The Jeff Booth Show

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Show Transcripts

August 24th , 2008

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This is the Jeff Booth Show for August 24th, 2008, brought to you by the Center for Sexual Expression and Education, and Erotic University. I’m Jeff Booth. From topless protests to presidential condom capers, we cover politics in the news. Our entertainment roundup includes the return of The Devil in Miss Jones Georgina Spelvin and her new book, the penis size contest between Sean Penn and James Franco, and the latest in sex in the movies and adult entertainment. Finally, our Sexvestigation takes a look at how the failure in the law to protect us has rendered our constitutional rights for sexual expression all but meaningless.  I’m Jeff Booth. Just click on the topic to the left you want to listen to, and thanks for clicking in.

Politics

We spent Saturday at Venice Beach, at the topless protest sponsored by gotopless.org. Women removed their tops and wore only pasties as they marched, pasties that were  molded from actual nipples and looked like nipples but were street legal because they covered the aureola, the part of the breast in California that women can go to jail for exposing. It effectively pointed out the sheer stupidity of the law. And while we think that fighting for women’s equality in all areas is a worthy effort, for some us, we don’t want to be limited to just topless. I don’t mean everywhere, but there should be some places that are clothing optional. In Los Angeles, there are none, not even commercial resorts let alone nude beaches. And there are few enough nude beaches in California, and now the state is trying to shut down one of the more popular ones. San Onofre State Beach, just south of the Orange County line. It has long been popular with the no tan lines crowd.  It is out of the way, and there is no shortage of beach for those who prefer to keep their suits on and not see naked people. When the state Department of Parks and Recreation announced it was going to shut down nudity on the popular trail 6 beach, users of the beach sued. And for now, they have won. A court told Park and Rec that they could not shut down the beach for nudists without having public hearings first. So for now, the beach remains open to nudists, so you might want to give it a visit before the sun possibly sets on one of the few remaining spots for clothing optional sun bathing and beach recreation.  

Condom maker One Condoms, noted for their round foil packages with a wide variety of designs, has issued a challenge to the McCain and Obama camps to support condom use and to support comprehensive sex education programs in their campaign platforms.  On Thursday they sent 56,300 condoms to each camp. If only they’d sent some to John Edwards two years ago. It amounts to one condom for every person the CDC estimates will become infected with HIV this year. We already know how the candidates stand. Obama stood up before a group of 2,000 evangelicals in Orange County and supported the use of condoms to fight AIDS as part of positioning himself to run for President. He also strongly supports age appropriate comprehensive sex education. McCain, however, has a 0% rating from Planned Parenthood for his stands opposing programs for women’s reproductive health, sex education, and disease prevention ,and it did not help his rating that he voted to completely defund Planned Parenthood. Nor did it help that he backed away from his earlier pledge to change the Republican platform to include exceptions for abortion in the cases of rape,  incest, or threat to the life of the mother. That’s right- potential fetus life trumps mom’s life. And when asked about whether he supported the use of condoms to fight AIDS in Africa, he said he just didn’t understand the issue. Apparently because like the Internet and computers, condoms are a technology that is far too recent for him to keep up with. He strongly supports the failed abstinence only education policies of George Bush. He even voted against emergency contraception for rape victims. But that’s then. At any moment he may voice the exact opposite opinion, perhaps even within the same interview.  The unique round packaging of the One Condoms is different from what McCain would have been familiar with as a young man, you know, before the miracle of vulcanized rubber. I just hope someone explains to McCain what all those round packages of condoms are, so that they don’t get used to drop 56,300 balloons at the upcoming Republican National Convention.

It’s a story that sounds like it comes right out of a satirical science fiction novel. A cloned puppy leads to the location of a sex crazed kidnapper. But the story is actually even stranger than that.  In 1977, Joyce McKinney fell hard for a young Mormon missionary man. She said “"I love him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to." I think he would have preferred that she had done that, as long as she was skiing away from him.. Instead, she kidnapped him, chained him to a bed, and kept him as a sex slave. With him chained to the bed, I’m not sure if the missionary position was even possible. She was caught, but she jumped bail in London and disappeared into the United States. Move forward some 30 years, and under the name Bernann McKinney, she garners international headlines with her picture after having five cloned puppies created from her beloved Pit Bull, Booger. And because the case is so old, she won’t be extradited. But the story doesn’t end there. She is also wanted in connection with a 2003 burglary plot in Tennessee to steal money to buy a prosthetic leg for her beloved three legged horse. And that’s not a punch line. Its an actual ongoing case. And I’m wondering where she got $53,000 to have her dog cloned. Anyone think into looking into that? And I’d really check to see what she has chained to her bed now.

