Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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Gay marriages don’t benefit society the same way hetero-marriages do – believes Rick “The Sanatorium” Santorum. He believes in the intrinsic “good” and sacredness of hetero-marriages. According to Ricky, LGBT pairings just don’t count, and apparently 52 percent of California voters agree.

So both The Sanatorium and the 52 percenters must have puked their guts out Tuesday when California’s 2008 Prop Hate was overturned by the Federal Appeals Court, deeming it unconstitutional.

In the opinion written by Judge Stephan Reinhardt, he maintained that the purpose of Prop Hate was

“...to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,"

A fascinating new study by researchers at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, demonstrates actual cognitive differences between conservative people and liberal people.

“In a series of experiments, researchers closely monitored physiological reactions and eye movements of study participants when shown combinations of both pleasant and unpleasant images. Conservatives reacted more strongly to, fixated more quickly on, and looked longer at the unpleasant images; liberals had stronger reactions to and looked longer at the pleasant images compared with conservatives.”

At first blush, this may not seem like a big thing, but honestly, it helps us to understand why the differences between viewpoints can be so extreme.

I heard several interviews with Rick “The Sanatorium” Santorum last week. They were particularly infuriating to my feminist sensibilities. I find it hard to believe that he actually says what he says, completely on the record, on national TV. His anti-female position on abortion is crystal clear to me now: rape is justified if it brings forth life!

The crazy part is that he’s in hallowed company – according to religious doctrine. Rick and God share the same depraved position: women should never have a choice when it comes to their bodies. They believe that the hard line of “no abortions ever” is doing the right thing – no matter the circumstances.

I breath deeply this afternoon. The Obama administration stood strong and made a decision that is socially sensible.

The decision? For the most part, if you are a female employed in the U.S., you will have the cost of birth control covered with no co-pay - regardless of your employing institution’s religious affiliation.

Churches and other houses of worship will continue to be exempt from having to supply birth control if they don’t believe in it. Forget the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows significant non-contraceptive health benefits to women including reducing the risk of cancer, balancing hormones, and easing cramps.

Fear and kink go hand in hand, that is until we begin to unravel the powerful life force energy compressed in our kinks. This is the story of communication and negotiation, both with ourselves, and our kink-friendly friends.

Claiming our kink is a very powerful thing. It’s acknowledging that being kinky is a part of life, something that everybody has, and something that we may want to open more fully to in our own lives.

In order to express our kinky sides, we have to be able to communicate our kinkiness to ourselves - without filters. Being kinky is a trance state. There may be things that get us off, but we may be completely embarrassed or even ashamed of sharing these things with other people. So the first thing is to begin to make our kinks available to our own conscious mind.

When it comes to casual sex, are men and women really that different?

My girlfriend explored that question in her recent blog, which began my exploration of the subject. For starters, most people would argue that men and women are different when it comes to sex. But here is the inescapable conclusion I have come to over the years: women want sex as much as men do - however, they require different conditions for casual sex to be appealing. This has been both my observation and my experience.

As the New Year approaches, I find myself feeling reflective. I thought I would share a list of a few things that I wish I learned - as a teenager - in sex-ed. Feel free to share and add on to the list.

Firstly, women and men are very much alike - and divisions of sexes are more mythological and cultural - especially when it comes to sex.

Sex runs the show. More than violence or any other crazy thing that we might see in films, TV, and on the news, sex, pleasure and the drive for freedom are the underlying motivations of much human behavior.

The sensations that we feel in our bodies are normal and natural. Welcome them.

When it comes to pleasure, stay open in body and mind, and always practice safer sex.

Let’s talk about the psychology of abortions. Abortions make you crazy? Right? I mean, one argument of anti-choice folks is that women who have abortions will suffer from craziness and depression.

They argue that even if a woman thinks having an abortion is the right thing for her, she will have unending feelings of guilt and loss. The underlying implication; if she does the bad thing, she should go nuts with guilt.

