Challenges - A Recent Debate

This might not be the usual fare that I type here in my blog but it was a recent conversation I had with two colleagues (perhaps friends even) over a couple of bottles of red wine! It was far from one of those drunken conversations where any old crap goes. On the contrary it was somewhat reasoned but mostly it was opinionated based on what could be best described as personal anecdotal observations of life in action!

The question posed related to once a woman was married was she off limits to all resident Casanovas or was it simply a case of being a bigger challenge? My colleagues tended to think that generally the answer here was one of being off limits. I, on the other hand, tended towards an increased challenge. My view is based on the fact that there is so much more at stake for a married person so the challenges would seem to be inversely proportional to the commitment to the marriage.

This is to say the more committed to the marriage the greater the challenge and conversely the less commitment there is to the marriage then so does the challenge decrease.

The argument was moot in the sense that no cheating on our individual parts was being contemplated. It was one of those debates that arose out of knowing someone where the subject matter of the debate was relevant!

In the end we agreed to disagree!

However, another interesting tangent to this debate was the idea that some men seem to harbor a belief that they are "God's gift to women" and this means that not even lesbians are safe from their God given charms in seducing women! For me this is an interesting argument as well. It could conceivably work in reverse with a woman thinking she could convert a gay man from one side to the other.

I am no scientist (which is probably a good thing for the world as I would probably be a 'mad' one) but this kind of argument intrigues me because I have always considered homosexuality and lesbianism to be genetic and not a learned behavior (and therefore not an illness to be cured). So, in that sense if you're gay then you're gay and similarly if you're a lesbian then you're a lesbian. There is no chop and changing between this and heterosexuality (bisexuality aside).

The point of this post is to solicit (perhaps elicit would be a better choice of word) any one who reads and wishes to comment on the challenges identified here. Comments posted after a enjoying a bottle of red or two are especially welcome :D (the picture is one from the Hrdlicka collection).

Anything Goes - The Last Supper Revisited!

The Internet is truly a place where anything goes and the boundaries of freedom of speech and good taste are often pushed to the extreme and perhaps regularly crossed.

However, as I was reading a story about a sketch that depicts the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy, which I might add was part of an exhibition being hosted by a Catholic Church in Austria in celebration of one of Austria's finest painters, Alfred Hrdlicka.

Nah, I know nothing about art or about one of Austria's finest painters but I do have to say trying to find the painting in question has proved way more difficult than I thought it might have been but persistence pays and I have located the sketch (above) and I have found a video of it here...

Not to be deterred though my travels led me to another depiction of the Last Supper that has a very definite S & M theme happening and it is just so Village People. This is the second picture!

The point of this post is not to offend (although it probably will) and it is not to make any pronouncement on what freedom of speech or expression means. Hopefully, the post will highlight that something does not have to breach the boundaries of free speech to offend. I am certain that if Indonesian Catholics were offended by the depiction of Soeharto and his children in the Last Supper scene then these two pictures are truly going to test the limits.

Nevertheless, the point is this; if the Indonesian government is going to block and prohibit access to the film Fitna because it is likely to upset the apple cart of harmony and public order in Indonesia then surely pictures of this kind have that same potential and should be banned (sad that I am advocating for my own banning)...

I guess what I am asking you to do is this, and that is ask yourselves these questions?

1. Is art, even where it offends, a legitimate expression of free speech and freedom of expression?

2. Who should decide what I look at as a consenting adult, the government or me?

There are probably many more questions that I could pose here but I will let you, my readers (some of whom I might have offended -- my apologies for any offence but not for the post) throw questions back at me...You already know from my previous postings that I am into constructive debate on topics that matter.