to forsee just how obsessed his followers would be with sex, and would provide better and clearer teaching. But no, his hippy son had to preach the peace bit, but didn't get around to coining the phrase: 'though shalt make love but not war'.

Apparently Jesus had nothing to say about sex, beyond 'don't commit adultery', and certainly nothing to say about sexuality (unless those writing the gospels dismissed any such teachings as boring and not worth noting down).

But, just in case her readers are not impressed enough with the Biblical stuff to instantly forswear playing with their own naughty bits, our Pet has a second sting to her argument:

"Despite the rumors that men spread about it being harmful or some scientific basis arguing the necessity for sexual release, single individuals must turn to God when faced with temptation and stand on His word for support."

Okay; so all this stuff about research linking frequent ejaculation to reduced levels of prostate cancer is a lie? Lucifer’'s got himself a white lab coat and was leading the research?

Pet and her ilk have to ignore this sort of research, of course. What's the alternative? That God, despite being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, decided to create man in such a way that, if he forswore sex, he'd actually increase his chances of disease? If this is the case, what does that say about Pet's God?

Does Pet believe men should risk cancer? Does Pet believe that her God wants men to risk cancer? Does Pet think that all young men should get married as soon as legally possible (regardless of the educational, career and financial implications) so that they can get 'release' without masturbation and, therefore, reduce their chances of disease?

God didn't plan this very well, did He?

And for added measure solo sex has other health benefits too.

Personally, wanking sounds much the best option for dealing with PMT, instead of just putting up with it or popping pills. But then again, some of these Christians probably think that period pain was a deliberate punishment from God for leading poor Adam astray.

The price of being a woman who loves sex

'Abby Lee' used to write a blog. It was all about her sex life, past, present and desired. What made it unusual was that she was an English woman who was randy as hell, sexually active and assertive – and intelligent. A winning combination, you might have thought.

Or a threatening one that needs to be condemned and derided?

Now she's been 'outed' by the Sunday Times as one Zoe Margolis. The paper went on to describe her sex life as "seedy" and her behaviour as "shameless". They'd obviously have preferred guilt.

The Daily Wail got in on the act too, with a couple of tittery/mock-shock stories that, in its online edition attracted the predictable readers' responses about Margolis's behaviour.

The world is, of course, obviously falling apart, as women degrade themselves in this fashion. Heaven help us all – Margolis talked about her masturbatory habits in her blog! Disgusting. A proper English rose wouldn't even know what that meant.

Ah, the joy of growing up and living in a society where there remains a cultural ideal of women as a form of Protestant-secular-middle-class madonna.

Like Margolis and her cyber alter-ego, a lot of us would rather be whores. It's considerably more fun.

But the episode is depressing. What's the betting on the rest of our home continent being bloody well relieved that there's a strip of water between them and the UK? That's when they're not laughing at us.

There is an issue over the 'outing'; what is the public-interest argument for doing it? Some of the public being interested doesn't count. Is there any other country in western Europe where women would be 'outed' simply for having a sex life? Mind you, this is the country that seemed to fall over in collective shock on discovering that a man of over 50 years of age (Sven Göran Eriksson) didn't spend all his spare time sitting by an open fire, smoking a pipe and watching EastEnders.

In a way, the reaction to Margolis is proof of her blog actually having an importance far beyond that of titilation.

The Guardian produced a decent interview, but journalist Zoe Williams illustrates the way in which women themselves have been taught to think when she comments that, although she wanted all women to be having as good time as the blogger, something made her suspect that the writer was male and not a female.

Arise, ye women from your slumber!

You don't have to be boring Daily Wail icons; some sort of sexless, size 10, no-cellulite (the Wail hates cellulite and loves to print pictures of women who have it), virginal (shagging for procreative purposes doesn't count) SuperMum, dedicated to hubby and kids, with a pristine house and exemplary clothing sense, who would no more put a cock in her mouth than she would a dog turd.

You can be a voracious, excited and exciting, experimental and happy woman who sucks pricks and eats pussy (whichever floats your boat), takes it up the arse, wanks for hours, watches porn, thinks about sex whenever she wants (guiltlessly), leches at blokes (and/or other women), enjoys being on top, likes being whipped or whipping, threesomes…

The orgasms are just so much better.

