As some of you know, I write about sex news for the Sex Feed on Sex Is. Which means I spend at least a couple hours a day up to my eyeballs in news about something loosely or wholly pertaining to sex. The good, the bad and the horrifically painful. I get to watch from the front lines as this battle for the right to a “sex-positive culture” unfolds before me in news outlet after news outlet. It’s riveting, and terrifying, and never fails to keep me on the edge of my seat. Until it lulls, as the news tends to do, into stories about spiders that practice sex until they’re mature enough to mate and email chains that insist Disney predicted the Royal Wedding.

You wanna know a secret? Before I started reading and writing about sex news, I had no idea our culture was so afraid of sexuality.

I mean, come on! One of the most used phrases in the advertising world in these united states is “Sex sells!”. Commercials these days are full of men and women wearing next to nothing, fawning all over each other and shaking their rumps like it’s nobody’s business. Hell, we’re even marketing sneakers to make you sexier and padded push-up bikini tops to little girls.

Oh, my mother is rather conservative, and she often told me, growing up, of all the things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite company. Even the least obtrusive public displays of affection made her cringe in humiliation.

But my dad is another story entirely. Though he’s a redheaded Republican Texan who spent the better part of his adult years serving Uncle Sam, “professionalism” and “decorum” were things for the office, and not for home. Hell, sometimes Dad left his decorum at the office entirely, not caring if someone was on the aisle he was when he acted really silly, or snatched Mom up for a lasting kiss, or talked about his (or our) bathroom habits. So I think through him, I got the impression that Mom, and the people like her, were the end of an era.

God, how I wish that were true.

The fact of the matter is, it’s not getting any better out there. Granted, lawmakers aren’t knocking down our doors and arresting all of us for sexual deviancy, but they are passing laws restricting breastfeeding in the name of public decency and trying to overturn domestic partnership protections. In Massachusetts, they’re trying to restrict who people involved in divorce proceedings can have sex with and when. People are figuratively lynching government officials over sex-related conferences they didn’t even know about until after they were over and school employees reported to be a-fucking-mazing at their jobs are being fired and harassed over careers in erotica and porn.

It seems the more we try to open the eyes and minds of those of us who still view sex as something that is distasteful and/or frightening, the tighter they close up, and the harder they cling to the myths that prove sex’s taboo nature. And you’ve gotta wonder … Who’s to blame?

Is it our fault? Are we pushing too hard, or not hard enough? How many of us still avoid the conversation worried our knowledge and openness will be too much for our friends and families to digest? Who among us still hides behind a “PG” persona to avoid offending the people who haven’t reached our stage of enlightenment, yet? Have we gotten so used to having to pretend we’re something we’re not in polite company that we’re content to keep the knowledge that sex is natural and normal and beautiful and awesome hidden away from the people we’re convinced wouldn’t understand? And really, what gives us the right to do that?

Maybe it’s the GOP’s fault? It’s so easy to lay blame on a bunch of straight cisgender white men who are so long in their political career that they’ve forgotten what their office is supposed to represent. They’re uber conservative. Some would have a heart attack and die on the spot if they found a site like this one where people talk openly about sex and relationships. Surely, it’s their fault we, as a country, are so afraid to talk about sex?

Maybe we’re all just scared? Maybe for all our insistence that sex is natural, we’re petrified of what will happen if we all let go of the taboos? Who knows, right?

What I do know is if the climate keeps heading the direction it is, I’m a little afraid for our collective sexual futures. I’m not at all interested in sex à la Demolition Man, you know?