It started with a post in Arabic last month by 23-year-old blogger Fadal Atamaz Al-Sibai, who complained that masturbation in Syria has "spread among the youths like wildfire," and announced a campaign to end the "secret habit."

His comments prompted a snarky response from Abufares, one of Syria's leading bloggers, who called for a countercampaign culminating in an "unprecedented Syrian Orgasm against absurdity, hypocrisy, and sanctimony."

Then things really picked up.

Yazan Badran, who blogs from Latakia in northern Syria, suggested observing a week of moral decay, to include drugs, porn, and eating publicly on Ramadan. Two other bloggers proposed campaigns against tribalism and fossilized thinking.

"While unsuspecting parents are watching Bab El Hara [a popular television show in the Arab world], the boys are spanking their monkeys and the girls are beating their beavers," Abufares wrote, in a posting so chalk with lewd detail that even a jaded reader might blush.

Has the Syrian ether suddenly become a bastion of free expression? Hardly. Just last month, the regime sentenced a 31-year-old political blogger, Karim Antoine Arbaji, to three years in prison for undermining President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

But bloggers and analysts say the secular regime in Damascus has proven to be far more tolerant of sex and sexual discussion on the Web than other countries in the region. "You're only in danger when discussing sensitive political issues. The presidency, for example," Badran from Latakia said in an e-mail exchange. "There is very little concern when it comes to social, cultural, or religious debates, especially over a medium like blogs."

Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says he's not surprised the masturbation debate exploded. "Whenever you have a high degree of authoritarianism, the things that are tolerated will rise to the surface quite forcefully," he says.

Tabler said the proliferation of Internet porn in Syria has alarmed clerics and might have been the impetus for Sibai's original posting. His blog is peppered with religious references explaining the supposed harmful effects of masturbation.