Furthermore, they argue, that just because a zygote is unwanted today, it doesn’t mean that the zygote will be unwanted for the rest of its life.

The FDA received a black eye Wednesday when its plan to widen the distribution of the morning after pill to include 16-year-olds was overruled by the US Health and Human Services secretary.

The ruling forces adolescents, under the age of 17, to get a prescription (and therefore parental consent) in order to take the morning after pill. The problem is that the pill must be taken quickly or its effectiveness drops off dramatically. That’s exactly why Teva Pharmaceuticals applied to make the drug easily accessible to women of all ages, available in pharmacies around the country, without a prescription. The FDA the agreed with the company, but the Health and Human Services secretary didn't.

Gay sex is not “equal” to hetero sex - that according to Republican Presidential hopeful, Rick, “The Sanitorium” Santorum. But how exactly do you know, Mr. Rick?

Can’t knock it till you’ve tried it. Or is it that you have tried it? Hmmm.

Anyway, when a college grad pressed him on his anti-same sex marriage stance, an agitated Rick blathered on about “the perils” of gay marriage.

As far as I can tell, the major perils of being gay come from ignorant people like Rick - who insist that they are de-facto spokespersons for god, and should dictate what’s best for people’s sex lives.

Of course there are also the perils of sexually insecure males who feel obligated to keep the world hetero through violence and intimidation (the two in this video had an early Christmas surprise).

I graduated from Syracuse University. You can imagine my dismay, when Sunday night, I received an email from the Chancellor. She said she had fired long time assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine.

The reason? Child abuse allegations from three men who claim that Fine molested them as children. Not surprisingly, Fine has denied the accusations. However, it was the third man coming forward that prompted police to search Fine’s home this weekend for evidence.

I’m glad the Chancellor took immediate action. It is warranted.

A kiss is just a kiss, unless you are the pope. Today Benetton was forced to pull one of the images from its “Unhate” ad campaign down, after Vatican lawyers threatened to sue them in an effort to block distribution of the “offending” image.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

The Vatican contends that image offends "not only the dignity of the Pope and the Catholic Church, but also the sensibilities of believers," their statement said.

That is about the only thing that the Vatican and I agree upon. The statement acknowledges that followers of Catholicism are “believers.”

There it is in black and white.

Thou shalt not “spill thy seed,” proclaim the sacred texts of the ancients. From these words we can clearly infer that one’s seed is sacred, spiritual, and must be saved at all costs.

That’s cause God does give a crap about our sperm. Really. Our sacred sperm must be used only to fertilize eggs. And once fertilized - that egg shall constitute a person. That is according Mississippi Proposition 26, which asked voters this past Tuesday, to amend the state constitution to say that human life begins at conception.

If passed, the amendment would have affected every aspect of the state constitution, focusing on abortion doctors and women, effectively making abortion - for any reason - illegal.

When it comes to sex, we live in a world that forces us backwards. The nutty folks who “feel” that they are in charge of our genitals would like to roll science back in time - way back.

I mean, I understand. Pleasure is dangerous. Joy is dangerous. Our genitals are very dangerous. So political and religious leaders encourage ignorance about our genitals from the very beginning - starting with the kids. That’s why Wisconsin State legislators want to mandate the teaching of abstinence and marriage in sex education classes - regardless of the contrary evidence showing this type of teaching actually encourages more problems for kids regarding sex.

Here’s my big question today: what is the opposite of pleasure?

This week I thought I would share a frame shift that I use in sessions and in workshops. It’s a powerful change in the way we view our sexuality, our bodies and our pleasure.

Let me first say that, if you are like a majority of the people of the world, you have been brainwashed by the principal behind your answer above - that the opposite of pleasure is pain.

For most of us, we have been completely dis-empowered by religious ideas about pleasure, ideas that have embedded themselves in our consciousness, regardless of whether or not we were raised in a religious environment.