NewsMax.com: Viagra Welfare Spurs New Sex Attacks

At issue: President Clinton, in 1998, issued a Presidential directive saying that State Medicaid programs would have to dispense the drug known as Viagra (sildenafil/Pfizer) to any male patient who required it for the treatment of impotency. Was this of a piece with Clinton's oversexed disposition? Perhaps. But more to the point: a number of men, under the influence of sildenafil, have assaulted a number of women and gone to prison for it. The DA of Westchester County, NY, reports that 86-year-old men have taken sildenafil so that they can continue to molest children.

Many things are wrong with this. First, the Constitution nowhere authorizes Congress to provide any sort of drug. Second, even if it did, impotency is not a life-threatening condition. The syndrome of men trying to keep up with Studly Jones is itself of a piece with the oversexed attitude of our entire society.

As any really happily married couple knows, sexual potency, attractiveness, and all the rest of it is neither necessary nor sufficient to happiness in a marriage. Marriage, properly understood, is the deepest, most abiding personal friendship that a man and a woman can enter into. Or at least, it should be. If sexual attractiveness is the only reason to get married--well, no wonder our society is full of divorcées and serially married men who jump from one trophy wife to another. And as for striking up a sexual liaison without getting married--well, the Bible mentions that only to condemn it, and rightly so.

So why is the government giving sildenafil to people, when sildenafil is essentially an elective treatment, like breast augmentation? (And a dangerous one, too--we now hear that sildenafil can make you blind. And that's no joke.) Add to it that it has resulted in a rise in sexual crime.

Behold your tax dollars at work. I know that Romans 13:1-7 tells us to pay taxes to them to whom taxes are due. But we also ought to follow Paul's example and ask whether certain policies of our government are truly expedient or even lawful.