Outdated Fears and Prohibition

Phoenix New Times News published an interesting article today called Phoenix Goddess Temple's "Sacred Sexuality" Is More Like New Age Prostitution

Read the article here:
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-02-17/news/feature/
I found the article entertaining yet typical in so many ways.

The writer's bias is screaming that the concept of Tantra is some sort of perversion, yet she also points out that there's a tradition of "sacred sex" that dates back to 490BC. Of course she puts the term sacred sex in quotations to add sarcasm, as if this is so hard to fathom in today's day and age.

In fact the entire tone of this article is sarcastic and deeply disrespectful to anyone who doesn't believe sex is some kind of perverted behavior.

The Phoenix Goddess Temple may very well be an undercover prostitution operation or it could actually be an institution founded for "all who wish to better know the Great Mother and her unique gifts for healing body, mind and soul", as it claims. In either case, the article in the Phoenix New Times is extremely revealing insight into just how immature, provincial, and downright hypocritical most Americans are, even in these modern times.

James Hays, who helped rewrite the city massage ordinance in 1989 and worked in adult-business regulations for more than a decade and "remembers sting operations on massage parlors in Phoenix in the 1990s" (how does one even get this job???) - sounds to me like the type of guy that end up getting busted years later for something actually perverse, like participating in some sort of international sex scandal.

Another facet of the article that I find downright hysterical in its hypocrisy, is the inane input of Phoenix psychologist Martin Keller who calls tantric sex "kinda hokey", yet devoted years of his life studying the pseudo-science of psychology - the industry that attempted to bleed and electrocute the "bad" out of people...the industry that reveres men like Wilhelm Wundt who adamantly proclaimed that the "spirit" does not exist and men are just domesticated dogs.

Keller, a diplomat of both the American Board of Professional Psychology and the American Board of Sexology went on further to say, "If they're doing sex therapy, sex counseling, or even sex education, they need to be a licensed mental-health provider." He says the alternative "trauma healing" techniques like those described at Phoenix Goddess Temple "sound scary." He says he sees it as dangerous.

Consider that Dr. Benjamin Rush, the "father of American psychiatry," published the first American textbook on psychiatry in 1812. In it, masturbation and too much blood in the brain were considered causes of madness. Treatment involved cauterizing the spine and genitals or encasing the patient's private parts to prevent masturbation.
Now ask yourself, how any shrink has authority to deem anything "hokey" or dangerous?

This article fails to make any sort of distinction between sex slave prostitution rinks and night crawlers with those who willingly make a comfortable living working in the oldest profession known to man. The women of The Phoenix Goddess Temple, all seem to be happy with their jobs and they're there by their own volition. Maybe a better angle on this subject matter might be to discuss the many harms that come out of prohibiting prostitution rather than regulating it?

Perhaps this type of thinking is deemed dangerous and perverted in places like America (porn capital of the world) where sexual impulse is to be buried, hidden and repressed - a place where we think natural healing through a simple understanding of the chakras is dirty and perverse, yet prescribing ritalin and paxil to our children is more and more commonplace.