People Have Sex

This assertion may prove startling, but studies indicate it’s true:

People have sex.

Some sophisticated people probably realize that storks alone can’t account for population growth. Indeed, experts must turn to biology to adequately explain the phenomenon, and that means--sex.

What those sophisticated people and those experts may not realize, however, is that people don’t have sex solely to produce children. Sometimes, people do it just for the sake of the act, whatever their true motivation. And sometimes --they even like it.

Overly sarcastic? How so, in a society where so many are so concerned about acts people do in their bedrooms (or wherever) that affect other people not at all? Why do they care? Why? “Oral sex is immoral!” pontificated one of my college students in a heated class discussion. “It serves no purpose!” “Oh, it certainly serves a purpose,” answered one of her classmates. “It may not be reproduction,” she continued, “but it definitely serves a purpose!”

The same political players who oppose government telling people what to do maintain a host of moral mandates must be law. Again, why? Why do they care?

The spread of STDs, cutting teen pregnancy, preventing the abortion of unplanned children--these must only be achieved through abstinence. Why? Wouldn’t condoms be, at least, the lesser evil? “Oh no,” comes the retort. “Sex education and teaching contraception encourages promiscuity!” Hello--sexual activity has been around LONG before sex education.

I was raised Catholic. When I was twelve, Dad came into my room for a talk. It was short, and featured him presenting me with a booklet, “A Doctor Talks to Twelve-Year Olds,” and encouraging me to ask if I had any questions. He was clearly uncomfortable. I read the booklet. I understood absolutely everything about the biology--the egg, the sperm, and so on. How the sperm happened to get to the egg--I couldn’t have told you. Everyone always talked about children as a blessing from God, so I figured it was in God’s hands. I had no questions. I understood perfectly.

Perfect conservative upbringing, right? Get real. Hormones, people, hormones! No one has to explain to a Junior High School boy that the girls have breasts, that he wants to touch those breasts, that he wants to explore her “down there,” or how to masturbate. So I learned about sex on the street, from other kids, from magazines, the way God intended. Or sort of learned. Lying naked with a girl in my dorm room, all I could think of was the fear of pregnancy. I didn’t really get/trust the diaphragm concept. “Do you want me to go down on you?” she asked. I was pretty sure I did, but I was too embarrassed to admit I wasn’t positive what she meant. I should have chanced it.

In Georgia, seventeen-year old Genarlow Wilson was sentenced to ten years in a Georgia prison for consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year old girl in 2003. Had they “gone all the way,” he’d only have been sentenced one year for intercourse, instead of “child molestation.” Two years into his sentence, a judge reviewed the case and commuted the sentence, giving Wilson credit for time served. Yet, Attorney General Thurbert Baker has challenged the judge’s authority to do so, taking the course to the Georgia Supreme Court. Wilson remains in prison.

Certainly we need to protect children. No one would argue to protect an adult who molests an eleven-year old, for example. But what if eleven-year olds decide to play doctor? Are they criminals (perhaps they’ll get “youthful offender” status)? Clearly, that’s not predatory, nor a matter for the law--that’s something parents/guardians should handle. But how can such sense earn a voice in a climate that in some corners still criminalizes consensual adult partners engaging in “mud turtling,” even married heterosexual couples? (God intended all partners to face each other, apparently.)

No wonder, then, that gay marriage provokes such opposition, but still--why does anyone care? “We need to oppose the destruction of marriage as an institution!” comes the response, but that’s hardly an argument. How does two people of the same sex loving each other hurt marriage in the least? Just what flimsy kind of marriage are those critics in--looking for an answer here. “It goes against God’s law!” comes the outrage. Yikes…I’m worried. If God is so impotent that He needs the law to control Creation, we’re all headed for hell.

Particularly weird to me is how alternative lifestyle people engage in the same sort of frenzy. Dominants and submissives warn against switches (we’ll leave transgender out of this discussion). BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism) devotees argue with each other about the “right” way to practice kink. Further, heated discussions ensue between BDSM folks and the Goreans, who embrace what they see as the philosophy and ideal order of Masters and pleasure slaves described in John Norman’s series of books about the fictional planet Gor. Since both camps practice TPE (Total Power Exchange--24/7 dominance/submission), collar “slaves” and so forth, the discussion just seems silly. Who cares? Kink has rules? Does Congress know?

Even weirder are the sub-arguments. Goreans argue with Goreans, for example, about who truly practices Gor. Really. Gorean fundamentalists, if you will. WHO CARES?????!!!!!!! Rise, go home, and be kinky as thou will. Or as conventional as thou might wish. Or celibate. WHO CARES?????!!!!!!! WHAT DOES IT MATTER?????!!!!!!! How does it affect anyone but the consenting adults participating in a private, intimate relationship? WHY does it bother people?

I can offer only one answer. Fundamentalists, absolute moralists of any stripe maintain that only one set of answers can be true. This is ridiculously flawed logic, of course, since life just doesn’t come down to one set of simple answers. Hell, most of our adult lives, we’re never truly sure we’ve done the right thing--we just do the best we can. That’s why over two thousand years ago, human thought moved from “might makes right” to a focus on character --not “here’s what you do, always,” but “here’s what you strive to be.” Anyone who disagrees with a fundamentalist, however, introduces another possibility--impossible in the fundamentalist framework, so a threat that must be crushed at all cost, even if that cost is revealing oneself as a ridiculous, irrational, bigoted fool. Maybe that explains the turtle metaphor: tur·tle (tûr'tl) n. a slow-moving reptile enclosed in a scaly, leathery domed shell into which it can retract its legs and head. Makes sense.

But I should confess. I’ve had sex. I liked it. And I intend to have it again--often.

Get out the handcuffs.

Writer