[Shane]

Originally Posted by (BrettH @ May 12 2006,22:25) You gave one example of a tribe that put gourds on male genitals. Want to bet that same tribe had women walking around with nothing over their breasts? ...

Every single picture or statue I have ever seen from Egyptian culture they are clothed. What explains that?

Greeks did not go around in public naked. They went to sport naked. Women were not allowed to go to sport at all if memory serves.

Tribes that "barely cover anything" are not the same as not covering anything at all, and a long list of them without any recourse to any authoritative study or even any mention of what their sexual taboos are and are not does little to help the point you seem to be trying to make. About the only one of your examples I was able to check out was Eskimo culture. They do indeed seem to be very open about sex, up to and including fondling their children from early childhood. So there's one. From the beginning, I have stated that some small minority of cultures do indeed practice open nudity and do not seem to treat sex as privately as most cultures do. You have now convincingly identified one of them. Pacific islanders are a notorious example that often works its way into these discussions as well. I am aware of them, as I said from the beginning. What percentage of the total human population do they make up? Is there any data?

Indian monks using nudity as a special sign of some religious significance seems to argue opposite your point, as does the habit of ancient Celts to go naked into battle. I would also like to point out the singular lack of utility of the last, as it is likely among the causes of their downfall in early conflicts with the budding culture of Rome. In any event, it would symbolize little if anything at all if there were no understanding of the vulnerability of nudity.

Most American indian tribes appear to have worn clothes. The larger civilized nations of mezzo and south America seem to have worn clothes.

If anthropologists are capable of ignoring the weight of all the many, many cultures - Japanese, Chinese, Western, Middle Eastern, African - cultures from every continent where mankind has made its home in any large number... all the weight of all these cutlures who do practice sexual discretion and clothe themselves, in favor of a long list of small tribes that actually appear to represent a tiny minority of people, and represent in themselves a relatively small number of truly distinct cultures, then that is a sad state of affairs. I am not convinced, however, that anthropologists are ignorant of the wide range of sexual taboos or the habit of wearing clothes that seems to pervade cultures all over the world, whether they be Christian or not.

This is to me the most baffling of all:

"It is irritating to see that a person considers Christian culture, coupled with a single Guinea tribe that wears gourds on their privates, as outweighing the validity of the countless cultures past and present that behave(d) completely differently; that supplying the example of one primitive tribe as proof of the naturalness of body-shame requires a full-fledged thesis list to refute. Of course it isn't really about that Guinea tribe, it's about the certainty one feels about social 'truths' when one is born and raised to them. Of course the many millions of people for thousands of years don't compare to personal conviction, do they?"

Do I have to, like you, go back and list all the nations, western and non western, where clothes are worn and where sex is private? No... because they are commonly known, whereas isolated tribes of people with no sexual inhibitions living in places where it is hard to maintain any contact with anyone else need to be enumerated just to be known. It's not as if I am speaking here out of the blue sky as you intimate, and it is this tendency to overexagerate a point that brings my mind back to one of my earlier statements, which is that most people who argue strenuously over these matters seem to do so without much regard to any sort of systematic philosophy, but do so with a sort of self-appointed zeal and seemingly feigned exepertise that says a lot more about their own personal beliefs than it does about all of anthropology or all cultures.

Two examples. First, if you think that by rattling off a list of isolated tribal cultures you have proven that the large bulk of humanity does not wear clothes or understand sex in terms of it being private, you are mistaken.

Further, you put words in my mouth. I have never tried to pass this off as a strictly Christian habit. You have, in your attempts to somehow single Christianity out. I am talking about the world in general, and have made that point more than a few times. To hear you, one would begin to think that Christians were the only people who historically wore clothes, whereas my point is of course that they are not, and that it is false to assert that clothes wearing or sexual taboos of any sort are strictly Christian in nature.

Looking over nudism on Wikipedia, I noted this woman at the bottom of the web page. "Question Authority".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_...dity#Sexuality

Pretty much sums up my experience with people who insist that treating nudity or sex as somehow private is a Christian aberation.

