If you listen to some Americans, you'd think that no one in the United States is having sex. Of course we all know this isn't true. People must be having sex because babies are being born, condoms are being sold, and I'm still getting junk e-mail for something called "Live Free Sex" chat site. I guess the "live" part is supposed to entice me.

Then again, considering my e-mail queue, maybe people really aren't having sex. Maybe they're all chatting it up on the Internet with Tiffany and Jade and Jasmine -- or some other jewel, gemstone or spice -- instead of having "real" live sex with a free partner of choice. Free sex, live sex, real sex, marital sex: In this day and age, the real boudaries seem to blur, but not in our minds.

We Americans are so hypocritical about sex that we ought to be wearing condoms on our tongues. We all know that infidelity is the great American pastime, yet we adhere to this weird notion that sex is love, but then only when we want it to be. And when we're chatting it up with Tiffany, Jade or Jasmine, sex can be anything we want. We all want our partners proprietarily, but we don't deny ourselves flirtations with others, no matter how "dangerous" they may be. And many of us don't hesitate to act on these impulses, all the while deigning disgust in those who do.

Much of this has come to light over L'Affairs Clinton, specifically, the Monica Lewinsky variety. You'd be hard-pressed to find an American not named Hillary who didn't think that little Slick Willie has made some inappropriate appearances. Yet we were shocked when a sex scandal rocked the White House yet again.

Does this mean Clinton is through? Far from it. His popularity in the polls surged. People said they didn't? care about his infidelities. This with straight faces as they gobble up every sordid morsel about the case.

And what's the rest of the world's take on this scandal? To be frank, Europeans think we're quite whacked. In much of Europe it's considered common if a husband keeps a mistress and a wife takes on a lover. And they're often seen in public together. But then a tryst is considered a tryst is considered private. It may be common knowledge but it's never discussed. You'd think the Europeans took on lovers like Amercans go to the bathroom.

The late French President Francois Mitterand was known for his alleged affairs, and he better resembled a balding vulture than Jack Kennedy. So you can clearly see why many Europeans think the American obsession with high-level sex scandals is rather juvenile.

The fact is the recent L'Affair Clinton made our nation giggle like a bunch of ninth-graders in a sex education class. As if to make matters more uncomfortable, we now fret about how we're going to explain it to the kids. Never mind the kids. What about us adults? So fearful are we of the new number one contraceptive -- a company's sexual harassment policy -- that one morning television show actually featured a segment informing corporate folks how they should talk and act about the case in the workplace.

Maybe we should ask the kids. They could teach us a thing or two. It certainly appears that the younger generations are far less hypocritical about sex. For older generations, sex is love... until you have it with someone else, then it's not. For the younger set, sex is your own affair, whether you equate it with love or lust or the Spice Girls.

I'm not implying infidelity is right or wrong. Or that Tiffany, Jade and Jasmine may be on to something big. It just means that we may have some more thinking to do about the matter of sex in the '90s. Or perhaps the problem is that we think too much.