Sex Panic’s Beginning

February 1998

Today, even big city mayors are crusading to rid their streets of evidence of sex. People with HIV are told to be celibate or face jail. And some gay people are going along with all sorts of measures to sanitize public space and demonstrate our sexual respectability.

To counter this anti-sex trend, activists gathered in San Diego last November at a conference titled Sex Panic. They focused on how HIV has been exploited by those opposed to sexual liberation and discussed how our culture remains crippled by destructive attitudes and laws born of the fear that sex outside of narrow boundaries is dangerous. They issued a "declaration of sexual rights" to challenge such exploitation and fear.

Sex Panic's call for greater sexual freedom is welcome. Almost all of our political groups and "spokespeople" shy away from sexual issues, not willing to jeopardize their cosmetic respectability. Some queer activists have become collaborationists, seeking to punish any sexual expression except that which follows the monogamous-adult-couples-in-private model. Institutions founded to fight for sexual rights have devolved into political cheerleaders, and many gay writers have been co-opted into parroting uptight sexual values. In such a depressing context, Sex Panic's agenda seems progressive.

But, sadly, even Sex Panic hasn't addressed the most compelling issues facing sexual liberationists. Tens of thousands of people are in prison for consensual acts of sexual affection. They face decades of incarceration, castration, and even execution– all because their partners are below an arbitrarily chosen age. Apartheid-like sex registration laws threaten a lifetime of harassment for them and all others who've violated any other sex laws. The Supreme Court has okayed sex gulags wherein prisoners are held, not for violating the law, but merely for suspicion that they might if they were free. In the guise of "protecting the children," a police state apparatus has been constructed.

And "protecting the children" has been the excuse for erosions of other civil liberties. Censorship of the Internet, music, photographers, writers, libraries, and museums receives near-unanimous support from politicians fearful of either being branded soft on child pornography or not vigilant enough in denying kids access to sexual material. Big Brother mutes virtually all opposition with the claim that sacrificing freedom is needed to protect kids from the horrors of sex.

Most of the challenges to such attacks on civil liberties have bought into the presumption that protecting kids from sex is a worthy goal. Thus, we have legal groups trying to make sure only "appropriate" sex offenders (i.e., the dreaded "pedophiles") are forced to register and "anti-censorship" activists endorsing "well-crafted" filtering software. The insight absent from these debates (and, unfortunately, from Sex Panic's agenda) is that it is precisely the notion that sex is dirty and bad for kids that needs to be challenged.

True sexual liberation means chucking out lies about how wicked sex is. Instead of viewing sex as always fraught with danger, we can view sex as pleasurable and life-affirming. The most difficult step for many struggling for humane sexual values is recognizing that kids' sexuality must be included in this new, liberated perspective. But kids' well-being depends on the realization that real harm comes from teaching that "private parts" are naughty, that touching "down there" is bad, that sexual affection is criminal.

As gay people, we have a head start on challenging sexual lies that plague our culture. We were taught that homosexuality was monstrous, but we've learned for ourselves that it is, in truth, a wonderful gift. Let us all, including Sex Panic, find the courage to demand that we stop demonizing non-adult sexuality and start raising kids who enjoy, rather than fear, sex.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=D98CD9E9-1911-11D4-A7AB00A0C9D84F02>