The sexual world is your oyster. You don't need to do these things (or anything else) if you don't want to, of course, but if you want to, then you can. You don't have to sit and fester in a frustrated, unfulfilled state.

And, come the revolution, the Daily Wail and all who sail in her will be first up against the wall.

Education, education, education

It's depressing to report, in this Sexual Health Week, that not only do most people not realise that condoms come in different sizes, but some teenagers who actually try to use condoms mess it up because they don't really know how.

Research by Southampton University found that, of 1,400 teenagers between 16 and 18 surveyed across England, around half had had sex.

Of the 373 who had used a condom on the most recent occasion, 6% had put it on too late and 6% had removed it too early.

The researchers also asked just over 100 teenagers to keep a six-month diary of their sexual activity.

Of the 74 who said they had used a condom, 31% had put it on after penetration had already occurred, and 10% had taken a condom off too early on at least one occasion.

Of the 714 diary entries given to the researchers, a condom was not used during sex on 322 occasions.

The main reasons for not using a condom were intimacy, not liking how it felt, other contraception was being used and the couple just got "carried away".

Those using condoms did so to avoid pregnancy, to avoid "making a mess" and to make sex last longer, but very few cited the prevention of STDs.

Toni Belfield, of the Family Planning Association, said: "This research continues to reinforce the message that young people need good information and support to use condoms correctly and consistently.

"Good communication with a trusted adult is an essential part of this support.

"We would urge parents and carers to be open about sex and relationships with their children, so they can be a source of guidance for them."

The research also showed that boys who were able to talk openly to their mothers during their early teenage years were more likely to use condoms correctly.

That bears out earlier work that defined three groups of young people in terms of their sexual behaviour:

• young people who grow up in 'liberal' surroundings, with open attitudes about sex, tend to start experimenting later and, when they do, they are the group most likely to use safe sex/contraception;

• young people who grow up in surroundings with negative attitudes toward sex (this includes religious families), tend to start experimenting earlier and, when they do, are less likely to use safe sex/contraception;

• young people who grow up in environments where nobody cares or is interested will start experimenting earlier still and will be least likely to use safe sex/contraception.

So-called moral campaigners often babble about how sex education should be the responsibility of parents, in the home.

Lovely idea. In a perfect world. Which this isn't.

Whatever Pink Floyd may think, clearly more education is essential. And, if the state doesn't want to pick up the results of ill-informed or ignorant, naïve and vulnerable young people experimenting sexually without understanding what they're doing and the risks they're taking, in terms of pregnancy and STDs, then such education cannot be left to parents.

Dumb and dumber

Good news! Fundamentalism is on a back foot in at least one part of the world.

The 16th Belfast Pride went off successfully last weekend, in spite of members of the Free Presbyterian Church turning their backs on the marchers.

But these protests have been dwindling, year on year, and the news that an Iposos-Mori survey has revealed that three-quarters of the Northern Irish population says they are tolerant of lesbians, gays and bisexuals, while 88% believe that there should be no discrimination against them, won't have cheered these cheerless evangelicals.

The poll was based on a face-to-face survey of 1,009 people, questioned at 47 different locations across Northern Ireland during February.

Perhaps the most interesting point to emerge was the difference in attitudes toward sexuality between Protestants and Catholics.

Eighty-three per cent of Catholics described themselves as "very accepting" of gays, lesbians and bisexuals, while the figure was 70% amongst Protestants, of whom 14% said that they were "not at all accepting" of the gay community.

This also suggests that, whilst die-hard evangelicals remain entrenched in their bigoted attitudes, the influence of the Pope (and therefore the Catholic church generally) is waning.

Hallelujah! So to speak.

Now, just to prevent over-excitement about diminishing religious idiocy, an anti-abortion group has chosen to show its true colours by condemning the Family Planning Association's Sexual Health Week (see yesterday's story).

The so-called Precious Life group has declared the FPA to be promoting a "safe sex hoax".

A spokeswoman for the group stated that safe sex was responsible for increases in levels of sexually transmitted diseases, and insisted that abstinence should be promoted in order to cut STDs.

