Dear Sasha: I'm a 27-year-old woman who has been living with a man and a woman for the last year and a half. We've decided to buy a house and hopefully spend the rest of our lives together. I've considered telling my family about this arrangement, but my parents are pretty small-town and were upset as it was that I was living with a man before getting married. How they'll react to having a bisexual daughter who has two partners, I can only imagine. It will undoubtedly involve heaving a Bible in my face along with other moralistic tactics, but I reached a point in my life where I'm willing to deal with the fallout. After I reveal everything that is really going on in my life, I wanted to be able to hurl back a couple of biblical quotations that could justify my lifestyle. Do you know of any such passages in the Bible? » Bible Libel

Dear Bible,
Are you kidding me? Have you ever even just skimmed over the Old Testament? Okay, granted, it looks like it's only permissible to form a quasi-triad when you're a barren nonagenarian who foists her centenarian husband on (according to various artists' renderings anyway) a disinclined handmaid for the purpose of procreation, like in the case of Sarah, Abraham and Hagar. As such, you may run into trouble explaining to the folks that your arrangement is based on a wildly different concept (love? Sexual and emotional equity?), but still, here are some Web sites you can peruse for material/discussions on sex and the Bible: www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.html, and specifically www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/sex/long.htm. The problem you might find with some skeptics is their grandstanding Michael Moore-like approach. You know, that cutesy "so let me get this straight, God" angle that smacks of college-level cynicism and, more unfortunately, televangelists.

Ronald L. Ecker's book And Adam Knew Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible, is available in an electronic version at www.hobrad.com/and.htm, and contains some even-handed information about sexuality in the Bible and the various attempted interpretations of all the misogyny, incest etc. I can't quite figure Ecker out; one minute he's writing country music about finding the Virgin Mary in the bottom of a glass of booze, the next minute he's a skeptic, the next minute he's talking about his dead father stealing postage stamps, but despite all that, his research on the book's topic seems cohesive.

As a totally solid choice, I would suggest Elaine Pagel's book Adam, Eve and the Serpent, where she explains, in her beautiful and clear style, how, when and why many Christians started freaking out about non-procreative and pleasure-driven sex.

Perhaps you should also consider making a real commitment to studying agnosticism. Really, why bother fighting hellfire with hellfire when there are dozens of perfectly good reasons why your choice is not only acceptable, but actually in many ways more humane? As my favourite new rationalist Kaz Dziamka says, agnosticism is "the best intellectual stance of those who can think undogmatically. To know that one will never know everything one would like to know about the nature of reality is the beginning of all wisdom."

Dear Sasha: How would I know whether a condom has clogged my toilet? I wasn't able to prevent someone from flushing one, along with a paper towel to make matters worse. Do most condoms make it through the plumbing, and do most get caught in treatment? So far my toilet is not acting strange. » Sara L.

Dear Sara,
In other words, when your boyfriend gets back from his business trip on Friday, that condom isn't going to all of a sudden bubble to the surface of the bowl and betray your indiscretion?

"I'd be more worried about the paper towel," said Cheryn Gervais, a senior communication co-ordinator with Works and Emergency Services in Toronto, "but if it's flushing properly, it's unlikely that it'll get hung up on something and come back up. If you want to be sure it's not stuck, you can get a plumbing snake at the hardware store, and it'll snake through the piping for about seven feet."

Most flushed condoms get caught in water treatment, are strained out and sent to landfill (which is why it's better just to throw them out) but an estimated 100,000 of them sneak past into our waterways.

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