Sex in the Lone Star State

Hard to believe it's been five months since I've posted to this site! It is certainly overdue and I need to make sure that much time doesn't elapse again without getting some new content up. I have, however, been pretty busy finishing up my 10th book, Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem in the Lone Star State. It is due for release in July and will be available everwhere (and is already listed on Amazon.com). As indicated by its subtitle, Texas Confidential is divided into four sections, one each devoted to "Sex," "Scandal," "Murder," and "Mayhem," 54 chapters total. Obviously, the one most suited to discussing on this site is Sex, and I have posted below an exlusive first look at the annotated, 13-chapter outline for that section!

1) Texas Vice: Prostitution was a factor in Texas society from its earliest days, well before it became a state or even an independent nation, and the Spanish had noted its presence in San Antonio at least as far back as 1817. (Shown here is the "Blue Book," a 1911 visitor's guide to the San Antonio red-light district.)

2) Miss Hattie’s Bordello: For fully half a century, from 1902 until 1952, one of the best known and most successful businesses in San Angelo was Miss Hattie’s Bordello. It was, in fact, the crown jewel in the local vice district known as the Concho, a neighborhood named for the river along which it was located.

3) Porno, Texas Style: Dozens of well-known pornographic actresses and actors have hailed from the Lone Star State, and some of these have had stories that were particularly sordid or interesting. These include the dissolute Chloe Jones (shown here), whose greatest claim to fame in her short life was receiving $15,000 for performing oral sex on the infamous Charlie Sheen — an act that may ultimately have led to her demise.

4) Walking Tall in the White House: Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States, always seemed proud of his womanizing ways. He had sex, inside and outside the White House, with secretaries, aides, and just about any other woman who would agree.

5) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas: Whether or not it was actually “the best little whorehouse in Texas” is probably a matter of personal opinion, but there really was a brothel in the southeastern town of La Grange that inspired first a Broadway musical and then a film.

6) Going Down to Get Ahead: In 1976, John Andrew Young was on his eleventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives when a woman who had worked for him accused him of pressuring her to have sex with him. Even worse, she said, the married father of five had compensated her at taxpayer’s expense.

7) Paying for It, Lying About It — And Getting Away With It: When Secretary of Housing Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio, lied to the FBI about money he paid his mistress, it caused him untold problems, tarnished a presidential administration, and cost the American taxpayers a lot of money.

8) Below the Bench: After being named Federal District Judge of Galveston by President George H. W. Bush, Samuel B. Kent was convicted of lying about sexually harassing two female employees and sentenced to 33 months in prison.

9) Now All Sex is Fine in Texas: For those who are interested, anal and oral sex between consenting adults of all genders is now legal in the State of Texas — but only since 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to tell the state where it could stick its intrusive sodomy laws.

10) A Risky Proposition: Passed in 2005 with the intent of preventing gay relationships, Proposition 2 threatened to accidentally illegalize all marriage in the state.

11) Anna Nicole Smith: Before she was a celebrity of questionable virtue, Texas native Anna Nicole Smith was a woman of no apparent virtue at all.

12) Sex Toys Now Legal in Texas!: Since November 2008, people in Texas have had the right to sell or purchase sex toys of various sorts as desired. Prior to that, however, the Lone Star State explicitly reserved the right to regulate morality and to prosecute people who did not measure up to its lofty standards.

13) Mark of Shame: In 2011, a jury in New Braunfels sentenced local attorney Mark A. Clark to seven years in prison for trying to induce a 12-year-old girl to pose for him in sexy clothing at his office the previous summer.

Who is a Good Samaritan?

One of the teachings in the Bible that I have contemplated increasingly over the past few years is that of the Good Samaritan, as presented in one of the parables of Jesus (Luke 10:25-37).

This is a key teaching but, in part because people have heard it so many times, I think it has to some extent lost its impact, had its meaning obscured and diluted, and been reduced to a children’s story. And, once a child thinks the point of the story is that they need to be nice to their little brother or help their mom around the house, they are probably never going to understand it correctly.

There are, however, two critical points to this parable. One is the importance of being kind to people who are not like oneself. The other is the importance of helping people without the possibility of reward.

Part of the reason people are often confused by the meaning of this parable is likely that they have heard the terms “good” and “Samaritan” used in conjunction with one another so many times that they have subconsciously established a relationship between them. “What is a Samaritan? Well, it must be an especially good sort of person.”

