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Signs of testosterone overload
Another sex scandal has made the news involving a well-known politician and this is the most amazing one yet. Anthony Weiner, a Democratic congressman from New York and a leading voice of his party, has resigned after texting and emailing sexual messages and revealing photos of himself to several different women. Weiner is married and his wife is expecting. When the details first became public, he did what most people do. He lied about it, saying that someone had evidently hacked into his account. As more women came forward saying they had received the same kinds of messages and photos, he knew he was fighting a losing battle and eventually admitted his transgressions.
So another politician ends his career because of his sexual misdeeds, following in the footsteps of John Ensign, Erick Massa, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Mark Foley, Jim McGreevey, Kwame Kilpatrick, Mark Souter, Eliot Spitzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger to name a few and the same question is asked that is always asked. Why do they do it?
The male sex drive is the strongest drive there is and it's present in every species. It's fueled by testosterone and it's present because if a species is going to survive, it has to reproduce prodigiously and that's why we're all still here. Sexual desire appears early in our lives and it never goes away unless we have a medical malady. Many studies have reported that the average college male thinks about sex every fifteen seconds and it doesn't diminish that much as we get older.
Now obviously, it's one thing to think about it and another totally different thing to act on it and that's what got these people just named in trouble. While Newt Gingrich was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for infidelity, he was having his own affair while his wife was in the hospital with cancer. John Edwards, while a candidate for president, had a long running affair and a love child with a woman while his wife was battling cancer too, a condition she eventually died of.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had an affair with his maid which resulted in another love child being born while he was married to Maria Shriver. These were important men, powerful men, affluent men, who lacked the self-control to deny their desires.
Testosterone therapy is now given even to women with low sex drives and reports indicate it is extremely effective. I personally know a woman who underwent these treatments and it changed her life completely. At least in regards to sexual matters, she quickly began thinking and acting more like a man than a woman.
This is why celibacy in the priesthood and among pastors so often fails. A man may wish to not think about sex, but his strong, biological drive overwhelms that wish and it can't be extinguished because the drive is more powerful than the mind.
So the obvious question is can we expect sex scandals to continue to interrupt our tender sensibilities? Of course we can because there's no on-off switch to sexual desire. Combine that with the power, control, affluence and influence of powerful people who have giant egos and it's a recipe for disaster, at least where they're concerned.
You can take man out of the cave but you can't take the cave out of man.