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Monday
March 01, 2004
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NEWS AND FEATURES
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Sex in George Bush�s America
By Justin
Kendall
[email protected]
Sex in George Bush�s
America. Most people laugh at the thought. �Is there any?� some
quip. Others, like syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, get
depressed. In light of the president�s State of the Union Address in
which W. promised to double federal funding for
abstinence-until-marriage education and hinted that he might support
a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being strictly
between a man and a woman, Cityview decided to take a look at the
state of sex in Bush�s America. We talked to (s)experts from across
the country and on both sides of the bedroom debates. Here�s what
they had to say about the president�s culture of sex, or the lack
thereof.
Dan Savage says he will abstain from
sex with President Bush. Most Americans will. Everyone loves
abstinence in theory, Savage says, but few people practice it. It�s
one of those good ideas for everyone
else.
�George Bush can shake his abstinence
[stick] in our face whenever he wants to and it�s not going to
inspire Americans to stop having sex,� Savage says. �It seems a
bizarre concern for the president of the United States. Let�s worry
about the half-trillion-dollar deficit. � It�s not your job to worry
about whether my trousers are up or down right now, however old I
am.�
Savage, who pens Savage Love for Seattle
alt-weekly The Stranger, has a solution for those who want every
unmarried person to stop the bedroom friction: spend a half trillion
dollars on chastity belts.
Savage also finds
it interesting that those preaching from the abstinence pulpit are
invariably the �people who no one on earth wants to have sex with,�
he says.
�No one wants to sleep with John
Ashcroft or William Bennett or Jerry Falwell or Lou Sheldon,� Savage
says. �All of us out there having sex should just tell them we�re
not because they�ll have no proof to the
contrary.�
Sex talk has always been an
interest of Republicans, Savage explains. It plays to the values of
people in �red states,� and although they are playing to their
constituency, they�re also enacting policies that destroy
working-class people living in those states, Savage says. They do so
by playing to people�s fears, be they about sex or black people,
social unrest or Muslims, he says.
�It�s one
of the ironies of the Democratic Party�s paralysis and the
Republican Party�s success,� he says. �Everyone who is voting for
the Republicans who isn�t filthy, stinking rich is getting screwed
by Republicans. Maybe the Republicans should abstain from screwing
working-class Americans who they fooled into voting for
them.�
No sex until you�re hitched
Mary Kay Casey agrees with the president
on abstinence being the only way to avoid sexually transmitted
diseases and unintended pregnancies. It�s a hard position to
disagree with. Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, where Casey works
as director of education and outreach services, teaches abstinence
as �the first defense� against both.
�The
problem is, it�s not used 100 percent,� she says.
Opponents of abstinence-only education echo
the same concerns. Proof the programs work doesn�t exist, they say,
and the Bush administration is abandoning science in favor of
ideology.
Abstinence-only education is a vague
notion, never fully defined, Casey says.
�Does
he mean abstinence from penis-vaginal intercourse? Well, what we
know is that young people are engaging in oral sex earlier and more
frequently and some of them are doing so and saying that they are
protecting their virginity. What�s that
about?�
The vagueness becomes apparent when
talking with Linda Klepacki, manager of abstinence education for
Focus on the Family, which supports the president�s
abstinence-until-marriage programs. The programs vary from school to
school, �but certainly the overall caveat on abstinence until
marriage is very obvious: We believe that abstinence from any sexual
behavior until marriage is the healthiest choice,� she
says.
�It�s been my experience over 25 years
of teaching sexuality education that kids are desperately hungry to
know how they can say no to sex and how they can be safe until
marriage and not have to engage in sexual behavior of any sort,�
Klepacki says. �So to say that all kids want to know how to put on a
condom and how to use contraceptives and that since they�re going to
be sexually active, here are behaviors they can use is just not
true.�
Klepacki admits it�s too early to say
abstinence-until-marriage programs work, but she does say
comprehensive sex education �certainly does not work because we have
higher epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases today than we ever
have in this history of the United States. And if, in fact,
comprehensive sex education did work, then we should see very low
numbers in STDs.�
Programs teaching abstinence
and the benefits of contraception have proven positive results in
delaying sex, its frequency and increasing contraceptive use, says
Evelyn Becker, deputy communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice
America, which fights for women�s reproductive rights.
