Stories by Lara Riscol
Should You Stay Together for the Kids? Hell No!
Choose the pursuit of happiness instead. For yourself, and for your child.
Posted on Jan 19, 2010, Source: AlterNet
Girls Gone Wild vs. Virgins Till Marriage: Why Is Sexual Life in America So Schizoid?
America, “Land of the Free”, continues to swing between smut and sanctimony.
Posted on Sep 3, 2009, Source: McGraw-Hill
Purging the Religious Right’s Sexual Demons
We’ve spend years being bludgeoned by zealots wielding sex as a weapon to divide America. Is it time for a new sexual revolution?
Posted on Feb 10, 2009, Source: RH Reality Check
Progressive Religious Leaders Drowned Out in Conversations About Sex
Mainstream media perpetuate the false assumption that sex and family values don’t mix by only talking to conservatives about religion and sexuality.
Posted on Jun 6, 2008, Source: RH Reality Check
Crazy U.S. Thinking: Rampant Sexually Spread Diseases and No Talk About Sex!
A fourth of American teen girls have an STD. Playing sex police only makes the problem worse.
Posted on Mar 27, 2008, Source: RH Reality Check
Sexual Adventures in a Pro-Abstinence Era
It’s time we stand up for sexual health education, services and civil rights so everyone can have pleasure with dignity — or without, as we choose.
Posted on Mar 3, 2008, Source: RH Reality Check
2004: Year Of Perversion
It was a year when conservatives made sexual perversion an art form.
Posted on Dec 28, 2004, Source: AlterNet
Bring on the Culture War
The right is rallying its ‘pro-family’ troops for 2004, reacting as if sanctioned sexual privacy poses a bigger threat to national security than Osama bin Laden.
Posted on Jul 22, 2003, Source: AlterNet
Crowned Virgins of the Right
The abstinence movement has glommed onto Miss America’s triumphant victory as the ultimate virgin-slut morality tale.
Posted on Oct 10, 2002, Source: AlterNet
Go Out and Get a Piece, Son!
Right-wing moralizers wink at boys’ sexual foibles — it’s unfettered female sexuality that they think is leading us into perdition.
Posted on May 21, 2002, Source: Salon
There She Goes, Miss America
The 81-year-old Miss America pageant doesn’t look that firm standing next to the uberwomen of Victoria’s Secret.
Posted on Apr 22, 2002, Source: AlterNet
Sex, Lies and Colin Powell
Colin Powell recently came under intense fire for advocating condom use among young people. Can the “abstinence-only” Bush crowd survive Powell’s honesty?
Posted on Feb 19, 2002, Source: AlterNet
Sex vs. Terrorism, Here and Abroad
Despite Bush’s simplistic analysis that “they hate us because we love freedom,” Islamic fundamentalists most definitely hate our sexual freedom. As the Religious Right does here.
Posted on Oct 19, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Fighting for Faith, Family and Freedom
A day after Terrible Tuesday, the Family Research Center praised our country’s courage, but added, “Americans are not rising up to defend the right to slaughter the unborn [or] so homosexuals can marry.” This is their idea of unity?
Posted on Sep 19, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Earth, Wind, Fire & Viagra
The legal love drug Viagra is the proud sponsor of Earth, Wind & Fire’s next tour. Finally, baby boomers can get their sex, drugs and rock & roll all in the same concert again!
Posted on Aug 7, 2001, Source: AlterNet
RISCOL: American Pie, Served Hot and Condom-free
The upcoming American Pie 2 has a marketing deal with Lifestyle condoms. And for that — not for the graphic sex jokes — Hollywood’s MPAA won’t approve its TV ads.
Posted on Jul 31, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Have Sex and Then You Die
A recent NIH study says there’s no such imagineear.com/pharmacy/ thing as 100 percent safe sex. So should we throw out condoms and preach abstinence as the only sexual option? Conservatives think so.
Posted on Jul 24, 2001, Source: AlterNet
RISCOL: Condit and the Thrill of Sexual Infidelity
We take to infidelity more naturally than we admit. Otherwise we wouldn’t so readily jump into bed with Gary Condit, Chandra Levy and accounts of their salacious sex.
Posted on Jul 17, 2001, Source: AlterNet
RISCOL: Bush Versus Smart Sex
Like a pimply teenager smoking his first pack of Marlboros despite its warning label, President Bush has soundly rejected the Surgeon General’s latest advice about sex.
Posted on Jul 10, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Madonna and the Contradictions of Sex for Sale
When it comes to profiting off sex, there’s not much difference between pop stars like Madonna and desperate teen strippers — except for subtlety and fortune.
Posted on Jul 3, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Radical Notion of Sex for Pleasure
My best sex hasn’t been for love or power, but for pure, exquisite pleasure. So when the Surgeon General admits that “beyond procreation, sex is for pleasure,” it isn’t radical to me … but it is to right-wing moralists.
Posted on Jun 26, 2001, Source: AlterNet
A Strange Sexual Alliance
Once again, we have something in common with our former enemy. Russia is also held hostage by right-wing extremists when it comes to sex ed policies.
Posted on Jun 20, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Bush’s Homosexual Agenda and Other Civil Rights Lies
Last year President Clinton designated June Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. This June President Bush discontinued it. But that’s not the half of it: Bush is our most anti-civil rights president of the civil rights era.
Posted on Jun 13, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The FCC Between These Thighs
When the FCC slapped a $7,000 indecency fine on a radio station that played a sassy — but hardly obscene — rap song by feminist Sarah Jones, it revealed a stark double standard about sex on the airwaves.
Posted on Jun 5, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Politics of Overnight Birth Control
Called the biggest kept secret in medicine, emergency contraception can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse. Too bad the right is on a mission to deny the medication.
Posted on May 28, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Reverend and the Prostitute
AlterNet’s sex columnist goes head-to-head with founder of the National Alliance Against Christian Discrimination. The subject: masturbation.
Posted on May 22, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Bigger, Harder, Faster
Pornography — America’s closet sex educator — has gotten more technologically sophisticated, explicit and accessible. What’s happening to a nation bent on titillation?
Posted on May 15, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Why I’ll Masturbate on May 20
In case you didn’t know, the third annual Masturbate-A-Thon is upon us.
Posted on May 8, 2001, Source: AlterNet
Clits Get Their Marketing Day in the Sun
Are you down? Do you suffer from Female Sexual Dysfunction? Well, help’s on the way, thanks to the brave new world of clitoral marketing.
Posted on May 1, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Reloading of Hugh Hefner
At 75, the founder of Playboy is awash in blond booty and Viagra — a hero (for some) of the adolescent age of American sex.
Posted on Apr 23, 2001, Source: AlterNet
The Britney and Bob Challenge
America’s teen queen songstress and most geriatric member have teamed up to plug Pepsi — evidence undeniable that the US is hostage to a schizophrenic approach to sex.
Posted on Apr 16, 2001, Source: AlterNet