Clinton’s Unintentional Legacy

February 2001

As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton sought political gain by flying home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of prisoners. As president, he reiterated his support for state killings, again seeking political advantage by being seen as a leader willing to throw the switch. It comes as no surprise, then, that Clinton will not be remembered as a friend of civil liberties.

President Clinton endorsed new censorship laws and enacted Draconian punishments for those who offend standards of "decency." He fought to require telecommunications manufacturers to make Internet and telephone snooping easy and to ban privacy-ensuring encryption technology.

Clinton decreed that those branded "sex offenders" be "hounded from state to state," forever enduring an Apartheid-like second-class citizenship. Ignoring habeas corpus and protections against ex post facto laws, he has implicitly endorsed sex gulags wherein citizens– serving no criminal sentence– can be warehoused for life. And he has stood silent as castration has been used as a "law enforcement" technique.

And though Clinton offered a respite from the know-nothing anti-gay style of the Reagan/Bush years, his substance wasn't much better. He codified anti-gay discrimination into armed service law, and his "don't ask, don't tell" policy has resulted in record numbers of discharges. He fired Joycelyn Elders for recognizing adolescent masturbation as a sexual reality. And he boasted to the Christian Right about his opposition to gay marriage.

He postured as being kinder and gentler, but Clinton cribbed his answers to challenging social issues from conservative Republicans: for his entire eight years in office, Clinton preached ever-more police, prosecutions, and prisons.

And yet, Clinton may be most remembered as a harbinger of a new sexual enlightenment. His affair with Monica Lewinsky forced nationwide dinner-table talk of extramarital and oral sex, discussions unimaginable a generation earlier. Clinton has brought the message, however involuntarily, that even establishment sexual attitudes have shifted radically. Blow jobs have gone from unspeakable perversion to routine foreplay. Indeed, many don't even consider oral sex as "real" sex.

Of course, our publicly proclaimed sexual standards remain out of step with our actual behavior. Even as yesterday's flower children mature into today's politicians and executives, few are willing to overtly endorse freer sexual values. But Clinton's adultery trial (a.k.a., his impeachment) forced public discussion of previously taboo topics. This dialog is a necessary first step towards replacing destructive sexual values with more sensible attitudes.

The spectacle of Starr's repulsive Puritanical attacks engendering Clinton's audacious lies underscores that we would all be better off with less sexual hypocrisy and more rational sexual values guided by true moral concerns of love, honesty, and compassion, not arbitrary rules about the orifices involved or the gender, age, race, number, or marital status of our partners. Once more of us find the courage to publicly endorse such humane sexual values, we can create institutions and attitudes wherein approval is won, not with hyper-pious morality nor with lies designed to perpetuate deceit, but by telling the truth. Let us hope that such change in our sexual attitudes will be Clinton's enduring– albeit ironic and unintentional– legacy.

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