The reason, however, that Jesus used a Samaritan in his parable is that it was an ethnic group that his audience would have found particularly objectionable. To us, the term “Samaritan” is intrinsically meaningless; there a mere 700-or-so members of this group still alive today and, even for those of us who might have known that, their existence almost certainly has no bearing on us one way or the other.

It is just as certain, however, that Jesus never said anything that was meaningless, and if he told that parable today he would therefore have to use a sort of person other than a Samaritan in order for the parable to make sense to his audience. What sort of person would that be?

Well, it might be the type of person for which his particular listeners had the worst or the most ethnic slurs. The one that they told the nastiest jokes about. The ones that they crossed the street to avoid, would have never had as guests in their homes, and would have forbid their children to marry. Today, any particular audience would likely hear the parable of “the good illegal alien.” “The good Arab.” “The good African-American.” Whoever his listeners would be most offended by is who he would insert.

I am probably making it sound as if this teaching would have been very unpopular — and I bet it was! While we revere Jesus and hold him in the highest regard, in his own time many people were really annoyed by him and with what he had to say — to the extent that they were willing to subject him to a mock trial and have him tortured and killed. They did not do that to knowingly fulfill a prophecy, they did it because they hated Jesus and because his words were an affront to them.

Last year, I covered an especially disturbing murder trial. After the defendant was convicted, her defense attorney called about a dozen character witnesses in an attempt to sway the sentence that the jury would impose (and succeeded in this regard). Many of these witnesses characterized the killer as a Good Samaritan, describing the things that person had, apparently selflessly, done to help them. This, however, displays an extreme misunderstanding of the teaching. When you help people that can testify on your behalf in court or serve you in any other way, you are not being a good Samaritan — you are paying the premiums on an insurance policy.

I am certainly not suggesting that helping one’s family members, friends, or neighbors is not a desirable thing. But, if the people you are helping can pay you back in any way, then your actions are meaningless in the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan. To the extent that helping people who can help you in return is a Christian value, it is just as much a Jewish value, a pagan value, a Muslim value, even an atheist value. Jesus and everyone else already knew that Jews helped Jews, Romans helped Romans, gentiles helped gentiles, and no one needed to tell a parable to illustrate that.

So, according to the words of Jesus, there are probably few greater things that one could aspire to be than a “Good Samaritan.” Doing so, however, just might be a lot tougher than you thought.

Bully for Conformity

As coverage on local and national news alike would suggest, it would seem that the subject of bulling is finally being taken seriously in our country, which I can only take as a positive development. Amongst all the talk about concerned school administrators on the one hand and indifferent ones on the other, one impression of the phenomena that I have long noted has, as far as I can tell, not been discussed at all.

That is, in short, the idea that "bullies" are in many cases not the enemies of the school administration but, in fact, its tools. When I was in high school, at least half of the bullies were varsity athletes, "good kids" that got a pass from teachers/administrators/coaches. A number of the very worst bullies were also the kids of teachers or school employees, and, even when their parents were explicitly told what their kids were doing, they did nothing to intervene. Bullying occurred not at the hands of kids who had been abused themselves, etc. (it is too nice to think that they might have been), but rather by kids who were being give a pass on their behavior.

These bullies were fully aligned with the power structure and harassed and menaced others in proportion to the extent that they were outsiders. Some of them clearly even saw themselves as little policemen, trying to stamp out disorder in the society in which they were favored. The more people were like everyone else, the less likely they were to be bullied themselves. One of the more popular songs was Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," and kids sang the lyrics to it knowing exactly what they meant ... but they were damn sure to sing them when, where, and how they were supposed to.

So, bullying probably brings to mind different images to most of us -- but I would suggest that in some cases it should bring to mind the idea of the order, conformity, and homogeneity it is meant to encourage.

The Price of Extremism

Every time I watch a movie about Northern Ireland, the civil war in Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda -- not the mention the news about more current events -- I am reminded of the cost associated with the extreme absurd result of intolerance amongst the peoples of a nation.

This, I think, is why I have chosen to reject the most extreme religious and political movements in our country today ... the essence of what they believe is irrelevant, even if in some cases it happens to be more compatible with my own beliefs with those of the opposition, because they are willing to trample on the "wrong" beliefs of others.

Sure, it feels good to rail against people with beliefs opposed to your own, to demonize and villify them, and there is so much more of that in our society than there has ever been before. Incivility and intolerance have become commonplace among the leaders of some our nation's factions. I recently read a news story about an event in which a state official publicly referred to the President of the United States as "a Chicago thug." Disgusting. It is a sign of how far that we have slipped that a roomfull of of middle-aged women applauded that comment rather than being revolted by it.