When it comes to the arguments made on the California voter guide, judges ruled this week that being truthful is not all that important. Planned Parenthood sued over the arguments in favor of the controversial Proposition 4, which would mandate abortion parental notification and a 48 hour waiting period for minors. What they objected to was this description: "Sarah was only 15 when she had a secret abortion" and suffered a "deadly infection. Had someone in her family known about the abortion, Sarah's life could have been saved." That, however, is not completely true. Sarah is the pseudonym for a 15 year old who lived in Texas, not California, and she was a legally married emancipated minor at the time. She was not living with her parents, and Proposition 4 would have had no effect on her. The judge decided that arguments for ballot initiatives should be allowed a little hyperbole- in other words, they should be able to flat out lie and say things that are demonstrably not true.

A different judge ruled in a court case on Proposition 8, which would eliminate the recently won right to gay marriage, that proponents of the initiative could only lie a little. The original wording was that teachers "will be required" to teach young children about gay marriage and endorse it if the measure fails. Not even remotely true. The judge ruled that the wording should be changed to “teachers may be required”. If you can use unsubstantiated possible scenarios, they might as well write that teachers may be required to give live gay sex demonstrations in class if the proposition fails. Sure, not likely, but who really knows how far this gay agenda thing goes. The judge also ruled that the name of the proposition could accurately reflect what the proposition does. Proponents sued to overturn the title by Attorney General Jerry Brown, which is: Eliminates the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. The problem proponents had with it is that it accurately describes what the initiative does, and when you want to take away people’s rights, the last thing you want to do is put that right in the tile. They preferred the title, Limit on Marriage, but they should have been bolder and proposed something like “Eliminates the rights of inherently predatory child molesting homosexuals to rape and convert your children, turning them into suicidal drug addicted sodomites.” After all, this is the way they describe the so-called homosexual agenda amongst themselves. The last thing you want it to be about is individual rights.

And again in California, the homophobes lost another round in court. They wanted the right for medical practitioners to be able discriminate against people just because they were gay. The California Supreme court in a unanimous ruling said no. A lesbian women sought out artificial insemination from a medical group and they denied her, apparently because she was gay. They argued in court that they deny unmarried people in general, but state law already prohibits that form of discrimination. And I wonder now how they would handle legally married lesbians. The bottom line, the court said, is that if you provide a service for some, you can’t just chose who you want to perform that service for. Whether you refuse because you just don’t want blacks, or Jews, or lesbians, or liberals breeding, it is still unconstitutional.

So, what is the difference between birth control and abortion? For many in the anti-abortion crowd, there really isn’t much. Which is why new rules from the Department of Health and Human Resources requiring that all medical practitioners religious beliefs be respected and that they are allowed to opt-out of anything that goes against their religion are viewed with such skepticism. Ostensibly it is about abortion, but it also allows them to opt-out of sterilization procedures, which has nothing to do with abortion. And while HHS secretary Mike Leavitt denies that this will not impact contraception, this is despite a leaked memo of an earlier draft actually defining many forms of contraception as abortion. And in tis current form, it specifically doesn’t  define abortion, and there is nothing preventing medical practitioners from defining it any way they want- and many of them on the far-right of the abortion issue consider things like the birth control pill, the IUD, and emergency contraception to be forms of abortion. They’re not, but there is nothing in the HHR language that says who gets to define what an abortion is, even if that definition is medically ridiculous. And the current draft language allows medical practitioners to simply not tell a patient about their options if those options go against their beliefs.  And if you live in a small conservative town, women’s choices for medical services could be drastically reduced. Planned Parenthood and Moveon.org are organizing to prevent the new regulations from going into effect. There are pharmacists across the country who currently refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception or the birth control pill. These new regulations would apparently override recently enacted state laws prohibiting pharmacists from deciding what prescriptions they choose to fill or not fill, and mandating equal care from all health care providers. Imagine federal regulations that would force you to hire an employee at your convenience store who objected to alcohol and refused to sell it. While these regulations are equally crazy, the consequences for women are much more serious. And I would not be surprised to hear that they are looking into conscience requirements on homosexuality to overturn the recent California decision on gays and medical care.

