It’s been a little more than a week since I attended my niece’s baptism. It was the first such ceremony for me in at least four years and my first ever non-Catholic baptism.

The ceremony was held in this quaint little Episcopal church, upon a bucolic little plot in the southeastern hinterlands of Long Island. Now, my sister was raised Catholic, which I fault as the inspiration to baptize her child, but I don’t quite get the Episcopal thing. I don’t know to which brand of religion subscribes her husband, but I didn’t think it to be King Henry’s American variety.

Which sect of Christianity, though, is rather moot. In my experience, the degrees of Protestantism do not absolve the faith of its nascent ties to the Roman Catholic Church, which I fault for many of the unconquerable ignorances of the theologically persuaded.

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Maybe people were crazier back in the day, or at least a lot more gullible, but if someone today came around talking about a burning bush and having spoken to God, how credible would be that person? Would anyone believe them? Anyone who isn’t already drunk on the “word” and thumping their own bible or religious text, reading it on the train and at every spare moment? I doubt it.

I’ve been watching ‘Deadwood’ lately. It is marvelous. Very gritty and unapologetically vile … true to how I imagine frontier life to have been: filthy, objectionable, brutal, hard, miserable, coarse and unpleasant.

In the show, there is a preacher. The speculation is that he suffers from a tumor that is causing him to do wonky things. His sense of smell is so fucked up he thinks his own flesh is rotting. He has seizures. His eyeballs are askew. His short-term memory is unreliable. Finally, he is talking utter nonsense with regard to scripture … that is to say, even more nonsense than when the scripture is read verbatim.

When last I saw the preacher, he was talking to a bull about circumcision. He would stand upright and say something, then double over to view the bull’s johnson. The guy is touched in the head, surely.

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What is  the big deal about someone paying for sex? Personally, I think the practice is pathetic, but definitely not something that should be punishable by law, for the solicitor or provider. If a woman (or a man, even, I suppose) is going to make money on her back, and it’s her choice to do so, who is the government to tell her she can’t? Anti-prostitution legislation is so absurdly Puritanical; the law is more disgusting than the practice it seeks to prohibit.

I bring this up because I just read that one of the so-called “hooker bookers” (in the Post’s parlance) from the Eliot Spitzer scandal is probably going to get six months to a year in jail. Her lawyer is crying foul. He says that the ex-Governor should be facing charges and, if Spitzer is going to get off (pun unintended) scot-free, his client should not face jail either. I agree.

People should be free to do whatever they please, so long as it doesn’t impinge upon the liberty of others. That’s my opinion, of course, but it’s supposedly one of the tenets upon which this country was founded. Puritanism sullies the intent of that tenet by applying a moral qualifier: “It’s okay to do this … so long as it’s moral” — but moral according to whom? And who is qualified to define morality to someone else? It’s so murky a concept that even murder isn’t absolutely immoral. If done for King and country, bravo … if done for personal gain, no-no. If don’t out of passion, you may get a pass. If don’t in self-defense, you’ll very likely skate. Morality is so subjective. Therefore, I think it is impossible to legislate.

I’m a big fain of laissez-faire government. I don’t want them in my business and telling me what I can and can’t do. I am not a Republican, despite their “small government” rhetoric, because their religious fundamentalism is so heinous and restrictive to individual liberty. I am not a Democrat because I abhor the idea of my money being spent by anyone other than me, for the benefit of someone other than myself or someone I, personally, have deemed worthy of it. I do not wish to support and encourage the indigent. I’ll provide to keep my roads paved and the snow plows going, garbage collection, libraries open, museums funded, parks kept … civic services from which I reap a benefit. I am happy to support them. As I have no children, I find it grossly unfair that I must pay to finance schools that can’t stem the tide of imbeciles in this city. Some things are fine, others rub me the wrong way … none of it is likely to change. I should not have to pay for services I do not use.

Government is so pervasive and entrenched in its illusion of choice (two parties, give me a fucking break. Even Baskin Robbin’s has 31 flavors) that it seems inexorable. When it legislates individual and private personal behaviors, it is a fascist abomination masquerading as “morality for the greater good of humanity.” If the government ever tried to legislate who I fuck and how I fuck them, I’d be more that mildly indignant. I can’t imagine what gays must feel in the face of institutional discrimination.

If someone wants to pay for sex, why the hell should they not be permitted? So long as the carnal purveyors have not been pressed into service, are providing it willingly for the big coin it provides, what is the harm? Tell me, honestly, who — what — gets hurt?

The fragile membrane of morality, that’s what, which is created by the insecurities and fears of those without the resolve to open their minds and cease to be afraid of something utterly natural. Yeah, you might get herpes from fucking someone, but you can get it from sharing a drink. You could get hit by a bus while crossing the street. Life is fickle and ludicrous, enjoyment is fleeting and often difficult to encounter … I simply don’t get the self-flagellating, self-castigating mentality that seeks to promote suffering as piety and malign physical sensation as base and vile.