Dear President-Elect Obama:
For months, I’ve been predicting that when you win, nothing will change regarding sex. I’ve said you won’t stop the government’s War On Sex; you won’t demand respect for sexual rights as human rights; you won’t prevent religious fanatics from controlling non-believers’ sex lives.
You now have your big chance: prove me wrong. Here’s what you need to do:
* End funding for abstinence-only training in public schools.
* End the Department of Justice’s war on adult entertainment. Keep the war on child porn. Make it clear they’re two different things.
* Decriminalize all consensual sex that teens have with other teens. Decriminalize teens sharing photos of themselves having sex.
* Increase financial support for Planned Parenthood, an investment proven to reduce poverty and domestic violence.
* Take the moral leadership to decrease abortion—by funding contraception services and comprehensive sex education, not by criminalizing abortion.
* Require all sex education programs to be scientifically accurate. Isn’t that required by the policies of car manufacturers, meat-packing plants, and toothpaste makers?
* Require all municipalities that want to restrict commercial sexual expression (strip clubs, adult bookstores, swing clubs, etc.) to actually demonstrate a need to do so, rather than simply claim “effects like crime, disease, and blight are well-established.” Because they’re not.
* Require all federal judges to take a Continuing Education course about sexuality. Healthy sexuality, not “sex addiction” or child molestation. Make this education mandatory for anyone aspiring to be a judge.
* Get the FCC out of the censorship business. Let Americans use the “off” and “change channel” buttons on their TV remotes whenever they want; it’s good practice for voting.
* Remove the blocking software from every federally-funded computer in America—libraries, universities, airports. Start with the computers in the White House and Congress.
I’ve said in dozens of lectures this year that you won’t make a difference in America’s War On Sex.
Please, prove me wrong.
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