Glasnost and the Condom

...Anyhow, none of us was sure how to pronounce the word...

...Should Washington refuse to back up Gorbachev against hardliners in the Politburo by acceding to Soviet desires on arms control, the argument runs, that shows the true ambitions of American militarism...

...And how did you spell it...

...Those who have raised their voices against the imprisonment of Soviet citizens have to feel good that some of them have been released— even as they demand that Moscow move further, ever further on the path of liberalization...

...They remind one of weak-kneed kids sidling up to the drug store counter to buy those rubbers and then bragging about the purchase all over the neighborhood...

...The only form of defense that gets their juices churning is abortion...

...Many American youths came to maturity thinking that "Trojan" or "rubber" or something much ruder was the proper name for the little items one dreamed of using some day, even as they crumbled into dust in one's watch pocket or wallet...

...About that they are very aggressive...

...Through Glasnost Darkly While Reagan Administration officials (or what remains of them) appear to be panting for a return to pre-1960s closed-in attitudes toward sexual propriety and promiscuity, Soviet officials are moving nervously toward an openness unknown in the Kremlin since the lamented Nikita S. Khrushchev allowed that Stalin had been a butcher...

...Nobody I knew ever asked for a pack of condoms...

...Nonetheless, the release of scores of malcontents from prison and exile, and the use of newspapers to report at least some news are notable innovations in the Soviet system...

...The only shield they're willing to buy is Star Wars...

...He can't understand why everybody can't live up to his example...

...Every new face in the Kremlin, even if it is an old one, gives this cadre an excuse for hope and a missile to fire at the Pentagon...

...The reaction in this country has been peculiarly predictable...

...There are ways to encourage the movement, short of buying the Soviet package on the salt negotiations or nonnegotiations...

...As for the confounding condom controversy, spare the morality...

...they have become the item of choice in protecting oneself from the perils of random encounters, and every TV anchorperson now has condom on her lips...

...If the Russians charge that the condom is an aggressive, not a defensive weapon, the amenable Left will come out against condoms...

...Since nobody had ever seen it in print, most of us thought there was a "u" in it somewhere...

...Those who are willing to risk their lives for the art of sex may belong in psychiatric institutions, along with those, like the Reverend Bennett, who would endanger the lives of others for some religious or ideological precept...

...There was something powerful about the word...

...Some of them thought the television series Amerika was Left-wing propaganda because it didn't show the Russian conquerors castrating U.S...

...Forthem, it is easier to make Somicistas into freedom fighters than to make babies...

...He's the fellow who performed the abortion on liberation theology...

...See the Nation for the latest variations...

...It's a case of prophylaxis versus esthetics...

...These people consider Howard Baker a Lefty...

...These tough guys have always preferred the Trojan missile to the Trojan of love...

...Some object to the condom's use for preventing conception, as required by the Lord as reward or punishment for copulation...

...Let's have all kinds of exchanges—merchandise, people, ideas —on the reasoning that openness is always good for democracy, good for the peoples of the Soviet Union, good for us...

...What turns the Cardinal on is sex, with a capital X. Anybody who dares to do certain forms of research with embryos, announces the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "usurps the place of God.' The Congregation exists to keep God in his place...

...The actions of Party General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev under his much heralded glasnost have so far not been revolutionary...

...If the Russians shoot down a Korean airliner, blame the CIA...

...it would have been tantamount to smoking a sissy cigarette brand like Kools...

...But the moralistic minority is outraged...

...it didn't flow comfortably off the tongue...

...Over on the distant Left, those who have always harbored a soft spot for the Soviet experiment and would much rather spill their indignation on the cruelties of Chile's Augusto Pinochet than those of Cuba's Fidel Castro are using glasnost as a weapon in their customary attack on Washington...

...Bythe 1960s, what with the diaphragm and the pill and the IUD and the vasectomy and oral sex and Aid to Dependent Children benefits, the condom suffered a severe decline...

...Ideology sheaths the hard Right from contamination just as it does their adversaries on the Left...

