Sex is not to be enjoyed!

When I got an e-mail yesterday with a .pdf attached saying “This is the worst thing I’ve ever read,” I was intrigued. I was more intrigued when I got another e-mail saying, “Hey, check out Christine Flowers’ column in the Legal Intelligencer today. It’s really awful.”

Flowers, as you may know, is the breastfeeding hating, intelligent design loving, conservative Daily News columnist who we all last visited when some blogger sent her a nasty email a letter to the editor and she replied before the letter was published and the blogger then complained to the DN editorial page editor.

Her latest column is quite a head scratcher. It concerns Club Kama Sutra. As you may know, the South Street sex club was raided late last year and shut down after CBS 3 did a big piece on it acting all shocked, even though everyone in the damned city knew what was going on there and it was very private.

And then, earlier this month, the Zoning Board seemingly shut down CKS for good. (This meant that Jan. 24 was even more depressing.)

Ms. Flowers’ column, of course, is praising the club’s shutdown because it, you know, the club made her angry. (You can read a scan of the column here.) After the jump, some analysis and some rare meanness and condescension from Philadelphia Will Do.

The first few paragraphs are pretty normal, then everything goes nuts:

There will always be those hardy throwbacks from the 1960s “feel-good” demographic who will protest that people who want to engage in consensual sex shouldn’t be chained (pun intended) by restrictive laws. The obvious strategy is to shift the focus from the obscene acts to their “privacy rights” … there is no doubt that the government has a distinct interest in preventing people, even consenting adults, from engaging in activity which undermines the public order and violates community standards of decency.

Now, I’m no master of rhetoric — nor am I a lawyer like Ms. Flowers — but it seems to me that it’s a strange debating technique to say “basically everyone in the world shares my opinion.” If that’s true, why are you writing a column? Dismissing your opposition with a patronizing pat on the head — “Oh, those people in the sixties who wanted an end to war and equal rights for all, you quaint little boys and girls who we ‘real people’ don’t take seriously” — seems like a bad debate technique, too. It sort of makes me feel that the author knows she’s not on solid ground, so she’s resorting to lame backhanded writing to make her point.

But, then again, I’m not a lawyer. Let’s move on.

How do sex clubs such as the late, lamented Kama Sutra disrupt that order? For one thing, they legitimize infidelity, something everyone can condemn, regardless of creed or politics.

There’s that debate style again! Man, being a lawyer must be much different than it is on Law & Order. And is it really infidelity if everyone involved is consenting and has knowledge of the situation? I don’t know. I’m not a dictionary writer.

Justice Antonin Scalia underscored this point by implying that certain activities can be banned because of their intrinsic immorality, even if they don’t offend the majority of people: “The purpose of Indiana’s nudity law would be violated… if 60,000 fully consenting adults crowded into the Hoosier Dome to display their genitals to one another, even if there was not an offended innocent in the crowd.” This is one justice who knows how to make a point. No wonder he was recently dubbed the funniest justice on the high court.

Whoo! Quite a real knee-slapper there, Christine! What hilarious jokes will you make next?

What’s next, building a nudist colony next to the drive thru, thereby giving new meaning to the term “Happy Meal?” Or perhaps allowing a hoagie shop/strip club to move next door to the local church, giving patrons the convenient option of sinning and confessing (and possibly sinning again) during their lunch hour?

I didn’t think it possible. Christine Flowers is less funny than Justice Scalia. Let’s skip to the end.

And deviations, sexual, legal or otherwise, should be avoided at all costs.

You know what. I finally agree with her. We should ban deviant behavior, such as that awful behavior that has nothing to do with reproduction at all: two people touching mucous membranes with each other. It’s more commonly known as kissing, and I hope Ms. Flowers will join me in asking for a ban on it.

Sex In Your City - Part Two [KYW 3]
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Valentine’s Party planned!