Just when you thought the radical environmental movement could not possibly get any stranger, another absurdity comes along.  A few years ago, Professor Elizabeth Stephens at U.C. Santa Cruz published something she called the Ecosex Manifesto.  She encouraged her art students to have sex with the Earth.  This involved tree hugging and licking, writhing in the mud,  and many other bizarre behaviors.

Now Professor Sarah Ensor at the University of Michigan is fully embracing this and has proposed that people start erotic relations with plants.  She believes that environmentalism cannot fully develop without these "relationships."

These people seem to have a fondness for trees.  I suggest they focus on conifers, also known as Gymnosperms,  for their naked seeds.  I wonder if they hope their ideas will take root and germinate into another new branch of academia.  I suspect, however, they will remain little more than a splinter group.

There are some caveats that I am not sure these academics have thought through.  How does a plant give consent, and what would be an inappropriate plant age?  Would it be anything beyond a sprout?  And if abuse is involved, do we need police undercover raids to curtail this?  They would probably have to hire some stinging nettles or nubile Venus flytraps.

They have proposed that areas be set aside, away from prying eyes, for these proclivities.  I must admit, I do not want to know what goes on behind closed garden gates in the flower beds, otherwise known as botanical boudoirs.  Perhaps this intimate attention paid to plants will embolden them.  I wonder if the extreme left, for which the Second Amendment is anathema, fully understands that all flowers are packin' pistils.

Will garden catalogs be too provocative and be forced to have plain brown paper covers?  Will there be ratings from G to X?

With new plant empowerment, there is a storm brewing.  It involves the most diverse and oppressed of the plant world: weeds.  Just look at the perfect, cultivated yard.  Do not be fooled, for that is botanical totalitarianism.  Every blade of grass has to be the same color and height as all the others.  No individuality is allowed.  Weeds are called weeds because we have not found a use for them.  They don't call themselves weeds.  Every time they peacefully move into a lawn, they are treated with chemical warfare.  Where is the United Nations?  They just want to be loved for who they are.

I don't cotton to any of these newfangled deranged notions.  The purveyors of Ecosex just sound like really lonely people to me, and I feel a little sorry for them.  Maybe they need some ecological counseling.  They need to relearn the philia of their own phylum.  They need to turn over a new leaf.

Roger Taylor is a physician in private practice.  He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago.  He has a plethora of interests.