Don’t cry for Mark Sanford, take a stand for privacy instead

$700 million dollars was the amount of money that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford wanted to refuse from the stimulus package. $700 million for failing South Carolina schools, for underpaid teachers, for jobs. His rationale was that he didn’t want the federal government interfering in South Carolina’s affairs. He now has the national media’s attention not on South Carolina’s affairs, but on his own.

I never had much sympathy for Mark Sanford. Yet watching him ramble and apologize, over and over again, for the extramarital affair that led him to disappear for six days, for the first time he appeared human. The man willing to deny money to the schoolchildren of his state, more concerned with paying down its debt, has a heart after all.

The only lasting impression from the man at the podium that day was that he was deeply, obsessively in love—so much so that he was willing to drop everything and fly to Argentina, bailing on his job and his family, on such short notice that his wife and his staffers even told press they had no idea where he was. And when he got back, got busted at the airport by reporters doing a little bit of shoe-leather journalism (wish they’d do more when sex isn’t the scandal du jour, but then again isn’t it always), he dropped all pretense and simply, for once, told it like it was to Americans.

There was no macho posturing (“I did not have sex with that woman”) or stoic statement with a speedy exit. There was no wife by his side. There were red eyes and an admission of crying in Argentina—the line that spawned a thousand headlines. Media experts called it a trainwreck, and gleeful Democrats Twittered with schadenfreude at the downfall of another presidential hopeful.

As a former South Carolinian who despises Sanford and all his moralistic crap, I too at first was thrilled to see his downfall. Though his replacement, if he does step down, is no better—the odious Andre Bauer, who is trying to ooze his way into the governor’s office any way he can, is so controversial that he almost lost office to a Democrat in 2006 in this reddest of red states (The lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor and indeed, Sanford’s wife endorsed Bauer’s primary rival in ’06).

Aside from strategy, though—I’d rather have Sanford remain in office and have a chance to put in a Democrat in 2010 than see Bauer try to prove he’s not a complete screwup—I don’t want to win this way. I don’t want electoral victory or anything else to rest on the sex lives of politicians. Personal relationships—and politics—are hard enough without the added inducement to hypocrisy and lies.

So I’m not going to read Mark Sanford’s emails to his Argentinean girlfriend. It’s tempting, but I think that however loathsome his politics are—and they are—he deserves his privacy. He deserves to have his love and the fleeting moments of happiness that he spoke tearfully about.

I’m not going to write about his use of state funds to fly to Argentina to see his “dear, dear friend.” I’m not going to cackle over his wife’s pointed barbs about his career or moan loudly over what will become of the children.

That’s right, I’m taking a stand. Not a stand in support of Mark Sanford, but in support of a healthier national discourse about sex, which we Americans simultaneously overvalue and undervalue. We love to obsess over the sex lives of politicians, to read Sanford’s emails and the salacious details in the Starr Report. We have seen in recent months sex scandals hit politicians good, bad and ugly, from Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards, from Larry Craig to John Ensign and David Vitter. We’ve seen some of them weather the tempest, while others drop off the national stage. And I want an end to this.

There’s a tradeoff I want, of course. I want certain politicians to stop harping about family values and the sanctity of marriage. I want them to stay the hell out of my bedroom and I in turn will wholeheartedly defend their right to do what they want in their own.

I want, most of all, for all of us to take a long, hard look at our own messy relationships and understand that what has happened to these men—and so far they are all men, but that won’t last forever—could happen to any of us. That rules, Biblical or otherwise, simply don’t apply to affairs of the heart or the bedroom.

It’s not only Republican politicians who think they have a right to judge others’ behavior, after all. We all do it. And absolutely none of us, not even the marriage counselors and clergy members among us, are qualified to do so. It’s simply too complicated. How many of us haven’t had a relationship that straddled several lines, bent a few rules back slowly, tested the tension, felt it snap? How many haven’t felt burning loneliness in an unhappy relationship, or perversely shattered a happy, healthy one simply because we could?

We live in a tabloid culture where Jon and Kate’s divorce is big news and the death of Michael Jackson drives even a juicy, messy political sex scandal off the pages. Other people’s relationships are our business, right? We talk about sex constantly, but are freaked out by honest discussions of it. Being a sex educator is enough to get you scorned by mainstream reporters, and 10% or so of women have never had an orgasm.

When we do talk about sex, half the time we’re talking about the rules, not about the pleasure, the desire, or even the problems, deep and personal, that everyone has. Young girls shouldn’t have sex. Sex toys are illegal. Am I doing this right? Is this normal?

It’s so time-consuming to wonder over and over if you’re living up to someone else’s idea of what your sex life ought to look like. It’s exhausting to stare up at the ceiling for a moment, outside of your own body, calculating the risk of your actions and forgetting what’s going on at that moment that might be worth all that risk—that might make that teary press conference a small price to pay for happiness. Or perhaps the obsession, the taboos might make it more exciting, more thrilling in the first place.

We have the same conversation every time a politician comes forward and admits his adventures outside of marriage. The public ritual and its aftermath is familiar by now. If you appear humble enough, you might be able to crawl back into the spotlight, but you’ll forever be asked questions about your sex life during interviews that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. It’s happened so many times recently that it’s almost boring by now. And until we can talk about sex like adults, acknowledge nuance, complexity, and the fact that some things are just none of our damn business, we’re going to keep having the same conversation.