Stroking at the easel: into what will these horny teenagers channel their pent-up orgone?

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, MUCH LAST YEAR SPENT ABOUT $99 million on the arts, has just authorized spending $250 million, to encourage teenagers to stop having sex. Simultaneously the House has decided to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.

This is extremely unwise. With the NEA gone and almost no arts programs available, into what exactly will. these horny teenagers channel their pent-up, unspent or gone?

Outbreaks of acne are to be anticipated. The manufacturers of pimple cream are probably behind the whole idea. Even if this is not true, you should put it on the Internet, and start a big rumor. I furthermore predict a sharp decline in teenage manners, more pierced body parts, more tragic haircuts, more gunnysack/war-trauma clothing, and, quite possibly, an upswing in adolescent crime rates. (I hope they mug Republicans, who insist that kids should be prosecuted as adults. This will help justify the big boom in government-funded prison construction. And we don't have to spend money to get inmates to stop having sex. If we refuse them condoms, they relieve the state of the cost of incarceration by dying. So it all works out in the end.)

No one is certain how the $250 million in abstinence money--or, rather, the half billion, since the states are required to match the federal, allocation--is going to be spent. (Fittingly, by the way, the antisex measure was attached to the equally repulsive welfare-reform bill.) There's some concern on Capitol Hill about this, though far less concern than there was over faggot artists getting tiny grants. Each state will receive $4 million to $5 million in antisex funds, the allocation of which falls into the hands of state legislatures. Something that isn't often discussed in the Age of Newt, when all power is flowing back to the states--as Jefferson Davis, George Wallace, and David Duke always dreamed it would--is that it's easier to become a state legislator than it is to buy an assault rifle in Texas!

It takes many zillions of bucks and a severe personality disorder to become president. You apparently have to sell your soul to the devil and be a major shareholder in hell to become a senator. And very few Americans are sleazy, dumb, and rich enough to become a House freshman. But to be a state legislator, all you have to be, basically, is sleazy and dumb. It doesn't cost all that much. You can't be poor, of course; the poor were disenfranchised last year. But if you have a credit card--and these days household pets have credit cards (thank God we're about to eliminate the deficit!)--you can charge enough to either make an independent film, or run for state legislator. If you choose the latter, you probably were unpopular in high school and have a secret vendetta against everyone in your county.

Anyone in this great nation of ours can be a state legislator, and pretty much everyone is: madmen, con men, Book of Revelations-reading eschatologists. My home-state legislature, in Louisiana, recently passed a law creating optional marriage contracts under which divorce is next to impossible--just so the kids who haven't had sex as teenagers will have something to look forward to.

I anticipate all manner of creative antisex ideas: Chastity belts. Electroshock. Prozac. Lobotomies. Antisex ads featuring the singers young people love, like--oh, I dunno--Zamfir? Lengthy homework assignments featuring Bill Bennett's monster morality readers. Everything except safe-sex education and condom distribution.

Gertrude Himmelfarb is going to be made the ayatollah of sex in Indiana. She will peddle her appealing message, "Bring back shame! " to all Hoosier teens! Really, I read this somewhere; I'm not making it up! Gertrude! In mufti! OK, I am making it up, but it's a good idea, and any closet case in the Indiana state legislature who secretly reads The Advocate is welcome to it.

When I was a teenager, I was years ahead of my time. I had no sex. OK, it's because I was gay and I would have been killed, probably, if I'd asked any one, or at least I believed I would. I love the idea that now straight teenagers will have to see what it's like being lonely and ashamed. It's the first fair thing the GOP has proposed since the Emancipation Proclamation. We hold this truth to be self-evident: All are created equally miserable. But I do worry about venues for sublimation, and so I recommend increasing the NEA's budget.

Hey, kids! If masturbation is insufficient, try art! It worked for me! It still does!