Everyone loves to see an underdog come out on top. This week the world got a particularly sweet taste of that: Susan Boyle, a homely, forty-seven-year-old contestant on Britain’s Got Talent wowed the audience and judge Simon Cowell by singing “I Dream a Dream.” So far, a YouTube video of that performance has been viewed close to 16 million times.

As if trying to cement her dark horse status, before Ms. Boyle stepped on stage she described herself as living alone and having never been kissed. So she’s a virgin, too!

While some adult virgins choose their status, many don’t, and that probably includes Ms. Boyle. She called her situation a “shame”. And most of us would probably agree. In general, virginity after a certain age loses its allure and becomes a curse. Anyone who hasn’t “done it” by twenty-one is generally seen as an oddball.

A bit surprising, though, is that Ms. Boyle is far from alone. In fact, there are an estimated 228,000 adult virgins in the United States. And here and there on the Internet, they have broken their silence. They are men and women from all backgrounds. Some suffer from social anxiety. Others say once they passed a certain age, dating became awkward and so relationships never got off the ground or fizzled early....

I pride myself on being an open-minded individual. But I just don’t get the folks who tout their “traditional values” on issues related to reproductive health.

On one hand, their passionate stance against abortion is gutsy and even admirable. Where others hedge, they believe unequivocally that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. In their protests and rhetoric, they are not just looking out for their own. All life is precious is their mantra. 

Given that, however, I would think one of their objectives would be to prevent unplanned—and unwanted—pregnancies in the first place. Their actions, though, suggest otherwise. To wit, they discourage women from taking the birth control pill, prevent teens from learning about contraception, and make Plan B unavailable to young women.

Then they the condemn those who do get an abortion.

Isn’t that kind of like withholding food from a child and then blaming the starving kid for swiping a candy bar (or a bowl of gruel)?

Luckily, we see options becoming available for people with dissenting viewpoints. Today, in opposition to Bush, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York rejected the FDA’s decision to limit over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive Plan B to...

In high school and college "fuck" was as much a part of my vocabulary as “dude” and “gross” and plain old “like” (as in, “like, that’s so gross, dude”). Saying “what the fuck” when I was annoyed or “fucking awesome” when I was pleasantly pleased was a bit of a rebellious act, since my home was a no-profanity zone. To me, "fuck" was blue collar, adult, and manly, and since I wanted to be a blue-collar adult man, it’s not so surprising that I loved the word. 

Apparently, Rod Blagojevich loves the word too. In building a case against the Illinois governor on corruption charges, the FBI secretly taped his private conversations. Among the things Rod was heard saying:

I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing.

Our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ’em the fuck out of there...

Of course all the news networks and FBI spokespersons have replaced “fuck” with “bleep”, in accordance with obscenity laws and decency standards. In other words: "Our recommendation is fire all those bleeping people, get ’em the bleep out of there ... "

Fuck can evoke...