Sex and the Country

By Harry T. Cook

It would be safe to say that the American psyche is obsessed with all things sexual from the private affairs (sic) of public officials to the uteri of its fecund women to the disputed right of gay and lesbian persons to marry. What gives? You can bet that by the time the Nosy Parker press gets fully engaged in the November presidential election, both John McCain and Barack Obama will be scrubbed within an inch of their libidos. Somewhere lurking even now is a sexual innuendo waiting to be sprung on one or another of them. In the end, the truth won't matter, only the prurient longing of the public "to know." Even while downing a side of Freedom Fries, I was impressed some years ago by the tableau at the graveside of François Mitterand as both his wife and mistress looked on in at least surface amity. Not long after that the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky hoo-hah had all America by the ears - that after plenary absolution of Franklin D. Roosevelt for Lucy Mercer Rutherford and John F. Kennedy for Marilyn Monroe, Judith Exner and a hostess of others. Sex is a complicated thing. There is nothing quite so exhilarating as the incandescence that illuminates two persons' mutual attraction. Consenting adults sometimes find it compelling and desirable to act upon that attraction in one of the few material ways biology has provided. Are such assignations adulterous? Regrettably, often enough. Can many of them be characterized as mere "hook-ups," as the saying goes? Yes, probably. Are they anybody's business except the major players and any others whom their dalliances may have hurt? Most times, not. However, when a member of the clergy uses his or her supposed power-position to seduce an adult parishioner or a physician an adult patient or a professor an adult student, other people must become involved: e.g. bishops, church wardens, ethics committees, etc. Yet, there is every reason to mete out discipline in discreet ways and not to let the offense become a public spectacle as often happens - to the secret, panting delight of people who relish such stuff.

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In a similar vein, an alarming percentage of Americans have apparently told pollsters that they are against abortion. So proclaim the pollsters. My answer to that is perhaps my all-time favorite bumper sticker: "AGAINST ABORTION? DON'T HAVE ONE." The Roman Catholic hierarchy and the gaggle of fundamentalist preachers who fulminate on the subject are well within their rights and privilege to tell their adherents that they may neither have abortions nor support the practice. The adherents are then free to defy their leaders and/or walk out the door. As legally confounding as the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling is, it began the process of getting America out of its Hester Prynne era. In so far as I know, there is no other body part - male or female - that has been the subject of such meddling as the uterus. Forbidding a woman by statute from exercising control over any part of her body grates against the very idea of freedom. Forbidding a physician from responding to a woman's reasonable request for treatment to end an unwanted pregnancy is equally repugnant. The debate over when a sperm and ovum "become human" is as pointless as a debate about the existence of a deity. At this stage of our human intellectual evolution, we have no hope of an answer to either question.

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As if American prurience and misogynist meddling are not sufficient unto the day, we are enduring ad nauseam the argument over so-called gay marriage. Whole institutes and foundations have been richly endowed to work both for and against the legal and moral acceptance of gay marriage. Tremendous political capital is expended in both support and opposition to it. In its wisdom, the electorate of my own state of Michigan recently wrote into its constitution a provision that defines marriage as between one man and one woman (at a time, supposedly), and now its perfervid supporters have convinced the state Supreme Court that the provision forbids public institutions from offering spousal benefits to gay and lesbian couples. Even the Congress of these United States enacted a thing called "The Defense of Marriage Act" in 1996. The bill was passed by an 85-14 vote in the U.S. Senate and by 342-67 in the House and signed into law by Bill Clinton in September of that year. Here is what the law of the land says: No state or other political subdivision within the United States need treat a relationship between persons of the same sex as a marriage, even if the relationship is considered a marriage in another state. The federal government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose, even if concluded or recognized by one of the states. God bless America. I was never aware that my marriage needed a defense of any kind. Never has a gay or lesbian person threatened my marital status. Never has the presence of any gay or lesbian couple in my neighborhood, my church or my community imperiled me or my marriage in any way. America with its industry of small-minded notions is still in its early adolescence where sex and related matters are concerned. I wish it would grow up.

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.