Bravo to you, TN Legislators, for taking a firm (though somewhat belated) stand against the holding of hands. I remember vividly my first experience with handholding as a gateway sexual activity. Well, I don't really, but I do remember being with this studly guy I was already having sex with, sitting in a movie touching hands and getting hotter than an insider-trading stock tip. So, you're right, all that touching definitely leads to sex, if you're doing it right.
During the past week I've thought quite a lot about this sexual gateway stuff. Your bill was eye-opening for me - I'd heard of gateway drugs, like marijuana and daddy's beer stash, but never of gateway sex. After much deep rumination I've come to some startling conclusions, Number One being that human beings are born to have sex! Think about it - we come into the world with gender specific genitalia (mostly), the hormone floods start in utero and continue throughout our lifetimes, despite the rumors that sex is NOT for old people.
There doesn't seem to be a topic that's as hot (heh) as sex and sexuality, at least not in this country, and over the centuries we seem to have found more and more ways to make rules in an effort to control sexual behavior, without ever succeeding.
This is a lost cause. Humans are hopelessly sexual, they strenuously resist all efforts to deny sexuality, and some of them appear to think about sex roughly every 5 minutes throughout their lifetimes. It's an incredible waste of productive energy.
Although it pains me to have to break this to you, I fear that your brave and lonely stand against early gateway sexual activities has fallen drastically short. Perhaps you were thinking about sex when you ought to have been focusing on the true gateway to sexual activities? You see what I mean, sex interferes with your ability to think clearly and act speedily!
There's only one solution I can come up with, after a week of heavy pondering: we need mandatory birth control laws passed immediately.
Birth is the most fundamental of gateway sexual activities. Once born, the human body is primarily engaged in one activity - maturing toward puberty. Once puberty kicks in there's little, if any, hope that sexual activities can be fully blocked. We are committed to a lifetime search for attractive and amusing sexual partners.
Marriage vows, the promise to cleave to each other until death parts us, have scant impact. Our divorce rate is high enough to make marriage a clear failure. No manufacturer would continue to build a device that has a 5o+% failure rate. Neutering males didn't completely prevent them from dallying with the harem, vows of celibacy seem to have a higher failure rate than marriage vows. As for chastity vows (or belts for that matter) it is to laugh! We are, as a species, hopelessly sexual. The only solution is to end the species.
You know much more about the creation of laws than I do, so I'll leave the details in your capable hands. I keep waffling between neonatal gonad removal and the infusion of contraceptives into our water and air. You may have already begun to study this issue and thus have cleverer solutions.
Please act quickly. Now that I'm fully aware of the hopelessness of this situation, I'm anxious to have rampant human sexuality thoroughly quashed.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I've lived 62 plus years without giving it serious thought. How blind I've been!