LOS ANGELES—World renowned psychologist/family therapist and commentator on sexual politics Dr. Marty Klein will be speaking at the Center for Inquiry-L.A. Sunday morning in conjunction with the recent publication of the second edition of America's War on Sex.
The talk will take place on Sunday, June 3, at 11 a.m. at CFI-L.A.'s headquarters at 4773 Hollywood Boulevard, LA 90027. Admission will be $8 for non-CFI members, and just $4 for students with proper ID—and of course, it's free for all CFI members.
Dr. Klein, whose ground-breaking work analyzing how politicians and pressure groups in the U.S. have stunted the country's sexual growth, will talk about how much has changed in America's sexual battlegrounds since the first publication of his book six years ago.
"The content itself is about 20 percent different," Klein explained. "What I've done is, I've updated the research on some of the chapters; I've updated the examples; I talk about the impact of the Tea Party, and I also talk about the ways in which things have changed or not changed under Obama. There was, among some people,, a great deal of excitement about how progressive this guy was going to be and how good for sex he was going to be, but from the very beginning, it was clear he was attached to religion; he supported the participation of religion in public policy through his continuation of Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiative and not only that, but during his campaign, he pledged that faith-based organizations getting federal money would have to follow federal anti-discrimination rules, and that has not turned out to be the case.
"There's also a new section on the gains that we have made around issues of sexual orientation and civil rights for sexual minorities," he continued. "In the first edition, sexual minorities were mostly people into S&M and kinky sex and swingers and things like that. I've now included in this edition stuff about sexual orientation, and I talk about how support for civil rights for gays is one of the very, very few victories, sexually, in the last six years. And of course, the stuff about pornography has been updated. I talk about how, with all of the increase in pornography consumption in the U.S., it has not led, as many on the right claimed it would, to an increase in the rates of sexual violence and sex crimes and things like that."
Klein delves into every nook and cranny of the government's and conservative religious groups' repression of all things sexual, and he'll be explaining many of those tactics and results in Sunday's talk.
"We're looking at people who are desperately frightened and lonely and sad and upset about their own sexual impulses and they're turning to any place they can find to comfort themselves," Klein told Tracy Clark-Flory recently in an interview. "Ironically, the religious right and the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party and Fox media, they're offering a kind of comfort. It's a Pyrrhic victory because the public doesn't walk away feeling, 'Oh, I have this wonderful sexuality and this wonderful body.' No, no, no. People get to walk away with, 'Phew, I dodged a bullet, here are the sexual restrictions that alleviate my guilt, lower my anxiety about my neighbor's sexuality, that make me as a parent feel less anxious.' People walk away with their sexuality diminished but they feel less anxious about the complicated world in which they live."
Klein is full of such insights, and they're just what LA's adult community needs to hear... so COME ON DOWN! Sunday morning at 11.