Clearly this dangerously stupid example of the species hasn't heard that abstinence campaigns aren't working in the US, despite massive investment from her fellow nutter in the White House.

"Condoms do not protect against STDs," she asserted. Presumably she still believes the Vatican's lies.

(As a slight aside, the Pope now says that married couples where one partner has HIV/Aids can use condoms: will he therefore admit that the Vatican has previously lied about the effectiveness of condoms or does he actually believe that condoms do not stop HIV and is simply a sadistic and opportunistic git?)

However, back to our dotty woman: "Condoms, if used at all, are often used ineffectively", she added. Now, quite apart from the fact that she contradicted herself – how can they be anything other than ineffective if they don't protect against STDs? – that's why education is the answer, you silly, silly person.

But hey, there's nothing like ramming your head in the sand and singing Every Sperm is Sacred without realising that the Pythons were taking the almighty piss out of people exactly like you.

There are days when eugenics seem like a perfectly good idea.

Something for the weekend

Welcome to Sexual Health Week 2006, the ninth year that the Family Planning Association (FPA) has organised this opportunity to highlight a particular aspect of sexual health.

This year's week-long campaign includes guidance for health professionals on talking to patients about condoms.

It might sound a bit basic, but apparently the biggest cause of condom failure is either splitting or slipping off. And the majority of people don't know that there are a range of sizes of condom available that could help to solve these problems.

Yet perhaps this shouldn't come as a great surprise, given the state of sexual education and sexual health awareness in the UK.

Earlier, this year, a poll of UK adults, conducted by MORI for the National Aids Trust, revealed that, despite increases in HIV infections, people are less aware of how the virus is transmitted than they were five years ago.

There was a drop in the number of people who knew that HIV can be passed on by two men having sex without a condom.

The number of people who knew that HIV could be passed on through heterosexual sex without a condom dropped by 12%.

And some people still believe that HIV can be passed on by spitting (7%), kissing (4%) or toilet seats (2%), while 8% of people had no idea at all how HIV was transmitted (up from 2% in 2000).

"We were shocked to discover that, while HIV is increasing in the UK, people know less about the risks than they did five years ago, and continue to practice unsafe sex," said National Aids Trust chief executive Deborah Jack.

The poll also found that, in London, where HIV rates are highest, knowledge of transmission routes was lower than anywhere else in the country – only 69% knew that HIV could be passed on through sex without a condom between two men.

And 15% of people who have had a new sexual partner in the last two years would rarely or never use a condom with that new partner.

It's a fair bet that similar levels of knowledge apply to sexually transmitted diseases other than HIV.

But levels of ignorance are not restricted to STDs. Another survey a couple of years ago showed that some young people still believe that you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex – at least not if you 'do it' on top of a telephone directory.

The government has promised much in the way of sex education and health but has reneged.

Schools can still decide what bits of the sex education curriculum they want to teach and which they don't. This is particularly the case in religious schools – despite the evidence of the failure to stop STDs of the US 'abstinence' schemes that George W Bush has been spending millions of taxpayers' dollars on.

And the UK government is also failing on sexual health provision.

Although Chancellor Gordon Brown cut VAT on condoms earlier this year – brownie points (so to speak) for that – Londoners have been given a slap in the face with the news that the city's HIV clinics have been told that they will be given no more money to pay for treatments and care in the current financial year, beyond 4% to cover inflation. This is despite patient numbers being projected to rise by 11% next year.

Why? Because the government is so wedded to the privatisation of the health service, and slapping artificial time limits and budgets on service providers.

In the spring, NHS bosses sliced 3% off the budget of every primary care trust in Greater London in order to pay for the debts of some.

Research by the BBC found that Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust is £20m in the red and Hillingdon PCT £25m.

Yet the two largest HIV clinics in London owe nothing: the Royal Free Hospital has broken even, while the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has £1.2m in the bank.

So PCTs that have worked hard to make savings, like these, could lose jobs. Health unions reacted furiously, accusing the Department of Health of "blind panic" that would only save about £4m of the £7m needed to fund new treatments.

Haemophilia services were also told to make cutbacks.

Finally, back to French letters. If you're one of those people who complains about condoms feeling like wearing a welly in the bath, German businessman Oliver Gothe may have the answer.

