By Amanda Painter
The Sun is on the Aries Point, where the personal is political. We’re just a few days on the heels of The New York Post’s story on Meghan McCain’s interview with Playboy (she’s the daughter of 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain, and a political contributor for MSNBC and The Daily Beast). And as if on cue, the threads of the big ‘personal/political’ issue of the year — who gets to control sex and sexuality — are in the news yet again. But with a couple of twists.
First, let’s check out a segment of that interview, available in full here. It’s full of down-to-Earth commentary (aside from her assertion that her dad would have had the country in better shape by now if he had been elected president instead of Obama) but what caught my eye was that she calls out the role of sexual repression in political sex scandals:
PLAYBOY: Why do so many politicians get caught up in sex scandals?
MCCAIN: I always say repression breeds obsession. Politicians have to be goody-goodies. They put on this face of perfection and pretend they’re completely above indiscretion. But the more you deny your sexual side, the more it builds up and comes out in inappropriate ways. Not to bring any particular politician into this discussion, but I always find it fascinating that the number one state per capita for downloading porn is Utah. All those pious Mormons and they’re drooling at their laptops all day.
Spoken like a true Scorpio, eh?
In fact, Meghan — who did not pose nude for Playboy, but instead wears a red sequined number while lying on white satin — openly proclaims she likes sex. And why not? It would seem the progressive pro-birth control forces could take a cue from this socially liberal Republican and take a positive stand for liking sex. Should access to birth control for medical purposes be protected? Of course. But when those on the front lines get squeamish or defensive about its use to prevent pregnancies by women who like to have a lot of sex, they do everyone a disservice by playing into the shame-and-guilt trap.
Even worse, pro-women groups run the risk of starting to sound more like Rick Santorum, the presidential candidate who has proven the most rabid in his anti-sex, anti-women crusade, as he proclaims how free he now is from his former porn addiction. That’s right — according to freewoodpost.com yesterday, Santorum told a bunch of Baptists this weekend that he just couldn’t get enough of the stuff — or his own hand: