It seems so obvious, yet never gets said, so let’s put it on the table:
Sex is the number one political issue of these times.
I know: The economy is tanking. War is raging in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a dozen other places. Global warming is about to change the planet as we know it. It’s not ALL about sex.
But if there is one core issue that defines and shapes the American political landscape at this particular moment in history, that issue would have to be sex.
Not abortion, not sex education in the schools, not HIV prevention, not same-sex marriage, not LGBT equality, not teenage pregnancy, not pornography, not prostitution.
All of these are, of course, important and well-recognized political issues — debated daily on the evening news. But these individual issues are in one sense only proxies for something more basic, something more fundamental to the political crossroad at which we find ourselves. And that something is sex — how we feel about sex, what place we want sex to have in our lives, what place we want sex to have in society.
Do we think of sex, bottom line, as a positive force or a negative one? As liberating or dangerous? As joyous or threatening? As something celebratory or something ominous? As a gift from God or the work of the Devil? As transcendent or debasing? As something we want, most of all, to free up? Or something we want, most of all, to control? Something to expand or to contain? To praise or to question?
Is it sex that’s a fundamental social problem facing the nation? Or is the real problem the guilt and shame we have been taught to feel about sex, about our sexual desires, about our sexual nature? Is the sexual turmoil around us the result of too much sexual freedom, of sexual activity spiraling out of control? Or is it over-zealous sexual restriction and regulation that has everyone tied up in a knot?
Obviously, it’s not a matter of all or nothing, of black and white, of sex being four-legs-good or two-legs-bad. It’s not a question of all sex or no sex. But there’s a clear and dramatic difference between people whose basic reflex is to embrace sex, and people whose basic attitude about sex is one of worry and concern — and this difference in sexual perspective is what the most virulent political battles of these times are all about, what lies at the core of the social split we more commonly think of as Democrat vs. Republican, red state vs. blue state, liberal vs. conservative.
The fundamental cultural war being fought in this country is about sexual values, sexual attitudes, sexual beliefs — about how we feel, not about sexual programs, but about sex itself. It is a battle between people who are, in their heart of hearts, groin of groins, sex-friendly, and people who are essentially sex-suspicious — between people who feel, for the most part, that sex between consenting adults, no matter what the form, no matter who the partners, is basically a good, healthy, fulfilling thing; and people who feel that only very well-defined, carefully controlled forms of sex are proper and safe — typically, sex between a man and a woman married to each other, and even then only when expressed in carefully managed ways.
Sex is the elephant in the political room, the big issue that no one wants to talk about in political terms. We demand that candidates for political office tell us their positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, internet pornography, or needle exchange programs, but we don’t ask them how they feel about sex, or what they think the basic relationship between government and sex should be. We care about politicians who have extramarital affairs or spend time with prostitutes, but we don’t question their basic sexual orientation — whether they think our society would be better off with more sex or less, sex that is more diverse or more limited, more sexual information or less, more sexual encouragement (for both teens and adults) or less — whether, in the end, sexual fulfillment is an important aspect of the American dream.
It’s time for that to change. It’s time for sex to take a seat at the table of proper political issues. It’s time for politicians to look sex directly in the eye, and let us know where they stand. And it’s time for us, as citizens, as voters, to hold politicians responsible for their sexual beliefs.
San Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 2009
Copyright © 2009 David Steinberg
Leave a Reply