The founder of Cologne-based company Lebenslust (Lust for Life) has invented a system for making tailor-made condoms.

A machine measures the customer's penis and uses the resulting 3D computer image to make customised johnnies.

And Gothe claims: "These condoms will fit so well you will hardly notice you are wearing one. We can make them wafer thin or fist thick, and 'engrave' them with your signature around the base."

The service will cost approximately £600 for what Lebenslust calls a "large" number, but now you’ll be able to combine safe sex with luxury – the Prada of wellies.

Carry on cruising

Do women cruise? In a recent Guardian article, Jaq Bayles suggested that, whilst lesbians haven't historically done so, now a "new generation of women are having erotic adventures".

It's all apparently to do with what Erica Jong described as the "zipless fuck" – no-strings sex.

But it's unfortunate that Bayles limits her thoughts to lesbians, because bisexual women have been at it for years.

Okay, it might not actually be wandering around Hampstead Heath waiting to grab a stranger and shag them silly behind a bush, but there are places in the UK, and London in particular, where it's possible for a woman to safely go and enjoy 'recreational sex' with other women or with men.

There is more than one reason for this lack of recognition.

There's a certain kudos in gay cruising – that it's part of the culture, it's liberating and different from 'straight' sexual behaviour – and that seems to be seeping into any discussion about lesbian cruising.

On the other hand, some lesbians are still reluctant to recognise bisexual women – and 'sleeping with the enemy' doesn't really count as 'cruising', just as being a cheap slag and a sell-out.

Not forgetting the whole 'cuddles-and-camomile-tea' view of lesbianism that some women seem to have – as if it doesn't actually involved sweaty sex with bodily fluids.

And then there are the hetero women who seem to think that women cannot have such sexually liberated lives.

A few years ago, I was at a social event, chatting with another woman about Catherine Millet's memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M. My acquaintance, who rather enjoyed being able to say that she'd read the book in the original French, noted that she'd have loved to be able to explore sex as Millet had, but went on to insist that women simply could not play around in such a way. She never did explain why.

Well, plenty of 'straight' and bisexual women 'cruise'. For women, there are, of course, even more safety issues than there might be for gay men, so you won't find many of them in old cemetaries or in the park, but in saunas or clubs or at parties.

Some people might refer to it as 'swinging', but it's all much of a muchness.

And these women do what they do in spite of the attitudes of a society that still sees such things as 'bad'.

Perhaps lesbians are just starting to catch up.

Good luck to World Pride

Best wishes to participants in World Pride in Jerusalem, which starts today.

With the Middle East in a state of war, there are people who would suggest that it would have been more responsible to cancel the event altogether. The planned Pride march has been prevented after police said that current security demands mean that they couldn't offer protection to marchers.

That in itself explains why other events must go ahead. Protection wouldn't just have been a symbol in Jerusalem. Bigots and religious thugs have threatened marchers. Police have apparently done nothing to stop Orthodox fundamentalists from handing out leaflets offering a 'reward' of 20,000 Israeli shekels to anyone who "kills a sodomite". Earlier this year, a rabbi stabbed a marcher during Jerusalem's own Pride. And an American rabbi had promised "bloodshed" if the march had gone ahead.

What an irony, that a group who suffered in the Holocaust should behave this way to another group who suffered under the Nazis.

Elsewhere in the region, it's only just over a year since Iranian mullahs trumped up charges against two young gay men so that they could hang them – effectively for being gay.

There's tyranny in the Middle East. And these religious lunatics are at the heart of it. People need to be reminded just how far their bigotry extends – and that the LGBT community has to suffer their hate crimes.

• And briefly, good luck to Brighton Pride too, which has had a disruptive build-up after accusations of heavy-handedness by police over drugs.

Hopefully, it'll be an unmitigated success for everyone.

A load of wankers

Good luck – and enjoy yourselves – to all those participating in the Masturbate-A-Thon in Clerkenwell, London, today.

What could be better? They'll have fun, raise money for Marie Stopes and the Terence Higgins Trust – and leave the Daily Wail in a state of deep indignation.

The event originally started in the US in 1994, as a response to the forced resignation of surgeon-general Joycelyn Elders, after she suggested teaching masturbation as part of school sex education programmes and was, predictably, slated by religious and conservative groups.