�It�s by censoring information that
abstinence-only programs can actually harm young people because they
put them at the risk of STDs and pregnancy,� Becker says. �Young
people need facts, not blanket
prohibition.�
Many say the Bush
administration�s programs are doing just that.
�In an abstinence-only approach, it�s not OK
to lie to young people to make a point,� says Heather Johnston
Nicholson, director of research for Girls Incorporated, an education
and advocacy group for young
girls.
Abstinence-only programs feed kids
misinformation, which they will carry the rest of their lives, says
Adrienne Verrilli, director of communication for the Sexuality
Information and Education Council of the
U.S.
Verrilli says abstinence-only programs
will say condoms fail one in six times, which isn�t true. Condoms
are 99 percent effective in preventing transmission of HIV or
unintended pregnancy when used consistently and correctly, she
says.
�Kids are going to have sex and they�re
not going to use protection,� Verrilli says. �So we are putting an
entire generation of young people at
risk.�
Sex education is more than condoms vs.
abstinence, she says. It�s how couples relate, communicate and feel
comfortable with each other.
�Sex is a natural
and healthy part of people�s lives,� Verrilli says. �You can�t be
told something�s dirty and awful and bad your whole life and then
suddenly when you�re married you�re not going to think that
anymore.
�I really need to know how abstinence
falls into our top 10 issues when we�re in the middle of a
recession, a jobless recovery, a war, a massive budget deficit, 44
million people without health insurance and all this president can
come up with is a multimillion-dollar program telling kids not to
have sex,� Verrilli says.
Saving sex for
marriage implies too many things, says Deborah L. Tolman, director
of the research department of the National Sexuality Research Center
at San Francisco State University. It implies sex is sexual
intercourse, everyone will get married and both are the norm.
�The bottom line is there is no scientific
evidence to support the notion that marriage is normal, necessary or
natural,� Tolman says. �It is a social
idea.�
With some people choosing not to get
married and several ways to form a family in America, abstinence
education excludes many people, Tolman says. It also leaves out some
of the young people it intends to reach, such as teens who have
already engaged in sexual intercourse and gay and lesbian youth.
Adds Marjorie Signer, communications director
for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice: �Our concern is
that the Bush administration�s policies are promoting lack of
information, lack of honesty and they�re doing this for political
reasons, to appeal to a certain political base that has ideas
grounded in their personal religious beliefs, or, sometimes we say,
dogma.�
The underlying message is sex is
dirty, and pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease is a
punishment for having sex, Signer says.
�It�s
not only negative toward people who are not married or who are
younger, but it is also negative to people who are having marital
sex, saying, �If you have sex, you should always be open to
conception,�� Signer says. �That�s a view that probably many people
don�t share. It�s a decidedly religious
view.�
The right�s hypocrisy
Dennis Hof doesn�t have a problem with
conservative views. He has a problem with hypocrisy. The owner of
the World Famous BunnyRanch, a brothel in Northern Nevada, and star
of HBO�s �Cathouse,� Hof has seen firsthand the destruction of
hypocritical right-wing Republicans. He was in Larry Flynt�s office
when the Hustler magazine publisher offered a million-dollar reward
for information about the marital affairs of members of Congress
during the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky
scandal.
�I listened to the hundreds of phone
calls coming in,� Hof says. �This [Robert] Livingston was two days
away from being the third most powerful person in this country, the
speaker of the House. Guess what? He went up in flames. Larry could
have absolutely buried this guy except he got the call from
Livingston�s wife saying, �Please, you�ve ruined his political
career, don�t destroy our family.� Larry Flynt showed him the
compassion not to do that. You�ve got all of these people. This
[Rep.] Henry Hyde. Great, take the shot at Bill Clinton but guess
what? You had a mistress.�
At the time of the
Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Hof conducted a 90-day survey of the
BunnyRanch�s johns. He found his customer base was two-to-one
Democrats. The kicker?
�The Republicans spent
three times as much money and are much kinkier,� Hof
says.
A sign outside the BunnyRanch reads,
�Warning: This establishment features sexual entertainment. If this
offends you, please do not enter the property. There is a turnaround
area provided for you.� This is full disclosure, Hof says.
