Blowjobgate

March 1998

Did Monica blow Bill? Does the President enjoy extramarital sex along with golf and Big Macs? That such questions preoccupy our nation's press and provoke constitutional showdowns reveals two important lessons.

First, the erosions of civil liberties in the US are exposed. The nation's most powerful man has been subjected to abuses routinely suffered by ordinary citizens: illegal wiretaps, associates threatened with retribution unless they sing the right song, private conduct leaked to embarrass, sex lives scrutinized by police bent on creating not preventing harm, and prosecutors who target people rather than crime.

Of course, there is irony in having Clinton subjected to overzealous prosecutors, for he has led many attacks on civil liberties. Clinton pushed for legislation requiring telecommunications manufacturers to make Internet and telephone snooping easy and forbidding privacy-ensuring encryption technology. He has also endorsed broad new censorship laws and enacted Draconian punishments for those who offend official standards of decency.

On sexual matters, Clinton has decreed that those branded "sex offenders" be "hounded from state to state," forever enduring an Apartheid-like second-class citizenship. He has implicitly endorsed sex gulags wherein citizens– serving no criminal sentence– can be imprisoned for life. He has stood silent as castration has been used as a "law enforcement" technique and boasts about his willingness to kill prisoners. Clinton has sought to politically benefit by demonizing sexuality. Now he finds himself tagged the demon.

The second lesson from Blowjobgate is how hypocritical our politicians, press, and people are concerning sex. Clinton fires a Surgeon General because she recognizes the reality of masturbation while he chases after intra-office fellatio. Corporate media interests trumpet concerns about ethics and journalistic standards while reporting as "news" salacious innuendo designed to boost circulation and attract advertising dollars. And the public gives the President high approval ratings even as they acknowledge he is an unabashed liar.

Our culture's public sexual standards are at odds with our actual sexual behavior. Such a great discrepancy between what people proclaim as essential morality and what they really do breeds both personal heartache and political mischief. As gay people we well know that sexual desire and activity hidden behind closet doors can twist ones psyche and personal relationships. We also understand that when severe punishment can be inflicted on those who don't conform to narrow sexual standards which are out of sync with real human behavior, almost anyone can be branded a pervert. This threat guarantees the sort of prosecutorial blackmail and underhanded coercion that embroils Washington now– but is usually visited on more defenseless individuals.

Instead of living with hypocrisy that winks at sexual transgressions when it suits and damns them when it doesn't, we would all be better off with more rational sexual values. Let us have sexual behavior guided by true moral concerns of love, honesty, and compassion, not arbitrary rules about the gender, age, race, number, or marital status of our partners. Let us understand that our sex lives are of legitimate concern to those directly involved, not to meddlesome neighbors or crusading politicians. And let us have the courage to endorse such humane sexual values publicly so as to spare us not only the current pathetic spectacle, but all such corruption that inevitably flows from hypocrisy.

True liberation, both civil and personal, is built on a foundation of honesty. As gay people, let us be architects of institutions and attitudes wherein approval is won, not with lies designed to perpetuate deceit, but by telling the truth.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=D98CD9C6-1911-11D4-A7AB00A0C9D84F02>