Bhutan Sex Lesson, Anti-car Bias
Wednesday - April 09, 2008
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Del.icio.usMonks in costume and masks danced at the ceremonial opening in Thomas Square of the Bhutan exhibit of the Honolulu Academy of Arts. But most attention quickly shifted to some Bhutanese jesters who roamed the audience, poking women in the crotch with exaggerated, red wooden penises.
There was lots of nervous laughter. Well, that’s their culture. Yes, it is, and no housewarming in Bhutan is complete without someone delivering a box full of wooden phalluses. Sex in Bhutan does not carry the same taboos that it does in neighboring India and China - or in the United States.
Some parents in Honolulu are going bonkers because a school-sex-education play displayed penis-like objects and condoms, horrified that their kids were told some hands-only sex is safer than the real McCoy.
In many Christian and Muslim societies, sex is kept underground even though everyone practices it, either openly or sneakily. We can do it but not show it or talk about it. We’d probably do ourselves a big favor if we could let go of our hangups and not make kids learn the details - masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality - from other kids who learned from other kids.
Sex happens. Babies aren’t delivered by storks anymore. Teens are getting pregnant and whacked by sexual diseases. Let’s talk to them openly, graphically and truthfully.
Is there anti-automobile, anti-highway, directed-growth social engineering at work in Honolulu’s fixed-guideway plan? You bet, and it’s at work in progressive cities everywhere faced with people-moving problems and pollution. It’s the Catch A Wave of the 21st century.
Political conservatives tend to hate it because they’ve grown up with cars and pavement and can’t abide so much change or the initial cost of change.
But social engineering is one of government’s main functions. Otherwise, we have chaos.
The closing of Molokai Ranch is one of those cases where government should stand back and let the differences between the owners and the residents work themselves out.
People who don’t live there - editorialists who know little and columnists who know even less - should butt out.
The company wanted to build by La’au Point. Many residents said no. There also were water and ecological concerns. But without that build-out, the company says, its lodge, golf course, theater, gas station and cattle operation weren’t profitable.
The residents have a right to oppose development. They don’t have a right to insist that the company stay in business. There are known trade-offs for saying no to resorts and cruise ships. One is unemployment and the other is a reputation as the Welfare Island.
But it’s laughable to read editorialists and columnists with their faux hand-wringing. And a state task force? I remind you of the fiasco called the Kohala Task Force of then Lt. Gov. George Ariyoshi on the Big Island.
We’ve got a renter in our serene neighborhood who feels entitled to pound his drums and cymbals at full percussive blast. He sneers at our complaints.
What to do?
Maybe join to file nuisance suits against the owners and their rental agency. Tie them up and encumber their properties with pending litigation that kills them if they want to sell.
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