T H E_.H O T_.S P O T Dr. Laura, how could you? By Patrizia DiLucchio Copyright war rages over Schlessinger's nude photos (11/03/98) ___________________ Satisfy all your intellectual urges at barnesandnoble.com! ___________________   R E C E N T L Y The shipping nudes By David Steinberg Why have certain postal services decided to become arbiters of obscenity? (12/10/98) Sade off By Molly Weatherfield The man who became history's most notorious pervert was no picnic to live with, either (11/19/98) Two hard men are good to find By Rona Marech Women's smutty little reading secret is sending black homoerotic literature to the top of the charts (11/05/98) The bridegroom stripped bare By Daniel Reitz A gay man discovers that the goings-on at a straight male stag party are kinkier than he could have imagined (10/22/98) - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Urge archives   Find a book and order it online from barnes&noble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author		2 concepts of sexual hysteria THE DEMOCRATS OFFER "BOOGIE NIGHTS," THE REPUBLICANS "THE CRUCIBLE." CAN WE CHANGE THE CHANNEL? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY LINDA R. HIRSHMAN AND JANE E. LARSON | The word hysteria originally meant being driven insane by your sex organs, which may help explain the last crazy year in politics. Republicans offered the American public that classic in sexual hysteria, "The Crucible" -- a witch hunt led by grown men who profess that private acts of sexuality must be exposed and punished. The president and his defenders offered an equally lunatic version, more akin to "Boogie Nights" -- embodying the compulsive horniness of Dirk Digler and the assumption that sex should never be judged. A big victory for either the Democratic or Republican party in the recent election would have been interpreted as an embrace of its sexual agenda. But the results showed that voters wanted to shift the political composition of American government only marginally. Although Republicans got 51 percent of the vote for Congress and won seven of the eight big governorships, the Democrats beat the trend that the party in the White House always loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Apparently the voters' message of moderation missed its mark. Following the elections, President Clinton foolishly interpreted the outcome as an endorsement and tried to out-lawyer the Judiciary Committee. After the slight election setback, the Republicans continued to pursue their sexual agenda under the thinly veiled explanation that they were carrying out their constitutional duty. (The sudden resignation of Speaker-designate Bob Livingston makes it clear that for the Republicans, no matter what they say, this scandal is not simply about lying but about sex.) But the American public continues to turn its back: Polls show that while most Americans overwhelmingly reject the prospect of impeachment, few are threatening Congress with retaliation to stop it, either. This seems like exactly the right reaction considering the options. Despite what the articles of impeachment profess, the public understands that this is a battle over the sexual mores of America. And they see that sexual hysteria is the worst possible politics of sex. Long after the current Washington game of chicken comes to an end, we will still be faced with the fundamental questions rumbling underneath the past year of partisan fighting: How are we as a society going to deal with sex scandals, sex laws and the division between public good and private freedom? Should there be more laws governing how men and women treat each other sexually? Is sex too sacrosanct to be subject to the law? Is the sexually obsessed media diverting us from the serious business of public life? If so, should we banish them, as Plato suggested banishing distracting and impious poets from his ideal Republic? No matter what happens to Clinton, sex will continue to intrude into political life. The sex scandals of the past few years alone give us a trail of these fault lines. Remember that Clarence Thomas was followed by Sen. Robert Packwood was followed by Lt. Kelly Flinn was followed by Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston was followed by Clinton and the improbable swingers Henry Hyde, Helen Chenoweth and Rep. Dan Burton, to be followed by ...? Sooner or later, we must stop seeing each eruption of sex into politics as an aberration. Of course, sex has always been the subject of some law, and Americans have had laws regulating male-female sex since the Puritans. Mostly, although not always, the laws were a weird mixture of male power and unexamined religious beliefs. Rape was indeed illegal, but the laws were more designed to protect men's desire to know who their children were than women's bodily dignity. Although over the years, these laws gradually changed, the fact that most states had no laws against marital rape until very recently shows just how limited early rape laws were. Similarly, most laws against adultery originally applied exclusively to wives (and their lovers) and only later were extended to husbands. But regardless of what the sex laws said, in the first half of the 20th century many of them were struck down, repealed or just ignored. Paradoxically, just as sex was being deregulated on many fronts, the legislative activism that sprung from the feminist movement in the 1970s added some new laws like the prohibitions against sexual harassment and marital rape. We were still very much in the middle of this process and still debating its wisdom when the sexual hysteria erupted this year. N E X T+P A G E | The days of fiddling in the White House are over