...It would be a more striking argument if it were a first-strike effort, if the same people had not already been making it long before glasnost, when "Gulag" was still the most popular word around the Kremlin...

...You remember Cardinal Ratzinger...

...Their attitude is wait-and-don't-see...

...The more intercourse, the better— but don't throw away the condoms...

...The Ideology of Intercourse And see The New Leader for the enlightened liberal line...

...When the USSR shows signs of bringing its troops back to its own borders and taking the heat off Eastern and Central Europe, that will be the time for us to rethink the nature of our commitment to the defense of Western Europe and our own defense...

...For generations in this country, the condom was no more common or respectable a noun than glasnost was in the Soviet Union, where dreams of openness were evidence of mental instability and a ticket to the nearest booby hatch...

...Everything Washington says is suspect...

...He wants self-restraint in close encounters, particularly ofthethirdkind.Heis horrified by the notion of all these youngsters running around doing all those things with each other, without even raising their hands to leave the room...

...he still has a couple of hundred years or so of history to go to approach Western standards of human rights...

...The American way is to advertise condoms like mad, let the Trojan people make money, let consenting and informed adults (which in the condom context means informing teenagers) take or resist their pleasure as they see it, and to concentrate on making the world a little safer—by curing AIDS and reaching a sensible arms deal with the Soviet Union...

...whatever those Russkies do, it's strictly to dupe soft-minded Americans...

...He attends church, just like Colonel Norjh...

...Despite efforts to engorge the market by turning out pastelcolored boutique rubbers guaranteed to drive both parties mad with passion, the industry shriveled...

...As they see it, the condom is a devious means of getting around venereal disease, nature's way of saying no-no—and AIDS is the pervert's way of bringing condoms in through the back door...

...It's not that he likes AIDS more, only that he likes unauthorized sex less...

...Some simply find the notion of humans having fun without paying for it appalling...

...it gave a teenager the feeling that he had more muscles than he had...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Glasnost and the Condom The hot words this season, as registered by their appearances in newspaper headlines and their mispronunciations by television anchorfolk, are "glasnost" and "condom...

...In the drug store, after making sure the druggist's wife wasn't on duty, waiting for all other customers to depart with their innocent purchases and taking courage from your pals, you'd walk up to the counter and mumble, "Trojans...

...Nothing Gorbachev does or fails to do can much affect their hatred of Communism, whatever that is at the moment, just as nothing that South Africa does or fails to do can much affect their sneaking sympathy for Pretoria...

...In accord with the experience that no ailment is without its up side, Trojans are ballooning again...

...the condom, as we have lately discovered, has to do with covering up...

...But whatever you called it, with that little packet (three for a quarter, pure rubber, in foil) in your possession, you were a warrior of sex, Mars ready for Venus— although if opportunity actually struck, who had the aplomb, not to mention the restraint, to begin fussing with one's wallet and so forth...

...Many of the people they wanted out of jail are out, but they are spreading no seeds of joy...

...Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger especially doesn't like artificial fertilization and embryo transfer...

...Both have aroused controversy and are bound to be on the agenda of the next summit meeting, just as soon as the United States has a President again...

...Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, who often confuses the school desk with the church pew, finds the condom, so to speak, distasteful...

...See the National Review for the latest variations...

...Where the United States is concerned, these folks suffer from premature excoriation...

...On the hard Right, those who have been loudest in expressing outrage over Moscow's treatment of Jews and dissenters are remarkably restrained about the Gorbachevian change...

...Then came AIDS, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome...

...Anything Moscow does gets the benefit of the doubt...

...The demands of the regime's mouthpieces, over American television, that this country respond to its new openness by lying down and rolling over are parodie even by Soviet standards...

...patriots...

...But that is the Russian way...

...The Vatican objects not only to contraception but to most artificial meansof encouraging conception...

...The President is, no doubt, troubled that birth control might have deprived the nation of a great hockey player or a hero like Colonel North or even of Saint Nancy...

...Glasnost, as we all know now, means something like opening up...