There *are* coherent reasons, that reasonable enough people might have, for wanting to restrict the sales of sex toys

There are?! I haven’t heard any coherent reasons. i can’t even IMAGINE any

And sometimes when faced with some of this stuff day in and day out, we just have to laugh to save our sanity. There are many days when a funny post saves me from wanting to just sit down and cry.

Thanks for engaging with what I said. Your points are taken – although somebody seems to have voted these legislators into office. So the struggle to legalise sex toys could be achieved indirectly by changing the minds and the priorities of the citizens of Texas – or at least that could be one way of going about things; I don’t deny that legal activism is helpful too. But neither does legal or political activism have to take on this tone.

I also think there is room to protest the ‘troll’ label, as I am on your side here – all I’m asking is whether, given our common aims, we’re making the best decisions in order to reach those aims.

Astraea,

I guess I would hope there would be a conception of humor that isn’t based on ridiculing people.

the very fact that entire states have bans on sex toys shows that there is a significant population who (1) either support such bans, or (2) don’t care enough to fight them – and my doubt is whether characterising the people in group (1) as ‘the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts’ will help the people in group (2) see this wingnuttiness, or will make them think that you’re not participating in the discussion fairly, if it all.

You seem to imagine that these things are put to a popular vote rather than imposed by wingnut legislators.

As for coherent reasons – I think some Roman Catholic concerns on the matter are coherent and intelligent, and even winsome, even if I have to reject them eventually.

And religious prohibitions on sex toys should be given credence by the government — why, exactly? Let the priests tell their parishoners not to use Rabbits and strap-ons and let everyone else worry about their own reasons for using them.

I guess my point is that blogs have impact outside themselves, and this kind of participating in ridiculing those who disagree lowers the general level of debate in a really unhelpful way. I suppose we can ignore the people who read Pandagon (or more to the point, this site) directly, if we assume that they all agree with us – but the very fact that entire states have bans on sex toys shows that there is a significant population who (1) either support such bans, or (2) don’t care enough to fight them – and my doubt is whether characterising the people in group (1) as ‘the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts’ will help the people in group (2) see this wingnuttiness, or will make them think that you’re not participating in the discussion fairly, if it all.

And I think that’s especially the case when religion is part of the satirical treatment here. Assuming that there are a number of Christians who think sex toys are fine, and who have persuasive reasons for this belief that stem from their Christianity – and there are these people, and they do have these reasons – then maybe appealing to these sorts of reasons could be effective (in a state like Texas, where presumably the objections are largely theological) far beyond the effectiveness of ridiculing religion tout court – which does seem to be the tenor of this thread, doesn’t it?

As for coherent reasons – I think some Roman Catholic concerns on the matter are coherent and intelligent, and even winsome, even if I have to reject them eventually. And I don’t expect most or indeed any readers of this thread to find them persuasive, but for the sake of argument I’ll try to flesh them out a bit – the teaching that sex is meant to be pro-creative as well as creative has, as its best, been tied to a holistic view of the body as a part of the universe, which asserts that whatever pleasure one person has is enriched and enlarged by participation in sharing that pleasure with another person, and by the same principle that the pleasure that two people can have together is greater when it participates in the universe’s greater pleasure in a creative selving-forth – so that to make something new is to have the highest sort of sex, the sort of sex that flowers enjoy.

Whenever that ‘making something new’ is completely reduced to ‘making a baby’, there’s a gross reduction of Christian teaching on sexual pleasure – which is, I think, a great failure of the church. And it’s a further mistake to forbid all other kinds of sex in favour of celebrating one.

But my point is, if the reasons that people give for banning sex toys (or banning homosexuality, or banning birth control – they’re all basically the same point) are specifically religious, it’d be better to appeal to a deeper, more intelligent form of their religion than to mock it.

You are showing that instinct, I think, when you point out that there’s no biblical support for a sex-toy ban – for certain protestants, that should be enough to convince them on their own terms. And that’s the whole point – Rhetoric 101 teaches us to know our audiences, because it’s going to help us achieve what we want to achieve if we can meet people where they’re at. But the moment you give up hope that they can be reasoned with, you dehumanise them, and it becomes a shouting match, a power struggle, an unproductive section on Fox News.

And seriously, what coherent reasons? There aren’t any. The reason is that all sexual pleasure is bad unless you’re a married man trying to make babies with his wife. For women, it’s always wrong. And they believe this because of (some crap that isn’t even in) The Bible. How the hell do you argue with that in a reasoned and logical manner?