Let's Talk About Sex

            Today in literary magazine, we got in a discussion about self-censorship.
            The disputed poem, in my opinion, could be taken as purely innocent or purely sexual*.  It has a sexual connotation, true, but no sexual denotation except "bare".  "Pure", "fill me", "weight upon me"... if the title had been "Water" then there would be no fuss.
            The offended were uncomfortable with the image.  True, it was the most sexual—suggesting a body pressed on the speaker's own.  However, when we've let violence and drug use into our magazine, a ten-line poem about purity and (presumably) sex seems to get unjust attention and criticism.  But it's not like this is anything new.  I wrote about basically the same thing when this happened last year.
            I just... why is our culture so screwed up?  Somehow we're fine with anything dripping with blood, but implied sexual content?—No, can't have that! 
            It ended up with a disagreement of how it fits in with school policy.  The policy of Jordan School District is abstinence-only sex ed.  However, the policy of schools nation-wide is also that we can't have knives or guns or drugs, but we've accepted related work.  The policy of the United States is the separation of church and state, but we have plenty of poems about God.
            We're a high school publication.  Students take things from their lives to apply to their art.  I promise, not all high schoolers are virgins, or pacifists, or atheists.
            I don't know how sex is worse than anything else.  "We need to protect the innocent!"  Anyone who knows anything about Chasms should know it's traditionally not an "innocent" magazine.  This is actually the most innocent issue I have ever seen.  We're all in high school.  It's obviously not a picture book to read to 5-year-olds before bed.  Know when we actually sold copies of the magazine?  When it was "banned".  For being offensive.  And still, we are absolutely nowhere near that. 
            I'm sorry I don't see why we should be so wary of implied sexual content.
            I'm sorry, please excuse me while I flip a table.
            Write about sex, for heaven's sake.  Have sex, if you want.  Sex can be safe.  You know what isn't, though?  Cutting yourself.  Chopping off feet.  Murder.  I've read all of that, this year.  Why the hell are we so offended by sex?  Our desensitization to violence and our hyper-sensitivity to anything sexual breeds ignorance and a powerful affinity to creating a cold distance of self from reality.
            Hello, America. 

*We have such a hyper-sexualization of virginity in our culture. I don't believe that "innocence" is the same thing as "virginity", but culture dictates that anyone not a virgin is a mother or a slut.  Double-standard alert: being "innocent" is also "sexy".