to keep the torch lit. Take, for instance, the fundie right badgering the Justice Department to speed up its fight against pornography and the Justice Department saying, in effect, just you wait and see. Days like this, I try to keep expert opinions before me, reminding me that the likelihood of turning back the clock of time isn’t likely to happen. I hope they’re right.
It’s hard to keep the faith when it’s faith itself that threatens to compromise what’s left of reasonable sex education in this country. It’s difficult additionally difficult to see lives wrecked by zealous actions.
I can only hope that the Republican party ultimately won’t want to be seen as the party of sexual repression. However, backpeddling isn’t likely to happen until the next presidential election nears and they realize they’ve catered too much to the strident ultraright. Still, I worry that too many of us are too complacent. It’s our complacency that allows them to pick off the edges of the flock, you know.
The bright spot in all this? The current issue of Utne magazine and its delightful focus on erotic intelligence. In both serious and humorous looks at erotic living, it imparts its message without stooping to the Maxim/Comospolitan level of all things sex. Best of all: Seeing Scarleteen.com earning a spot in a sidebar and, leading off the list of Marty Klein’s Erotic Intellgentisia 2003, Jack McGeorge, Hans Blix, and Kofi Annan. Remember McGeorge? He’s the weapons inspector that the Washington Post outted as an S/M enthusiast, who stood firm in saying, “I am not ashamred of who I am — not one bit.” And whom Blix and Annan bravely backed with a pat “all weapons inspectors are required to be sensitive to local cultures.” Period.
OK, now I feel refreshed. Let the culture war rage on.
