[travel] Can the religious conservatives relax now?

[mattbell]

This vending machine offers not just condoms but bumpy little sex toys as well.  I found it in the men's bathroom at Berlin's Schoenfeld airpport.  Clearly the presence of such things has not caused the horrible moral decay that religious conservatives in the US worry about.

Comments

[doublefeh.livejournal.com]

After visiting the Louvre, there was a part of me that wondered if one reason the French are a bit less uptight about nudity than the US is that their Legendary Artistic Monument is chock full of naked people.
I mean, It's a bit harder to doublethink that Nudity is Bad AND Michelangelo's David is Art when Dave and all his naked buddies are just down the street in your national Hallowed Halls of Artistic Wonderfulness*, than it is when he's some abstract artistic idea on the other side of the world.

*Well, David isn't there, but there are plenty of others.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

You might be right. Older cultures have a longer history of this sort of thing to look back on. It may also help that their artistic culture has stronger ties to Greek and Roman roots than ours, and the Greeks and Romans *definitely* had no problem with nudity.

Also, porn often turns into art if you wait long enough. I remember hearing that some respectable institution like the Smithsonian is planning an exhibit of classic Playboy centerfolds from the 50s.

[neoteny.livejournal.com]

Hmm, do you really want to use Berlin as your standard of moral hygiene? :)

Sadly the presence of condom machines in the US for years hasn't calmed anyone down either.