By Jack Nichols

In GayToday's current interview I admitted I'd failed to understand why a relatively new gaymale activist group--Sex Panic!—had chosen its peculiar name. But now as the nation's historic sex crisis unfolds, eagerly fed by the hoopla of careless media moralists, the term "Sex Panic" seems not only apropos but, in fact, quite tame. Surely the entire Clintonesque mess is partly, at least, a tragi-comedy. A nervous mother says, "My 7-year old wants to know what's the President's lying about, but please, I don't want to go there." CNN's Bernard Shaw was asked if he'd expected his duties as a journalist might one day include grilling the President of the United States: "Did you have oral sex?" The CNN anchor replied: "No, I never would have expected such a thing." Why, many thinking people want to know, is this sex panic happening? Here, in my opinion, are the reasons: Politics is like that old card game, Three Card Monte. As Gore Vidal well knows, the public is always mesmerized most by just three little words-- terms that savvy publishers call "buzz words." Vidal's choices for the most effective buzz words (as reflected in the title of a collection of his earlier essays) are "Sex, Death, and Money." In the current political "card game," Republicans, backed by big-business-sponsored-media, have pushed the damnable sex card forward, hoping we'll all be distracted by its –excuse the odd phrasing—frontal positioning. Then, while America's attention is diverted by lurid tales of fellatio and cunnilingus in high places, these same vile politicos can cash in the cards they really care about : money and the resulting outcome of its criminal usage: death. Let me explain further. Last Thursday two stories dominated the front page of The New York Times: the Pope's Cuban visit and the emerging White House sex crisis. Needless to say, media personnel covering the Pope jumped quickly on planes, returning to Washington where a better and bigger buzz word, sex, awaited their vulture-culture talents. The Pope, for his part, had been yammering to Cubans about his own version of a sex panic. In his "historic" visit to the Caribbean island that had wisely thrown off his 9th Century shackles, the puritanical pontiff harped on three tired themes: sexual morality, abortion and the overriding "importance" of the reinstitution of Roman Catholic education. The media fawned over the wicked geezer as usual. But in Washington, it appeared, the press had more pressing matters to attend to: more sex, presidential style. As long as the American public can be hoodwinked into ignoring matters of grave importance by petty pied piper sex talk of who's doing who, just so long will we be led like hapless rats over cliffs to our deaths and to the hidden political fleecing of our moneys. Yup, while poor Bill Clinton fights charges that he either received or gave a little pleasure to another adult, the Republican Congress, silent during this stupid political crucifixion of an opposition leader, is also silently sticking—without a condom-- an enormous hot poker into the nation's all-too-willing posterior. While it's the president's sex life we're discussing, every other issue goes not only to back burners, but behind crude screens where nobody knows they exist. The Three Card Monte game is in full swing, and the mesmerizing sex card dazzles sexually-repressed Americans like nothing else can. The French and the Russians are laughing at us, and rightfully so. Proof? Well, the aforementioned issue of the "prestigious" Times (January 22) with its front page blither about both president and pope—sex blab—buries a much more important story on page A-22 : Business Coalition to Fight Legislation on Patients' Rights. Lets just take a peek at this buried issue. The first paragraph tells the whole smokescreened story: "WASHINGTON, Jan. 21—Lobbyists for big business, small business and health insurance companies today unveiled a $1 million campaign to block bi-partisan legislation intended to protect the rights of patients." The news report states that Republican leaders like Representative Dick Armey of Texas and Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi are on the side of the big business lobbyists. Lott, in his Saturday radio address to the nation, implied that President Clinton would bankrupt us with his "liberal" health care benefit programs. Yeah, sure, thanks a lot, Lott, you slimy worm. As I recall it was Texas' biggest asshole, Armey, who referred to Barney Frank as "Barney Fag". Nice, huh? Then, of course, we mustn't forget the now-silent Republican Party's hit man, Kenneth Starr, the $30 million investigator-wonder, the sex-tapes poop snooper. What a creep. So now, dear readers, whose side are you on? Is the president's sex life—his alleged forays into White House broom closets—as important to you as the elimination by big business profiteers--the money-mad-men--of your own healthcare benefits—leading, possibly, to your untimely death? And while one big-time sex panic rages at the White House, another more important story finds the Pentagon trembling too. (See GayToday's "People" feature on Timothy R. McVeigh.) Do you want the Republican party to yank the rug from under you while you're focussed—in this national sex panic-- on silly rumors about White House blow-jobs and such? Do you really care where George Washington slept? Well, I don't.