When you care enough to send the very fabulous, Hallmark now has greeting cards for gay weddings. Well, they can also be used for commitment ceremonies, since they don’t specifically mention marriage. And that has inspired the ironically named American Family Association to call another one of its boycotts. They want Hallmark to “stop promoting a lifestyle that is not only unhealthy, but is also illegal in 48 states.” Being gay is not illegal in 48 states, nor are commitment ceremonies, and gay marriage isn’t illegal in 48 states, it is just not legally recognized as equivalent to marriage and many of those states have domestic partnership options. In their press release, they wrote that: “Hallmark is a private company obviously driven by greed.” That’s not greed- its called capitalism, centerpiece of our economy, something I thought you conservative types were all for. There is clearly a market for it.  The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that more than 85,000 same-sex couples in the United States have entered into a legal relationship since 1997, when Hawaii started offering some legal benefits to same-sex partners.

Entertainment

I often point out that Britain is almost as crazy as we are about sex. Latest case in point is an art show in Dorset. They banned a painting by Maxime Xavier from the show, a self-portrait, because the nipples were too big and appeared to be erect. Its not a sexually explicit picture by any means, a fairly typical nude, but Maxine apparently has the misfortune of not having socially acceptable nipples. As she said, “Its not as if I am knocking things off shelves with them when I go shopping.” She may have had unacceptable nipples, but the big boobs are the people behind the decision to censor art that is little different from that in England’s major art museums.

I’ll admit, I have never seen the Devil in Miss Jones. It was a little before my time. And I was a little surprised when my mother recently admitted that she had seen it at the local Pussycat theatre. Everyone at the time was going to see it, she said. And the reason this came up is that I told her we went to see the Devil in Miss Jones star Georgina Spelvin do a talk to promote her new book, the Devil Made Me Do It. I knew little about her, but turns out she is charming and very funny. Her book is quite an entertaining read, and while it does cover her struggles with alcoholism, it is not a victim book. All I surmised about her was that she had to know something about the theatre to use the name Georgina Spelvin, as that along with George Spelvin are traditional names actors use in the theatre when they don’t want to use their actual names. Turns out she was very much involved in theatre, appearing in Damn Yankees, the Pajama Game, and she was the dance stand-in for Shirley McClaine in the Sweet Charity film. There was a reason that reviewers gave her acting high marks in The Devil in Miss Jones. And the story of her life porn and post porn is quite entertaining. I really enjoyed her opening for the reading of her book. She said “The first 112 pages of my book go into deliberately graphic detail of my experiences as a fornicatrix. I will begin my reading on page 113.” And she was a delight the rest of the evening.

The House Bunny opens this weekend. It stars Anna Farris as a Playboy Playmate who leaves the mansion to go out on her own and winds up being a house mother in a sorority. It also has cameo appearances of Hefner and his girls. And what’s with a movie about the Playboy mansion and a playmate with only brief partial nudity? And we only get to see Anna Faris from behind. But at least she didn’t use a body double. It was originally planned to use a body double, but the body double fell through, so the director insisted that Faris do the scene herself. But since Faris is also the director of the film, she complied with little complaint.   

Who has a bigger dick, Sean Penn or James Franco? Both appear in the biopic about San Francisco’s first gay Mayor, Harvey Milk. And Sean gave the title to fellow actor Franco after seeing his nude scene, not realizing that Franco was prosthetically enhanced. Its already ridiculous that so few male stars will do full frontal nudity, but now they are disguising their shortcomings with prosthetics? Next thing you know, women will be doing nude scenes with augmented breasts.

Hopefully, you won’t rent Slippery Slope for the kids thinking it is a film adapatation of the Lemony Snicket book.  It’s a screwball sex comedy directed by Sarah Schenck about a young woman who wants to send her documentary, Feminism for Dummies, to a film festival. To do that, she needs cash, so the anti-porn crusader secretly takes a job directing porn. Of course, she’s going to make sophisticated art porn. Now, I know you are thinking this will be about feminism versus porn, but actually, her experience on the porn set awakens her repressed sexuality, much to the shock of her conservative husband. The movie knows little about the adult industry. A director is not going to make $50,000 upfront, and her husband would never be allowed to jump into the actions on set unless he was hired and tested first. A more thoughtful sendup of the porn industry and feminist sexual repression would have been more interesting, but at least it has lots of sex and nudity, such as the four-way with Yolanda Ross and Jessica Leccia.

