More than a generation after the sexual revolution, the mere word "sex" still flusters us so much that in public we handle it with tongs of delicacy. This sentence, lifted from the Internet, demonstrates the discomfiture of its author: "Friday, July 6: Rep. Gary Condit has admitted to Washington, D.C., police that he had a romantic relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy, a police source told Fox News."

Romantic? In some contexts, "romantic" might have meant they read Keats and Shelley to each other or played soft music during dinner while candles flickered. But that's not what the writer was trying to convey. "Romantic" has become one of the words we use in place of "sexual" because we remain nervous about a subject that everybody decided, 30-some years ago, not to be nervous about any more.