[Shane]

Originally Posted by (Asaudan @ May 13 2006,05:33) I agree; Christianity is, like, totally the devil. Before the white man came, we Finns received from our great pagan gods the power to move mountains (which is why we don't have any, these days, as we smote the Norwegian tribes with them).  There was never a murder, theft, or rape, as we all revelled in our numerous and ubiquitous orgies.  All day long.  The resulting spread of sexually transmitted diseases is responsible for our limited population even today. It must be true.

LOL!

[Shane]

Originally Posted by (Tim @ May 12 2006,23:22) Brett makes the superior point here. As a member of one of these seemingly mysterious primitive “people that have somehow missed the mass of civilization” I thought I should speak directly to this issue. ...

Meaning no disrespect, but again you appear to be missing my point.  I did not mean to imply that small numbers make a people unimportant, or that they should be abused, merely that to argue that your culture's attitudes towards nudity and sex are a very small subset of the total of humanity, Christian or not.

"According to the 2000 census, the population of the 5 pernanently inhabited islands is 3,600 people in 646 households. With a land area of only 3.08 square kilometers, the islands have a population density of 1168 persons per sq. km. – much higher than the national average of 276 persons per sq. km.

Access to the Turtle Islands is difficult, as there are no regular means on transportation to the area."

Another Wikipedia entry, but is it not relatively accurate?

In other words, isolated incidences such as your case do not counter effectively the idea that most cultures do wear clothes and have sexual taboos regarding public sexual displays.  They consider sex private.

[BrettH]

Originally Posted by Every single picture or statue I have ever seen from Egyptian culture they are clothed.  What explains that?

Apparently your limited exposure to the culture. Study it in some depth, and my example will make more sense to you.

Originally Posted by Greeks did not go around in public naked.  They went to sport naked.  Women were not allowed to go to sport at all if memory serves.

Going ANYWHERE naked (and public! indicates that the culture did not see nudity as an evil that children needed to be protected from. And yes, in Sparta, the women competed in the nude as well. You're thinking of Athens, where women were considered property and not allowed to attain the purity of men.

"The Greek admiration for the human body and the willingness to display it were closely bound up with Greek honesty and intelligence. No one thought it wrong that young Spartan girls should go naked in public dances and processions. The young men who gathered to look upon the events displayed no lust or wantonness. Plutarch (the Greek biographer and historian) wrote that the appearance of these maidens was received with admiration, respect, and shamelessness." --Papalas

Actually, though, Greeks got naked whenever clothing got in the way, such as working in the fields.

Originally Posted by Tribes that "barely cover anything" are not the same as not covering anything at all

Wearing a string around one's waist (without a genital cover) is, technically, not the same as total nudity. But let's get real, it is NOTHING like the modern American concept of modesty. If you'll recall, my original post on the matter stated that the only constant about modesty tabboos is that people seem good at inventing totally different ones depending upon the culture.

It is well known that certain tribes felt naked without their lip plugs, even though they habitually wore no clothing. Missionaries often did not understand that when 'properly clothing' natives, they brought them a deep sense of shame for removing or covering what they considered to be essential adornments (body painting, long hair, jewelry, scarification.)

This is understood by anthropology not as an inherent sense of body shame (since most cultures do not agree on which parts are shameful, or that any body parts are necessarily shameful) but that modesty stems from presenting oneself in accordance with learned traditions; being in a situation outside the norms brings a sense of 'shame', whether that is to not wear the appropriate rings around one's neck, painting of symbols upon one's body, cutting off one's hair, or covering the body from head to foot with a burkha. A celt being told to wear clothing for battle would have been deeply ashamed.

Originally Posted by Indian monks using nudity as a special sign of some religious significance seems to argue opposite your point, as does the habit of ancient Celts to go naked into battle.  I would also like to point out the singular lack of utility of the last, as it is likely among the causes of their downfall in early conflicts with the budding culture of Rome.  In any event, it would symbolize little if anything at all if there were no understanding of the vulnerability of nudity.

