The Human Toll From Our National Obsession and Ignorance about Sexuality

What is it about our inability as a nation to deal with sex in an adult way?  Despite the excessive use of sex in marketing of nearly every product, many US citizens aren't able to talk frankly, with knowledge, and without embarrassment about sexuality.

One side effect is politicians (we'll leave other professions for another day)  disgraced by the public disclosure of their sexual conduct.  Because of our cultural obsession with publicly denying real human sexuality in favor of  happily ever after fairy tales, these politicians  resort to twisted lies (from Clinton's "I didn't have sex with that woman" to South Carolina's Gov. Sanford's Appalachian trail story) rather than tell the truth.   In most cases, the deception becomes more problematic than the behavior.  

Here's an example from,  until recently, closeted gay California Republican state senator Roy Ashburn, who, apparently to cover his own sexuality, has voted his whole career against the rights of GLBT citizens. 

The following is a guest commentary by Sen. Roy Ashburn

Startled by the blurry reality of a red light glaring in my rear-view mirror at 2 am on the morning of March, 4, 2010, I knew my life was about to change.  The California Highway Patrol stopped me as I was driving drunk after leaving a gay club in Sacramento, California’s capital.   With my arrest and the media inquiry that followed, my deeply-held secret was no longer my own business.  My private life as a closeted gay man was now the public’s business, and I had a lot of explaining to do. [You can read the rest of the commentary by this 26 year Republican politician at GayPolitics which I found through BentAlaska.]

While his apology (you have to click on the link to get the whole thing) is welcomed by all who believe in equal rights, it only came after he was outed.  

The internet has made knowledge about sexuality and all its myriad variations (sort of like all the different flowers and birds and bugs in nature) much more accessible, and possibly more of our population has a more realistic picture of human sexuality than my generation grew up with.  But on the one hand,  the many misogynist lyrics and movies suggest  a lot of people may know more mechanics of sex than about the art of relationships.  On the other hand the denial of the many faces of human sexuality, most often by religious zealots,  suggests ignorance is thriving too.  Somewhere in the middle there must be a healthy mental and physical balance.

Fortunately, people like Dan Savage offer accessible and frank (and sometimes over the top) discussions of sexuality and relationships that were completely  unimaginable 26 years ago when Sen. Ashburn was first elected.  If he could have read columns like Savage's as a young man how different and more honest his life might have been.