If you are trying to get into an Ivy League School, the last thing you want is for anyone to find out that you are both a Ninja and a cheerleader rescuing your Sensei from mafia kidnappers, and trying to do all that before midnight so you can compete in a dance contest to get money for college. That is the high concept dilemma in Ninja Cheerleaders, a martial arts CHEERLEADER sex comedy. It features SURREAL LIFE reality star Trishelle Cannatella and George Takei as the wise instructor Hiroshi. The Ninja babes manage to keep their clothes on but do a lot of cheering and a lot of ass kicking. Jamie Lynn and Heather Vandeven do the disrobing duties, along with a few others.

And in porn, its Black Reign 14, and I wouldn’t mind if it were raining Diamonds, as long as it was the beautiful Diamond Jackson, who appears along with Cassiday Clay, Aryanna Star, Alianna Love and Madison Luv (no relation).  It’s a Lex Steele production from Mercenary Pictures.

Sure, Jenna Jameson will never spread her legs for this industry again, as she famously said at the last AVN awards, but fortunately for her fans she spread them a little extra before retiring so that new DVDs featuring her can continue to be released. The latest is Burn, from Vivid/Club Jenna and directed by Paul Thomas. Lots of lesbian scenes, a little spanking and flogging as well, and Jenna having sex with now former husband Justin Sterling.. It also stars Nina Hartley, Stephanie Swift, Cytheria and Taylor Rain, and yes, how did you guess it was shot a few years ago?

From Vivid Alt comes Hospital, starring punk pornster Mandy Morbid. It also stars Kimberly Kane, Zak Sabbath, Caroline Pierce, and Marie McCray. Mandy plays Lucy, a homeless punk nymphet who wakes up in a disturbingly decrepit hospital where doctors want to use brain surgery to reform her. Its punk meets porn meets disturbia

Hustler brings us Barely Legal Troublemakers. It was written and directed by Henri Pachard, the renowned adult director with a 40 year career who is now battling cancer and directed this while battling the disease. It stars Lexi Belle, Sara Faye, Kayden Faye, Kylie Rachelle and Isabella Amour. I’ve had the chance to chat with Pachard and a few occasions and he is a passionate and talented director, and I am particularly saddened that attempts to create a fundraising video for him turned into a fiasco. I talked to someone the other night who was there, and one person seemed to think it was all about them, and not about raising money for someone who is sick and really needs it. It turned out very badly and was very frustrating for the many who volunteered their time and money, but with some diligent efforts by others it appears that the project is back on track under new guidance.

Hustler also brings us the Stuart Canterbury directed Get Smartass, with Agent 86 no longer battling chaos, but P.E.N.I.S., an evil organization that does not adhere to goodness and niceness, and has discovered the real identity of all of the agents and plans to send seductresses after them.  Well, getting captured could be worse.And, of course, agent 99 has been reassigned to agent 69. And Max now works for Kuntrol. It stars Kayla Paige, Britney Amber, Eden Adams, Envi, Veronica Jett and Veronica Rayne.

And continuing in the endless parade of 60s television shows going porn parody, Adam & Eve Pictures/X-Play bring us Not Bewitched XXX. It stars Jenna Haze as Samaantha, and Eva Angelina as Aunt Clara, who turns one year old Tabitha into a legal aged sex pot, played by Teagan. Its also got Sunny Lane, Aurora Snow, Nina Hartley, and Sasha Grey. It includes a magically inspired 8 girl orgy, which is one of those things I think you would inspire if you could do magic. Its from Jeff Mullen, the man largely responsible for launching the television porn parody craze with his Not the Bradys XXX. 

Sexvestigation: The Sexual Wedge Strategy

Amongst those who reject all of science and want to see creationism, or its more recent reincarnation, intelligent design, injected into the schools as a substitute, there is something called the wedge strategy. It’s a way to keep kids from actually learning about evolution and science without doing it directly, which would be unconstitutional.

