Dear Tiero,

Can I call you Teiro? I know this is a really personal thing to ask of you, but I think it’s time you got some real talk.

Many men — so I’ve heard, anyway — don’t like “going down” on women. They all have various reasons for that, from cultural stigmas that brand it less manly, to religious objections (though the Catholic Church is actually not anti-oral, if it’s part of regular p-in-v relations between married people), to general physical preferences against doing it. And, I promise you, I have no real urge to speculate which objection(s) your husband has raised over the course of your marriage.

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Ok, I grant you that your husband’s discriminatory policies against LGBT people in your state does seem rooted in a genuine hatred and bigotry. So I’m not saying that there is no part of him that is interested in limiting legal consensual sex to that of the p-in-v variety as a way to further his own hated, bigoted agenda against LGBT Virginians.

What I am saying is that any man who would seriously risk his own political ambitions and make himself a national laughingstock on the altar of outlawing in the state all manner of sexual contact that is inconsistent with how he himself clearly prefers to have sex… is a man that has run out of excuses to give his lady wife about why, no, he won’t just kiss her “down there.”

Look, I know it sucks. I know movies like “Bound” and “Pulp Fiction” made it look fun and gratifying in the nineties (I’m assuming you missed “Henry and June”), that “Sex in the City” made it seem standard in the early aughts and that you can’t even watch “Game Of Thrones” without seeing yet another woman gasping in pleasure from it. And, I’m woman enough to admit that (when done right), it is exactly that good if not better. So, I’m sorry that Virginia’s esteemed Attorney General isn’t up for (or up to) going down, and I know those vows you made to him didn’t have an out clause for this circumstance. I feel you.

Yes, I have seen myself that it’s easy enough to nag the majority of husbands into doing chores they find objectionable (even if it doesn’t make for the most fun time), but I think it’s time to admit that this is one “chore” you’re just not going to be able to nag the man into doing. I mean, girl, he is trying to pass a law to make doing it illegal! His bid for higher office is going to be remembered for being the campaign to make this particular kind of sexy fun-time illegal in a whole state — and it’s 2013! This is, like, next-level stubbornness, it seems to me — as my mother would say, he’s all but cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Your husband is a man who really, really, really, really, really does not want to share with you this particular intimate act. Really-really. Like, not now, not ever. He wants to make people who engage in it subject to criminal prosecution — including you and your children, by the way.** In the battle of wills that is this request of yours, you’ve fired a couple shots at the British from the treeline, and he’s about ready to bomb Hiroshima.

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But there are other people in the state who are happily engaging in the acts your husband seeks to outlaw — gay, straight, bi, trans, you name it — and they are the ones who will be really hurt by your husband’s actions here. So maybe it’s time to make your peace that he’s never going to do it, tell him you’ll stop asking and quietly buy a rechargeable lady’s-best-friend (they’re quieter, if you don’t already know). You can have it shipped to my house, if you don’t want him to find out.

-Megan

** I mean, effectively, he wants to criminalize — or at least make prosecutable — being gay in Virginia, which is a whole situation which I think should make you question the quality of the person to whom you are married, but that’s a whole ‘nother letter.

[Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli speaking at the 2012 Liberty Political Action Conference in Chantilly, Virginia.. Image via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, Creative Commons licensed.]