The U.S. Declares War On Sex

By James Donahue

It was bound to happen. The Janet Jackson exposure before millions of Super Bowl fans is the focal point for a government ban on public "indecency," but I have been hearing rumors for about a year or more than Attorney General John Ashcroft has plans for some kind of assault on American morality.

The decision by Clear Channel to drop popular radio "shock jock" Howard Stern from six of its stations because of sexually explicit and racially suggestive remarks made with one of his callers was only the latest of a growing string of events that have been going on quietly behind the scenes.

Before Stern, Florida radio personality "Bubba the Love Sponge" was fired after federal regulators said he aired sexually graphic material on four Florida stations.

Also another pair of radio personalities, known for sexual antics, Opie and Anthony, were fired  following a stunt involving sex in famous places.

These kinds of shows got popular because of our sexually suppressed Christian environment, where sexual banter and visual nudity is either banned or strictly controlled on public radio, television, theatres and movies. This stuff has been creeping up on us because of the explosion of new media outlets available to us; cable and satellite television and radio and now the Internet. In areas where regulation is not yet in place, or next to impossible to enforce, shock sex is there.

Now that our government is in the hands of a band of professed born-again evangelical Bible-thumping Christians like President George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, it should not be surprising to find the FCC cracking down on guys like Stern, Bubba the Love Sponge, and Opie and Anthony.

FCC Director Kevin Martin has publicly declared that his agency is considering a crack down on the decency standards for cable and satellite radio and television services. I have no doubt that the government will soon be looking at the magazine and book publishing industry as well as the Internet where graphic sex is practically being thrown into our faces.

I, for one, would be glad to have some controls put on those e-mail ads promoting pills and ointments to get a bigger penis, or invitations to call expensive 900 numbers for telephone sex. But I also would like to get rid of the thousands of other unsolicited e-mail promotions for everything from cheaper prescription drugs to low interest mortgages to get out of debt.

It wont be long before Playboy Magazines will be going back under the counter and sold under plain brown wrappers. But Playboy, or a reasonable facsimile of that old girlie show, wont go away.

Sex is a vital part of life. It is the ultimate expression of love between two people. The pursuit of it is a driving force behind most of our personal social life. There should be nothing shameful or secret about it.

The fact that the Catholic church has created a man-god from a virgin birth suggests that a perfect man can only be produced without sexual involvement. And that is a lie. It was raw sexual lust by our parents that brought each of us into this world. And if the "Virgin Mary" carried Jesus in her womb, you can be sure that she was no virgin.

That the church insists on celebrate priests and nuns, who are supposed to be "married to God" and thus go through life devoid of sexual release, is sick and unnatural. Small wonder that a scandal involving pedophilia among priests and alter boys has been exposed. I suspect a lot of sexual secrets are known among the priests and nuns and within the bedrooms of the nunneries as well.

It seems that a society that suppresses free expression of sex develops an unnatural interest in sex. America, which is about 70 percent Christian, has more businesses linked to nudity and prostitution, more crimes of sexual assault and more pedophiles per capita than almost any other country in the world.

If the Attorney General gets his way, the perversion will only get worse.