There have been rumours that today's event will be the focus of protests. Some people really do need to get a life. And a good wank probably wouldn't go amiss either.

Sex in the Bible belt

Sometimes it's too easy. But hey, who ever said that you should ignore the easy things in life?

With this in mind, this blog is delighted to bring you Dr Shay.org, the website of an American sex therapist.

What's newsworthy about that, you ask. Well as Dr Shay says in her introduction to the site, it's "a website that is committed to promoting healthy, Godly female sexuality and intimacy".

"Godly female sexuality". Difficult to stop sniggering, isn't it?

The site includes testimonies from people that Dr Shay has helped. One woman tells how she was "too tired for sex". The advice that she was given appears sound enough, until you get to things like seratonin being described as "God's natural antidepressant". Oh, and prayer apparently helped too.

There's a chapter on "Gender differences regarding sex"; pity the good doctor doesn't understand the difference between sex and gender.

Anyway, she explains that "The Sexual Response Cycle is very different for men and women.

"Frequency of thinking about sex: men = once every hour to once a day; women = once to 3 times a week".

What? Where the hell did she conjure that one from? And does that mean that I am unique in thinking about sex a great deal more than once a day?

And then: "Men and women differ in what they want from sex.

"Women—want physical and emotional closeness, time together, affirmation, romance, talking."

Oh give over! How about women who want a damned good balling? Or isn't that in God's plan?

And get this problem letter: "I felt so good when my husband and I first met and that first two years was wonderful! But those 'good feelings' have worn off and while I still love him I want that 'feeling' back."

Solution? "In the first chapter of my book, For Women Only; God's Design for Female Sexuality and Intimacy, I describe a brain chemical called PEA. We believe this chemical is God's 'bonding' chemical, but it only lasts about 2-3 years and sometimes less. It's the cause of those 'ooey gooey' feelings. However, endorphins take the place of PEA and a calmer more secure feeling takes place."

In which case, if PEA is "God's 'bonding' chemical" (someone pass the sick bag, please), then God didn't do a very intelligent job, did he/she/it, if he/she/it actually intended people to be monogamous. If God did actually design the PEA so that it would only last for a limited time, then God either didn't intend people to be monogamous or God is a sadistic bastard.

And then there's the stuff written by Dr Shay and her hubby about pornography.

Amongst other things, porn "addicts" need "godly Christian counselors trained to do this difficult work, which involves insightful therapy that includes the spouse in the recovery process."

And let's not forget "common male sexual dysfunction", which is covered in an essay by Dr Robert Roop, Dr Shay's other half, who peppers his contribution with Bible quotes and notes that, "since God has promised that all things will work together for our good, even sexual dysfunction can help us to grow and mature".

No, it’s clear I’m on my way to hell. And reading this sort of bunkum, thank goodness. I bet the devil has all the best orgies.

The stupid things people say

According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), some newspapers, environmental groups and the government have been a tad irresponsible in their rather apocalyptic coverage of climate change issues.

So much so that the institute has accused them of producing "climate porn".

Now 'food porn' is an easy phrase to understand and entirely appropriate when it applies to the sort of gloriously illustrated recipe books that leave one of your orifices very wet and make you want to blow the chef (after eating the dish concerned, of course).

But "climate porn"? Pur-lease.

Does anyone actually get a stiffy from reading about how we're damaging the planet?

The gist of the IPPR's idea is that people buy newspapers and respond to statements that are sensationalistic; that people enjoy being a little frightened or shocked. Fair enough, but that doesn't mean it's 'porn' of any variety.

Are these people so sad that they've never actually seen porn? Are they so sad that they don’'t know what porn is? Or are they so sad that they think that porn is bad and nasty and scary and is a good label for anything else that's bad and nasty and scary and which we all need protecting from?

Porn is great. It's entertainment and it helps to develop the vocabulary of our fantasy lives. It's escapism. It's a release. It's a way to explore ideas and fantasies. Most of all, it's a turn-on.

To describe something as "climate porn" is as crass and as lazy as people who use the word 'fascist' to describe anyone whose views they don't like.

