Showing our support for good personal hygiene and sexual decorum aren't the reasons why civil libertarians, lefties and sex radicals should be rallying to Howard Stern's side, however. (Though you never know when you might wind up in bed with a Stern fan.) At bottom, this is an issue that transcends Howard Stern's right to obsess over lesbian sex acts and the size of his own penis on the radio five mornings a week. It's also bigger than the right of his millions of listeners to enjoy his brand of humor and, as we've seen, learn valuable lessons. We should be concerned because what's being done to Howard Stern is part of a concerted effort by religious and cultural conservatives to stamp out the sexual openness that has come to define mainstream culture over the last 20 years.

Frank and explicit talk about human sexuality became a virtue in the wake of the AIDS epidemic that hit in the early 1980s. The United States had already been through a sexual revolution, but mainstream culture -- television, radio and film -- preferred to focus solely on the social impact of the sexual revolution (see "Love American Style," "Three's Company," et al.), avoiding all talk of actual sex. It wasn't until a new and fatal sexually transmitted disease emerged that Americans were forced to discuss not just the sex we were supposed to be having (heterosexual, missionary, procreative), but the sex many of us were actually having (hetero and homo; oral, vaginal and anal; procreative and recreational). AIDS forced Americans to start having open, honest conversations about sex and desire. It was an adult conversation about sex, and like all adult conversations about sex it involved a lot of humor. Dying is easy, as the AIDS epidemic made clear. Talking about sex is hard -- and the sudden need to talk about sex in the wake of AIDS opened the door not just to condom commercials on television and safe-sex pamphlets in our mailboxes, but sexually explicit humor on "Friends," "Sex and the City," and Howard Stern's radio show.

So now Howard Stern is in trouble for talking about sex like an adult, for using humor, and for doing it on the radio -- something he's been doing for more than a decade, something he was celebrated for doing until very recently. Stern didn't say or do anything obscene -- not by the standards of the communities where his show is aired, and certainly not by the standards of the people who tune in to his program. George W. Bush's version of "the feds" are after Stern for what he symbolizes -- the '90s' sexual openness, frank and humorous discussion of desire -- and Stern is not the only one they're persecuting. The through-the-looking-glass treatment of Janet Jackson after the Super Bowl, the Justice Department's ongoing investigation of mainstream porn producers, the prosecution of a woman in Texas for selling sex toys -- these are all dots that someone needs to connect to the treatment of Stern. And the right's culture warriors are not just moving against sex: Tommy Chong is in jail for selling a few bongs while Rush Limbaugh, abuser of maids and illegal drugs, is walking around a free man.

Perhaps this is a "First they came for Howard Stern ..." piece. And it's time for those of us who value the freedom of adults to speak in public, and value the idea that not everything on radio or television (or the Internet) has to be suitable for children, to speak up. After all, what the hell good is free speech if you can't speak freely about swamp ass?

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