My hunch is that very few families and friends will be giving thanks for sexual freedom as they go around the Thanksgiving table. Yet sexual freedom is not to be taken for granted. We are indeed fortunate to live in a country where we have relative sexual freedom. We may date whomever we wish and can conduct our sexual behaviors in private without undue fear. We have access to birth control information and means. We can buy vibrators on the internet. We can explore and touch our own bodies as well as those of others, with proper consent of course.
Yet there are still some areas in which sexual freedom is still practiced at great cost. Sexual minorities, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in many areas of our country still fear violent retribution. California is the only state, I believe, that has passed a law banning reorientation therapy for gay minors. Abstinence only sex education, though unproven as effective, is still taught in many districts.
Although we have more freedom than countries where infidelity is punishable by death, where sex before marriage can land you in prison, and where the body is covered for fear that the sight of it will stir the sexual imagination, we are still not quite free.
Just a few days ago, Margo Kaplan, a law professor, published an article on sexual pleasure and the courts in the Washington Post. I invite you to read the article to understand that Puritan attitudes toward sex still abound. While the courts remain squeamish about sexual pleasure, citizens are moving more toward embracing the benefit of a satisfying sex life.
Please join me in giving thanks for our sexual freedoms, and then take whatever step you can to ensure even more sexual freedom for future Americans.