These do not invalidate my point at all. They show cultures that had a very different opinion about what nudity meant; they represented heroism and purity, not shame. The Celts tended to wear clothes the rest of the time because it's really wet and cold in those parts of Europe.

Do you REALLY think the Celts didn't understand that being naked was a vulnerability in battle? That they did it just because they were stupid? Again, if you'd do just the slightest investigation into the culture, my example would make more sense to you. Certainly, they were defeated, as were many of the other cultures that didn't fit into your concept of inherent shame in nakedness and sex.

You could argue that might makes right; certainly, most of the conquering cultures have done so in order to justify what they have done. One might even go so far as to say they were conquered because they broke the wrong tabboos and incurred a spiritual wrath that shall go unnamed by me. It certainly wouldn't be the argument that I would use.

The fact remains that there have been many cultures, some huge and grand, some small and isolated, that did not feel that nudity and/or sex was shameful. You asked for examples, I gave only a FEW of those that could be mentioned.

You discarded the listing of isolated tribes as a valid example of a lack of body shame, yet used an isolated tribe of New Guineans yourself to support your idea that body shame is instinctive to the species rather than culturally determined.

You discarded my examples of very important and large historical cultures because you don't know enough about them.

Your very assertion that clothing is the result of inherent shame rather than shame resulting from the learned habit of wearing clothing indicates that you have had absolutely ZERO exposure to the field of anthropology, yet are presenting yourself as a defending standard thesis that has placed the burden of proof upon those that disagree with you (and the burden to educate you!, when in any anthropological circle, you'd be the one that would have the burden of proof to convince the status quo of your unsubstantiated notion.

I'm afraid you'd have to do more than say "These particular cultures conquered most of the world and forced other cultures to behave in that fashion by our current times, therefore those culture's ways are inherent to humanity."



---Brett

[Tim]

Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that.

My people the Odawa have never been a large tribe, before contact or otherwise. We are however, Ahnishnabek. The “K” in that word means that it is plural, nishnabe is a root word meaning “the people”. So what we are talking about here is membership to a greater collective. Other Ahnishbabek people include, but are not limited too, the Ojibway, Potowatomi, Cree, Sauk, Fox, Mickmac, etc. The Ojibway alone are the second or third largest Indian Tribe in North America today. Before contact, which is what I was referring too, we dwarfed the population sizes of many communities even today. Some accounts have as high or higher than the population of Detroit in the Detroit area. One quarter of the American continent is hardly “unimportant” do to small numbers.

Additionally, just because we wore clothing does not mean we were hung up on this nudity point you are making. Men wore leggings because we didn’t like our legs tore up in the forest. We just didn’t have the fore sight it would have taken to know that in order to clearly illustrate our comfort with nudity to someone from a different culture in the twenty-first century we would have had to not wear any cloths at all ever … atoll.

I do not often speak for other tribes, we consider it to be rude, but it is quite plain that other tribes throughout the America have held the same view. This is, of course, if you keep your nose out of Wikipedia. I recommend Francis Densmore. You can even find some of her work on line. She wrote around the turn of the 20th century so the whitemans poison was already firmly entrenched in the Ojibway (whom she was primarily concerned with writing about) but there were traditionals around even then. Densmore does give you a jumping off point though to read more periods works, some even written at the time of contact.

Brett makes a good point about doing your research thoroughly. A few years ago, before I finished graduate school, I heard one of the faculty at the college I was attended say, “What the Internet has taught us in academia is that you no longer have a right to your opinion. We cannot afford to say that anymore. You only have a right to an INFORMED opinion.” To that point I would add that anything is possible as long as you don’t know what you are talking about.

