Dole Is Here to Remind Us: Sex Isn’t Dirty

Let’s have it out about sex. Sorry to bring it up so early in the morning in a family newspaper, but the sense that I have after the media blitz all last year is that sex is nothing but trouble. Dirty, really, with no redeeming social value.

Oh sure, we still need sex for procreation within the confines of marriage to sustain the species, but you know darn well that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about sex just for fun.

Yes, that pernicious ‘60s licensing of the libido that places otherwise sensible people in compromising, career-destroying circumstances.

Just look at what’s happening to America’s first flower-child president and some of the members of Congress who sit in judgment of him. We’ve gone through a year in which a state of sexual excitement has hardly been treated as a good thing.

So imagine my shock last week when the state of California, like New York and Connecticut before it, ruled that health insurance plans are obligated to pay for the sexual arousal afforded by Viagra. That’s a cost borne by the rest of us, and for what? To help some poor bloke mess up his life even more?

Only weeks before, we were told that Bob Dole, of all people, signed up with the Pfizer company to promote its Viagra product on television. What’s going on? Isn’t sexual impotence God’s gentle way of saying to a 75-year-old man, “You’ve had enough”?

Evidently not for Dole, who had participated in early trials for Viagra and who’s a true believer in the product he’s about to sell. When he first came out for Viagra, he joked, “I’d already lost the election, and I wasn’t looking for the erectile dysfunction vote,” but he was calling it “a great drug.”

I’ll take his word for it, but why do we as a society want people to be more sexually active? Is there a problem of underpopulation that we haven’t been told about?

Now that he is being compensated by Pfizer for his endorsement, Dole says he’s pushing Viagra to “help men pay attention to health problems they might otherwise be afraid to discuss.” But if you listen to the government experts, some people are healthier if they don’t take Viagra.

That’s why the FDA has required the manufacturer to warn about risks to those with a history of heart disease, high blood pressure and even some eye problems.

So what is it then, Mr. Dole? It’s not really about health, is it now? Unless--and this is a big, important leap we are about to take given the current puritanical mood--it is healthy to want, even to have, sex just for the heck of it. That’s it, isn’t it? Basic to our nature, or something like that.

Who would’ve thought it would be left to Bob Dole to carry the banner once grasped by the likes of D. H. Lawrence, Anais Nin and the scribes of the Kama Sutra and remind us that the manifestation of erotic desire is a darn good thing.

Of course, it should be added, everything in its proper place and time and with full respect for the needs and rights of others. These are boundaries for consenting adults to determine. But that said, the inalienable truth of the human experience is that sex is a mighty important part of what makes life worth living.

That’s why, as you thumb through the pages of most major newspapers, enticing underwear is so prominently featured in department stores ads. All around us, wildly seductive billboards dangerously distract motorists, TV sitcoms exist on sexual innuendo and much of late-night cable TV veers from erotica to porn. And for some people, the celluloid aphrodisiacs of the movies, which Dole-the-candidate once condemned, may work as effectively as Viagra.

Whether in a medium as old as print, or on the brave new world of the Internet, where sexual titillation is a lucrative source of revenue, the stoking of sexual appetite is a dominant feature of any society where freedom is permitted.

So no, sex isn’t dirty; it’s normal. Obviously, we know that, but after the events of last year, it is good to celebrate that life-affirming fact.

Thanks to Bob Dole and the makers of Viagra for the promise that at the age of 75, and hopefully much beyond, a man may still be potent. But even failing such efforts at better living through chemistry, it is reassuring to know that erotic ambition persists in the most conventional of souls.