Orgasm a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Saw this on HuffPo today, hidden down towards the bottom of the page. Apparently Britain's National Health Service has begun a new educational campaignpromoting the idea that "school pupils [...] have a 'right' to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health." The new campaign's tag line, "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away," is beautifully crafted, aesthetically simple, and dripping with a Dionysian reality that is often suppressed by the enormous stick that seems to be up the worlds butt. And though telling school children that sex is indeed a beautiful and enjoyable activity, and only results in baby making if you are stupid about "doin' it," is a step towards removing that stick that seems so stuck, there are still haters out there who are a)clearly not getting enough, and b)insistent upon projecting their sex starved rigidity on the rest of us.

A British physician opposed to the campaign had this to say:

'If you look at the people who come into my surgery, it's the orgasm that got them there - not kept them away,' he said. 'It is unbelievable that this is being sent to schools.

'I'd like to know what scientific evidence there is to back this up. There are an awful lot of overpaid and under-occupied health promotion officers around who are obsessed with sex.

'This leaflet encourages the idea that there is nothing more to sex than pleasure, and inciting underage sex is doing nothing less than encouraging child abuse.

'If the NHS wants to promote a healthy heart, as it says it does in this leaflet, it should put the money into reducing smoking and alcohol - which cause far more cardiac damage than encouraging people to have sex.

'The strapline I'd have is - sex is an adult activity. Underage sex is as dangerous as underage drink and usually leads to sexual ill-health.'

There are so many points of contention here. First of all, to the idea that there is "nothing more to sex than pleasure:" Sex is pleasurable, if you do it right, and frankly, if world leaders were having great sex, I would venture to say we would have less wars on our hands. Not even sure where he's going with the child abuse thing. That's almost to absurd to fend off. Now, to the idea that putting "money into reducing smoking and alcohol:" We spend far too much time and energy telling people what not to do, rather than encouraging healthy behaviors.

Treating sex as an illicit drug has led us perhaps to perpetuate that its consequences remain unspoken, swept under the rug, and demonized as wholly other and outside accepted social mores. Were we to celebrate sex rather than demonize it (and I'm not talking about American Apparel ads, which simply prey on our societal unease concerning sex), I imagine a lot less pregnant teenagers, a lot less single mothers, lower rates of STDs, and a lot more shit-eating I just had the best sex of my life grins.