If you find that a bit harsh I am sorry. I know I found it to be the first I heard it. It is, however, the reason I decided to post here. I am responsible, for my part, in the proliferation or stopping the proliferation of erroneous ideas. The idea that Indians had a garden of “Eden”, that our culture was identical to the dominant culture today or that we used crystals in out ceremonies are all examples of that. That list goes on and on by the way so I will leave you with just the three.

Asaudan, if you are pointing that straw man at me please don’t. I think we are trying to have a serious conversation here.

--Tim

[Shane]

Originally Posted by Apparently your limited exposure to the culture. Study it in some depth, and my example will make more sense to you

I took an art class that covered it in some detail.

Regarding Greek clothing,

"The painting by Degas at the top of this page illustrates what is thought to be a not atypical scene of a (coed) Spartan gym class. However, it seems that the Spartans were not in step with the rest of Greece, where somewhat more prudishness was evident.
Although in Greece generally people were sufficiently used to the sight of nakedess, this costume of the Spartan girls was ridiculed. Hence they were called "thigh-showers", "those with bare thighs", and the expression "to dress in Doric fashion" ... was used of those "who liberally bared a great part of their body". In gymnastic and bodily exercises Spartan girls also put off this single piece of clothing and appeared completely naked.
Sparta aside,
In the rest of Greece the chiton as a single article of dress was only worn in the house; in public the himation was indespensible for women; this, with the exception of the somewhat modified cut required by the differently conditioned build of the female's body, was not essentially different from the man's himation."

http://cgd.best.vwh.net/home/naturism/nudity6.htm


I don't know if your misrepresentation was purposeful or not, but it is apparently somewhat common knowledge that Sparta was the exception and not the norm, and certainly neither is accused of being overly Christian, so where did they get these habits from?

The site also seems to dispute your assertion that all Greeks tended to get naked at the drop of a hat in clothing got in the way, and if you have ever done strenuous work of any kind, you will find in short order that clothes tend to keep certain sensative bits out of the way rather than being a hindrance.


You next go into a description of native dress in some cultures which I have already stated several times I am aware of. I am also aware of the concept you describe regarding shame being more of a result of breaking expected social norms. What I have said before is that in general, clothing's utility makes it near universal in use, and that once it becomes common to wear clothing, it tends to take on significance sexually since sexual characteristics that are normally hidden come into plain view, which has the natural effect of making this sudden appearance more sexually arousing than the same body parts would be if they were in plain view all the time. This bit seems to have been lost in translation somewhere, but if you look back you will surely see that I covered that ground.

Regarding Indian and Celt issues. Of course they had different ideas of what nudity meant, but the point is that it MEANT something. In cultures where clothing is habitually worn, I think it is a given that nudity will begin to mean something, since it will be the exception. I find it hard to fathom how it would not carry sexual connotations because it is necessary to get partially naked at least to have sex at all, and even in a culture where nudity is common place, one at least has to have the capacity to see a person of the opposite sex and be attracted to them and sexually aroused or else sex becomes impossible, so I don't think it makes sense to try to insinuate that the naked form does not carry with it a certain sexuality.

You accusation of me not having made even the slightest investigation into Celts belies the fact that I pointed out a specific point in their history where the courage and "fear factor" of going naked in battle became a negative rather than positive thing. Nor was the point at all that it was "right" that they were defeated. My point is that there are physical realities about nakedness that I believe play into the development of cultural norms concerning nudity and the privacy of sexual behavior, and I have stated this before as well. For some reason, you seem to like to shift from that thrust in my posts though and off into things I neither said nor intended. I wish you would stop. It would make getting on with things that I actually don't know much easier if you would stop accusing me of not knowing things that I do, indeed, know, and have even given examples of knowing in previous posts.

I did not discard the list of tribes as invalid. I specifically stated that they do not appear to make up a large portion of historical cultures, and my argument concerns the natural development of sexual mores and folkways around certain physical necessities, most notably clothing, and how the use of clothing would then give rise to dynamics that lead so many cultures to behave differently than the handful that you mention. In other words, it is invalid to argue that Christianity is somehow uniquely anti-sex when so many other cultures share the same or similar mores and folkways. I used the example of a tribe I had heard of because this tradition of rattling off little known tribes as examples of how narrow minded Christians have made western culture ignores the fact that not all tribes lack the taboo against nudity.

