When I realized that the fourth anniversary of Pursed Lips was just around the corner, I considered doing something clever. Like doing a state of the sexblog address to the tune of the Bare Naked Ladies’ hit, One Week. It was going to go something like this:

It’s been four years since I took the plunge
put my words to a blog and said how dandy.
Four years since I grabbed a link saying
get off your ass now, get on with blogging.
Back then sex was frowned upon
I realized such talk wasn’t liked ‘mong the techies.
Still today it’s a favorite rage
it’s sex all the time and from every persuasion…

About here’s where the going got tough and the tough decided they can’t render history in lyrics. It was just too manic a prospect, given the song’s meter. Besides, if you’ve read Pursed Lips for any length of time, then you know the story.

But I do have a thought to share with you this year: I’m glad the sexblog explosion continues unabated. I’m glad people are blogging everything from sex news to pornography to personal experiences. We need the public discourse and the bearing witness to pro-sex acceptance. Why? Because the culture war’s back on.

Consider the fundie right’s unrelenting effort to equate every GLBT success as a victory for evil, gay sadomasochists. Sites like section12.com’s weblogs and efforts like 100 Bloggers stand to counter them simply by proving that sadomasochism isn’t just for gay men. They supply evidence that plenty of BDSM practitioners are coupled heterosexuals and stand contrary to what the fundie right wants us to believe.

As well, I’d like to think the dirty whores, the pornographers, the hedonists, and the renegade artists out there might become ubiquitous enough to dull the U.S. Justice Department’s prosecution of Extreme Associates. I worry that if federal authorities succeed in this case, they’ll continue down the line, attacking one weak link after another in the adult industry, and yet I think the weight of sexblogging will help push the community standard further along so when juries are presented with “evidence,” they’ll yawn and acquit.

The sexblog presence helps move the public community standard towards a more liberal and open stance, and it does so by being of, by, and for the people. Every sexblogger is a common everyday person, distinquished only by being brave enough to reveal him- or herself publically through blogging. I can’t of anything any more democractic than the critical mass that our growing presence is helping to create.

Next year, when Pursed Lips turns five, I hope there’ll be so many sexblogs of so many persuasions that it’ll be impossible to blogroll ‘em all. I hope people everywhere will have something bold and positive to say about sex. I hope we’ll create enough of a new culture that whatever this renewed attempt at a culture war is, it will sputter to a stop.