Reply #36: In answer to the last question first, both.

[Dr Morbius]

In England, a fag is a cigarette. In America, a fag is a male homosexual prostitute. Obviously, few gays of either gender are also prostitutes, and it is insulting to call anyone a prostitute.

To imply that the so-called "tea partiers" are gay is indeed an insult to gays. And I agree with your main point, that hey, if folks want to tea-bag, and they're consenting adults, there's nothing wrong with it.

Neither would I say it is an "unusual" practice. I can but won't tell you what my wife and I do, but I can't guess (and wouldn't try) what others do. Americans have HUGH hangups about sex; some kinds of sexual behavior are seen as "normal" and other kinds as "abnormal" or "unusual", and the only justification for such terms (like unusual) is the presumption that they are practiced rather less than other kinds of sex. Which is ridiculous; unless I watch others, how do I know? Can't really tell from adult videos; they're putting out whatever will sell.

And it is astonishing to what lengths folks will go to stamp out practices they consider "deviant" while simultaneously practicing some pretty strange stuff themselves!

You are correct. I am sure many women like to teabag, there are men who like to teabag, and I bet few men would object to receiving such treatment in private from the object of their own affections. Calling tea-partiers "teabaggers" is indeed an insult to those who like to, um, you know, um... "tea-bag." I will stop doing it.

However, can you recommend a better name for them? "Tea-Party" people is inappropriate, too, on a couple levels, not least of which they've purloined the name of an important patriotic event in our nation's history. These morons should not be compared to the colonists who silently boarded British ships in the dead of night and dumped their precious, high-taxed monopoly-provided tea overboard. And I LIKE TEA! I drink it all the time. Bastards. What can we call them, then, these misguided fools?