For people’s private sex lives, there is something in play that works along similar lines. Swinging, homosexuality, threesomes, BDSM, triads- all technically legal for the most part. But because of a gaping failure in the law, anyone who practices any of these things or anything outside of what is considered vanilla sex, can be severely punished. Not by going to jail, but by losing their job or having their kids taken from them. For most people, those are pretty serious consequences for what is technically legal activity. Even arguably constitutionally protected activity.

Your private sex life can be used against you, and though it has no bearing on how well you raise your kids or do your job, that is irrelevant. And when such extreme punishment can be doled out with little you can do about it, how can we say that we have any privacy or freedom with our sexual lives?

I was on the Jenny Jones show a few years ago discussing a case where a grandmother was trying to take her own daughter’s children from her because she was involved in a polyamorous relationship with two men. I pointed out on the show the then recent case of a lesbian mother living in a nice home in Texas who had her daughter taken from her because she was living with another woman. Her husband got custody, and the child wound up living in a trailer with the dad. He’d have gone to court sooner, but he just got out of jail after serving a sentence for murdering his first wife.

In a recent case, a sex blogger is now fighting for his kids. On the blog, he has written about his bisexuality and sex parties which of course took placed while his wife had custody. Now his ex-wife has sued in court to take away joint custody after discovering his anonymous blog and learning that it was written by her ex-husband- the man she walked out on. Yes, even his ex-wife admits he is a great father, and no, there are no accusations that he ever did anything inappropriate around the kids. But just because he is bisexual and lives an alternative sexual lifestyle, his wife claims that he is an unfit father. And sadly for him, she comes from a wealthy family with significant financial resources.  And he has absolutely no protection in the law. I won’t mention his name as he is paranoid about the case being discussed too much online, but this whole affair is quite sad.

It’s a story I hear from swingers on their second and much happier marriages all the time. They are afraid that their ex will find out and sue for custody. And yes, they can lose their kids over this. Actually, losing kids over your sex life happens a lot. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom documents hundreds of cases a year where parents lose custody because of their sex lives.

According to sex expert and author of America’s War on Sex, Dr. Marty Klein “Practitioners of alternative sexual lifestyles have suffered terribly in child custody hearings. Parental fitness is often questioned, for example, because one spouse has committed adultery, been “promiscuous,” is gay, or participates in “unusual” sexual activity. Courts often agree—typically without evidence—that a child would be endangered because a parent engages in “alternative” sexual behavior.”

Dr. Klein noted a specific case in California where it was discovered that a woman and her live-in boyfriend engaged in BDSM activities. The boyfriend had a better relationship with the child than the actual father, but the court appointed a profoundly ignorant psychologist to evaluate the situation. He found no actual evidence of anything untoward, but he decided that BDSM activities in themselves constituted domestic violence. Despite no evidence whatsoever of any harm or potential harm to the child, the court reduced her custody, ended her alimony, and ordered her to a year of psychotherapy despite no evidence that she had any psychological problems. 

Compared to losing your kids, losing your job is not nearly as devastating, but in these tight financial times, it can mean losing your home and not having anywhere to live, so it is still quite consequential. People can and do lose their jobs over what they do sexually in private, and not just in the military.

A woman I knew named Lynn was in a polyamorous relationship and the Oxygen channel did a documentary on them. She was subsequently fired from her job as an emergency medical technician. Of course it had nothing to do with her being able to do her job, but you can be fired for your sex life and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Take the recent case of Las Vegas KTNV-TV reporter, Jeff Gradney. He and his girlfriend posted an ad on craigslist looking for another guy to join them. Station managers found out when a  disgruntled employee sent them a copy of the ad and pointed out that it was Gradney. He was immediately fired. Come on- in promos they referred to him as Action News Reporter Jeff Gradney. And now they are shocked that he was looking for a little action? And to add insult to injury, the media reported the story with the headline that he was soliciting sex online, which sounds like he was doing something illegal, namely seeking out a hooker, instead of something legal, like looking for an extra playmate.

Sure, we have some sexual rights. We can have sex with other consenting adults. We can engage in threesomes. We can go to swing clubs. We can participate in BDSM play. And the law can’t send us to jail for it. But the law should be more than about punishment, it should also protect us. And when we face losing our jobs or our kids for participating in legal acivities, then we don’t really have those rights.  Rights that are not legally protected exist only in theory. We need rights in the real world, where we all live. And we need our sex lives protected, and not just punished, by the law.