And, if you really believe in something then you might believe that doing anything to achieve the ends associated with it is a good thing ... It's not. Not in a country like ours; this is the crux of disaster, this sense of moral right. Whatever else you believe America is about, it's about tolerance, and accepting that other people have a right to live as they choose ... even if you don't like it. The consequences of intolerance are only worse.

Sex, and the crap that follows.

If you are a woman and you want to sleep with a man, it follows that you will have issues. Not simply issues related to the particular incident, but issues from the other women in the sphere of the man you are/have slept with. This I have found is a more recent phenomenon. Ten years ago, it seems like you could go have casual sex if you were careful, and then go about your merry way, being friends or not with the guy, with no ill effects. Nowadays it seems like more and more the boys you end up sleeping with are happy to let you suffer and the other women in their lives suffer the consequences of something which should have been between just the two of you. They call it being open and honest. Really? Well... shit. I can't argue that, it is honest. It is also cruel and sometimes just rude. I don't want to deal with some crazy girl you are sleeping with who is in love with you and says she can handle a non committal sex only relationship, and then freaks out completely when you admit openly that you and I have slept together. What we do is between us, and what you two do is between you two. Seem shady? Well... Let me put this delicately... It seems like the women in your life would be much happier if you would instead of the "honesty" tried for more "Discretion". There is no need to flaunt the fact that you have several women you sleep with, you tell a girl once and then you let it go. You don't brag about it and you don't introduce the parties to each other, or expect them to happily skip down the lane together now do you? You do? Wow... then you have either, a lot of balls, no regard for any woman, or no brains. Now.... Some girls can handle the casual thing, but I'm here to tell you we're rare! There are many more ladies out there who will tell you that they are ok with it, and then flip the fuck out when you take them up on their cavalier, yet ultimately fake acceptance of another female in your realm. Discretion boys, is the better part of valor, it will keep the women in your life happy. There is a reason that people say ignorance is bliss, and I'm not telling you to lie to your ladies, but you don't have to rub it in either now do you? All of this is after a year of watching a couple of people who are very good at being honest, and the girls they deal with falling apart when their worlds are shattered. Be nice boys! and hey.. Girls? Stop being psycho bitches to the other women in your men's lives, they are in the exact same boat as you, so recognize, and move on. As a side note, the author is not involved in the above described drama, I am merely an audience member.

~Jules

American Values

How many people feel their skin start to crawl, and feel a weight start to press down upon them, when they hear the word "values" these days? Is that what the Founding Fathers intended? That people would feel sick and apprehensive when they considered the values that defined their country?

I don't think so.

America was a country founded on the promise of a dream of freedom.

So here is a value for you ... and one that will work for you when other people observe it ...

Mind
Your own
Fucking
Business

That's right. Mind your own fucking business. Don't worry about other people. Don't worry about what they're doing. And, if we ever got to point where everybody followed that advice, you wouldn't get that scared, sick, clammy feeling when you heard some asshole mention the word "values" ... Because you would know that it wasn't being used to bend you to someone else's will and make you live your life in some way you did not want to.

An Un-Friending

Recently, I received a series of reproachful email messages from a close friend of 30 years, in response, he said, to the post on this site about the Tea Party (with which he claims to have no affiliation and know little about).

Based on that post, he accused me of being a socialist, a Nazi, a racist, crazy, a follower of Jessie Jackson, and, furthermore, suggested at least a couple of times that people in general and I in particular do not have the right to live wherever we choose in the country (this latter suggestion is so outlandish that I assumed he was joking the first time he made it, but he subsequently clarified that he was not). There were some other accusations and personal attacks in there as well but they all sort of rambled and one thought did not necessarily follow another in a way I could understand and I could almost sense rage behind his broken, jumbled, and repetitive prose. He made it clear in them however, that we were no longer friends.

To suggest I am not very upset by this would be untrue. I take friendship very seriously and it never occurred to me that our friendship would ever end, much less over uncertain views of mine that I never approached him with and which he had to seek out. Certainly, it would seem to me that there is more here than is meeting my eye, but I don't know what to do about it.

So, all very strange and disquieting. But it would seem to be a sign of the times ... How often are people being un-friended these days for forwarding intolerant, bigoted, email messages to everyone in their address books? Not often enough, apparently, or they would not keep doing it. But suggest tolerance and moderation and that is going too far.