Mind you, given that the IPPR labels the Independent as being particularly guilty of sensationalism in reporting global warming, perhaps all they're really hoping that, if the government gets its way, anyone caught with a copy of the Indy will be chargeable under any forthcoming legislation On Possession of Extreme Climate Pornography.

Married to the system

In 2003, Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson were married in Canada, but found that, after the Civil Partnerships Act came into force in the UK last December, their relationship had been classified as a civil partnership here.

Earlier this week, the university professors failed in a High Court bid to have their marriage recognised as such in this country.

Now, quite apart from the issues about whether or not this is 'fair', why on earth would gay or lesbian couples want to get married?

Civil partnerships are understandable, conferring, as they do, the same legal rights as marriage; rights that lesbian and gay couples have not previously had access to.

But marriage itself – disregarding the principle of the thing – what else does that confer? It is hailed as sacred by religions, so why would you want to adhere to an institution that is so admired by something that has a rabidly homophobic history and remains, in large parts, rabidly homophobic?

A gay friend, having struggled for some time with the idea of bisexuality, eventually reached the conclusion that 'straight' was really those people in heterosexual, monogamous marriages. Swingers (gay, straight and bi), the kinky and festishistically inclined, trannies – none of these people were 'straight'.

It's an interesting definition.

Marriage is an institution, created by state and church in the days before DNA tests, to ensure the passage of title, property and wealth to the legitimate heirs.

Human beings are not naturally monogamous animals, but marriage is an artifice that attempts to make them so, whether they're happy with that or not.

It's no coincidence that Mary Whitehouse didn't start her 'decency' campaign because of a flash of naked flesh on her telly, but because she disagreed with someone else's opinion of marriage.

It was Dr Alex Comfort, the author of The Joy of Sex, in a late-night interview on BBC2's This Nation Tomorrow in 1963, who dared to suggest that the institution of marriage was propped up only by adultery, and that chastity was no more a virtue than malnutrition.

Whitehouse was galvanised into action. So much for a democratic right to voice an opinion, then.

Marriage is about control and restriction and playing society's 'game' by society's 'rules'.

So why would gay and lesbian couples wish to buy into such an institution?

Come to that, why would anyone want to buy into such an institution?

And who really wants to be 'straight'?

The God Squad are at it again

Friedrich Nietzsche was right; we have killed God.

But in so doing, the middle religious ground, which was formerly occupied by the majority of people, has been vacated and is now being filled by extremists who would, formerly, have languished on the fringes.

Last month, the Gay Police Association placed an advert in the Independent newspaper during EuroPride, showing a Bible next to a pool of blood and describing the 74% increase in homophobic hate incidents recorded by the association, where religion was the sole or primary motive behind the assault.

Now it's emerged that Scotland Yard is apparently considering whether the advert "constitutes a faith crime" after complaints, which are believed to have come from anti-gay Christian groups.

The prime suspect is Christian Voice, which last week released a statement celebrating the fact that the GPA was to be investigated. Christian Voice's director is homophobic bigot Stephen Green, who seems to think that others shouldn't say nasty things about Christianity, but that he can make whatever vile comments he wants to about homosexuals.

It's a "faith crime" to hate bigots and extremist nutters? Well, that pretty well means that any decent human beings will be guilty, then.

What is it with some religious people? In recent weeks, we've seen threats of violence and offers of financial rewards from Jewish leaders and groups against participants in the (now cancelled) World Pride in Jerusalem.

We’ve seen the anniversary of the state murder of two young Iranian men for being gay – on the grounds that homosexuality is not very Islamic (although the Iranian mullahs had to trump up charges of rape to make sure that they could get away with the murders).

Nobody's telling them they can’t have their beliefs – but they seem to be confused over having a belief and ramming their medieval ideas down other peoples' throats and into their lives.

So Nietzsche might have been right. But bloody hell… can't we just find an island somewhere and stick all these nutters on it and let them fight it out between themselves?

Just imagine: 'My God's bigger than your God'.

'No, mine's bigger than yours'.

'Mine's stricter than yours'.

'Mine hates fags'.

'Mine hates fags and women.'

They can have the biggest pissing contest in history. Give them a load of weapons and let them all kill each other off in the name of whatever god they choose.

And let the rest of the world get on with attempting to build tolerant and civilised societies.