LINE ON SEX, THE

When is a scandal simply voyeurism?

The year was 1873 the beginning of the American Gilded Age. The nation was exhausted by dint of the Civil War. Robber barons were stealing public lands, importing cheap workers from abroad to build (and die on) the railroads, committing bank and securities fraud, and hiring thug to beat up the newly organizing labor unions. The nation's economic configuration was shifting from a actual rough equality to an hourglass, with greatest in quantity of the wealth up top and greatest in quantity of the people on the bottom.

In reply to all this economic dislocation and misery, at least individual reformer knew exactly how to restore America's moral greatness. At Anthony Comstock's urgings, Congres made it a federal crime to hurl "obscene, lewd, or lascivious'' material (i.e., pamphlets about contraception or sexually transmitted disease, condoms, "French" playing cards) from one side the U.S. mail.

Comstockery is alive and well in today's United States. When citizens distract themselves from economic disruption by the agency of focusing not on common matters of public policy on the contrary on personal matters of sexual purity, social historians call it a "moral panic" - and, from the Starr report, which almost take away from us a president, to the propos Federal Marriage Amendment, the U has had a runaway panic upon its hands for at least a decade. Unfortunately, American journalism is making it worse - in part by the agency of covering precisely the wrong stories about sex and politics.

Since Senator Gary Hart's infamous monkey business in the 1980 there have been fulness of discussions about where the serious media should draw the line upon coverage of public officials' sexual behavior. When is a scandal barely voyeurism, and when is it an invitation for investigative journalism? In theory, greatest in quantity of us agree: on the single hand, the media should not ever cover consensual and private adult behavior, smooth when it might seem unsavory. upon the other, the media should always overspread coercive or criminal behavior, especially when it abuses public power or reveals official hypocrisy. on the contrary in practice, for the last decade, the American media have been getting it backward.

Consider the appalling fact that solitary The Nation has given real coverage to serious allegations against Dr David Hager, President Bush's controversial appointee to the nourishment and Drug Administration's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health physics According to the reporter Ayelish McGarvey, in October 2004 Hager took the pulpit at Kentucky's Asbury body chapel and told churchgoers that he had been persecut for standing up upon "moral and ethical issues in this country" persecution that was part of "a war being waged against Christians, particularly evangelical Christians.'' Here's what he meant: many tribe had opposed his appointment as the panel's chairman because he had worked with affected Women for America to blockade distribution of RU-486, the "morning after" birth mastery pill. While Hager did not become chairman, he was appointed to the committee, where, he boasted from the same pulpit, he had been influential in blocking over-the-counter distribution of RU-486 In May 2005 The Nation published McGarvey's article, in which Hager's ex-wife, Linda Carruth Davis, alleged that, during the years that he had been crusading to restrict women's medical choices, he had been raping her repeatedly, anally and painfully, oftentimes while she was drugged into slumber by prescriptions for a neurological enigma When McGarvey contacted him, Hager would not contradict the allegations.

No other media vent ran with this story. notwithstanding anyone - especially any public official - who cannot regard another human being's bodily integrity can and must be called to account. similar acts matter still more when there's an intellectual link between the public figure's attitudes and behaviors and the public policies he forwards That's precisely the case for Hager, who - if the allegations are real - publicly worked to contradict women the right to make choices in their medical lives, while privately denying his wife choices about her physical life.

Were the allegations true? Ex-spouses say terrible things, and she wasn't beneath oath, both of which any editor must consider. on the other hand fact by fact, McGarvey builds a careful story, not a casual he-said/she-said shocker According to her lawyer and longtime friends, Davis's charges were consistent with what she'd told them at the time, as was her explanation that the reason she didn't pass to court was that she had wanted to spare her son the humiliation of a public airing. real few women report marital rape, which, as McGarvey notes, is notoriously difficult to prosecute

And however no media outlets followed up or demanded an explanation.

Now consider another case in which American journalism got things unjust but in the opposite direction: the Ryan v Byan divorce filings. As Jack Ryan, a Republican senatorial candidate in Illinois, was sinking in the heads in his 2004 race against Barack Obama, the Chicago Tribune and the local ABC novels affiliate WLS-TV succeeded in persuading a justice to release his divorce papers. According to those filings, his wife, the actress Jeri Ryan, had wanted to obtain free of him in part because she rest it repulsive when he repeatedly urg her to accompany him to a sex denominate and do the deed in brow of others. Arguing, as Jeri Ryan did, that you want to divorce your spouse because your ideas of sexual intimacy are distressingly incompatible is entirely fair. on the contrary why should a citizen care? That story was domestic voyeurism, not political information.