Safe Sex: The Big Lie

Sex can be hazardous to your health!

by Sean Carter
06/16/05

One of the major problems facing America (besides our inability to pick the correct American Idol) is the proliferation of harmful myths. Not only do we perpetuate fanciful myths like, say, “one man one vote,” but we allow people to feel a sense of legal entitlement about them.

This is certainly the case with the biggest myth of all – safe sex. Most men have been taught to foolishly believe that sex can be safe so long as they wear a condom (and don’t let their wives find out). Well, they’re wrong.

Sadly, a Massachusetts man learned the truth the hard way. Our hapless victim was in the throws of passion when his female lover suddenly switched positions. In the process, she landed awkwardly on him and fractured his penis.

I’m going to go lie down now.

Not surprisingly, our fallen comrade has never quite been the same. Believing that he was “entitled” to safe sex, he took the extraordinary step of suing his former lover for negligence.

Now, I certainly don’t want to be too hard on a guy who has suffered this indignity, but give me a break! You can’t go around suing people for ruining your sex life. If that were the case, we would all be suing our children.

Besides, from a legal standpoint, his case is soft. He claims that his former lover acted without “reasonable care” when she spontaneously switched positions. In other words, she should have looked before she leaped. Furthermore, he claims that she should have warned him beforehand.

Well, that certainly would take all of the fun out of sex, wouldn’t it? Good sex requires a certain level of spontaneity (and not a lot of ambient light). No one wants to make love to someone who sounds like that lady on the GPS systems: “In 15 seconds, I will be turning right.”

The appeals court in Massachusetts agrees with me (although they’ll probably never admit it). Last week, they ruled for the woman in this case. And while they termed their official opinion in legal mumbo jumbo, I suspect their ruling was actually based on the fact that most of them were once single men.

For a single man, it’s difficult enough to get a woman into bed in the first place. Yet, if women were facing lawsuits (in addition to the very real possibility of disappointment), pre-marital sex would become as rare as a Democrat with a backbone; only far more believable to the guys in the locker room.

Furthermore, the judges were concerned about the slippery slope effect. If men could sue for sexual injuries, why not women? The last thing any judge wants is a docket full of cases involving women, all claiming that “he keeps lying on my hair.”

In the end, men and women must accept the risks that accompany sexual relations. This is why I’ve developed the following sexual disclaimer:

I, _____________, being of sound mind and body (except for those 27 shots of tequila), agree that sex with ______________ (assuming that’s his/her real name) could be hazardous to my health. I make this acknowledgment of my own free will and not just because I don’t have any other ride home.

As the old saying goes, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” And, quite frankly, there isn’t anything more desperate than today’s dating scene.

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Sean is a practicing attorney who writes a weekly humor column on current legal events called "Lawpsided." Lawpsided pieces appear in a growing number of general circulation papers across the country, including The Los Angeles Times. Moreover, his musings on the law appear on nationally recognized websites, such as jewishworldreview.com, findlaw.com, newsmax.com and etherzone.com, and legal publications, such as The National Law Journal and The Los Angeles Daily Journal. Lastly, he is a regular contributor to national magazines like Razor and Tirade. If you would be interested in publishing this piece or seeing other samples of his work, please feel free to contact him by e-mail, by phone at (626) 786-2095, or through his website at:

www.lawpsided.com