I never asserted that clothing was about shame. I said the use of clothing probably gives rise to the shame that then turns into a sexual taboo about nudity and the privacy of sexual conduct. ou ascribe that to me and then proceed to deconstruct the argument with little regard to what I have asserted.

About the only thing I have asserted forcefully is that it is unfair and off topic to take a slap at Christianity in a forum thread about sex in muds.

[Shane]

Originally Posted by (Tim @ May 13 2006,13:28) Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that.

I never said that. (Edited to add: Actually I very appologeticly and specifically said the exact opposite directly TO YOU, Tim.  What gives here?)

 I said that to accuse Christians of being somehow unique in their desperate hangups about sex and nudity would take more than stringing together cultures with small populations and insisting they make up some sort of norm from which Christianity has fatally strayed.

Wikipedia has been compared favorably to professionally created  encyclopedias and has an organizational philosophy that belies the insulting tone you use in reference to it.  It is at heart a lovely example of how people can free themselves of academic snobbery for which I find your quote regarding people no longer having a right to their opinions somewhat symptomatic.

To me, if one wants to prove tha Christianity is a horrible abomination when it comes to its effect on sexuality, one needs to make reference to something besides a group of little known people groups who form an exception, and not the rule, regarding such things.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by (Shane @ May 13 2006,14:13) Originally Posted by (Tim @ May 13 2006,13:28) Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that. I never said that. (Edited to add: Actually I very appologeticly and specifically said the exact opposite directly TO YOU, Tim.  What gives here?)  I said that to accuse Christians of being somehow unique in their desperate hangups about sex and nudity would take more than stringing together cultures with small populations and insisting they make up some sort of norm from which Christianity has fatally strayed. Wikipedia has been compared favorably to professionally created  encyclopedias and has an organizational philosophy that belies the insulting tone you use in reference to it.  It is at heart a lovely example of how people can free themselves of academic snobbery for which I find your quote regarding people no longer having a right to their opinions somewhat symptomatic. To me, if one wants to prove tha Christianity is a horrible abomination when it comes to its effect on sexuality, one needs to make reference to something besides a group of little known people groups who form an exception, and not the rule, regarding such things.

If you wish to refer to North America as nothing more than loosely strung together cultures of small populations then you will be constantly struggling with the chains of academic snobbery. At least academia has the virtue of actually having had to work to form their opinion.

You can go ahead and post your opinion on Wikipedia, going back and reading it there might make you feel better about having done little to form it.

Christian abomination, especially as it is expressed in America today and in American history, is readily apparent to anyone who is not Christian, ignorance being chief among that religions components. To speak directly to the issue of the confused sexual crisis with in the Christian faith I will quote Father Richard McBrien from the University of Notre Dame … he has a PhD so likely you will want to undermined this statement to the best or you abilities …

“Jesus could have been married, and see I am not discounting the possibility, but if we had clear evidence that he was and even that he had a family, that would have knocked out of the box all this nonsense that has been part and parcel of the Christian tradition, small T, for so many centuries that somehow sex is ahhh not so, not so nice.”

Christianity teaches, among other things, that one: it’s followers need to be ignorant of even their own religion and two: to veraciously attack anything that even remotely looks like it could challenge the political position or power of it’s faith. Father McBrien is desperately trying to combat this very issue in his own faith. I can respect him for it but he is a salmon swimming up stream. His statement does however shine a light on the confused sexuality of the Christian faith.

[Shane]

This edit function is not to be used twice in a row with quote functionality, it seems....

