Isn't it fitting that in this, the age of Megan's Law, the bully pulpit is occupied by an accused rapist? Mr. Clinton must surely feel the pain of community notification after months of the airing of his (or is it Monica's) dirty laundry. And all the cruise missiles launched against Milosevic cannot erase his "offender" registration in the public consciousness. Shall we view the President as a case example of a sex offender attempting to put his life back together? Should we also be examining ourselves for our prurience, and explore the deviant society that has infiltrated from the heartland to the executive branch?

The war we wage to curb the sex offense menace is as two-faced as the war on drugs. The zeal with which the criminal justice system distinguishes minor sexual nuisances belies the fact that we seem to be creating tomorrow's deviants faster than we rush to throttle them. Never has a developing generation been as primed for committing sex offenses as this, the Megan's Law generation, is. With herpes and AIDS paranoia largely behind us, promiscuity has returned on the responsible back of-what else- journalism and the entertainment industry. As the new millennium approaches, a merging of the thirst for experience of the information age has merged with the message to try anything new. And anything means... pick your sex offense: voyeurism, exhibitionism, pedophilia, incest, rape. Offenders are not limited to the underclass, to the undersocialized, underprivileged, and undersophisticated.

Ask your divorce attorney neighbor how many marriages have been ruined by compulsive pornography surfing on the internet. It's the hottest thing since mice kept clicking that lever which fed them a shot of cocaine (you know we're in trouble when addicts set an example for the rest of us). Virtual reality technology brings the promise of sex on demand that acts as a drug to be taken in isolation. But like any drug, when habituation occurs, the thirst increases, and the effort to satisfy the urge must expand. And with the cyberworld taste for the novel, pornography has evolved into literally an entire nation taking it off and telling it all. Exhibitionism has found an audience of sensation-seeking voyeurs who have gone on to create a exploding economy sector. It's no longer hard to conceive of a corrections officer who spends an afternoon smacking around the weirdo Peeping Tom in cell block C, then goes back to the office, logs on, and masturbates in front of his computer while looking at pictures of men being tied up. When that fantasy loses its thrills, how will he indulge his fantasy—with Tom.

Maybe you are repulsed by stories about pedophiles. The incestuous molester might as well be lynched if he dares to get a job as a school bus driver, even though he poses no risk outside his own home. But the angry mod formed to protect the school just might be led by a teacher who happens to be shtupping the fifteen year old in his home room class-just as he has done to scores before her. She's not a child, we say, she's another Lolita. We say we don't want our little girls to be wild, but is there anything America doesn't do to promote adolescent sexual hyperactivity?

At the same time that we recognize the moral limitations of the adolescent male, we stuff his head with every sexual and Oedipal model imaginable, deviant and otherwise. In the school setting, boys are hardly victimized; in their boundary free, parenting free lifestyle, the female teacher is the prize. To her, the boys are more sensitive and easier to manage than the men she knows. After all, she read it was okay in a woman's magazine.

And they don't grow out of it, either. Getting laid is such a matter of college campus peer pressure that fraternity gang rape and sexual assault by athletes have become almost acceptable; they simmer as quietly overlooked-but quite recidivistic-sex offenses. How many frat boys have registered with local law enforcement? And that star wide receiver? Don't worry, the Raiders will still draft him.

More recently, technical advances have honed GHB and Rohypnol into rape tools for the rest of the campus. Only now are we discovering the link between predators who exploit in this manner and necrophilia. Did you think it was just Jeffrey Dahmer? One recent rape drug defendant had been named the most eligible man in Massachusetts. Incest? Woody and Soon Yi visibly and blithely enjoy the overpaid Knicks, their great seats paid for by our rush to see Mr. Allen's musings on life and neurotic reality.

Where, in fact, is the selectively outraged feminist community when the gang and gangsta "culture" redefines a woman's place as a mattress, preferably by force of rape, perpetrated by numbers? Where psychedelics and an attitude of openness influenced the thinking of one past generation, hip-hop influences ours to seek immediate gratification, indulge in violent breast beating, and view everything as an object to obey one's thirst. It's enough to get me rushing to the next Million Man March.

Of course we need to protect the public. But citizens policing sex offenders represents a curious paradox: those who get caught are being watched by those who don't. In a law office the other day, I wandered over to the telescope trained out the window on an apartment building next door. What does one see? Lots of people tied up, doing funny things with their vacuum cleaners, or even a dog, uh, lover? While all this may lead you to the fairly justified conclusion that this country needs an enema, the problem we now face is that too many will get gratification from it.

Surely it is easier to eternally damn sex offenders than Serbs. But if we don't learn how sex offenders developed from people just like us, we will fail to understand where we are headed. If we are so concerned about protecting our neighborhoods, it's time for us to take an unflinching look at the high risk lurking in our families and ourselves.