Pinto Alegre!

"Recently, in a small Brazilian town called Novo Santo Antonio in the central state of Mato Grosso, the mayor Joao de Souza Luz began a Viagra distribution program that was approved by the legislature and dubbed 'Happy Penis' or 'Pinto Allegre' in Portuguese. In this program, men over the age of 60 can sign up to receive free Viagra. " But many of the men were cheating on their wives so "De Souza Luz changed the program to only distribute Viagra to the wives of the old men, 'That way, when the women are in the mood, they can give the pills to their husbands.'"
-Prompt from Public Health Homework

I’m pretty sure that there would never be such a blatant program in the United States. For one thing, the United States is absolutely obsessed with the idea of maintaining sex as a taboo. This can be seen in the way how the government educates its citizens about sex: only promoting abstinence only programs despite their lack of effectiveness. The major political issues of the past few elections have been gay-marriage and abortion, two sex-related issues that affect few people and have little or no impact on the actual day to day lives of a huge majority of the population. Voters don’t turn out to vote for their legislators, but they will turn out in droves to turn down these measures. We are in a weird Puritanical culture that only has comparisons with countries in the Middle East. It’s not an issue of Christianity or even fundamentalism. In Europe, you don’t see anything like this. Portugal, which is where my family is from and a place I’ve visited many times, is a country that is nearly entirely catholic yet they have few of the hang-ups that you see in America. It is not uncommon to see nude people on television, in commercials, movies, or on beaches at just about anytime during the day.

This is part of the Puritanical idea of denying any pleasures but in fact it only leads to greater disturbances and more bizarre behavior. Shoving sexuality to the dark regions of what is dirty in our society has had little effect on preventing teenage pregnancies or pedophilia. In fact it has been shown that the shame regarding sexuality has led to decreased use of contraceptives of teenagers which has only worsened the problem. To me this is all completely insane. I have a lot of problems with the way how this whole issue is treated in our society. For instance, I don’t think that parents should be able to keep their children out of sex education classes if they don’t want their child to participate. It think that it is the government’s role to educate its citizens and it is absolutely in societies best interest if children are able to learn outside of the box that their parents want to keep them in. If this didn’t happen there would never be any progress. For this reason, I think that home-schooling for any non-special needs child should be outlawed. All this breeds is a lack of free thought and encouragement of the sheep-like following of some particular tenants. In reality, any rational person would see that even if they were not in favor of gay-marriage, it doesn’t really affect them and it is only irrational thought, which currently is mainly being perpetuated by right-wing religious groups, that is keeping this country from finally stepping out of its discriminatory history. The only dangerous thing is I don’t know who I would trust to determine what is taught in schools.

The most dangerous thing imaginable is someone that is brainwashed, because someone who simply follows the doctrine of a religion without thinking isn’t someone that is faithful, it is someone that is already dead. Hence it is no surprise many are willing to commit suicide to promote their ideas in the Middle East. This is an issue that spans all cultures and all religions and one that needs to be addressed.

In this particular case in Brazil, it is a little questionable that the stance of the government shifted. Either sex is a human right that should be covered by health insurance or it isn’t. One can’t say that people have a right to have sex but only with their partner. It is the person’s choice and not the government’s. It seems that this type of medication could only reasonable be given if it was viewed in that way. It can’t just be seen as a way of giving an opiate to its elderly people or else what is keeping them from moving on and actually giving them actual drugs.