The 90's Rise Of The American Libido

It certainly seems that every decade has its own center of gravity. In the post war 50’s, New York, both the city and its suburbs, defined howAmerica lived.

In the 60’s the Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, became the cultural hub of anti-war free expression.

In the 70’s that creative energy moved down the coast, as Los Angeles became a beacon of post urban America, along with a new wave of Hollywood films that held up a mirror up to the changing social and cultural landscape.

The 80’s gave us Reagan and Thatcher and AIDS, as the locus shifted to a more conservative Washington.

Then the 90’s happened. What Vanity Fair editor and filmmaker David Friend has labeled The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido We had our first Baby Boomer President. Sex and self absorption were everywhere, and they were not just being talked about, but being acted upon. From Wall Street to Washington to California, sex was the coin of the realm. It inflamed the culture wars in ways that are still impacting us today.

My conversation with David Friend:

We'll always have sex?

It seems as if creative destruction and technology are changing everything...even sex.

This may be problematic given the degree to which sex is connected to everything else; marketing, relationships, essentially all forms of human interaction. As Emily Witt says, “we organize our society around the way we define our sexual relationships.”

The inflection point at which all these forces are coming together, is in part what Emily Witt writes about in her new book Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love.  Yet even in that future, as Woody Allen so aptly said..."we all need the eggs."

My conversation with Emily Witt:

Dan Savage on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics

Few controversial issues in contemporary American life have seen the kind of rapid sea change in public opinion that we’ve witnessed on the subject of gay marriage. In fact, recent polls show almost 60% of the American public, in support or acceptance of same-sex marriage. Even members of the GOP, like Sen Rob Portman and numerous party operatives, have expressed support.

The gay magazine The Advocate had a recent cover saying that “gay is the new black.” But is this debate really similar to race, or does the issue have its own politics, tied to broader themes of sexuality? And if so, how will this current debate impact these broader issues of sex and sexuality and might it perhaps move us beyond American puritanism.

Standing for years on the ramparts of all of these issues is prominent sex advice columnist Dan Savage, most recently the American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics.
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My conversation with Dan Savage:

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