[Shane]

Originally Posted by (Tim @ May 13 2006,14:52) Originally Posted by (Shane @ May 13 2006,14:13) Originally Posted by Tim,May 13 2006,13:28 Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that. I never said that. (Edited to add: Actually I very appologeticly and specifically said the exact opposite directly TO YOU, Tim.  What gives here?)  I said that to accuse Christians of being somehow unique in their desperate hangups about sex and nudity would take more than stringing together cultures with small populations and insisting they make up some sort of norm from which Christianity has fatally strayed. Wikipedia has been compared favorably to professionally created  encyclopedias and has an organizational philosophy that belies the insulting tone you use in reference to it.  It is at heart a lovely example of how people can free themselves of academic snobbery for which I find your quote regarding people no longer having a right to their opinions somewhat symptomatic. To me, if one wants to prove tha Christianity is a horrible abomination when it comes to its effect on sexuality, one needs to make reference to something besides a group of little known people groups who form an exception, and not the rule, regarding such things. If you wish to refer to North America as nothing more than loosely strung together cultures of small populations then you will be constantly struggling with the chains of academic snobbery. At least academia has the virtue of actually having had to work to form their opinion. You can go ahead and post your opinion on Wikipedia, going back and reading it there might make you feel better about having done little to form it. Christian abomination, especially as it is expressed in America today and in American history, is readily apparent to anyone who is not Christian, ignorance being chief among that religions components. To speak directly to the issue of the confused sexual crisis with in the Christian faith I will quote Father Richard McBrien from the University of Notre Dame … he has a PhD so likely you will want to undermined this statement to the best or you abilities … “Jesus could have been married, and see I am not discounting the possibility, but if we had clear evidence that he was and even that he had a family, that would have knocked out of the box all this nonsense that has been part and parcel of the Christian tradition, small T, for so many centuries that somehow sex is ahhh not so, not so nice.” Christianity teaches, among other things, that one: it’s followers need to be ignorant of even their own religion and two: to veraciously attack anything that even remotely looks like it could challenge the political position or power of it’s faith. Father McBrien is desperately trying to combat this very issue in his own faith. I can respect him for it but he is a salmon swimming up stream. His statement does however shine a light on the confused sexuality of the Christian faith.

Wiki has a mechanism by which you can go and see what has been changed recently and by whom, and is also regularly edited. Your opinion of the work done there seems to be characteristic of those who feel their hegemony over public discourse and scholarship slipping.

David danced nearly naked in public, but Victorian morals were vastly more strict. Christian values morph as the religion moves through different cultures, and there have been some pretty strict seeming times it is true, but your wandering off topic to just slam Christianity in general, again, does nothing to change the fact that there are cultures all over the world, the majority in fact as far as I can tall, whose members habitually wear clothes, whose tolerance for nudity in public varies from social situation to social situation, but whose overall attitude towards sex is that it is a personal and private matter.

I don't see any reference anywhere to the Odawa representing the norm for North American natives. Maybe that is something you would like to work on, as so far you have provided zero references, Wiki or otherwise, to support any of your various statements, most of which come in the form of attacks it seems to me, which I do not understand given I have repeatedly tried to be quite polite in my dealings with you and your culture, by contrast.

You have no idea how validating your statements about Wiki are though to me. It infuriates you it seems that people should merely come together and share information, and that that information should prove in a few short years to rival the work of academics.

I love Wikipedia.

[Shane]

Father McBrien

Yeah, there's a balanced expert opinion on Christianity for you, academia style.

[Tim]

As I said, you will obviously want to devalue Father Brien’s comments. He is an informed well-educated individual who must adhere to the mechanism of pier review. Something you obviously are very intimidated by.

The point remains however that the racist ideology that we Ahnishnabek did not have a cohesive culture or a body politic is flatly incorrect, despite what you might find splashed about the Internet or what gives you personal satisfaction to think.

The fact that Christianities morally bankrupt view on sex has poisoned the indigenous cultures of the America’s is again a signpost I am sure you will continue to argue with.

The point however, is that your Puritanical views on modesty are not common to cultures outside the influence of the Christian Church. In fact, they are not even common to early Christians.

