Keeping People in the Dark

In the NY Times, Frank Rich writes that Channel 13, New York's public broadcasting channel, refused to air a spot promoting the movie "Kinsey," a bio-pic about the sex researcher from the 1950s. Rich goes on to argue that our culture today is all-too-similar to the repressive culture of that era: "'Kinsey' is an almost uncannily helpful guide to how these old cultural fault lines have re-emerged from their tomb, virtually unchanged."

It is so dangerous to allow children to be exposed, everywhere, all the time, to media messages glorifying sex - and then to deny them basic education regarding how to exercise their sexuality in a healthy, safe manner. Here's more from Rich:

No matter what the censors may accomplish elsewhere, the pop culture revolution since Kinsey's era is in little jeopardy: in a nation of "Desperate Housewives," "Too Darn Hot" has become the national anthem. A movie like "Kinsey" will do just fine; the more protests, the more publicity and the larger the box office. But if Hollywood will always survive, off-screen Americans are being damaged by the cultural war over sex that is being played out in real life. You see that when struggling kids are denied the same information about sexuality that was kept from their antecedents in the pre-Kinsey era; you see that when pharmacists in more and more states enforce their own "moral values" by refusing to fill women's contraceptive prescriptions and do so with the tacit or official approval of local officials; you see it when basic information that might prevent the spread of lethal diseases is suppressed by the government because it favors political pandering over scientific fact.