�As long as there is that type of disclosure,
what does anybody care what�s going on behind the doors of the
BunnyRanch?� Hof asks. �I don�t like hypocrisy in George Bush�s
America because they can�t live it. They just can�t live
it.�
The examples are plenty. Hof points to
former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani: �Hey, Rudy, you close up
the topless clubs so there�s no sex for the poor conventioneer who
comes to town, but easy for you to do because you�ve got a mistress
and a wife. Where does it end? It goes on and
on.�
His accusatory finger also points to
Bush. �The hypocrisy of the right wing now is outrageous. I don�t
know about all of the allegations of George Bush, but there were a
lot of them. And where there�s smoke, there�s
fire.�
Hof says he�s really a conservative
guy. He respects marriage and monogamy, but believes it should be up
to the people to decide how they want to live � as long as it�s
legal.
�I�m single-handedly sanitizing this
business,� Hof says of his brothel. �I don�t have a big lobbying
group like the liquor or tobacco industry, but look at the
transition they�ve all made.�
Hof wants to
legalize prostitution across the United States. People who don�t
support legalized prostitution are inadvertently supporting the
exploitation of women, he says, because these women get beat up by
dirtball pimps or raped or maimed. Not at the
BunnyRanch.
�If you don�t support legalized
prostitution, then you�re supporting money going into a criminal
environment,� Hof says. �Illegal prostitution is driven by drugs.
Legal prostitution eliminates all that. We don�t have any girls in
here on drugs. They don�t need drugs. They don�t need
pimps.�
Prostitution is legal in all of Nevada
except for Las Vegas and Reno, a misconception held by a lot of
people, Hof says. More than 300 prostitutes arrested in the Las
Vegas area have tested positive for HIV, Hof
says.
�In the BunnyRanch and other brothels in
Nevada, there have been hundreds of thousands of tests, millions of
sexual experiences and no HIV. Not one case,� he says. �So if you
don�t support legalization, you are supporting disease in the
workplace.�
Politicians shy away from publicly
saying they will support prostitution, but behind closed doors, they
will, Hof says. Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura boasted of going
to the BunnyRanch. But he wouldn�t go so far as to endorse
prostitution.
�It�s going to happen some day,
but it needs to be controlled, it needs to be zoned, it needs to be
taxed,� Hof says. �Let�s take out the disease, take out the
exploitation, take out the criminals and do it the right
way.�
Hof says he�s willing to pay $1 million
a year to open a ranch in Reno.
�Let�s use
our resources to protect our country and make this a safe, fun place
to live in and let the people who want to watch girls dance, and
watch a little porn and come to the BunnyRanch and have a little sex
every once in a while, let them do what they want to do,� he says.
�Just tax it and regulate it properly and make sure the right people
are operating it.�
The far right�s side
�You say you�re an alternative paper.
Does that mean you�re a homosexual newspaper?� asks the Rev. Lou
Sheldon of the Traditional Values
Coalition.
�I don�t believe
so.�
�You don�t? How long have you worked
there?�
�I�ve worked here for two
years.�
�Well, you would certainly know it,
wouldn�t you?�
�Well, I would hope
so.�
�Every city has a gay
paper.�
�No, we�re not a gay
paper.�
Sheldon tips his hand with the
conversation. He stands firmly alongside the Bush camp�s position
against gay marriage. Keeping marriage between one man and one woman
isn�t a religious belief, Sheldon explains. Gay people are free to
�have whatever sexual arrangement they
want.�
�But they�re not free to steal the word
marriage and call their sexual arrangement marriage,� Sheldon says.
�Never in the history of mankind has that been called marriage. Why
now is it morally right for them to steal something? They can go and
have whatever sexual arrangement they want. They�re perfectly free
to do that. Second, it just doesn�t make common sense to try to say
a man and a woman can now be replaced in marriage by people of the
same sex.
�You can�t call it something that is
going to infringe on marriage because there is such a thing as
trademark and protection rights and things like that,� Sheldon
adds.
Calling unions between gays and lesbians
�civil unions� isn�t acceptable either, Sheldon
says.
