Word: moderns
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Once lost, virginity can never be replaced - but modern medicine now offers women a near-perfect physical simulation of their lost innocence. Hymenoplasty, the surgical reconstruction of the hymen broken during a women's first experience of intercourse, or, increasingly, during demanding exercise or as a result of a collision or fall by women who've never had sex, has prompted a growing number of young betrothed women in France to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the humiliation, repudiation, and possibly violence that could result from husbands and families discovering from blood-free bridal sheets that their wedding...
...French Muslim women are increasingly defying the restrictions and repression men try to enforce, and leading full, modern lives - including sexually," says Dounia Bouzar, whose recent book Allah, My Boss, and Me explores Islam in the French workplace. "The one time they feel obliged to make a concession to outdated attitudes is with the marital requirement of virginity - a purely macho tradition that has no basis in Islam, and is certainly nothing courts should be respecting. This surgery is unfortunate, though it is a way for women who have insisted on living their own lives to avoid punishment under...
...wonders whether this is for the best. Certainly, the authors and artists behind religious tracts and art, especially moving into the modern era, have invested increasing amounts of ego into their work. But most would probably have at least mouthed the platitude that they were as much messengers as auteurs. And since the faith awakened or sustained by their work was its most important attribute, they probably would have hoped for maximum exposure - which can be at odds with free market economics, portracted lawsuits, or the bitter taste that accompanies literary bickering. "Well gosh," says Prothero of the Sallman portrait...
Prothero brings up what is perhaps the foremost example of this kind of tolerance. Most modern critics regard the Gospels of the new Testament as being mutually dependent. "Did Luke rip off Mark?" he asks. "Probably." That is to say, Luke probably incorporated Mark's gospel into his own. Did it matter? Certainly not to the early Christians, who put four different and arguably contradictory accounts in their Bible. "Piety," notes Prothero, "trumped authorship." Besides, the real author reigned in heaven...
...premier culture warrior in Congress, leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton and fighting medical marijuana, gay marriage, even the right of soldiers to practice Wicca--all of which are anathema to the out-of-our-bedrooms libertarian ideal. In fact, one of the biggest political victories of the modern Libertarian Party was to unseat Barr in 2002; it poured money into an anti-Barr campaign, ran attack ads and called him the "worst drug warrior in Congress." Another strike against Barr: he's a former CIA official and a former federal prosecutor. "To Libertarians," one of his opponents told...