Dear Mr. President,

I see your situation with Ms. Lewinsky as a teachable moment for the country. A moment I fear, whose message has already been lost in the taboo woods.

In more than 20 years as an alcohol and drug counselor on the West Coast, I was often the third person to find out who had sex for the first time, or who was pregnant. I learned that news consistently before the parents. I told my students I was honored that they shared this with me, but it's your parents that should be talking to you, not a trusted stranger. They told me that their parents felt uncomfortable with talking about sex, other than admonitions to "don't do it", "wait until marriage", this from parent's from the free love generation.

Silence means people come up with their own rules. One of my best students came up with her own "10 date rule". "Guy's don't like it because it contradicts their 2 date pressure rule." After ten dates he might get sex, after showing her HIV/STD free test results. Once a pregnant teen watching her mother's multiple relationships, she came up with these rules on her own.

Some colleagues suggest you may be a sexual addict. If so your recovery is your affair (so to speak), but you are certainly not alone. We use sex to sell consumer goods, but we don't have conversations and actions that inform our behaviors with common sense. Disney makes movies of children kissing (Jungle to Jungle, Blue Lagoon), but our daughters don't track their ovulation cycle and conceive by choice, even if they can avoid sexual encounters with adults in their homes.

I believe your involvement with Ms. Lewinsky was as preventable as it was predictable. Your societally based myths, folklore, and taboos meshed to produce your relationship. Lies by omission and denial are in accord with the code of silence society still promotes. Society continues those lies by omission and denial as if we are still living in some nostalgic 50's sitcom. The silence on this critical issue condemns people to wholly preventable pregnancy, disease, death, and injury. Talk may be cheap, but embarrassed silence can be deadly.