Religion, Power, and Sex

What is it with political and religious standing that sends folks over the libidinous precipice?

The House Ethics committee is looking into alleged sexual harassment charges against Democratic Representative Eric Massa from New York.

Hindu holy man Nithyananda Swami has been arrested on charges of obscenity surrounding the release of a video showing him having a menage-a-trois.

Though old news, Mark Sanford contributed a new colloquialism to the vernacular.  "Hiking the Appalachian Trail" no longer means what it used to.

Pope Benedict is busy figuring out ways to apologize and seem genuinely concerned about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church while avoiding actually doing something about it.

And federal prosecutors are going after Doug Perlitz, a Fairfield, Conn. resident who is charged with having sex with underage boys enrolled in the schools that he is working to establish in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Perlitz is not a priest or politician, but apparently the Rev. Paul Carrier is somehow involved in a potential cover-up.  Also, Perlitz established his educational programs with help from the Order of Malta, a Catholic charity group that happens to share its name with the island that Pope Benedict just recently visited.

This is all getting pretty ridiculous.

The Reverend Barbie

And now, an Episcopal priest with a truly unearthly 39-21-33 figure.  The vestments don't really flatter her though.

Barbie has served as a number of different role models for young girls, but mostly she has been an unattainable ideal of femininity.  Simultaneously loved and reviled, she has survived all sorts of revolutions and changes of thought toward the womanly self-image, relatively unscarred.

She now has the chance to become a part of the oldest of old boys' clubs -- the Church.