Double standard on sex show

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Double standard on sex show				February 14, 2009

What a difference a year makes.

Around this time last year William & Mary president Gene Nichol was the recipient of multiple stab wounds, barbs, shots to the head and various other coffin-nail attacks for adhering to the First Amendment and allowing the Sex Workers Art Show to be staged at the college.

Several members of the Board of Visitors were invited to Richmond to be tossed on the grill and barbecued by the putative Pooh-Bahs of Puritanism on the House Education Committee. Soon after came the announcement that the board would not renew Nichol’s contract, and he promptly resigned.

This year the students have invited the sex workers to return to the college and once again reveal everything, or at least everything they know about the sex industry.

Using essentially the same First Amendment arguments that got Nichol into hot water, president Taylor Reveley approved the students’ request, though his sanction is embedded in a rather lengthy and disingenuous statement of demurring disapproval and a somewhat wonky appeal to Thomas Jefferson.

Whatever Jefferson’s reaction to the Sex Workers Art Show might have been, I doubt that he would be clamoring for a debate after the performance. Given his views about the privacy of sex, I suspect he might have excused himself after the appearance of the first boob.

Reveley, however, will not suffer the same slings that jolted Nichol.

In a statement to the press, BOV chairman Michael Powell cooed and schmoozed over Reveley’s decision and announced that “The board is very impressed with how President Reveley has handled this matter. Guided solely by the college’s best interest, he made a clear and timely decision.”

Since this clear and timely decision is the same one Nichol made, you have to wonder why the board thinks that Reveley’s approbation is more in the best interests of the college than that of Nichol. I suspect it was the appeal to Jefferson that did it, but who knows?

Perhaps the board’s reasoning will become more transparent if again this year they’re hauled before some legislative committee to explain themselves.

And that is not entirely out of the question. Much like last year, Del. Brenda Pogge (R-96^th) is red-faced and in full fulmination mode against what she perceives to be the obscenity of the sex show.

Like the Rappster before her, the Pogger has surreptitiously made a nighttime raid on the herd of snoozy Bill Barlow and rustled his Williamsburg dogies into her district. As a result, dismayed students are writing her letters and making clear their disgust for the vile corporeal revelations that the sex workers are foisting on unsuspecting chastity-belted coeds and their monastic male counterparts. Or so she says.

What drives Pogge to embarrass both herself and her constituents by engaging in such puerile juvenilia is hard to say. It is, I suppose, the same quirky hormonal misfire that moves all too many delegates on the right to micromanage the sexual and social lives of apparently debauched Virginians. It’s as though these delegates have seen too many Eugene O’Neill plays and are bent upon proving that sex and nudity constitute one immensely painful psychic boil.

What with all the economic and budgetary problems facing the legislature this year, you would think that delegates would be attuned to the fact that their priorities do not include drafting insipid letters to college presidents about sex workers they have never met or sex industry shows they have never seen.

Obviously people like Pogge need adult supervision when it comes to matters legislative.

In this case, she might well consult Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3^rd), who, despite his personal disapproval of the sex show, has creditably argued that the legislature should butt out of such matters and let colleges manage their own affairs.

“I don’t think it’s my role as a legislator to second-guess the governance of the college by the Board of Visitors or the president,” said Norment.

I couldn’t agree more. Given the slash and burn techniques being used by the governor and the legislature to cut what meager funds they normally give to state colleges and universities, I should think that legislators like Pogge would be too overwhelmingly embarrassed to have contact with any college president about anything.

Despite Pogge’s efforts, it seems clear that the sex show will go on, if indeed the sex workers are still in business. Like their website, they may well be on hiatus.

What still remains unclear, however, is why this year the Sex Workers Art Show is inexplicably in the best interests of the college, whereas last year it helped lead to the downfall of a president. I suspect Gene Nichol might be asking himself the same question.