The fact that a cohesive indigenous culture comprising of no less than one quarter of the American continent did not agree with, support, or act in a manner consistent with your fallacious belief in human nature is just a bit more than you can stand and as such you cast about for any life raft of denial. Additionally, the fact that many other Indigenous cultures acted more in accordance with the Ahnishnabek than with your Puritanical Christian faith buries your argument entirely.

On the point of Wikipedia, take a college class sometime. Try using it as source to support any writing you do in that class (much like you are doing here) see what kind of grade that gets you. Before you go off on the oppressive nature of “the man” … an analogy might be to get a serious infection and rub grass in it instead of taking penicillin, or if your one of those types you can try the power of prayer. You could likewise try praying yourself to work in the morning as apposed to driving or shaking your cross at your computer to make it run. I suspect that to you these analogies seem inconsistent because you want your computer, you want your car, and you want penicillin but you LOVE Wikipedia because you just don’t want to be wrong.

[Asaudan]

Originally Posted by You see.. Ninewidbaskohaung Ndesnekas. Mukwa Ndodem. Bedosega ndogeba minawa Waganakising Odawa Ndaw.

Originally Posted by Among the first to have the twisted words of Christianity victimize our people through this very topic.

Originally Posted by The Church fathers speak with two tongues, and they always have. From the gender bias their book is written in, to its racists over tones, to the way their priests murder, rape and destroy the world around them the truth manifest in our reality has very little to with Christian ideology or philosophy.

Originally Posted by I think we are trying to have a serious conversation here.

Tim, if you're trying to keep me from posting by making my case for me, please don't.

Come on, I know you're just kidding, yourself. Your sentence structuring gave you away.

[Shane]

I seriously doubt you read or comprehended the reference to Mcbrien I posted, as you would know that for one, I agree with him on some points, being protestant, but that as far as presenting himself as a Catholic theologian, that is not a very honest position.  He consistently is opposed to official Catholic teaching and it is not as if Catholic priests, Cardinals, Bishops, and so forth are uneducated rubes.

That is the way of academia though.  All is relative, and so he is an expert on Catholic Theology according to some.

Again you put words in my mouth.  I never said the Ahnishnabek had no cohesive culture.  I said you have not provided evidence that your pronouncements about them represent either them or the rest of the non-Ahnishnabek cultures of the Americas, and that lacking that sort of evidence, you cannot discount for example the relative prudishness of non-Christian China for example, or any number of other large scale societies for which your pronouncements are known not to apply.  You rely on a combination of bringing up obscure points piecemeal and then hurling fresh, manufactured accusations at me about things I never said when you discover that I have already considered your point and still find you unconvincing.

I have stopped being shocked by this ability among some who like to attack Christianity to state self-contradictory things, but putting them in the same sentence is a pretty astonishing thing.  So Early Christians didn't have this sorry trait, but only later ones?  Which exactly had what traits, and when were they developed, and by whom, regarding sexual inhibitions?  

Mostly I love Wikipedia because it gets your goat, and because it has withstood the attacks of academics. I had a professor that stated at the beginning of our semester that we were to use gender-neutral phrases in all of our writing, including things like "personhole" instead of "manhole". I dropped his class.  I'd love to see what this man would do with Spanish.  All I can tell you is that I have a very low opinion of the so called scholarship of many modern academics, especially in the humanities, and the fact that in order to pass a paper I would have to use other sources does not really phase me in the least.  Revolution takes time.

Your stark refusal to even so much as provide ONE source for statements such as that your culture was actively supportive of homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, or that all jealousy was considered immature are among the more glaring examples of why I find your brand of academics questionable.  Apparently I am to take you at your word because you told me you had a Masters degree, even though you apparently have a hard time distinguishing a "pier" from a "peer".

I know, I know... I make horrid typos too, but come on man.  Please.  Lighten up and make your case sometime or other.  You're just not presenting anything that anyone could get a handle on.

I'm beginning to think you just like yanking my chain.  

Maybe it took me way too long to figure that out.