AfterElton Briefs: Fox puts "Sit Down Shut Up" in detention, Chad Allen's undies and more!

Thumbs up for looking beyond the gay-bait that the AE author took and regurgitated to stir trouble and instead examining the actual motivator behind the monk's training course.

A few more like you and we might make actual headway in getting along as human beings instead of empty-headed flapping about diversity why practicing wedge relations.

And on Perez, now that I know he cares most if people are reading his site, I'm pleased I stop reading him years ago.

Interestingly enough, I would bet that if a Christian priest or a Muslim cleric were stifling individuality in this way, we might be hearing an entirely different reaction.  However, because this discriminatory course is being taught by a follower of one of the trendier Eastern religions, we get a rather weak defense of the practice peppered with flowery language and references to irrelevant and incorrectly transliterated Sanskrit words.  What strikes me as important, however, is the caption under the picture accompanying the article in question, "It is customary for Thai men to enter the monkhood for training at least once." Replace "Thai" with "American" and "monkhood" with "Catholic seminary" and perhaps the problem is a little clearer.  

 Buddhism may resonate with Westerners who find it intriguing, but it is, in Thailand at least, a rather sexist religion, and unnaturally obsessed with what we do with our bodies.  The current Dalai Lama (admittedly an icon of Tibetan Buddhism, not Thai) has a well-meaning Western following of almost Mother Teresa-like zeal, but like that hypocritical and small-minded woman he demonstrates that "sacred knowledge," i.e. that 8 fold path gibberish mentioned above, is all too often merely uninformed and obsolete garbage masquerading as fortune cookie wisdom.  On homosexuality, the Dalai Lama is rather tolerant but still annoyingly preoccupied with the physical act: "A sexual act is deemed proper when the couples use the organs intended for sexual intercourse and nothing else... Homosexuality, whether it is between men or between women, is not improper in itself.  What is improper is the use of organs already defined as inappropriate for sexual contact."  Very enlightening indeed.