�That is an absolute hijack of a
classical and antiquity institution called marriage,� he says.
In the State of the Union Address, Bush vowed
to �defend the sanctity of marriage.� Then came the declaration from
Massachusetts� highest court that only full marriage rights for gay
couples will do, opening the door for same-sex marriages to begin in
mid-May.
President Bush called the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court�s ruling �deeply troubling,�
adding, �marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman.
If activist judges insist on redefining marriage by court order, the
only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what
is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of
marriage.�
�George Bush is really trying to
tap into people�s homophobia,� says Leslie Margolin, a professor in
the University of Iowa's Sexuality Studies Program. �So on the one
hand, the country has been more liberal and accepting. This is a
tremendous advance from a few years ago that we would support gay
marriage, but he�s trying to produce a reaction to
that.�
The U.S. Supreme Court�s ruling last
year that invalidated a Texas law banning same-sex sodomy could
become a �watershed moment in the history of privacy in this
country,� says Ben Stone, executive director of the Iowa Civil
Liberties Union.
�It really does, kind of, for
the first time really make it clear that activities in the bedroom
are nobody�s business in the government,� Stone says. �It�s a pretty
powerful ruling.�
As more people learn there
isn�t a �gay agenda,� people will realize gay marriage isn�t a big
deal, he says.
�There is this constant
repetition of �We must protect marriage,� but yet there is never an
articulation of how granting the right of men to marry men and women
to marry women threatens marriage. It�s never articulated,� Stone
says. �They throw it out there and just let it hang, but serious,
thoughtful people will realize that this doesn�t threaten marriage.
It threatens intolerance and bigotry. That�s what gay marriage
threatens.�
Sheldon contends that being gay
isn�t �like being black, Hispanic or Asian or handicapped or Jewish.
Homosexuality is a behavior. It�s not genetic. You�re not born that
way. Therefore it doesn�t entitle itself to the same kinds of civil
rights protections that we must offer to
minorities.�
Tolman disputes Sheldon�s claim.
�Why would you choose a life that leads to
being marginalized, ostracized, perhaps violently harmed?� she asks.
�Why would you choose that?�
Sheldon points to
too many people leaving �the lifestyle.�
�Now,
from a practical standpoint, the reason homosexual marriage is
nonsense and not even common sense is because the body parts don�t
fit,� Sheldon says. �And you enter into a high-risk behavioral
pattern when you have homosexual sex. It is against
nature.�
Sheldon argues the Massachusetts
ruling is unconstitutional because the court became a legislative
body. It�s judicial tyranny and could backfire on the court, he
says.
�The courts are not allowed to
legislate, and that�s what they�ve done,� he
says.
Bush-whacked
The president holds a born-again
Christian view of the world. He is an evangelical Christian and he
caters to the conservative right wing.
Bush�s
views resonate with a large proportion of the population, says
Arthur Sanders, associate professor of politics and international
relations at Drake University.
The talk of
abstinence-only education and marriage between one man and one woman
in his State of the Union Address featured a lot of language that
signals to religious conservatives, Sanders says. These same
religious conservatives have been growing frustrated with the
president on the issue of gay marriage because he has only shown
implied support for a constitutional amendment, not coming out and
saying he will campaign for a constitutional amendment, Sanders
says.
President Bush has polarized America,
Margolin says.
�The abstinence-only, the
attempt to erode people�s freedom of choice in abortion, the attempt
to stop abortion, the abstinence-only approach to sex education is
really not popular widely, but it�s popular among his base of
supporters who are evangelical and very right-wing conservatives,�
Margolin says. �He seems to not seek compromise but to seek his way
and the way of his base.
�He appeals to kind
of knee-jerk reflexes on sexuality,� he says. �Instead of trying to
elevate the discourse, he lowers it. It�s just incredible. This guy
is just incredible.�
President Bush is a
�political animal,� pandering to the religious right and a
moralistic agenda, Planned Parenthood�s Casey says. His sights are
clearly set on a November re-election.
�It was
a total political speech,� Casey says of the State of the Union
Address. �He was not coming out of a public health agenda or a
cultural agenda, what was best for this country or for kids or best
for families.�
Bush pushing for
abstinence-only funding is simple �political opportunism,� Verrilli
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