The state’s motivation didn’t seem to be to “protect” him, but from a GOP attitude of “we’re not going to waste our time protecting patients who are being big old whores in the first place, we will purposefully look the other way and make up any reason to excuse our lack of action.”

It may well be! But to me, the issue here isn’t whether Traci Lords is an amazing person. It’s that she was a minor when she made the movies, she was technically the victim of multiple crimes at the time, and it’s been a long-ass time since it happened — I bet the average Jez commentor was a small child or not yet…

Absolutely. I can understand why people were angry at her in 1985, but I would hope that with the passage of time people would have gotten over it, all things considered. Apparently not.

That’s a good analogy.

This sounds like a really gross podcast. Glad to know I can give it a miss.

Right. She’s 15, we can’t expect her to have common sense about sexuality, objectification, etc. I’m not judging her at all — I just worry for her. Young teens just don’t have the life experience to handle these situations, and having parents who seem more interested in scoring points on social media than in raising…

Yeah, when I looked through her social media I was more concerned by the skimpy white bikini photos than the politics. And her comment on the thirst traps is like, “I’m a minor, you shouldn’t sexualize me,” which is a noble thought that I agree with in principle but one that has stopped creepy dudes from being creepy a…

Disability activists are great at advocating for relatively high-functioning people with disabilities who can live independent lives if given reasonable accommodations. And that’s fantastic — it helps millions of people, and I don’t want to take anything away from it. But the problem I have with them is that I’ve…

I’m having the same Kinja problem. I know there are comments I want to reply to that I just can’t find. Whatever the software is doing, it’s not helpful for a complex thread.

Yeah, I know. It’s a thing they came up with when integration became more accepted. But it’s been pretty central for 40ish years, and there’s no sign it’ll go away.

Yeah, exactly. Really they’re pro-life but only if that life is confined to the womb, once you’re out you’re on your own, good luck and try not to get shot.

No need to apologize, I appreciate the tangent. I live in Virginia and our last couple statewide candidates to try to run on racism got their asses handed to them, so maybe I underestimate how well it plays in states that are more white/rural. (Note, I’m not saying Virginia voters aren’t racist — far from it. But…

I agree to a point, and I definitely think you’re right about the imbalance in weighing “spark of life” talk against more pragmatic concerns. The thing is, Democrats made concessions on things like parental consent laws and “partial birth abortion” bans, and it was a)never enough for the pro-life types and b)got us to…

Might depend on who you’re talking to and where you hang out, I imagine. I do hear “Democrats just want to raise my taxes” and grumbling about “free stuff” (you know, the same taxpayer-supported “free stuff” white conservatives eagerly take advantage of whenever they’re eligible), but usually from slightly older…

Makes sense! Now if we could just get white megachurch pastors to talk a little less about how bad abortion is, and a little more about how Jesus wants people to have health care...

That’s a really good point — white voters can put racism to the side, even if they say they’re opposed to it, and become single-issue voters on abortion. Black voters don’t have that privilege.

Excellent point. They’re willing to shoot themselves in the foot if it means they can feel better than everybody else.

Ugh. It sounds like they just really wanted to reassure each other that they were all still having sex. 

I’ve read those anecdotes too. No idea if they were factually true or not, but they’re definitely believable and made their point.

Oh, no question. Which is extra weird because it’s not like only single women need birth control; most married women do too. So outside the relatively small minority of people who sincerely oppose contraception, these evangelical women would benefit from sex ed and birth control as much as anybody. But the conceit in…