It’s springtime once again, and it seems like a good time to think about sex. Of course, you young folk out there might say “don’t think about it, just do it!” Yes, however . . . . you’ll be old some day, and you may then come to realize just how much of a delusion sex can be, once you can finally free your mind from the grip of your hormones. As Sophocles said, when age takes the passions away from you, “it is like escaping from the bondage of a raging madman.” But let me be fair about it; if sex leads to true love – and that does occasionally happen – well, then perhaps the charade is worth it. But just as it’s the sun’s rays being reflected, and not the moon itself that lights up the night, the promise of sex is ultimately love. The reality of sex without love is just as barren as the lunar craters.

Anyway, we children of the 1960s turned sex into both a playground and an imagined biological necessity, thanks to the technology and social currents of the times – e.g., birth control, abortion rights and the substitution of psychology for religion. We converted sex into a birthright and a marketing tool. Whooppeeee.

Until perhaps the mid-70s, some old-tyme religion people still lectured that sex was something to be careful with, something that can bring forth the worst of life’s moments as well as the best. But before long, the “free love” ethos had won the day. Not even the most fire-breathing of religious preachers would dare warn their congregations any more about the pitfalls of indiscriminate sexuality. You wouldn’t have a congregation for very long if you did.

The ancient Greeks saw past the thrill (which, as Lord Chesterfield famously noted, is fleeting), in their better moments anyway. They celebrated sex as the source of our species’ renewal, and yet feared it as a source of destruction and death. For example, Sophocles’ fellow tragedian Euripides told a story of Medea and Jason (of Argonauts fame). Medea fell in love with Jason and helped him through his various adventures and battles. Her clairvoyance and herbal potions got him out of some tight situations. And yet, wouldn’t ya know it, Jason decided that trusty old Medea just wasn’t too exciting anymore, and took up with some bimbo (i.e., King Creon’s daughter; ah yes, power and wealth are definitely aphrodisiacs). Well, Medea was still holding the torch for Jason and got into a fit about it. How to avenge such betrayal? She decided to kill their sons. That’ll fix Jason.

The free love people might have responded as follows: “oh come on, that was just an old Greek tale; once we get over our hangups, sex is just as harmless as a teddy bear”. Yea, well – we’re living in a “post-hungup” world, and yet the dark side of sexuality keeps on coming thru (aside from the monkey-wrench that nature threw at “free love”, i.e. AIDS). There’s still way too much rape and domestic violence, mostly perpetrated by men. But even women sometimes show forth their Medea-like qualities. Recently, a jilted woman threatened to kill her rival – which wouldn’t have made the news, but for the setting in which it took place. That setting was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — the bastion of science, rationality and military discipline. Yes, I’m talking about Lisa Nowak, the Space Shuttle veteran who drove 900 miles with a diaper, a knife, a BB gun and some pepper spray, to take on her rival (Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman). When you see the astronauts on TV, floating around up in the heavens, all middle-American and laughing at clean jokes and talking their techie lingo with cool precision, you say wow, this is truly the victory of rationality. These folk are absolutely in control. NASA has obviously picked the coolest of the coolest. Roger that.

But the dark side of sexual passion has finally gotten past the gates of NASA. Bottom line: I think that kids still need to be lectured by adults about that dark side, even though doing so instantly crashes the standing of any such adult in the eyes of today’s youth. It would take guts to speak up, because kids seem to be running the world these days. Their likes and dislikes certainly drive our consumer-oriented economy. And I’ll be the first to admit – I’m not gonna stop the next gaggle of 15 year olds I see walking down my street on a warm spring evening to enlighten them with tales of argonauts and astronauts. No one can do it alone. But parents and teachers and clergypeople who aren’t Christian or Islamic nutcases should really try to explain the two-sidedness of sexuality to young folk. Perhaps a few of them might benefit, even if the majority would just get a laugh out of it.