Sex in America is endlessly entertaining. Our television programs, movies, books, magazines, internet and corner gossip are filled with it. Sexiness sells cars, perfumes, hair care products, fashions, motorcycles, fitness equipment, food, wine and song. It is the stuff of fiction, the source of endless fantasies, dirty jokes, silly cartoons and schoolyards.
Ironically, when it comes to politics, sex is evil. Not all sex is evil, of course, just the sex that others have that might depart from “normal.” The resignation of Senator Larry Craig was a direct result of disclosures of sexual advances made in a men’s room, not what most of us would consider a particularly lovely venue. Nonetheless, the variety and expressions of sexual behaviors between consenting adults are vast and far from normal, and descriptions of them have always been somewhat shocking. When Alfred Kinsey released his report on sexual habits in the ‘50s, people were shocked, and when a U.S. senator pleads guilty to imprudent bathroom behavior in 2007, we are shocked as well.
I find more shocking, however, that Senator Craig was such a strident proponent of the sanctity of marriage, and so self-righteously refused to support any effort to legalize gay marriage or afford gays the same legal rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. If Senator Craig deserves great criticism, it is for this, not the fact of making a pass in a bathroom at an undercover cop.
Like Bill Clinton before him, Larry Craig showed abysmal judgment for an elected official, yet one must suppose that such consuming sexual drives are akin to an addiction that has to be satisfied. As such, I feel compassion. Any addiction that leads to self-harm or the harm of others is a terrible trial. The shame of such addiction, like a stone in the heart, is a heavy load to bear. One hides, denies, pretends, lies and betrays. To be hounded out of office or pursued by special prosecutors for sexual activity must feel almost light by comparison.
The sex lives of others may be entertaining, but that’s all it is. However, when powerful policy makers compensate for their sexual drives and inclinations by attacking the sex lives of others, it then becomes serious business. It seems that those who rail loudest against the sexual habits of others should be suspect, and with good cause. Such moral self-righteousness is often a mask, behind which shame and guilt reside. Better to be honest, like the openly gay representative Barney Frank, and then at least moral pronouncements can be taken at face value. As it is, in a circus atmosphere where the sex lives of the rich and powerful are paraded before the public through the media, such disclosures simply fuel the public’s own addiction to such stories. What is it that our attachment to the shame of others is masking, I wonder?
If as a society, we but acknowledged the truth about the sex lives of others, that it is varied and that love in all its expression can be found between adults irrespective of gender, the likes of Larry Craig would not have to hide and feel shame. Ironically, the self-righteous pronouncements against gay sex and marriage that condemn the hopes and lives of others also condemn the hopes and lives of the self-righteous.
