srparedon – editorials (archive)

April 1999

Why is prostitution so vehemently suppressed? Cops arrest hookers and hustlers, district attorneys target escort services for sting operations, and neighbors copy down suspected johns' license plate numbers in attempts to embarrass prostitution clients. Society assigns to sex workers the social status of drug dealers and petty thieves. Our culture which usually worships market economics reacts differently when the commodity being hawked is sex. Why?

After you strip away all the red herring concerns about traffic and health and shady business associations (which can all be addressed through proper regulation, as in any other enterprise), opposition to… Continue reading →

March 1999

The adultery trial of William Jefferson Clinton is mercifully over. Television and newspaper pundits tell us that although Clinton was acquitted, his sexual shenanigans brought shame on the presidency and that his legacy will be forever compromised. Congressional Democrats join in the condemnation chorus: Clinton should be ashamed though not impeached for his cheating. The public is told to be glad that a "sorry chapter" in American history is now finished.

But there is another, more optimistic way to look at this failed attempt to punish a sexual rule-breaker. The Republican party is in the hands of… Continue reading →

February 1999

The great chronicler of gay sex Boyd McDonald was fond of repeating the aphorism "How often have we gone out looking for sex but found only love." As he did so often, Boyd managed to lampoon our culture's inverted sexual values with words that seem, at first, to be twisted in order to amuse. But Boyd wasn't just being clever or ironic– his seemingly mangled proverb, taken at face-value, exposes how we are ill-served by prevalent attitudes about sex and love.

"Love," as used in Boyd's maxim, is a treacly sentiment. This love is easily felt for… Continue reading →

January 1999

The holiday season is a time when more than a few of us succumb to a wistful sadness about how difficult it is to be gay or lesbian. To be sure, many, perhaps even most, of us come from families that are not very accepting of homosexuality in general and of our homosexuality in particular. Though to be fair to our families, in some instances we have never given them the chance to deal with it. We have decided for them that our sexuality would be too difficult for them to handle and have chosen to be silent… Continue reading →

December 1998

Sexual liberation has launched enormous changes in sexual behavior in the last three decades. But old sexual "morality" has proved hard to shed. Sex remains judged by how closely it resembles the "ideal": a husband's penis in his wife's vagina attempting to conceive a child. The more sex deviates from this hallowed model, the more suspect and condemned it is. But we live in an increasingly overpopulated world, most definitely not in need of more mouths to feed. For the planet's well-being, we must complete the sexual revolution by chucking out the erroneous notion that "dirty" sex needs… Continue reading →

November 1998

Ken Starr's prosecution of President Clinton for adultery has generated interminable media chatter billed as "debate." Talk show panels and op-ed pages have Clinton attackers routinely paired with presidential defenders. In addition to a civics lesson in constitutional law, we are also– supposedly– getting a robust discussion about heretofore taboo topics. Self-congratulatory media folk tout the "new openness" in discussing oral and extramarital sex. Clinton's Oval Office philandering has, we are led to believe, elicited the full gamut of possible responses. Turn on any television, open any newspaper, browse any search engine and you'll be told we are… Continue reading →