Changes in attitudes about sex are rare but from time to time they occur. Recently, I was stunned when a number of mainstream news media carried the story about the lawsuit in Alabama challenging a 1998 law forbidding the sale of personal vibrators (female sex toys). This may not seem like progress but it is.

Who would have thought that we could actually talk about sexual things and do so with humor. Surprisingly, not only did comedians like Jay Leno and Bill Maher pick up on the story but so did all the major news networks. Only Nightline is needed to make the coverage complete.

When I was a sophomore in college in 1969, I saw the play Hair in NYC. This irreverent musical began with the lead character coming on stage and repeating the F word over and over for what seemed like an eternity but was actually only about three minutes. At first, the audience was silent; then they squirmed uncomfortably. As time passed, giggles broke out and finally the theater was rolling in laughter. What started out as offensive wound up as hilarious...and something else. I doubt if anyone who attended that performance was ever offended by that word again. This was my first consciousness raising experience about my own immature and easily embarrassed sexual attitudes.

This year, perhaps because of the droning of Ken Starr and Henry Hyde, our country has experienced another attitude altering experience involving sex. Maybe because it has been in the news so much we have become less shocked by it. Now, perhaps, we will be able to talk more realistically about sex and look honestly at the absurdities of our own repressive beliefs. For example, recently on a T.V. show, when the Alabama's attorney general defended the anti sex toy law by saying that the state had the prerogative to protect its citizens from "harmful products," panelists reasonably asked what threat could a vibrator pose?

In fact, as a therapist I have often recommended the use of personal vibrators for women who suffered from orgasmic dysfunction, with remarkable success. Indeed, some of the most grateful letters and phone calls I have ever received have been from thankful women and their husbands who were thrilled with the results.

Far from harmful, vibrators are good things. Unlike other medical prescriptions, there are no dangerous side effects or risks of over dosing. I guess our negative attitudes toward such things must be a vestige of the old Puritan notion that something that feels so good can not be good for you.

I'd like to explore that for a minute because I really believe that our fear of sex underlies so much of what our country was put through this past year.

As a culture, we are conflicted about sexuality. On one hand, we are obsessed with it. We soothe and anaesthetize ourselves with it. We plaster it everywhere and use it to sell almost everything. On the other hand, we are terrified by it. Most people don't think of sex as dirty but when we dare mention it at all, we euphemize, we speak of making love or of procreation. It is clear that we have trouble affirming the validity of sex just for pleasure. In fact, if something does assist us in our sexual arousal or satisfaction, or appeals to our prurient interests, it is by definition deemed obscene. Go figure.

The women who are challenging the Alabama law are asserting that enjoying sex is not harmful and certainly none of the government's business. The only thing to be afraid of and the only thing that is harmful is our own repressive attitudes and laws.

I really like the vibrator story. It focuses the issue for women and fills out the consciousness raising phenomenon of 1998. It is the female equivalent of Bill Clinton's oral escapades or Bob Dole's erectile dysfunction ads. At long last our country is able to say the word penis and accept its importance. Now if we can accept that female orgasms are important and that, for millions of women, vibrators are just as important as Viagra is for men, we will have completed the sexual revolution begun in the '60's.

Rev. Michael Heath , Fayetteville, NY 2/23/99